Rafi and Todd are two polar opposites at an elite high school where they bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game. It sets them up for life: Rafi will get lost in literature, while Todd’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.

Elsewhere, Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs; Ina Aroita grows up in naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home.

All of these people meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, marked for humanity’s next great adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out into the open sea. As the seasteaders close in, how will Evie play the ever-unfolding oceanic game? Will Ina engage in acts of destruction? Todd and Rafi, now estranged, still find themselves in competition: Todd unravels while working on an idea to redraw the boundaries of human immortality, while Rafi and the residents must decide if they will greenlight the new project on their shores and change their home forever.

Set in the world’s largest ocean, Playground explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize and interweaves profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.

The threats of economic espionage and intellectual property (IP) theft are global, stealthy, insidious, and increasingly common. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, IP theft is estimated to top $250 billion annually and also costs the United States approximately 750,000 jobs. The International Chamber of Commerce puts the global fiscal loss at more than $600 billion a year.
Secrets Stolen, Fortunes Lost offers both a fascinating journey into the underside of the Information Age, geopolitics, and global economy, shedding new light on corporate hacking, industrial espionage, counterfeiting and piracy, organized crime and related problems, and a comprehensive guide to developing a world-class defense against these threats. You will learn what you need to know about this dynamic global phenomenon (how it happens, what it costs, how to build an effective program to mitigate risk and how corporate culture determines your success), as well as how to deliver the message to the boardroom and the workforce as a whole. This book serves as an invaluable reservoir of ideas and energy to draw on as you develop a winning security strategy to overcome this formidable challenge.
-It's Not "Someone Else's" Problem: Your Enterprise is at Risk
Identify the dangers associated with intellectual property theft and economic espionage
-The Threat Comes from Many Sources
Describes the types of attackers, threat vectors, and modes of attack
-The Threat is Real
Explore case studies of real-world incidents in stark relief
-How to Defend Your Enterprise
Identify all aspects of a comprehensive program to tackle such threats and risks
-How to Deliver the Message: Awareness andEducation
Adaptable content (awareness and education materials, policy language, briefing material, presentations, and assessment tools) that you can incorporate into your security program now

Since its inception in the early 20th century the Federal Bureau of Investigation has emerged as a dominant agency in the American judicial system. Within its 10 chapters, this source provides a comprehensive chronological history of and guide to the FBI that includes information about the facilities, the organizational structure, and biographies of key individuals. This reference source will not only please FBI enthusiasts, but it also serves as an excellent resource for those interested in U.S. history, criminal justices, and American culture. Also included is an extensive chronology of key events, a subject index, and an authoritative bibliography. Numerous photographs throughout the book illustrate the essays, along with graphs and tables. An excellent reference source for all libraries".--"Outstanding Reference Sources : the 1999 Selection of New Titles", American Libraries, May 1999. Comp. by the Reference Sources Committee, RUSA, ALA.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Winner of the William Dean Howells Medal. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Named One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by the New York Times Book Review.

The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of―and paean to―the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

There is a world alongside ours―vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

A definitive survey of the finest examples of residential architecture in Britain from 1900 to the present, featuring the major architects of the 20th century and leading emerging talents. In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the architectural history and heritage of Britain. This has been driven by many important political, cultural and social factors, as well as a powerful and renewed interest in the design of house and home. The Iconic British House explores and celebrates fifty of the most architecturally significant houses from 1900 to the present. Encompassing major artistic movements, such as Arts and Crafts, Art Deco, Modernism and Postmodernism, the houses include examples designed by architects Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Edwin Lutyens, Berthold Lubetkin, Richard Rogers and many others. 21st-century innovation and imagination are evidenced in houses by established and emerging talents, such as Seth Stein, Nick Eldridge, Robin Partington and Ken Shuttleworth. Much more than a celebration of influential homes, this richly illustrated overview is also a comprehensive guide to shifting architectural movements and ideas, a survey of great architects with international relevance and a journey through changing tastes, styles, aesthetics and patterns of living.

This anthology collects nine exceptional novels that were written by high school students from New York City during the summer of 2005 in 826NYC's Young Adult Writers' Colony. Ranging from comedic, to fiercly political, to deeply personal, these novels are immensely entertaining and forecast a bright future for this brand new generation of novelists. As novelist Richard Powers says in his foreword, "There comes a time when we must decide whether we love the world enough to hand it over to its next lover . . . [This is a book of] nine worlds that nine people could not find and so had to make themselves. Here it is before you: how the story ends this time. And how it starts again."

The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He's also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin's emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother's brain... With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son's ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers's most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?

Some of the world's greatest architects, including Walter Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, have used their talents to create groundbreaking innovations in American residential architecture over the past 120 years. Though wide-ranging in style, these houses share a remarkable sensitivity to site and context; appreciation of local materials; experimentation with form, materials, and technology; and understanding of clients' needs. Spanning the length and breadth of the United States, The Iconic American House features fifty of the most important, timeless, and recognizable houses designed since 1900. With pithy text and fresh, vibrant illustrations, this book presents a lavish array of architectural masterpieces designed by architects such as Philip Johnson, Richard Neutra, Peter Eisenman and Thomas Gluck. Specially commissioned and stunning photographs, floor plans, drawings and architect biographies ensure that it is perfect for students, professionals, design aficionados and anyone who dreams of building a house of their own.

This compact volume features over 100 of the most spectacular interiors from across the world, spanning the entire 20th century to the present day. It includes interiors assembled by artists and fashion designers, architects, interior and set-designers, bringing together diverse design talents from Piero Fornasetti to Alvar Aalto, Marc Newson and Matthew Williamson. Twenty short profiles are presented in the introduction, with a single iconic photograph and a concise, informative text; the interiors are arranged by chronological order, with superb colour photography and texts recounting the stories of these remarkable designs. Representing every style from minimalism and Art Nouveau to Gesamtkunstwerk creations that defy definition, these interiors are elegant compositions that will endure.

An enthralling story about desire, new love and the mysteries of science from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory Stuart Ressler, a brilliant biologist, sets out in 1957 to crack the genetic code. His efforts are sidetracked by other, more intractable codes - social, moral, musical, spiritual - and he falls in love with a member of his research team. Years later, another young man and woman team up to investigate a different mystery - why did the eminently promising Ressler suddenly disappear from the world of science? Strand by strand, these two love stories twist about each other in a double helix of desire. 'A love story of charm and substance, brimming over with ideas, yet anchored in emotional truth' Sunday Telegraph

An Air Force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. These four, and five other strangers-each summoned in different ways by trees-are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent's few remaining acres of virgin forest. In his twelfth novel, National Book Award winner Richard Powers delivers a sweeping, impassioned novel of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of-and paean to-the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond, exploring the essential conflict on this planet: the one taking place between humans and nonhumans. There is a world alongside ours-vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe. The Overstory is a book for all readers who despair of humanity's self-imposed separation from the rest of creation and who hope for the transformative, regenerating possibility of a homecoming. If the trees of this earth could speak, what would they tell us? "Listen. There's something you need to hear."

"Gain "braids together two stories on very different scales. In one, Laura Body, divorced mother of two and a real-estate agent in the small town of Lacewood, Illinois, plunges into a new existence when she learns that she has ovarian cancer. In the other, Clare & Company, a soap manufacturer begun by three brothers in nineteenth-century Boston, grows over the course of a century and a half into an international consumer products conglomerate based in Laura's hometown. Clare's stunning growth reflects the kaleidoscopic history of America; Laura Body's life is changed forever by Clare. The novel's stunning conclusion reveals the countless invisible connections between the largest enterprises and the smallest lives.

'Beautifully written, brilliantly insightful' Owen Jones Tony Blair and Noel Gallagher shaking hands at No. 10. Saatchi's YBAs setting the international art world aflame. Geri Halliwell in a Union Jack dress. A time of vibrancy and optimism: when the country was united by the hope of a better and brighter future. So why, twenty years on, did that future never happen? Richard Power Sayeed takes a provocative look at this epochal year, arguing that the dark undercurrents of that time had a much more enduring legacy than the marketing gimmick of 'Cool Britannia'. He reveals how the handling of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry ushered in a new type of racism. How the feminism-lite of 'Girl Power' made sexism stronger. And how the promises of New Labour left the country more fractured than ever. This lively, rich and evocative book explores why 1997 was a turning point for British culture and society - away from a fairer, brighter future and on the path to our current malaise.

After four novels and several years living abroad, the fictional protagonist of "Galatea 2.2"--Richard Powers--returns to the United States as Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he runs afoul of Philip Lentz, an outspoken cognitive neurologist intent upon modeling the human brain by means of computer-based neural networks. Lentz involves Powers in an outlandish and irresistible project: to train a neural net on a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the device grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own name, sex, race, and reason for exisiting.

Highly imaginative and emotionally powerful, this stunning novel about childhood innocence amid the nightmarish disease and deterioration at the heart of modern Los Angeles was nominated for a National Book Award.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory and Bewilderment, a visionary novel about the failings of the American dream. 'It's not possible for powers to write an uninteresting book' Margaret Atwood In Lacewood, Illinois, Laura Bodey, a divorced mother of two and real estate agent, plunges into a new existence when she learns that she has cancer. This same small town is home to Clare & Company, a soap manufacturer begun by three brothers in nineteenth-century Boston. Over the course of more than a century, it transforms into a powerful international corporation. Clare & Company's stunning growth reflects America's kaleidoscopic history, yet for Laura and her family, this wild success has profound and lasting consequences. 'Penetrating and splendidly written... Dazzling' New York Times