When skateboarders skate they experience a euphoric rush. They have a clear mind and the ability to see with the heart. The many principals that apply to skateboarding fit into a framework for how we approach, process, problem solve, persist, and overcome the challenges and hardships of living. This book offers you the opportunity to experience the great wisdom which is equally poignant in life as it is in the street or the skate park.

This book explores the ways in which religion is observed, performed, and organised in skateboard culture. Drawing on scholarship from the sociology of religion and the cultural politics of lifestyle sports, this work combines ethnographic research with media analysis to argue that the rituals of skateboarding provide participants with a rich cultural canvas for emotional and spiritual engagement. Paul O’Connor contends that religious identification in skateboarding is set to increase as participants pursue ways to both control and engage meaningfully with an activity that has become an increasingly mainstream and institutionalised sport. Religion is explored through the themes of myth, celebrity, iconography, pilgrimage, evangelism, cults, and self-help.

Sophie Friedel explores the action of skateboarding in her book as a way to escape cycles of despair, not only in war torn environments and regions affected by poverty. The author critically reflects on her involvements of teaching skateboarding in Afghanistan within the context of youth empowerment and peace work. By way of personal experiences, Friedel illustrates how skateboarding can be understood as an elicitive approach to peace work and conflict transformation that unfolds the extraordinary human potential inherent to all of us.

Winner of American Library Association award: Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers: 2010 An illustrated guide to skateboarding skills and techniques. Skateboarding is more than a sport; it is a passion and way of life driven by those who love to push the limits of gravity and inertia while bending the notions of social acceptability. The Skateboarding Field Manual addresses both the intricacies of the sport and the intangibles of its culture. Skateboard enthusiast and journalist Ryan Stutt provides outstanding advice, which ranges from how to stand on your board and how to fall without causing injuries to how to perform grinds, slides and flips. This comprehensive reference is simply the very best manual on the sport of skateboarding. There are 33 maneuvers and tricks for beginners to intermediates, all illustrated with over 350 custom color photographs by skateboarding photographer Harry Gils. Other features include: A 12-page primer on skate culture, including history, deck art, skateboarding in the media and the importance of homemade skate videos and photos. A beginner's guide to parts, safety equipment and skatepark etiquette. Instructions on the basic techniques of pushing, turning, dropping-in, ollies and nollies. Advice on flips, grinds and slides for rails, ramps and ledges, including the varial flip, the nose grind and the board slide. The Skateboarding Field Manual is the essential guide for anyone looking to master the art of skateboarding and to understand its unique culture.

"What corporations fear most are consumers who ask questions. Naomi Klein offers us the arguments with which to take on the superbrands." Billy Bragg from the bookjacket.

Yearning for a life of leisure? In 24 chapters representing each hour of a typical working day, this book will coax out the loafer in even the most diligent and schedule-obsessed worker. From the founding editor of the celebrated magazine about the freedom and fine art of doing nothing, The Idler, comes not simply a book, but an antidote to our work-obsessed culture. In How to Be Idle, Hodgkinson presents his learned yet whimsical argument for a new, universal standard of living: being happy doing nothing. He covers a whole spectrum of issues affecting the modern idler—sleep, work, pleasure, relationships—bemoaning the cultural skepticism of idleness while reflecting on the writing of such famous apologists for it as Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Johnson, and Nietzsche—all of whom have admitted to doing their very best work in bed. It’s a well-known fact that Europeans spend fewer hours at work a week than Americans. So it’s only befitting that one of them—the very clever, extremely engaging, and quite hilarious Tom Hodgkinson—should have the wittiest and most useful insights into the fun and nature of being idle. Following on the quirky, call-to-arms heels of the bestselling Eat, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss, How to Be Idle rallies us to an equally just and no less worthy cause: reclaiming our right to be idle.