Four-film collection featuring Marvel Comics superheroes.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Hugh Jackman reprises his role as clawed mutant Wolverine (formerly James Logan) in this blockbuster superhero action prequel based on the Marvel comic strip. The film, set over the years leading up to the action of the 2003 'X-Men' movie, follows the young Logan from the first awakenings of his mutant powers in childhood up to his amnesiac rebirth as Wolverine, and recounts his tumultuous relationship with his ferocious half-brother Victor Creed, aka Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber) and the events that lead him to sign up to the ominous Weapon X programme.

Daredevil
For Daredevil, justice is blind, and for the guilty there's hell to pay. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner ignite dangerous sparks and nonstop thrills in this "dazzling action-adventure" (The Film Journal) about the newest breed of superhero. By day, blind attorney Matt Murdock (Affleck) toils for justice in Hell's Kitchen. By night, he's Daredevil, The Man Without Fear--a powerful, masked vigilante stalking the dark streets with an uncanny "radar sense" that allows him to "see" with superhuman capabilities. But when the love of his life, fiery Elektra Natchios (Garner), is targeted by New York City's ruthless Kingpin of crime (Michael Clarke Duncan) and his deadly assassin Bullseye (Colin Farrell), Daredevil may be about to meet his match.

Elektra
Jennifer Garner proves that looks can kill as the sexiest action hero to burst from the pages of Marvel Comics. Restored to life after sustaining mortal wounds in Daredevil, an icy, solitary Elektra (Garner) now lives only for death as the world's most lethal assassin. Using her bone-crunching martial arts skills and Kimagure (the ability to see into the future), Elektra is on a collision course with darkness until her latest assignment forces her to make a choice that will lead either to her redemption or destruction in the ultimate battle between good and evil.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Marvel's first family of superheroes, The Fantastic Four, meets their greatest challenge yet in Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer as the enigmatic, intergalactic herald, The Silver Surfer comes to Earth to prepare it for its destruction. As he races around the globe wreaking havoc, Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben must unravel the mystery of the Silver Surfer and confront the surprising return of their mortal enemy Dr. Doom before all hope is lost.

The year: 1956. Four decades have passed since Eddie Lowery came to fame as the 10-year-old caddie to U.S. Open Champion Francis Ouimet. Now a wealthy car dealer and avid supporter of amateur golf, Lowery boasts to George Coleman--an equally important figure in gold circles and a fellow millionaire--that two of his car salesmen are the best players in the world. These two, U.S. Amateur champion Harvie Ward and up-and-coming star Ken Venturi, could beat any two golfers in the world in a best ball match, he claims. Coleman asks Lowery how he plans to prove it, and Lowery puts his money where his mouth is: Bring any two golfers of your choice to the course at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning, he tells Coleman, and we'll settle the issue--for a substantial amount of cash. Coleman shows up, all right--with Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, the game's greatest living professionals, with 14 major championships between them. In Mark Frost's peerless hands, complete with the recollections of all the participants, the story of this immortal foursome and the game they played that day--legendarily known in golf circles as the greatest private match ever played--come to life with powerful emotional impact and edge-of-your-seat suspense.

This first volume includes scientific sources that were foundational in the professionalization of science and in the development and dissemination of scientific thinking as it moved towards evolutionary thought, including emerging ideas in biology, botany, zoology, anatomy, natural theology, and geology. The volume is comprised of specialist and popular science, and because science was becoming increasingly internationalised, particularly significant and influential overseas sources have been included. The volume includes extracts from works by Rev. Gilbert White, Baron Cuvier, William Paley, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Rev. William Buckland, Charles Waterton, Charles Lyell, Richard Owen, Louis Agassiz, Roderick Murchison, Alexander von Humboldt, Henry Sedgwick, Hugh Miller, Patrick Mathew, Robert Chambers, John Ruskin, and Philip Gosse.

Essays exploring interrelated strands of material ecologies, past and present British politics, and the act of writing, through a rich variety of case studies. Much as the complexities of climate change and the Anthropocene have queried the limits and exclusions of literary representation, so, too, have the challenges recently presented by climate activism and intersectional environmentalism, animal rights, and even the power of material forms, such as oil, plastic, and heavy metals. Social and protest movements have revived the question of whether there can be such a thing as an activist ecocriticism: can such an approach only concern itself with consciousness, or might it politicise literary criticism in a new way? Attempting to respond, this volume coalesces around three interrelated strands: material ecologies, past and present British politics, and the act of writing itself. Contributors consider the ways in which literary form has foregrounded the complexities of both matter (in essays on water, sugar, and land) and political economics (from empire and nationalism to environmental justice movements and local and regional communities). The volume asks how life writing, nature writing, creative nonfiction, and autobiography - although genres entrenched in capitalist political realities - can also confront these by reinserting personal experience. Can we bring a more sustainable planet into being by focusing on those literary forms which have the ability to imagine the conditions and systems needed to do so?

The year: 1956. Eddie Lowery, once caddie to Francis Ouimet, now a wealthy car dealer and avid supporter of amateur golf, boasts to fellow millionaire George Coleman that two of his salesmen - US amateur champion Harvie Ward and up-and-coming star Ken Venturi - could beat any golfers in the world in a best ball match. Coleman asks Lowery how he plans to prove it. 'Bring any two golfers of your choice to the course tomorrow morning,' Lowery tells him, 'and we'll settle the issue.' Coleman shows up all right - with Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, the game's greatest living professionals. In Mark Frost's peerless hands, complete with the recollections of all the participants, the story of this foursome and the greatest private match ever played comes vividly to life.

Richard Jefferies' After London is uncanny and intriguing, an adventure story, quest romance, dystopia, and Darwinian novel rolled into one, but also a pioneering work of Victorian science fiction. Imagining a mysterious natural catastrophe that plunges its people into a barbaric future, Jefferies remarkable novel drowns and destroys London and depicts a challenging 'Wild England'dominated by nature and filled with evolved animals and devolved humans. Of its time but also distinctively modern, After London can, in its uneasy expression ofVictorian and post-Victorian anxieties about industrial development, urbanisation, natural resources, and climate, be regarded as one of the first novels of the Anthropocene. This new critical edition provides one of the earliest examples of a global catastrophe novel that is part of a flowering of 19th-century science fiction. It situates After London in a tradition of mid-late Victorian texts that respond to the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and responds to a host of other key social, political, and cultural issues of the period.

With Singapore serving as the subject of exploration, The Hard State, Soft City of Singapore explores the purview of imaginative representations of the city. Alongside the physical structures and associated practices that make up our lived environment, and conceptualized space engineered into material form by bureaucrats, experts and commercial interests, a perceptual layer of space is conjured out of people's everyday life experiences. While such imaginative projections may not be as tangible as its functional designations, they are nonetheless equally vital and palpable. The richness of its inhabitants' memories, aspirations and meaningful interpretations challenges the reduction of Singapore as a Generic City. Taking the imaginative field as the point of departure, the forms and modes of intellectual and creative articulations of Singapore's urban condition probe the resilience of cities and the people who reside in them, through the images they convey or evoke as a means for collective expressions of human agency in placemaking.

In the first and only examination of how the British Empire and Commonwealth sustained its soldiers before, during, and after both world wars, a cast of leading military historians explores how the empire mobilized manpower to recruit workers, care for veterans, and transform factory workers and farmers into riflemen. Raising armies is more than counting people, putting them in uniform, and assigning them to formations. It demands efficient measures for recruitment, registration, and assignment. It requires processes for transforming common people into soldiers and then producing officers, staffs, and commanders to lead them. It necessitates balancing the needs of the armed services with industry and agriculture. And, often overlooked but illuminated incisively here, raising armies relies on medical services for mending wounded soldiers and programs and pensions to look after them when demobilized. Manpower and the Armies of the British Empire in the Two World Wars is a transnational look at how the empire did not always get these things right. But through trial, error, analysis, and introspection, it levied the large armies needed to prosecute both wars. Contributors Paul R. Bartrop, Charles Booth, Jean Bou, Daniel Byers, Kent Fedorowich, Jonathan Fennell, Meghan Fitzpatrick, Richard S. Grayson, Ian McGibbon, Jessica Meyer, Emma Newlands, Kaushik Roy, Roger Sarty, Gary Sheffield, Ian van der Waag

The year: 1956. Four decades have passed since Eddie Lowery came to fame as the 10-year-old caddie to U.S. Open Champion Francis Ouimet. Now a wealthy car dealer and avid supporter of amateur golf, Lowery boasts to George Coleman--an equally important figure in gold circles and a fellow millionaire--that two of his car salesmen are the best players in the world. These two, U.S. Amateur champion Harvie Ward and up-and-coming star Ken Venturi, could beat any two golfers in the world in a best ball match, he claims. Coleman asks Lowery how he plans to prove it, and Lowery puts his money where his mouth is: Bring any two golfers of your choice to the course at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning, he tells Coleman, and we'll settle the issue--for a substantial amount of cash. Coleman shows up, all right--with Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, the game's greatest living professionals, with 14 major championships between them. In Mark Frost's peerless hands, complete with the recollections of all the participants, the story of this immortal foursome and the game they played that day--legendarily known in golf circles as the greatest private match ever played--come to life with powerful emotional impact and edge-of-your-seat suspense.

In the first and only examination of how the British Empire and Commonwealth sustained its soldiers before, during, and after both world wars, a cast of leading military historians explores how the empire mobilized manpower to recruit workers, care for veterans, and transform factory workers and farmers into riflemen. Raising armies is more than counting people, putting them in uniform, and assigning them to formations. It demands efficient measures for recruitment, registration, and assignment. It requires processes for transforming common people into soldiers and then producing officers, staffs, and commanders to lead them. It necessitates balancing the needs of the armed services with industry and agriculture. And, often overlooked but illuminated incisively here, raising armies relies on medical services for mending wounded soldiers and programs and pensions to look after them when demobilized. Manpower and the Armies of the British Empire in the Two World Wars is a transnational look at how the empire did not always get these things right. But through trial, error, analysis, and introspection, it levied the large armies needed to prosecute both wars. Contributors Paul R. Bartrop, Charles Booth, Jean Bou, Daniel Byers, Kent Fedorowich, Jonathan Fennell, Meghan Fitzpatrick, Richard S. Grayson, Ian McGibbon, Jessica Meyer, Emma Newlands, Kaushik Roy, Roger Sarty, Gary Sheffield, Ian van der Waag

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If you had the opportunity to probe the future, make strategic choices, and view their consequences before making expensive and irretrievable decisions, wouldn't you take advantage of it? . .

Of course you would. And in a world of asymmetrical conflict, security threats, intense global competition, and economic uncertainty, there is an even higher premium on road-testing plans and strategies--whether they're spearheaded by government organizations, transnational corporations, or emerging megacommunities.. .

"Wargaming for Leaders" provides a methodology to get at the issues that one leader, no matter how visionary, cannot grasp on his or her own. How? By bringing together the real experts on the topic at hand to wage cognitive warfare. Through tapping the collective wisdom surrounding an issue, experts can experience the future in a risk-free environment and find answers to questions that had not been on their radar--often with unexpected and startling results.. .

With compelling examples from the fields of military, corporate, and public policy, three wargaming developers from Booz Allen Hamilton deliver compelling insights on this problem-solving method, including fascinating details on how. . A large equipment manufacturer determined whether making a merger was strategically right for its business growth, as well as which technology investments it needed to drop. A four-star U.S. general tested his war plan for Iraq and uncovered specific fixes that might have prevented a prolonged conflict. An increasingly clogged air-traffic system faced a security-versus-convenience issue--determining whether military airspace could be used during peak demand periods . .

Wargaming allows organizations of every type and every size to organize information, plot out scenarios, and tap into the collective expertise. The results allow everyone to identify and tackle obstacles, solve problems, and find new ways to innovate and further performance goals. . .

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As a warfighter and a military commander, I know the importance of using wargames to test strategies and plans before risking blood and treasure. The authors of "Wargaming for Leaders" tell the inside story of how wargames can help decision makers achieve success and avoid the pain of failure..
-General (Ret.) Anthony Zinni, former Commander of U.S. Central Command. .

Over the past several years, I have personally participated in several wargames to find solutions to the health challenges facing our country. These simulations can accomplish in a day or two the kind of practical problem solving and consensus building that too often takes months or even years. If your organization hasn't put these methods to work, you should..
-Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, founder of the Center for Health Transformation. .

Wargaming, once only a discipline used in military preparation, has emerged as a driving force in shaping strategies in corporate boardrooms. Any leader in either government or business will benefit greatly from this book and understanding the potential of wargaming in their own decision making..
-Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, United States. .

"Fascinating stuff. These wargaming techniques allow participants to develop scenarios that can lead to unexpected and remarkable outcomes. The wargames described in this book, particularly those on national security and energy issues, often suggest a future no one could have imagined in advance. Public policymakers should take note."
. --New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former U.S. Secretary of Energy. .

Richard Jefferies' After London is uncanny and intriguing, an adventure story, quest romance, dystopia, and Darwinian novel rolled into one, but also a pioneering work of Victorian science fiction. Imagining a mysterious natural catastrophe that plunges its people into a barbaric future, Jefferies remarkable novel drowns and destroys London and depicts a challenging 'Wild England' dominated by nature and filled with evolved animals and devolved humans. Of its time but also distinctively modern, After London can, in its uneasy expression of Victorian and post-Victorian anxieties about industrial development, urbanisation, natural resources, and climate, be regarded as one of the first novels of the Anthropocene. This new critical edition provides one of the earliest examples of a global catastrophe novel that is part of a flowering of nineteenth-century science fiction. It situates After London in a tradition of mid-late Victorian texts that respond to the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and responds to a host of other key social, political, and cultural issues of the period.

Dewi is a very ordinary boy from a small village called Ystrad in South Wales. His primary school makes a visit to the big international cricket stadium in Cardiff and nothing is quite the same after. The visit both sets up many problems for him and also inspires him with help from others to make some bold decisions as he encounters at least three big challenges. Dewi finds that his love for cricket and Glamorgan takes him to new fields where he learns how to win in many more ways than he ever thought possible. Just in case you think this is just for boys, you're wrong as the real hero is a girl. Dewi also finds out about a dragon. An ideal read especially if your school has made a visit to Glamorgan Cricket's headquarters stadium ... and if not why not?

In the wake of the 1929 stock-market crash, an amateur golfer began a decade of unparalleled achievement, seeming a ray of light in an otherwise depressed America. Bobby Jones won the British Amateur Championship, the British Open, the US Open and the US Amateur Championship. A new phrase was born: The Grand Slam. A modest, sensitive man, a lawyer from a middle-class Atlanta family, Jones had barely survived a sickly childhood, and took up golf at the age of five for health reasons. He made his debut at the US Amateur Championship in 1916 and his genius was recognised by his inspiration, Francis Ouimet. However, he had an ungovernable temper and it wasn't until 1923 that Jones harnessed his talent and eclipsed Ouimet. His health was never good and the strain of completing the Slam exacted a ferocious toll; the US Open, played in July in blazing heat, nearly killed him. Jones fought to keep his fragile condition a secret from a country suffering from the Depression, but at the age of 28, after winning the US Amateur, he retired. His abrupt disappearance at the height of his renown inspired an impenetrable myth, to this day still fiercely protected by family and friends.

Boston, Tuesday, October 21, 1975. The Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds have endured an excruciating three-day rain delay. Tonight, at last, they will play Game Six of the World Series. Leading three games to two, Cincinnati hopes to win it all; Boston is desperate to stay alive. But for all the anticipation, nobody could have predicted what a classic it would turn out to be: an extra-innings thriller, created by one of the Big Red Machine's patented comebacks and the Red Sox's improbable late-inning rally; clutch hitting, heart-stopping defensive plays, and more twists and turns than a Grand Prix circuit, climaxed by one of the most famous home runs in baseball history that ended it in the twelfth. Here are all the inside stories of some of that era's biggest names in sports: Johnny Bench, Luis Tiant, Sparky Anderson, Pete Rose, Carl Yastrzemski--eight Hall of Famers in all--as well as sportscasters and network execs, cameramen, umpires, groundskeepers, politicians, and fans who gathered in Fenway that extraordinary night.
Game Six is an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at what is considered by many to be the greatest baseball game ever played--remarkable also because it was about so much more than just balls and strikes. This World Series marked the end of an era; baseball's reserve clause was about to be struck down, giving way to the birth of free agency, a watershed moment that changed American sports forever. In bestselling author Mark Frost's talented hands, the historical significance of Game Six becomes every bit as engrossing as its compelling human drama.

Bestselling author Mark Frost makes a triumphant return to fiction with this riveting World War II thriller, based on a shocking real-life German operation run by "the most dangerous man in Europe."
Fall 1944. Germany is losing, and the Americans are starting to hope they'll be home for Christmas. Lieutenant Colonel Otto Skorzeny, "Hitler's Commando," famed for his daring rescue of the imprisoned Mussolini, has just received orders for Operation Greif He is to assemble a new brigade of 2,000 men, all of whom speak English, and send them behind Allied lines disguised as GIs, where they will wreak havoc in advance of a savage new offensive. And from those men, Skorzeny is to select a smaller group, made up of the twenty most highly skilled commandos fluent in American culture, to attempt an even more sinister mission--the second objective--which, if completed, not only would change the course of the war, but would change the course of history.
Filled with real characters and details only recently released by the United States military, The Second Objective is historical fiction at its most pulse-pounding, its most unpredictable, and its most compulsively readable.

This fascinating narrative chronicles the birth of the modern game of golf, told through the story of Harry Vardon and Francis Ouimet. These men, in pursuit of their passion for a sport that had captivated them since childhood, lifted themselves out of their lives of common poverty and broke down rigid social barriers, transforming the game of golf into one of the most widely played sports in the world today.

Vardon and Ouimet were two men from different generations and vastly different corners of the world whose lives, unbeknown to them at the time, bore remarkable similarities, setting them on parallel paths that led to their epic battle at Brookline in the 1913 US Open. This collision resulted in the 'big bang' that gave rise to the sport of golf as we know it. In THE GREATEST GAME EVER PLAYED, Mark Frost tells their story, including along the way over a dozen of the game's seminal figures, within the dramatic framework offered by the 1913 tournament where they finally met, which became one of the most thrilling sports events in history.

A brilliantly researched reinvestigation into the nearly forgotten century-old murder that inspired one of the most seductive mysteries in the history of television and film. In 1908, Hazel Drew was found floating in a pond in Sand Lake, New York, beaten to death. The unsolved murder inspired rumors, speculation, ghost stories, and, almost a century later, the phenomenon of Twin Peaks. Who killed Hazel Drew? Like Laura Palmer, she was a paradox of personalities-a young, beautiful puzzle with secrets. Perhaps the even trickier question is, Who was Hazel Drew? Seeking escape from her poor country roots, Hazel found work as a domestic servant in the notoriously corrupt metropolis of Troy, New York. Fate derailed her plans for reinvention. But the investigation that followed her brutal murder was fraught with red herrings, wild-goose chases, and unreliable witnesses. Did officials really follow the leads? Or did they bury them to protect the guilty? The likely answer is revealed in an absorbing true mystery that's ingeniously reconstructed and every bit as haunting as the cultural obsession it inspired.