Issue #2 of the life and times of the Mayor of Khaboom, a democratically elected leader of a city dominated by powerful wizards. With an influx of immigrant goblins, a disloyal right hand, a bodyguard gone mad and a rampaging minotaur on the loose, who would even dream of running for re-election?

The Arena of Khaboom is set on the Kraken Continent, an alternative fantasy world. With the Tunnels & Trolls short rules, available by free download, a few dice and a pencil and paper, you can play a fighter to take on any of 72 pre-designed opponents. They get tougher as you progress and many have special powers. You will have plenty of chances to upgrade your abilities and maybe you will even live!

The third issue of the only comic that puts a magic city and its mayor under the microscope. More woes for the Mayor as he faces an election hot on the heels of an influx of goblin immigrants while the Wizards' Guild, his deputy and a demon in the shadows queer his pitch. The Goblin King loses his crowd, Samos Treek continues to run round like a headless chicken and Murgatroyd's misery leads to many heads being lost...

Thirty-two million Americans have lost jobs because of permanent factory closings since 1970. Gregory Pappas here provides an intimate account of the economic, social, psychological, and medical consequences of one such closing. Once known as "the magic city" of economic opportunity, Barberton, Ohio, is an industrial working-class town of second- and third-generation factory workers. When the Seiberling tire plant in Barberton was closed in 1980, over 1200 jobs were eliminated. Drawing on extensive research, including surveys and interviews with workers laid off by the closing, Pappas offers an incisive analysis of their responses to unemployment. Pappas first details the ways in which the unemployed rubber workers have met their economic needs in the face of declining income. He next evaluates their success in reentering the labor market, as he examines the job-hunting process, the unemployment insurance system, and workers' initiatives toward retraining and relocation. Turning to the psychological effects of the shutdown on workers and their families, Pappas describes unemployed workers' responses to the loss of status, identity, participation in the community, and sense of time. He next considers central historical questions, offering an explanation of the contemporary rise in unemployment and analyzing the prior development of this community that must now bear the burden of change. Two detailed portraits document the adaptations of individuals to the shutdown and explore the complex relationship between social change and personality.

Magic City is the story of one of American music's essential unsung places: Birmingham, Alabama, birthplace of a distinctive and influential jazz heritage. In a telling replete with colorful characters, iconic artists, and unheralded masters, Burgin Mathews reveals how Birmingham was the cradle and training ground for such luminaries as big band leader Erskine Hawkins, cosmic outsider Sun Ra, and a long list of sidemen, soloists, and arrangers. He also celebrates the contributions of local educators, club owners, and civic leaders who nurtured a vital culture of Black expression in one of the country's most notoriously segregated cities. In Birmingham, jazz was more than entertainment: long before the city emerged as a focal point in the national civil rights movement, its homegrown jazz heroes helped set the stage, crafting a unique tradition of independence, innovation, achievement, and empowerment. Blending deep archival research and original interviews with living elders of the Birmingham scene, Mathews elevates the stories of figures like John T. "Fess" Whatley, the pioneering teacher-bandleader who emphasized instrumental training as a means of upward mobility and community pride. Along the way, he takes readers into the high school band rooms, fraternal ballrooms, vaudeville houses, and circus tent shows that shaped a musical movement, revealing a community of players whose influence spread throughout the world.

In the early twentieth century, Miami cultivated an image of itself as a destination for leisure and sunshine free from labor strife. Thomas A. Castillo unpacks this idea of class harmony and the language that articulated its presence by delving into the conflicts, repression, and progressive grassroots politics of the time. Castillo pays particular attention to how class and race relations reflected and reinforced the nature of power in Miami. Class harmony argued against the existence of labor conflict, but in reality obscured how workers struggled within the city's service-oriented seasonal economy. Castillo shows how and why such an ideal thrived in Miami’s atmosphere of growth and boosterism and amidst the political economy of tourism. His analysis also presents class harmony as a theoretical framework that broadens our definitions of class conflict and class consciousness.

In a time where knowledge and power is everything, a young prince from a small kingdom forges a new path. The first volume follows Davy’s and Tina’s mission to an ancient temple discovered in Silver City and hints at Ash’s unique destiny. For readers of all ages who like fantasy, comic and adventure books.