When something goes horribly wrong during the filming of a new virtual reality show, teenaged contestants are trapped in a simulation, questioning how much of the game is real.

In 1845, an estimated 2,500 emigrants left Independence and St. Joseph, Missouri, for the Willamette Valley in what was soon to become the Oregon Territory. It was general knowledge that the route of the Oregon Trail through the Blue Mountains and down the Columbia River to The Dalles was grueling and dangerous. About 1,200 men, women, and children in over two hundred wagons accepted fur trapper and guide Stephen Meek's offer to lead them on a shortcut across the trackless high desert of eastern Oregon. Those who followed Meek experienced a terrible ordeal when his memory of the terrain apparently failed. Lost for weeks with little or no water and a shortage of food, the Overlanders encountered deep dust, alkali lakes, and steep, rocky terrain. Many became ill and some died in the forty days it took to travel from the Snake River in present-day Idaho to the Deschutes River near Bend, Oregon. Stories persist that children in the group found gold nuggets in a small, dry creek bed along the way. From 2006 to 2011, Brooks Ragan and a team of specialists in history, geology, global positioning, metal detecting, and aerial photography spent weeks every spring and summer tracing the Meek Cutoff. They located wagon ruts, gravesites, and other physical evidence from the most difficult part of the trail, from Vale, Oregon, to the upper reaches of the Crooked River and to a location near Redmond where a section of the train reached the Deschutes. The Meek Cutoff moves readers back and forth in time, using surviving journals from members of the 1845 party, detailed day-to-day maps, aerial photographs, and descriptions of the modern-day exploration to document an extraordinary story of the Oregon Trail.

CUT OFF! When Illusions Surviveis a unique study of dynamics evident in every person, group and culture. This story celebrates human resourcefullness as three survivors battle to overcome the destructive sides of their personalities. What would happen if you were isolated and stranded by a major cataclysm with no idea if the rest of the world survived ? This novel is prompted by our experience following the September 11, 2001 (9/11) shut down after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. My wife, our two teenage sons, and I were in a remote Iupiaq Native Alaskan village above the Arctic Circle when all planes were grounded. We were isolated and felt cut off from the rest of the world. My thoughts about the very real possibility that all was lost, brought forth this novel.

Following François Laruelle's nonstandard philosophy and the work of Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, Luce Irigaray, and Rosi Braidotti, Katerina Kolozova reclaims the relevance of categories traditionally rendered "unthinkable" by postmodern feminist philosophies, such as "the real," "the one," "the limit," and "finality," thus critically repositioning poststructuralist feminist philosophy and gender/queer studies. Poststructuralist (feminist) theory sees the subject as a purely linguistic category, as always already multiple, as always already nonfixed and fluctuating, as limitless discursivity, and as constitutively detached from the instance of the real. This reconceptualization is based on the exclusion of and dichotomous opposition to notions of the real, the one (unity and continuity), and the stable. The non-philosophical reading of postructuralist philosophy engenders new forms of universalisms for global debate and action, expressed in a language the world can understand. It also liberates theory from ideological paralysis, recasting the real as an immediately experienced human condition determined by gender, race, and social and economic circumstance.

It's been six years since the plague and Tristan has spent five of them in Maui with her brother Alden. Life seems quiet. Simple. Peaceful. All these illusions are torn away when she discovers an alien installation hidden in the mountains. In response, she prepares a boat and starts work on a new home deep in the forest. But the locals don't appreciate her raiding their town for supplies. Soon, their resentment flares into open war—and draws the attention of the aliens, who bomb the area relentlessly. With their home and lives in ruin, Tristan and Alden flee deep into the jungle of Hana. And discover a secret paradise. Yet it's not meant to last. Off the coast of China, Ness and his alien ally Sebastian are tracking an alien conspiracy. Its tendrils will lead them straight to Maui—and pull humanity to the brink of extinction.

An in-depth look at an integral part of mining strategy optimisation - cut-off specification.

In old England, if a king didn't like you, he would cut off your head. Now, if they don't like you, they'll cut off your project! As the Johnson Administration initiated its war on poverty in the 1960s, the Mingo County Economic Opportunity Commission project was established in southern West Virginia. Huey Perry, a young, local history teacher was named the director of this program and soon he began to promote self-sufficiency among low-income and vulnerable populations. As the poor of Mingo County worked together to improve conditions, the local political infrastructure felt threatened by a shift in power. Bloody Mingo County, known for its violent labor movements, corrupt government, and the infamous Hatfield-McCoy rivalry, met Perry's revolution with opposition and resistance. In They'll Cut Off Your Project, Huey Perry reveals his efforts to help the poor of an Appalachian community challenge a local regime. He describes this community's attempts to improve school programs and conditions, establish cooperative grocery stores to bypass inflated prices, and expose electoral fraud. Along the way, Perry unfolds the local authority's hostile backlash to such change and the extreme measures that led to an eventual investigation by the FBI. They'll Cut Off Your Project chronicles the triumphs and failures of the war on poverty, illustrating why and how a local government that purports to work for the public's welfare cuts off a project for social reform.