A sucker is still born every minute. In this modern and interconnected world, con-men are lurking everywhere - it's never been easier for them to dupe us, take from us, and infiltrate our lives. One of the world's leading and celebrated experts on con-games takes the reader through the history of cons, how they've been updated to the modern age, how they work, how to spot them, and how to protect yourself from being the victim of one. R. Paul Wilson is a con-man who works for the other side - our side. He has spent a lifetime learning, performing, studying, and teaching about the ins and outs of the con world in order to open up our eyes to the dangers lurking about us - and to show us how not to get taken. Paul has never made a living as a con-man, profiting off of marks - he has used his expertise throughout his life to help people avoid cons. In this fascinating book, Paul takes the reader through the history and developments of the con game, what elements from the past are based on basic human psychology and have stood the test of time, what has been updated for the modern era and how it's getting used in the computer age, the structure of how these cons work, and - most importantly - how to recognize one, protect yourself and your loved ones, and avoid becoming just another sucker.

This volume explores how imperial powers established and expanded their empires through decisions that were often based on exaggerated expectations and wishful thinking, rather than on reasoned and scientific policies. It explores these exaggerations through the concepts of El Dorado, utopias and dystopias - undertakings based on irrational perceived values - in case studies from across the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, and incorporates imperial traditions including Scottish, British, French, German, Italian and American. Various colonial spaces are considered, from the Mediterranean, Middle East, Africa, Australia, Asia and the Americas, and in doing so, the contributors offer new insights into the nature of imperialism and colonial settlement. -- .

The author of the controversial bestseller "Brain Trust" brings his scientific expertise to the chilling true story of unexplained phenomena on Utah's Skinwalker Ranch -- and challenges us with a new vision of reality.
For more than fifty years, the bizarre events at a remote Utah ranch have ranged from the perplexing to the wholly terrifying. Vanishing and mutilated cattle. Unidentified Flying Objects. The appearance of huge, otherworldly creatures. Invisible objects emitting magnetic fields with the power to spark a cattle stampede. Flying orbs of light with dazzling maneuverability and lethal consequences. For one family, life on the Skinwalker Ranch had become a life under siege by an unknown enemy or enemies. Nothing else could explain the horrors that surrounded them -- perhaps science could.
Leading a first-class team of research scientists on a disturbing odyssey into the unknown, Colm Kelleher spent hundreds of days and nights on the Skinwalker property and experienced firsthand many of its haunting mysteries. With investigative reporter George Knapp -- the only journalist allowed to witness and document the team's work -- Kelleher chronicles in superb detail the spectacular happenings the team observed personally, and the theories of modern physics behind the phenomena. Far from the coldly detached findings one might expect, their conclusions are utterly hair-raising in their implications. Opening a door to the unseen world around us, "Hunt for the Skinwalker" is a clarion call to expand our vision far beyond what we know.

"Find your one true love and live happily ever after." The trials of love and desire provide perennial story material, from the Biblical Song of Songs to Disney's princesses, but perhaps most provocatively in the romance novel, a genre known for tales of fantasy and desire, sex and pleasure. Hailed on the one hand for its women-centered stories that can be sexually liberating, and criticized on the other for its emphasis on male/female coupling and mythical happy endings, romance fiction is a multi-million dollar publishing phenomenon, creating national and international societies of enthusiasts, practitioners, and scholars. Catherine M. Roach, alongside her romance-writer alter-ego, Catherine LaRoche, guides the reader deep into Romancelandia where the smart and the witty combine with the sexy and seductive to explore why this genre has such a grip on readers and what we can learn from the romance novel about the nature of happiness, love, sex, and desire in American popular culture.

In 1916, Berenger Sauniere, the enigmatic priest of the French village of Rennes-le-Chateau, created his ultimate clue: he went to great expense to create a model of a region said to be the Calvary Mount, indicating the 'Tomb of Jesus'. But the region on the model does not resemble the actual lay-out of Jerusalem. Did Sauniere leave a clue as to the true location of his treasure? And what is that treasure? After years of research, Andre Douzet discovered this model, never collected from the model maker by Sauniere, who had died just before the model's completion. Backed by evidence showing correspondence between Sauniere and the model maker, Douzet also reveals much new evidence, including the revelation that Sauniere spent large amounts of time and money in the city of Lyons, often on exotic and high tech photographic instruments. And for the first time, it is shown Sauniere met some very interesting people from esoteric, in particular Martinist, circles in Lyons. This body of evidence for the first time demonstrates there is indeed a true mystery surrounding this village priest -- a theory widely speculated on so far by others authors, but seldom if ever backed by evidence. The model is the only real clue Sauniere left behind as to the nature and location of his treasure -- and is unveiled in this book, which includes pictures and detailed drawings of the model, among many other things. It also reveals the location of the region where Sauniere had located his treasure...and where Douzet himself has so far recovered large quantities of precious and semi-precious materials. Above all, Douzet demonstrates that grounds of Perillos not so much hold a 'treasure' (though present), but rather a 'secret', and that this secret was the true importance of Sauniere's mystery; a secret that is said to be of vital importance -- and terrifying force.

Traditionally gnawa musicians in Morocco played for all-night ceremonies where communities gathered to invite spirits to heal mental, physical, and social ills untreatable by other means. Now gnawa music can be heard on the streets of Marrakech, at festivals in Essaouira, in Fez's cafes, in Casablanca's nightclubs, and in the bars of Rabat. As it moves further and further from its origins as ritual music and listeners seek new opportunities to hear performances, musicians are challenged to adapt to new tastes while competing for potential clients and performance engagements. Christopher Witulski explores how gnawa musicians straddle popular and ritual boundaries to assert, negotiate, and perform their authenticity in this rich ethnography of Moroccan music. Witulski introduces readers to gnawa performers, their friends, the places where they play, and the people they play for. He emphasizes the specific strategies performers use to define themselves and their multiple identities as Muslims, Moroccans, and traditional musicians. The Gnawa Lions reveals a shifting terrain of music, ritual, and belief that follows the negotiation of musical authenticity, popular demand, and economic opportunity.

This book analyzes the patterns of and factors associated with health seeking behavior and out-of-pocket (OOP) spending on chronic non-communicable diseases (CNCDs) in rural Malawi. The author used descriptive statistics to describe treatment options and related household OOP expenditure on CNCDs and econometrics models to analyze factors influencing health seeking behavior and OOP expenditure on CNCDs. This study found that in spite of a context where care for CNCDs should in principle be free of charge at the point of use, the utilization rates of CNCD care are still low and OOP payments impose a considerable financial burden on rural households, especially among the poorest.

The Poconos in the hills of picturesque Pennsylvania is home to beautiful resorts, lively casinos, and stunning waterfalls. Yet, stand in any one spot long enough and chills will run up your spine. Journey with paranormal investigator L'Aura Hladik Hoffman to twenty haunted locations within this tourist mecca. Dine at Tannersville Inn with the ghost of Mabel or stay the night at The Shawnee Inn with a Lady in White. Discover the Pennsylvania Dutch beast Siwweyaeger or the phantom of the Poconos Cinema and Cultural Center as it "strikes again." The Hotel of Horror theater will challenge you to discern between actor and specter at every turn. Examine local legends, haunted artifacts and attractions, ghost photography, and more. Included is a directory of local paranormal organizations, researchers, and tours to plan your own investigations. It won't take long for you to discover that the ghosts of the Poconos are ever present, so join the hunt!

Jane Stanford, the co-founder of Stanford University, died in Honolulu in 1905, shortly after surviving strychnine poisoning in San Francisco. The inquest testimony of the physicians who attended her death in Hawaii led to a coroner's jury verdict of murder-by strychnine poisoning. Stanford University President David Starr Jordan promptly issued a press release claiming that Mrs. Stanford had died of heart disease, a claim that he supported by challenging the skills and judgment of the Honolulu physicians and toxicologist. Jordan's diagnosis was largely accepted and promulgated in many subsequent historical accounts. In this book, the author reviews the medical reports in detail to refute Dr. Jordan's claim and to show that Mrs. Stanford indeed died of strychnine poisoning. His research reveals that the professionals who were denounced by Dr. Jordan enjoyed honorable and distinguished careers. He concludes that Dr. Jordan went to great lengths, over a period of nearly two decades, to cover up the real circumstances of Mrs. Stanford's death.

Tales from the Time Loop is the most comprehensive book yet written about the global conspiracy that is now unfolding all around us. David Icke has been warning for well over a decade of the plan for a world fascist state, a global version of Nazi Germany, in which the people will be prisoners of a Big Brother dictatorship founded on the suppression of the most fundamental freedoms and total control and surveillance. Today there is a gathering awareness that he was right. People are realizing that Big Brother is no longer "coming" - he's here. Icke pulls together his fantastic wealth of accumulated knowledge to reveal the multi-levels of the fascist conspiracy. He begins in the "five-sense" world with a highly detailed exposure of the forces, methods and agenda behind the "war on terrorism," the invasion of Iraq and the planned conquest of the Middle East and elsewhere. He goes on to explore the other-dimensional connection to the "human" manipulators and then reveals how our sense of reality - what we think is "real" - is being implanted in our minds by the second while we believe we are thinking for ourselves.In early 2003, Icke had some amazing experiences in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil that revealed to him as never before that the world we think is "real" is only an illusion; a lucid and manipulated dream that he calls the "Matrix." In Tales from the Time Loop, he shares those experiences and details the scientific support for what he learned about the illusion we call daily life. Icke says that this section of the book is the most important work he has published. It is, he says, the knowledge that will set us free and take us home.

On any given day in America's news cycle, stories and images of disgraced politicians and celebrities solicit our moral indignation, their misdeeds fueling a lucrative economy of shame and scandal. Shame is one of the most coercive, painful, and intriguing of human emotions. Only in recent years has interest in shame extended beyond a focus on the subjective experience of this emotion and its psychological effects. The essays collected here consider the role of shame as cultural practice and examine ways that public shaming practices enforce conformity and group coherence. Addressing abortion, mental illness, suicide, immigration, and body image among other issues, this volume calls attention to the ways shaming practices create and police social boundaries; how shaming speech is endorsed, judged, or challenged by various groups; and the distinct ways that shame is encoded and embodied in a nation that prides itself on individualism, diversity, and exceptionalism. Examining shame through a prism of race, sexuality, ethnicity, and gender, these provocative essays offer a broader understanding of how America's discourse of shame helps to define its people as citizens, spectators, consumers, and moral actors.

On any given day in America's news cycle, stories and images of disgraced politicians and celebrities solicit our moral indignation, their misdeeds fueling a lucrative economy of shame and scandal. Shame is one of the most coercive, painful, and intriguing of human emotions. Only in recent years has interest in shame extended beyond a focus on the subjective experience of this emotion and its psychological effects. The essays collected here consider the role of shame as cultural practice and examine ways that public shaming practices enforce conformity and group coherence. Addressing abortion, mental illness, suicide, immigration, and body image among other issues, this volume calls attention to the ways shaming practices create and police social boundaries; how shaming speech is endorsed, judged, or challenged by various groups; and the distinct ways that shame is encoded and embodied in a nation that prides itself on individualism, diversity, and exceptionalism. Examining shame through a prism of race, sexuality, ethnicity, and gender, these provocative essays offer a broader understanding of how America's discourse of shame helps to define its people as citizens, spectators, consumers, and moral actors.

Trickster Theatre traces the changing social significance of national theatre in Ghana from its rise as an idealistic state project from the time of independence to its reinvention in recent electronic, market-oriented genres. Jesse Weaver Shipley presents portraits of many key figures in Ghanaian theatre and examines how Akan trickster tales were adapted as the basis of a modern national theatre. This performance style tied Accra's evolving urban identity to rural origins and to Pan-African liberation politics. Contradictions emerge, however, when the ideal Ghanaian citizen is a mythic hustler who stands at the crossroads between personal desires and collective obligations. Shipley examines the interplay between on-stage action and off-stage events to show how trickster theatre shapes an evolving urban world.

The day the towers fell, indelible images of plummeting rubble, fire, and falling bodies were imprinted in the memories of people around the world. Images that were caught in the media loop after the disaster and coverage of the attack, its aftermath, and the wars that followed reflected a pervasive tendency to treat these tragic events as spectacle. Though the collapse of the World Trade Center was "the most photographed disaster in history," it failed to yield a single noteworthy image of carnage. Thomas Stubblefield argues that the absence within these spectacular images is the paradox of 9/11 visual culture, which foregrounds the visual experience as it obscures the event in absence, erasure, and invisibility. From the spectral presence of the Tribute in Light to Art Spiegelman's nearly blank New Yorker cover, and from the elimination of the Twin Towers from television shows and films to the monumental cavities of Michael Arad's 9/11 memorial, the void became the visual shorthand for the incident. By examining configurations of invisibility and erasure across the media of photography, film, monuments, graphic novels, and digital representation, Stubblefield interprets the post-9/11 presence of absence as the reaffirmation of national identity that implicitly laid the groundwork for the impending invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Veteran worrier, author of To Be a Machine and father-of-two, Mark O'Connell, meets the anarchists, environmentalists, far-right nut-jobs and super-rich who are preparing for the end of days.

NOW UPDATED TO INCLUDE THE LATEST APOCALYPSE.

The apocalypse is nothing new, but of late Mark O'Connell has found himself particularly anxious about the end of the world. As things fall apart around him, he sets out to meet the people preparing to survive: environmentalists meditating in remote Scottish forests, billionaires dreaming of life on Mars or a villa in New Zealand, and conspiracy theorists yearning for a lost American idyll. Journeying with him through this landscape of anxiety, we learn just what it takes to make it to the other side.

500 Common Chinese Proverbs and Colloquial Expressions is a dictionary of key Chinese proverbs or suyu. Suyu are vivid and colourful expressions widely used in Chinese language. The smooth use of chengyu in Chinese writing and of suyu in spoken Chinese not only makes communication more effective, it is also an indicator of mastery of the language. This dictionary will provide an ideal resource for all intermediate to advanced learners of Chinese. Concise and practical, it draws upon a large corpus of authentic language data to present 500 of the most commonly used Chinese suyu. The suyu are listed and organised according to their frequency, enabling easy and convenient access for the reader. Each proverb listing: is given in both simplified and traditional characters offers an English translation, followed by English equivalents is followed by two examples, written in Chinese, Pinyin and English, plus explanations and usage notes. Examples are given in the form of dialogues reflecting typical situations, and helpful cultural annotations are provided throughout. A Pinyin index, a stroke index and a Chinese word index are presented at the back of the book and accompanying audio is also available for free download at www.routledge.com/9780415501491. Recorded by native speakers and covering the whole range of proverbs, expressions and example sentences featured in the book, this invaluable resource will help students to build up strong comprehension and communication skills. This dictionary is suitable both for class use and independent study and will be of keen interest to students and teachers of Chinese alike.

Jokes and Targets takes up an appealing and entertaining topic the social and historical origins of jokes about familiar targets such as rustics, Jewish spouses, used car salesmen, and dumb blondes. Christie Davies explains why political jokes flourished in the Soviet Union, why Europeans tell jokes about American lawyers but not about their own lawyers, and why sex jokes often refer to France rather than to other countries. One of the world s leading experts on the study of humor, Davies provides a wide-ranging and detailed study of the jokes that make up an important part of everyday conversation."

The ritual of rainmaking is one of half a dozen Japanese folk practices and festivals described in this book. The story of rainmaking ceremonies begins with personal experience and then draws on the work of Japanese folklorists to record significant local variations and to construct a general account of the history and purpose of the ceremony. Field research was conducted during study visits to Kyoto, to Tenri in Nara Prefecture and to Shiga Prefecture. The chapter order follows the year cycle, from New Year via early summer purificatory festivals and rainmaking ceremonial to the feast of Bon, which with New Year ceremonies divides the year. Alongside these community or public rites are described private or family rituals concerned with birth, marriage and death. The introductory chapter relates aspects of Japanese culture, myth and language to the constant features of folk practice recorded or extant in 1950s Japan. Originally published in 1963.

Do ancient maps prove that the planet was surveyed 12,000 years ago? Were the poles once in a different position to where they are today? Is there a secret pattern joining the great sites of antiquity? In this revolutionary little book, ancient sites expert Hugh Newman outlines various theories concerning geometry in the distribution of sacred sites on Earth and comes to some startling conclusions. Illustrated throughout with fantastic graphics, this book will change your world. WOODEN BOOKS are small but packed with information. "Fascinating" FINANCIAL TIMES. "Beautiful" LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS. "Rich and Artful" THE LANCET. "Genuinely mind-expanding" FORTEAN TIMES. "Excellent" NEW SCIENTIST. "Stunning" NEW YORK TIMES. Small books, big ideas.

This is a scientific expoe that will shatter our knowledge of ancient human history. Scholars have told us that the first civilisation on Earth emerged in a land called Sumer some 6000 years ago. New archaeological and scientific discoveries made by Michael Tellinger, Johan Heine and a team of leading scientists, show that the Sumerians and even the Egyptians inherited all their knowledge from an earlier civilisation that lived at the southern tip of Africa more than 200,000 years ago...mining gold.

These were also the people who carved the first Horus bird, the first Sphinx, built the first pyramids and built an accurate stone calendar right in the heart of it all. "Adam's Calendar" is the flagship among millions of circular stone ruins, ancient roads, agricultural terraces and thousands of ancient mines, left behind by a vanished civilisation which we now call the First People. They carved detailed images into the hardest rock, worshipped the sun, and are the first to carve an image of the Egyptian Ankh - key of life and universal knowledge, 200,000 years before the Egyptians came to light.

This book graphically exposes these discoveries and will be the catalyst for rewriting our ancient human history. The book is a continuation of Tellinger's previous books Slave Species of God and Adam's Calendar which have become favourites with readers in over 20 countries.