Social Games

A wall in the distant north cuts the world in two. Ruthless sea borne warriors raid the coasts from their war galleys, yearning to regain lost glories. A young nobleman and his kin are slaughtered under a banner of truce within a mighty castle. A warrior king becomes a legend when he smites his foe with one swing of his axe during a nation-forging battle. Yet this isn’t Westeros–it’s Scotland.

The hardening of racial lines during the first half of the 20th century eliminated almost all African Americans from white organized sports, forcing black athletes to form their own teams, organizations, and events. This separate sporting culture, explored in the 12 essays included here, comprised much more than athletic competition; these “separate games” provided examples of black enterprise and black self-help and showed the importance of agency and the quest for racial uplift in a country fraught with racialist thinking and discrimination.

In Great Games, Local Rules, Alexander Cooley, one of America's most respected international relations scholars, explores the dynamics of the new competition for control of the region since 9/11. All three great powers have crafted strategies to increase their power in the area, which includes Afghanistan and the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. Each nation is pursuing important goals: basing rights for the US, access to natural resources for the Chinese, and increased political influence for the Russians.

The first in a fast-paced, funny series featuring The Stig: Top Gear's legendary racing driver. Sam Wheeler may be the new boy in Bunsfold, but he's got a feeling that all is not well either in the town or at Bunsfold High - and he's not just talking about the maths teacher with the unfortunate flatulence. A local boy, Buster Mustang, has recently gone missing, and no one seems to care - they're all too busy playing the highly addictive video game Xenon or getting the town ready for its very first TT race.

Oral historian and documentary researcher David Wolinsky invites listeners to sit in on a series of urgent, intimate conversations between some of the most distinguished voices across entertainment and media as they reflect on the longstanding impact of Gamergate. What went wrong, and what can we learn from Gamergate to help us build a more equitable online world?

This audiobook is the window into the underground world of cheating at the highest levels, which set off a frenzy of activity and hand-wringing in the offices of Major League Baseball and Congress. Through the authors' pursuit of sources and documents, they were able to open for public view a world in which elite athletes trade money and risk their health for the edge that will allow them to run faster, hit harder, and compete longer, and then cash in on the fame and wealth.

Stevie and Maison have a great friendship where they travel back and forth between the Overworld and the human world. Maison has earned some fame for battling off the mobs at her school, but the attention has also brought about cyberbullies DestinyIsChoice123 and TheVampireDragon555, who have hacked her computer and discovered the portal! Now, through complex coding, the cyberbullies have turned the Overworld into eternal night and unleashed a pack of zombies.

Bill Littlefield (NPR's Only a Game) presents the second installment in the Library of America series devoted to classic American sportswriters, a definitive collector's edition of the pathbreaking writer who invented the long-form sports story.

Olivia Peters is over the moon when her literary idol, the celebrated novelist and much-adored local priest Mark D. Brendan, offers to become her personal writing mentor. But when Father Mark’s enthusiasm for Olivia’s prose develops into something more, Olivia’s emotions quickly shift from wonder to confusion to despair. Exactly what game is Father Mark playing, and how on earth can she get out of it?

Everyone in Lumush’s Nairobi neighborhood knows to stay away from the house on Desai Street. A family died there, and now the place is haunted by strange noises and ghosts in the night. Lumush and his friends, Dado, Mose, and Odush, who spend their free time hanging out by the wreck of an old Zephyr car near the railway yards, begin sneaking into the old house on Desai Street in search of adventure. They soon realize that it’s not ghosts they have to fear but Mwachuma, the malevolent owner of the town junkyard who has his own reputation for violence.

India's relations with the People's Republic of China have captured the popular imagination ever since the 1950s but have rarely merited a detailed understanding of the issues. Individual episodes tend to arouse lively debate, which often dissipates without a deeper exploration of the factors that shaped the outcomes.

From parsing Silicon Valley personal ads, hanging out with high tech gurus, attending conferences-cum-rallies or exposing the flaws in technolibertarian thinking, Borsook's observations, mordant wit, and furious passion awakens you to the social and political consequences of having computer geeks run the world.

After Arthur calls Francine a marshmallow, she refuses to speak to him. Then Mr. Ratburn pairs them up for a homework project. They reluctantly go to the library for research and, when the library closes, find themselves locked in. Will Arthur and Francine set aside their differences and work together to find a way out?

Nearly everyone has played chess at some point in their lives. Its rules and pieces have served as a metaphor for society including military strategy, mathematics, artificial intelligence, literature, and the arts. It has been condemned as the devil’s game by popes, rabbis, and imams, and lauded as a guide to proper living by different popes, rabbis, and imams. In his wide-ranging and ever fascinating examination of chess, David Shenk gleefully unearths the hidden history of a game that seems so simple yet contains infinity.

Play Money explores a remarkable new phenomenon that's just beginning to enter public consciousness: MMPORGs, or Massively MultiPlayer Online Role-Playing Games, in which hundreds of thousands of players operate fantasy characters in virtual environments the size of continents. With city-sized populations of nearly full-time players, these games generate their own cultures, governments, and social systems and, inevitably, their own economies, which spill over into the real world.

Josh Valentine was trapped in anxiety, shyness, and depression for over a decade until he stumbled upon this truth in the lowest moments of hating himself: Confidence is a skill; it’s a muscle, and you can build it faster than we can fathom. In fact, confidence is self-love, self compassion, and building yours is the very point of life. You see, the point of life is to achieve our highest levels of emotional growth; our most positive internal state.

McKenzie and her boyfriend, Brady, are having the best summer ever when Mack’s aunt arrives to bring her back east for school. Before Mack leaves for her exclusive prep school, she and Brady decide to surf one last wave for the summer. But after a surfing mishap, the duo finds themselves transported into a classic 1960s' beach movie musical! They soon discover that there is an intense rivalry between the local surfers and bikers.

Sun (check). Fun (check). Friends (check). Tortures of junior high (on hold!). Get ready to jump into summer with Lizzie McGuire in A Very Lizzy Summer and A Totally Hottie Summer!

What if saving the Earth were a game? Not just any game, but the greatest game we’ve ever played. This workbook helps social and environmental change professionals learn how to implement powerful techniques from the fields of game design, behavioral psychology, design, data science, and storytelling, that are not only proven to have impact, but also can make your project fun. In a 10-step framework of exercises, tutorials, and case studies, How to Save the World will teach you the art of changing the world — and it’s often not what you think.

This isn't just any book; it's your secret toolkit, brimming with laughter-inducing, thought-provoking, and friend-making games that can turn any moment into a fantastic adventure! In this engaging and interactive book, you'll uncover a treasure trove of 23 hilarious conversation games that promise to bring the fun to any situation. Whether you're at a sleepover, a family gathering, or a classroom setting, these games will enliven the atmosphere and spark memorable conversations.