Search results for ""avalon publishing group""

Rise of the Dungeon Master tells, in graphic form, the story of Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, one of the most influential games ever made. Like the game itself, the narrative casts the reader into the adventure from a first person point of view, taking on the roles of the different characters in the story.Gygax was the son of immigrants who grew up in Lake Geneva, WI, in the 1950s. An imaginative misfit, he escaped into a virtual world based on science fiction novels, military history and strategic games like chess. In the mid-1970s, he co-created the wildly popular Dungeons & Dragons game, determining the rules and inventing the signature 20-sided dice. Starting out in the basement of his home, he was soon struggling to keep up with the demand. Gygax was a purist, in the sense that he was adamant that players use their imaginations and that the rules of the game remain flexible. A creative mind with no real knowledge of business, he made some strategic errors and had a falling out with the game's co-creator, his close friend and partner, David Arneson. By the late 1970s the game had become so popular among kids that parents started to worry -- so much so that a mom's group was formed to alert parents to the dangers of role play and fantasy. The backlash only fueled the fires of the young fans who continued to play the game, escaping into imaginary worlds. Before long, D&D conventions were set up around the country and the game inspired everything from movies to the first video games. With D&D, Gygax created the kind of role playing fantasy that would fuel the multibillion dollar video game industry, and become a foundation of contemporary geek culture.

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Immerse yourself in San Miguel's baroque architecture, thriving art scene, and local flavors with Moon San Miguel de Allende. Inside you'll find: Flexible, strategic itineraries, from a week covering the best of San Miguel de Allende to three days exploring the art and architecture of the city The top sights and unique experiences: Admire colonial architecture and browse contemporary art galleries and streetside markets. Soak in a hot spring, sample mezcal, and snack on gorditas. Stroll the Franciscan missions of the Sierra Gorda or enjoy the mariachis serenading diners on the sidewalks. Celebrate Mexico's independence at the colorful parades of the fiestas patrias, or indulge in handmade tamales before siesta time Focused advice from expat Julie Doherty Meade, who shares her passion for the vida mexicana In-depth coverage of San Miguel de Allende and the vicinity, Guanajuato, and Qu

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Trek across salt flats, scale towering rocks, and explore the marble canyons of this otherworldly landscape with Moon Death Valley National Park. Inside you'll find: Flexible Itineraries: Easy-to-follow itineraries for seeing the best of Death Valley in one day or one week, plus lists of the best scenic drives, desert oases, stargazing spots, and more The Best Hikes in Death Valley: Detailed trail descriptions, mileage and elevation gains, and backpacking options Experience the Outdoors: Hike through forested trails to sweeping canyon views and discover abandoned mining camps, remote ghost towns, and hidden springs. Go four-wheeling in the backcountry and admire surreal salt flats, rock formations, and sculpted sand dunes, and find the best vistas for that perfect sunset photo-op How to Get There: Up-to-date information on gateway towns, park entrances, park fees,

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Whether you're visiting the park for a day hike or spending a long weekend under the stars, escape to the great outdoors with Moon Best of Yosemite. Inside you'll find: Easy itineraries for one to three days in Yosemite National Park, from a morning drive along the Tioga Pass Road, to a day hike along the Panorama Trail, to a full weekend exploring the park The top hikes in Yosemite: Whether you're looking to stretch your legs for a couple hours or challenge yourself to an epic trek, you'll find trailheads, detailed trail descriptions, individual maps, mileage, and elevation gains Can't-miss experiences: Make it the perfect getaway for you with the best waterfalls, views, picnic spots, and more. Ride the open-air tram through Yosemite Valley or hike downhill from Glacier Point past roaring waterfalls. Admire the towering trees in the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, or spot black bears and bighorn sheep

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Explore granite domes, thundering waterfalls, and towering trees: Moon Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon reveals the best of these stunning national parks. Inside you''ll find:- Flexible Itineraries: Unique and adventure-packed ideas for day hikers, winter visitors, families with kids, campers, and more- The Best Hikes in Each Park: Detailed hike descriptions, individual trail maps, mileage and elevation gains, and backpacking options- Experience the Outdoors: Ride the open-air tram through Yosemite Valley or hike downhill from Glacier Point past roaring waterfalls. Drive the legendary Generals Highway or take a scenic bike ride to pristine lakes (and yes, more waterfalls!). Go for a horse-drawn wagon ride on a history tour or take a rock-climbing lesson. Walk among the goliaths of Sequoia''s Giant Forest and stop at a historic lodge for dinner and a well-deserved drink- How to Get There: Up-to-date information on trave

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Baseball is called America's pastime for a reason. Experience the best of the MLB cities and stadiums with Moon Baseball Road Trips! Flexible Itineraries: Explore the 30 major league cities with a variety of road trip options, including a Boston to DC route, a loop through the Midwest, a dip into Toronto, a cruise along the West Coast, and more Visit all the Ballparks: From the ivy walls of Wrigley to Fenway's Green Monster and Dodger Stadium's gorgeous mountain views, experience every ballpark in the league and dive into local fan culture Catch a Game: Find valuable tips for snagging tickets and get the inside scoop on the best places to park or catch public transit, where to eat and drink nearby, and events like music festivals, the Hall of Fame Weekend, Fourth of July celebrations, and more Explore the Major League Cities: Get to know the MLB hometowns with full chapters on each city. Pay

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'Island time' isn't just for the tropics: Escape to evergreen forests, rocky shorelines, and the glittering sea with Moon San Juan Islands. Inside you'll find: Flexible itineraries like a 10-day best of the islands and a weeklong family camping trip, with coverage of gateway towns such as Anacortes, Whidbey Island, and Bellingham, plus nearby Seattle Unique experiences and can't-miss sights: Picnic on cliffs overlooking the ocean or paddleboard on a tranquil lake. Visit local farms filled with fragrant lavender or fluffy alpacas and sip wine or cider at island vineyards. Savor the flavors of the Pacific Northwest at incredible farm-to-table restaurants, sample oysters fresh from the sea, or browse your way through quirky bookstores and funky antique shops The best outdoor adventures: Go sea kayaking or glide through glimmering nighttime waters during a bioluminescence tour. Marvel

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For devotees of Bird by Bird and The Artist's Way, a memoir-driven guide to healing through the craft of writing A cinematic exploration of the writing life by Francesca Lia Block, the bestselling author of the Weetzie Bat series of magical-realism novels, The Thorn Necklace offers visceral insights and healing exercises for the writer who creates as a way to process pain and adversity. Gently guiding the reader down the write-to-heal path, Block offers guideposts of awareness for writers, such as how to find a muse, channeling agony into art, putting chaos into order, ignoring the inner critic, fostering personal perseverance, and thriving as an artist in a troubled world. The author also addresses the intrinsic value of channeling our experiences into the written word and provides compassionate support to the reader for his or her own write-to-heal process.

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Paris, 1911. Picasso, Debussy, and Proust were revolutionizing art, music, and literature. Electricity had transformed the City of Lights. And the Parisian elites were mad about their fancy new cars. The Belle Époque was well underway, yet it was not without incident. That year, Paris was gripped by a violent crime streak that obsessed and frightened its citizens. Before Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger, the Bonnot Gang, led by the coarse Jules Bonnot, captured the minds of a nation with their Robin Hood-esque capers. With guns blazing, the Bonnot Gang robbed banks and wealthy Parisians and killed anyone who got in their way in spectacularly cinematic fashion--all in the name of their particular brand of anarchism.In Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits, John Merriman describes the Bonnot Gang's murderous tear and the Parisian police force's botched efforts to stop them. At the heart of the book are two anarchist idealists who wanted to find an alternative to Bonnot's crimes and the French government's unchecked violence. Victor Kibaltchiche and Rirette Maîtrejean met and fell in love at an anarchist rally, and together ran the radical Parisian newspaper L'Anarchie, which covered the Bonnot Gang with great sympathy. The couple and their anarchist friends occupied a world far apart from the opulent Paris of the Champs-Élysées. Their Paris was a vast city of impoverished workers who lived near bleak canals, cemeteries, and empty lots around smoky factories. Victor and Rirette found hope in radical politics, Bonnot and his gang in crime, but none could escape the full might of the French military. The lovers were arrested and imprisoned for their political views, Bonnot was murdered after an hours-long standoff with the police, and his gang was hunted down and sentenced to death by guillotine or lifelong imprisonment.Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits is a classic tale of lost causes, tragic heroes, and the true costs of justice and revenge.

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Named a Best Book of the Year by Amazon.com and the Washington Post Three years ago, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges and award-winning cartoonist and journalist Joe Sacco set out to take a look at the sacrifice zones, those areas in America that have been offered up for exploitation in the name of profit, progress, and technological advancement. They wanted to show in words and drawings what life looks like in places where the marketplace rules without constraints, where human beings and the natural world are used and then discarded to maximize profit. Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt is the searing account of their travels.

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On a hot and dusty December day in 1980, the bodies of four American women- three of them Catholic nuns- were pulled from a hastily dug grave in a field outside San Salvador. They had been murdered two nights before by the US-trained El Salvadoran military. News of the killing shocked the American public and set off a decade of debate over Cold War policy in Latin America. The women themselves became symbols and martyrs, shorn of context and background.In A Radical Faith , journalist Eileen Markey breathes life back into one of these women, Sister Maura Clarke. Who was this woman in the dirt? What led her to this vicious death so far from home? Maura was raised in a tight-knit Irish immigrant community in Queens, New York, during World War II. She became a missionary as a means to a life outside her small, orderly world and by the 1970s was organizing and marching for liberation alongside the poor of Nicaragua and El Salvador.Maura's story offers a window into the evolution of postwar Catholicism: from an inward-looking, protective institution in the 1950s to a community of people grappling with what it meant to live with purpose in a shockingly violent world. At its heart, A Radical Faith is an intimate portrait of one woman's spiritual and political transformation and her courageous devotion to justice.

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The police in America belong to the people,not the other way around. Yet millions of Americans experience their cops as racist, brutal, and trigger-happy: an overly aggressive, militarized enemy of the people. For their part, today's officers feel they are under siege,misunderstood, unfairly criticized, and scapegoated for society's ills. Is there a fix? Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper believes there is.Policing is in crisis. The last decade has witnessed a vast increase in police aggression, misconduct, and militarization, along with a corresponding reduction in transparency and accountability. It is not just noticeable in African American and other minority communities,where there have been a series of high-profile tragedies,but in towns and cities across the country. Racism,from raw, individualized versions to insidious systemic examples,appears to be on the rise in our police departments. Overall, our police officers have grown more and more alienated from the people they've been hired to serve.In To Protect and Serve , Stamper delivers a revolutionary new model for American law enforcement: the community-based police department. It calls for fundamental changes in the federal government's role in local policing as well as citizen participation in all aspects of police operations: policymaking, program development, crime fighting and service delivery, entry-level and ongoing education and training, oversight of police conduct, and- especially relevant to today's challenges- joint community-police crisis management. Nothing will ever change until the system itself is radically restructured, and here Stamper shows us how.

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In the first week of June 2013, the American people discovered that for a decade, they had abjectly traded their individual privacy for the chimera of national security. The revelation that the federal government has full access to all phone records and the vast trove of presumably private personal data posted on the Internet has brought the threat of a surveillance society to the fore.But the erosion of privacy rights extends far beyond big government. Big business has long played a leading role in the hollowing out of personal freedoms. In this new book, Robert Scheer shows how our most intimate habits, from private correspondence, book pages read, and lists of friends and phone conversations have been seamlessly combined in order to create a detailed map of an individual's social and biological DNA.From wiretapping to lax social media security, from domestic spy drones to sophisticated biometrics, both the United States government and private corporate interests have dangerously undermined the delicate balance between national security and individual sovereignty. Without privacy, Scheer argues, there is neither freedom nor democracy. The freedom to be left alone embodies the most basic of human rights. Yet this freedom has been squandered in the name of national security and consumer convenience.The information revolution has exposed much of the world's population to a boundless world of universally shared information. But it has also stripped both passive and active participants of their every shred of privacy in ways most don't comprehend. No authoritarian regime ever could have hoped to gain the power to control the power and aspirations of their subjects that today's off-the-shelf information technology already provides. The technology of surveillance, Scheer warns, represents an existential threat to the liberation of the human spirit.

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In this lyrical debut, Ryan Berg immerses readers in the gritty, dangerous, and shockingly underreported world of homeless LGBTQ teens in New York. As a caseworker in a group home for disowned LGBTQ teenagers, Berg witnessed the struggles, fears, and ambitions of these disconnected youth as they resisted the pull of the street, tottering between destruction and survival.Focusing on the lives and loves of eight unforgettable youth, No House to Call My Home traces their efforts to break away from dangerous sex work and cycles of drug and alcohol abuse, and, in the process, to heal from years of trauma. From Bella's fervent desire for stability to Christina's irrepressible dreams of stardom to Benny's continuing efforts to find someone to love him, Berg uncovers the real lives behind the harrowing statistics: over 4,000 youth are homeless in New York City,43 percent of them identify as LGBTQ.Through these stories, Berg compels us to rethink the way we define privilege, identity, love, and family. Beyond the tears, bluster, and bravado, he reveals the force that allows them to carry on,the irrepressible hope of youth.

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2014 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Notable Book AwardIn Goliath , New York Times bestselling author Max Blumenthal takes us on a journey through the badlands and high roads of Israel-Palestine, painting a startling portrait of Israeli society under the siege of increasingly authoritarian politics as the occupation of the Palestinians deepens.Beginning with the national elections carried out during Israel's war on Gaza in 2008-09, which brought into power the country's most right-wing government to date, Blumenthal tells the story of Israel in the wake of the collapse of the Oslo peace process.As Blumenthal reveals, Israel has become a country where right-wing leaders like Avigdor Lieberman and Bibi Netanyahu are sacrificing democracy on the altar of their power politics where the loyal opposition largely and passively stands aside and watches the organized assault on civil liberties where state-funded Orthodox rabbis publish books that provide instructions on how and when to kill Gentiles where half of Jewish youth declare their refusal to sit in a classroom with an Arab and where mob violence targets Palestinians and African asylum seekers scapegoated by leading government officials as "demographic threats."Immersing himself like few other journalists inside the world of hardline political leaders and movements, Blumenthal interviews the demagogues and divas in their homes, in the Knesset, and in the watering holes where their young acolytes hang out, and speaks with those political leaders behind the organized assault on civil liberties. As his journey deepens, he painstakingly reports on the occupied Palestinians challenging schemes of demographic separation through unarmed protest. He talks at length to the leaders and youth of Palestinian society inside Israel now targeted by security service dragnets and legislation suppressing their speech, and provides in-depth reporting on the small band of Jewish Israeli dissidents who have shaken off a conformist mindset that permeates the media, schools, and the military.Through his far-ranging travels, Blumenthal illuminates the present by uncovering the ghosts of the past,the histories of Palestinian neighbourhoods and villages now gone and forgotten how that history has set the stage for the current crisis of Israeli society and how the Holocaust has been turned into justification for occupation.A brave and unflinching account of the real facts on the ground, Goliath is an unprecedented and compelling work of journalism.

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"This is my story, the story of an Arab woman. It is the story of a lost world. It begins in 1917, in Lebanon, when I was seven years old." So opens this haunting memoir by Wadad Makdisi Cortas, who eloquently describes her personal experience of the events that have fractured the Middle East over the past century. Through Cortas' eyes we experience life in Lebanon under the oppressive French mandate, and her desire to forge an Arab identity based on religious tolerance. We learn of her dedication to the education of women, and the difficulties that she overcomes to become the principal of a school in Lebanon. And in final, heartbreaking detail, we watch as her world becomes rent by the Palestine question," Western interference, and civil war. The World I Loved is both an elegy on Lebanon and her people, and the unforgettable story of one woman's journey from hope to sorrow as she bears painful witness to the undoing of her beloved country by sectarian and religious division.

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Why does a disease that killed only a handful of Americans like ebola provoke panic, but the flu-which kills tens of thousands each year-is dismissed with a yawn? Why is an unarmed young black woman who knocks on a stranger's front door to ask for help after her car breaks down perceived to be so threatening that the stranger shoots her dead? In Jumping at Shadows, Sasha Abramsky sets his sights on America's most dangerous epidemic: irrational fear.In this meditation on the paralyzing terror Americans feel when confronted with something they don't understand-from foreigners to tropical viruses to universal health care-Abramsky delivers an eye-opening analysis of our misconceptions about risk and threats, and how our brains interpret them, both at a neurological level and at a conscious one. What emerges is a journey through a political and cultural landscape that is defined by our fears, which are often misplaced. Ultimately, Abramsky shows that our fears can teach us a great deal about our society, exposing our deeply ingrained racism, classism, xenophobia, and susceptibility to the toxic messages of demagogues.

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