"This six-volume series provides young readers with a thrilling adventure! When orphaned twins Benjamin and Louise discover that their long-lost father is the legendary pirate Captain Roc, they escape their Parisian orphanage and attempt to track him down. But they're not the only ones looking for him! Who can be trusted amongst the pirates and pilferers that suddenly surround them? Young readers will be captivated by the twists and turns of this fictional tale. "

Originally published in 1991, this introduction to studying the television audience discusses developments in semiology and cultural studies and their contribution to our understanding of the power of television. How, in the most precise and intricate sense, does television influence the way we think about the world? What ideological role does it play in contemporary culture? Does TV control us or do we control it? This insightful book assesses the progress in responding to these questions and offers some answers of its own. In the 1980s, with the emergence of semiology and cultural studies in particular, there were a number of significant theoretical developments in our understanding of television's power of which this book provides an overview while also incorporating traditional approaches. It suggests that television influences us ambiguously and unpredictably, depending upon who we are and how we think. Ambiguity does not blunt television's power, it simply diversifies it into a very modern kind of omnipotence. Employing two major qualitative audience studies, this impressive study illustrates its argument with findings that are both unexpected and disturbing.

With decades of research to draw from Philip Jowett explores this extraordinary David-and-Goliath conflict, where the rag-tag Igbo tribal army of secessionist Biafra faced off against the Nigerian Federal forces. It was an African war that captured the attention of the western media, with individual commanders such as Biafran leader Colonel Ojukwu and Federal Colonel Adekunle becoming familiar figures across the globe. The Nigerian forces easily outnumbered their opponents and benefitted from British and Soviet equipment, yet against all the odds the Biafrans held out for two and a half years, inflicting many setbacks on the Federal forces before their eventual surrender in 1970. Specially commissioned artwork and historical photos, including some from respected Italian war photographer Romano Ganoni, reflect the diverse array of uniforms and equipment on both sides, with images ranging from Sandhurst-educated officers in immaculate uniform to ragged militiamen armed with World War II kit.

First published in 1974, The American Prison Business studies the lunacies, the delusions, and the bizarre inner workings of the American prison business. From the first demonstration that the penitentiary is an American invention that was initiated by the late eighteenth-century reformers, to the startling revelations, in the chapter called ‘Cheaper than Chimpanzees’ of how pharmaceutical companies lease prisoners as human guinea-pigs, every page stimulates and surprises the reader as Jessica Mitford describes, inter alia the chemical, surgical and psychiatric techniques used to help ‘violent’ prisoners to be ‘reborn’; why businessmen tend to be more enthusiastic than the prisoners they employ in the ‘rent-a-con’ plan; and the Special Isolation Diet which tastes like inferior dog food. Jessica Mitford’s financial analysis of the prison business is a scoop. Her hard-eyed examination of how parole really works is a revelation. As the prison abolition movement continues to gain momentum, this book will provide food for thought for legislators, officials and students of sociology, law, criminology, penology, and history.

Finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction * New York Times Bestseller * A Huffington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the Year * One of the Best Books of the Month on Goodreads * Library Journal Best Sci-Tech Book of the Year * An American Library Association Notable Book of the Year “Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus does for the creature what Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk did for raptors.” —New Statesman, UK “One of the best science books of the year.” —Science Friday, NPR Another New York Times bestseller from the author of The Good Good Pig, this “fascinating…touching…informative…entertaining” (The Daily Beast) book explores the emotional and physical world of the octopus—a surprisingly complex, intelligent, and spirited creature—and the remarkable connections it makes with humans. In pursuit of the wild, solitary, predatory octopus, popular naturalist Sy Montgomery has practiced true immersion journalism. From New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico, she has befriended octopuses with strikingly different personalities—gentle Athena, assertive Octavia, curious Kali, and joyful Karma. Each creature shows her cleverness in myriad ways: escaping enclosures like an orangutan; jetting water to bounce balls; and endlessly tricking companions with multiple “sleights of hand” to get food. Scientists have only recently accepted the intelligence of dogs, birds, and chimpanzees but now are watching octopuses solve problems and are trying to decipher the meaning of the animal’s color-changing techniques. With her “joyful passion for these intelligent and fascinating creatures” (Library Journal Editors’ Spring Pick), Montgomery chronicles the growing appreciation of this mollusk as she tells a unique love story. By turns funny, entertaining, touching, and profound, The Soul of an Octopus reveals what octopuses can teach us about the meeting of two very different minds.

'I have spent almost 33 of the last 53 years in and out of prison, but mainly in. I was a juvenile offender back in the mid 1970s and went on to become an adult prisoner in the 1980s and beyond. My shortest prison sentence was 7 days (for criminal damage) and my longest sentence was life (for bank robbery and possession of firearms). I have 58 criminal convictions for everything from attempted theft to armed robbery and prison escape, and I was a career criminal for most of my life. What I do not know about criminal and prison slang could be written on the back of a postage stamp and still leave room for The Lord's Prayer ...' From ex-professional bank robber and bestselling author Noel Smith, this is the most authoritative dictionary of criminal slang out there - and an unmissable journey, through words, into the heart of the criminal world.

Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world." Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces, ranging from global to local, conjoined to produce the prison boom. In an informed and impassioned account, Ruth Wilson Gilmore examines this issue through statewide, rural, and urban perspectives to explain how the expansion developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity. Detailing crises that hit California’s economy with particular ferocity, she argues that defeats of radical struggles, weakening of labor, and shifting patterns of capital investment have been key conditions for prison growth. The results—a vast and expensive prison system, a huge number of incarcerated young people of color, and the increase in punitive justice such as the "three strikes" law—pose profound and troubling questions for the future of California, the United States, and the world. Golden Gulag provides a rich context for this complex dilemma, and at the same time challenges many cherished assumptions about who benefits and who suffers from the state’s commitment to prison expansion.