During the course of nine injury-ridden but wonderfully fulfilling months in 1998, British sports writer, broadcaster and author Ian Stafford lived out his own fantasies and played sport with the world's greatest individuals and teams in their own environments. In doing so, he put his physical and mental skills to the ultimate test as he attempted to mix with the best.

How can an invitation to the world's most exotic pleasure island lead to obsession and murder? Six of the world's most powerful men and six of the world's most beautiful and resourceful women are about to find out. Only one place on earth can serve the needs and fantasies of Thoros Gagarian, one of the world's richest men. That place is Mora Utu -- the Playground of the Gods -- the most luxurious and seductive private preserve anywhere on the planet. Only one challenge can rouse the appetites of Thoros' five closest friends: men of wealth, accomplishment, and power. That challenge is to join Thoros in celebrating the completion of Mora Utu in a week of sex and sunshine. Each guest is required to bring a trophy woman beautiful enough to grace the island and the men's beds. But the women haven't been told the agenda and they don't consider themselves pawns in a rich man's game. So when one of them becomes the victim of sudden violence, they leave the men for the jungle and band together to teach them a lesson they'll never forget. Suddenly, six smart, tough, and resourceful women must call on skills they've always had -- for martial combat, for negotiation, for sabotage -- to use in ways they never dreamed. They'll be guided in their crusade by a wise and ageless woman with a secret, ancient agenda of her own. And finally, they'll be forced to consider uniting with the men who have become their adversaries, when, without warning, the jungle threatens to consume them all.

Sutton-Smith focuses on play theories rooted in seven distinct "rhetorics"--The ancient discourses of fate, power, communal identity, and frivolity and the modern discourses of progress, the imaginary, and the self. In a sweeping analysis that moves from the question of play in child development to the implications of play for the Western work ethic, he explores the values, historical sources, and interests that have dictated the terms and forms of play put forth in each discourse's "objective" theory