British Furniture 1820 to 1920 is the first book on the subject for several decades and the only book ever published to span the century from 1820 through to 1920. It creates a continuum to underline the importance of the late Recency style favoured by George IV, moving through to the first two decades of the 20th century, with a host of ever-changing styles and fashions. Payne illustrates the importance of the revival styles and copies: a fundamental part of the furniture trade that has often previously been ignored. Many of the makers' names are familiar to furniture collectors, such as Gillows, Hollands, Collinson & Lock, Morris & Co. and Maples. However, the importance of others, such as Baldock, Blake, Trollope, Hindley & Wilkinson, Hamptons or Lenygon & Morant - as well as a host of provincial makers - is explained.  British Furniture 1820 to 1920 - The Luxury Market is a landmark publication and arguably the first book to properly assess British furniture design through the whole of the Victorian era. It goes further than any book has attempted before by filling in important research particular for the latter half of the century. It shows that what is often termed simply, and once pejoratively, as ‘Victorian’ is often of an earlier date, commencing in the revered Regency period of the 1820s. Christopher Payne considers each decade, adding important new research and building a huge archive of text and images. The book contains in excess of 1000 colour photographs and also an important compendium of makers names and details. 

This book is an investigation into the economic policy formulation and practice of neoliberalism in Britain from the 1950s through to the financial crisis and economic downturn that began in 2007-8. It demonstrates that influential economists, such as F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, authors at key British think tanks such as the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Centre for Policy Studies, and important political figures of the Thatcher and New Labour governments shared a similar conception of the consumer.

For neoliberals, the idea that consumers were weak in the face of businesses and large corporations was almost offensive. Instead, consumers were imagined to be sovereign agents in the economy, whose consumption decisions played a central role in the construction of their human capital and in the enabling of their aspirations. Consumption, just like production, came to be viewed as an enterprising and entrepreneurial activity. Consequently, from the early 1980s until the present day, it was felt necessary that banks should have the freedom to meet the borrowing needs of consumers. Credit rationing would be a thing of the past. Just like businesses, consumers and households could use debt to expand their stock of personal assets.

By utilizing the method of French philosopher Michel Foucault this book provides an original analysis of the policy ideas and political speeches of key figures in the New Right, in government and at the Bank of England. And it addresses the key question as to why policy-makers both in Britain and the United States did little or nothing to stem rising consumer and household indebtedness, instead always choosing to see increasing house prices and homeownership as a positive to be encouraged.

A Beginner's Guide to Special Makeup Effects: Monsters, Maniacs and More is an introduction to special effects makeup using cost-effective tools and materials that can be found in local stores. The book is divided into three sections - Simple Makeup, Advanced Materials and Techniques and Advanced Makeup - and features tutorials to create characters such as a pirate, vampire, ghost, robot, burn victim, witch, zombie and goblin. Each character is introduced with a full-page photograph of the finished makeup and illustrated with full-color, step-by-step photographs. The book also includes instructions on how to make fake teeth, apply bald caps, create gory wounds and injuries and make simple prosthetics. Each makeup tutorial is designed to progressively build on the techniques outlined in the preceding tutorial, guiding readers from the basics of foundation, highlight and shadow to creating advanced creature makeups. This is a beginner makeup book suited for students of Stage Makeup courses, as well as for the theatre technician working and training on their own.

A Beginner's Guide to Special Makeup Effects: Monsters, Maniacs and More is an introduction to special effects makeup using cost-effective tools and materials that can be found in local stores. The book is divided into three sections - Simple Makeup, Advanced Materials and Techniques and Advanced Makeup - and features tutorials to create characters such as a pirate, vampire, ghost, robot, burn victim, witch, zombie and goblin. Each character is introduced with a full-page photograph of the finished makeup and illustrated with full-color, step-by-step photographs. The book also includes instructions on how to make fake teeth, apply bald caps, create gory wounds and injuries and make simple prosthetics. Each makeup tutorial is designed to progressively build on the techniques outlined in the preceding tutorial, guiding readers from the basics of foundation, highlight and shadow to creating advanced creature makeups. This is a beginner makeup book suited for students of Stage Makeup courses, as well as for the theatre technician working and training on their own.

This book is an investigation into the economic policy formulation and practice of neoliberalism in Britain from the 1950s through to the financial crisis and economic downturn that began in 2007-8. It demonstrates that influential economists, such as F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, authors at key British think tanks such as the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Centre for Policy Studies, and important political figures of the Thatcher and New Labour governments shared a similar conception of the consumer. For neoliberals, the idea that consumers were weak in the face of businesses and large corporations was almost offensive. Instead, consumers were imagined to be sovereign agents in the economy, whose consumption decisions played a central role in the construction of their human capital and in the enabling of their aspirations. Consumption, just like production, came to be viewed as an enterprising and entrepreneurial activity. Consequently, from the early 1980s until the present day, it was felt necessary that banks should have the freedom to meet the borrowing needs of consumers. Credit rationing would be a thing of the past. Just like businesses, consumers and households could use debt to expand their stock of personal assets. By utilizing the method of French philosopher Michel Foucault this book provides an original analysis of the policy ideas and political speeches of key figures in the New Right, in government and at the Bank of England. And it addresses the key question as to why policy-makers both in Britain and the United States did little or nothing to stem rising consumer and household indebtedness, instead always choosing to see increasing house prices and homeownership as a positive to be encouraged.

At first encounter, North Brother Island is among the most unexpected of places: an uninhabited island of ruins in New York City that hardly anyone knows, existing today almost in secret. But in some fundamental sense it is also quite ordinary, for just as they have in other parts of the city, people have lived, worked, studied, healed, and died here for centuries. The island has been bought and sold, used and re-used many times over. For a while, though, it was famous: In 1885, it became the home of the Riverside Hospital, which had been established to isolate and treat people with infectious diseases. By 1895, the hospital had grown to such an extent that the social reformer Jacob Riis wrote that there was nothing like it in the world. Later, the island's reputation grew mostly in infamy: In 1904, the passenger steamship General Slocum caught fire in the East River, leaving more than a thousand souls dead on the shores of North Brother Island, the single greatest loss of life in New York City to that time; in 1908, the hospital received as a patient Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary, who would die on North Brother in 1938.
North Brother Island is both part of the City of New York and a world apart from it. Its twenty acres sit low in the East River, just north of Hell Gate, with twenty-five or so buildings in various states of decay. As there is no public access, it's most easily seen as you lift off the tarmac at LaGuardia. Look to the west for a brown smudge stuck in the blue-gray East River, close up against Rikers Island and not far from the Bronx shoreline. That's NBI.
Photographer Christopher Payne, renowned for his work at abandoned state mental hospitals, received permission to visit and photograph the island over a period of years, and this book, North Brother Island, is the result of that work. His collaborator and co-author is Randall F. Mason, Chair of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania, who has studied the island and its history as a unique example in the annals of urban planning and policy.
North Brother Island features an essay and more than 80 large-scale color images by Christopher Payne and a highly illustrated study by Professor Mason, including images from throughout the island's history, official documents, and other supporting graphics.

Powerful photographs of the grand exteriors and crumbling interiors of America's abandoned state mental hospitals. For more than half the nation's history, vast mental hospitals were a prominent feature of the American landscape. From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth, over 250 institutions for the insane were built throughout the United States; by 1948, they housed more than a half million patients. The blueprint for these hospitals was set by Pennsylvania hospital superintendant Thomas Story Kirkbride: a central administration building flanked symmetrically by pavilions and surrounded by lavish grounds with pastoral vistas. Kirkbride and others believed that well-designed buildings and grounds, a peaceful environment, a regimen of fresh air, and places for work, exercise, and cultural activities would heal mental illness. But in the second half of the twentieth century, after the introduction of psychotropic drugs and policy shifts toward community-based care, patient populations declined dramatically, leaving many of these beautiful, massive buildings-and the patients who lived in them-neglected and abandoned. Architect and photographer Christopher Payne spent six years documenting the decay of state mental hospitals like these, visiting seventy institutions in thirty states. Through his lens we see splendid, palatial exteriors (some designed by such prominent architects as H. H. Richardson and Samuel Sloan) and crumbling interiors-chairs stacked against walls with peeling paint in a grand hallway; brightly colored toothbrushes still hanging on a rack; stacks of suitcases, never packed for the trip home. Accompanying Payne's striking and powerful photographs is an essay by Oliver Sacks (who described his own experience working at a state mental hospital in his book Awakenings). Sacks pays tribute to Payne's photographs and to the lives once lived in these places, "where one could be both mad and safe."

Joseph's Dream News represents ancient stories in a modern newspaper or popular magazine style of reporting for the modern reader who may have little knowledge of ancient past, or of epistemology, psychology, cosmology, theology, astronomy, science, psycholinguistics, politics and religion. Presenting these ancient stories using modern idioms and formats the author makes them come alive in dealing with real life problems, challenges and circumstances in the world today. In ancient characters we can learn something about life and ourselves. Is it possible to see the repeat of history as you read through these headlines? History will show you the future if you understand and gain perspectives from studying narratives of the past. Our story of Joseph's heroic adventures is the timeless tale of a young person who faces many challenges while growing up and how he responds and reacts to these challenges. Core principles enabled Joseph to be a servant of God and to follow his dreams. Tossed into a hole in the ground by his own brothers and then later sold into slavery did not alter Joseph's firm belief that God was with him. Joseph was a possibility thinker, no matter what was happening in the circumstances or changing events of the moment around him he stayed true to his God and his beliefs. Often held in slavery or captivity, Joseph served his fellow man confident that God was with him as he hustled to make his dreams a reality. Joseph's faith in God engendered his high ethical standards early in life and shaped his passion to serve humanity to the best of his ability. He was proactive and took responsibility for acquiring learned lessons from his experiences and by always choosing a positive, life affirming response to dire circumstances. Early in life, Joseph learned time tested sound principles while working on his father's farm. Joseph's principled thinking empowered his honesty, duty, service and problem solving skills. Joseph believed his life purpose was service to God. He believed that in serving others he was serving God. His life of service to others helped to mold his character and shape his choices and options in life. This humble personality is what made him a great leader. However, this did not necessarily mean he always made the right choices in what was best for the people.

One of China's bestselling novels, an unusual literary thriller that takes us deep into the world of code breaking
In his gripping debut novel, Mai Jia reveals the mysterious world of Unit 701, a top-secret Chinese intelligence agency whose sole purpose is counterespionage and code breaking.
Rong Jinzhen, an autistic math genius with a past shrouded in myth, is forced to abandon his academic pursuits when he is recruited into Unit 701. As China's greatest cryptographer, Rong discovers that the mastermind behind the maddeningly difficult Purple Code is his former teacher and best friend, who is now working for China's enemy--but this is only the first of many betrayals.
Brilliantly combining the mystery and tension of a spy thriller with the psychological nuance of an intimate character study and the magical qualities of a Chinese fable, "Decoded" discovers in cryptography the key to the human heart. Both a riveting mystery and a metaphysical examination of the mind of an inspired genius, it is the first novel to be published in English by one of China's greatest and most popular contemporary writers.

Come along with Parker Preston on his exciting adventure across the world -- from his South Pole home through new and different places -- and join him as he makes friends and has fun times on his way to the North Pole to finally meet the most generous man the world has ever known: Santa Claus