In Extra Lives, acclaimed writer and life-long video game enthusiast Tom Bissell takes the reader on an insightful and entertaining tour of the art and meaning of video games. In just a few decades, video games have grown increasingly complex and sophisticated, and the companies that produce them are now among the most profitable in the entertainment industry. Yet few outside this world have thought deeply about how these games work, why they are so appealing, and what they are capable of artistically. Blending memoir, criticism, and first-rate reportage, Extra Lives is a milestone work about what might be the dominant popular art form of our time.

The cigarette is the most lethal consumer product in history. The movement to extinguish smoking, however, has become alarmingly illiberal. Smoking bans have spread beyond restaurants and bars to parks, beaches, and sidewalks; rising cigarette taxes rob the wages of society's least well-off; moral panic threatens smokers' access to potentially life-saving e-cigarettes; and smokers are discriminated against, stigmatized, and made to feel unwelcome in society. What if there's a better way? The Rediscovery of Tobacco is a moderate manifesto against the extremes of the anti-smoking movement. This contrarian take on smoking makes the case for respecting the choices of consenting adults, acknowledging the genuine pleasures of pipes and cigars, and encouraging an innovative market for lower-risk competitors that will finally end the deadly reign of the cigarette.

I've written this book because "smoking-related disease" continues to destroy millions of smokers and families worldwide every year with no accountability. I believe that many if not most of those deaths are preventable with a new, evidence-based approach - regulating pesticides in Tobacco Cartel products using existing consumer product pesticide residue limits as the standard. Ludicrously, Tobacco Cartel products are exempt from pesticide regulation. This book documents what the Cartel has known and kept secret for generations: that smoking-related disease and death may be caused not as much by Tobacco as by exempted & concealed super-toxic xenobiotics used by Cartel companies purely to boost profits, free of any effective regulation. I don't claim that smoking Tobacco, even organic Tobacco is safe; I do say that inhaling a proven carcinogenic/neurotoxic/genotoxic fungicide/insecticide cocktail a hundred times or more a day, from whatever source, combusted or vaporized, will surely and certainly destroy human energy, health & life. This book offers hard evidence, new facts, and numerous peer-reviewed research citations to raise awareness that the Tobacco Cartel has, in plain view, engaged in a trans-generational conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity on a scale beyond imagination. I hope that you'll consider the evidence on its merits.

In the spring of 1676, Nathaniel Bacon, a hotheaded young newcomer to Virginia, led a revolt against the colony's Indian policies. Bacon's Rebellion turned into a civil war within Virginia--and a war of extermination against the colony's Indian allies--that lasted into the following winter, sending shock waves throughout the British colonies and into England itself. James Rice offers a colorfully detailed account of the rebellion, revealing how Piscataways, English planters, slave traders, Susquehannocks, colonial officials, plunderers and intriguers were all pulled into an escalating conflict whose outcome, month by month, remained uncertain. In Rice's rich narrative, the lead characters come to life: the powerful, charismatic Governor Berkeley, the sorrowful Susquehannock warrior Monges, the wiley Indian trader and tobacco planter William Byrd, the regal Pamunkey chieftain Cockacoeske, and the rebel leader himself, Nathaniel Bacon. The dark, slender Bacon, born into a prominent family, soon earned a reputation in America as imperious, ambitious, and arrogant. But the colonial leaders did not foresee how rash and headstrong Nathaniel Bacon could be, nor how adept he would prove to be at both inciting colonists and alienating Indians. As the tense drama unfolds, it becomes apparent that the struggle between Governor Berkeley and the impetuous Bacon is nothing less than a battle over the soul of America. Bacon died in the midst of the uprising and Governor Berkeley shortly afterwards, but the profoundly important issues at the heart of the rebellion took another generation to resolve. The late seventeenth century was a pivotal moment in American history, full of upheavals and far-flung conspiracies. Tales From a Revolution brilliantly captures the swirling rumors and central events of Bacon's Rebellion and its aftermath, weaving them into a dramatic tale that is part of the founding story of America.

While some may wonder, “Does the world really need another flavored vodka?” no one answers this question quite so memorably as spirits writer and raconteur Jason Wilson does in Boozehound. (By the way, the short answer is no.) A unique blend of travelogue, spirits history, and recipe collection, Boozehound explores the origins of what we drink and the often surprising reasons behind our choices. In lieu of odorless, colorless, tasteless spirits, Wilson champions Old World liquors with hard-to-define flavors—a bitter and complex Italian amari, or the ancient, aromatic herbs of Chartreuse, as well as distinctive New World offerings like lively Peruvian pisco. With an eye for adventure, Wilson seeks out visceral experiences at the source of production—visiting fields of spiky agave in Jalisco, entering the heavily and reverently-guarded Jägermeister herb room in Wolfenbüttel, and journeying to the French Alps to determine if mustachioed men in berets really handpick blossoms to make elderflower liqueur. In addition, Boozehound offers more than fifty drink recipes, from three riffs on the Manhattan to cocktail-geek favorites like the Aviation and the Last Word. These recipes are presented alongside a host of opinionated essays that cherish the rare, uncover the obscure, dethrone the overrated, and unravel the mysteries of taste, trends, and terroir. Through his far-flung, intrepid traveling and tasting, Wilson shows us that perhaps nothing else as entwined with the history of human culture is quite as much fun as booze.

""Places in the World a Woman Could Walk" is deeply felt and bitingly precise. The author's dual professions of farmer and poet give the stories two gifts: an intimate, gritty sense of life on the land and a skill with language that amounts to alchemy."--Anne Tyler The women in Janet Kauffman's spirited stories are unafraid to look closely at their flawed lives. Burdened by the struggles of a rural existence, they are determined to embrace the simplest pleasures with a true heart. Whether slaughtering a favorite cow or leaving a violent husband, these characters make tough choices and live with the consequences. "A distinctive voice both quirky and down-to-earth, totally unsentimental and capable of rendering reality's baffling undertones."--"Library Journal"