Social Games

The original Dungeons & Dragons released by TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) in 1974 created a radical new medium: the role-playing game. For the next two decades, TSR rocketed to success. But by 1997, a series of ruinous choices and failed projects brought TSR to the edge of doom—only to be saved by their fiercest competitor, Wizards of the Coast. Unearthed from Ben Riggs’s own adventurous campaign of in-depth research, interviews with major players, and acquisitions of secret documents, Slaying the Dragon reveals the true story of the rise and fall of TSR.

Those who have been lured by the sound of skate blades slicing into fresh ice and everything-or-nothing attitude of the game know that hockey can seem like its own world. Yet in another light, that tight community can turn insular; the values of teamwork and humility can manifest as collective silence in the face of abuse and discrimination. In Game Misconduct, reporters Evan Moore and Jashvina Shah reveal hockey's toxic undercurrent which has permeated the sport throughout the junior, college, and professional levels.

Set in a beautiful seaside town on the Italian Riviera, Luca is a coming-of-age story about one young boy experiencing an unforgettable summer filled with gelato, pasta, and endless scooter rides. Luca shares these adventures with his newfound best friend, but all the fun is threatened by a deeply held secret: They are sea monsters from another world just below the water’s surface.

Der liebenswürdige Schneemann Olaf aus Arendelle liebt es zu lesen. Eines Tages erhält Olaf eine unerwartete Nachricht und begibt sich mit seinen Freunden Anna, Kristoff und Sven auf eine Mission zum Haus Biblio–einem Ort, der als "Meer aus Geschichten" beschrieben wird. In diesem Audible Original begleiten wir die Freunde dabei, wie sie Berge überqueren, unter Brücken nach Monstern suchen und mit freundlichen Schafen plaudern. Unterwegs findet Olaf neue Freunde und hört jede Menge aufregende Geschichten.

The research is clear: Human beings are born to play. In Game On? Brain On!, Lindsay Portnoy unpacks the games and playful experiences that invite engagement and deep learning. Using cognitive science to explore the ways in which play helps students acquire and maintain critical skills, Portnoy shows how inviting creativity and excitement into the classroom results in big gains for everyone.

It’s easy to overlook the underlying strategic forces of war, to see it solely as a series of errors, accidents, and emotions gone awry. It’s also easy to forget that war shouldn’t happen—and most of the time it doesn’t. Around the world, there are millions of hostile rivalries, yet only a tiny fraction erupt into violence. Too many accounts of conflict forget this. With a counterintuitive approach, Blattman reminds us that most rivals loathe one another in peace. That’s because war is too costly to fight.

The Iran Wars is an absorbing account of a battle waged on many levels - military, financial, and covert. Jay Solomon’s book is the product of extensive in-depth reporting and interviews with all the key players in the conflict - from high-ranking Iranian officials to Secretary of State John Kerry and his negotiating team. With a reporter’s masterly investigative eye and the narrative dexterity of a great historian, Solomon shows how Iran’s nuclear development went unnoticed for years by the international community only to become its top security concern.

Why do Democrats fail to win voters to their side, and what can they do to develop new winning political strategies—especially as the very fate of democracy hangs in the balance in 2024? Too often the carefully constructed, rational arguments of the Left meet a grisly fate at the polls, where voters are instead swayed by Republican candidates hawking anger, fear, and resentment. Only when Democrats are handed an overwhelming motivational issue—like the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade—have they found a way to counter this effect.

Este libro es una obra maestra, única, que tiene muchos consejos útiles para entender la naturaleza de las relaciones humanas. Según el Dr. Eric Berne, los juegos son patrones de comportamiento entre individuos que pueden indicar sentimientos o emociones ocultas. Estamos jugando todo el tiempo - juegos sexuales, juegos maritales, juegos de poder con nuestros jefes y juegos competitivos con nuestros amigos.

Tammy Duckworth takes listeners through the amazing - and amazingly true - stories from her incomparable life. In November of 2004, an Iraqi RPG blew through the cockpit of Tammy Duckworth's US Army Black Hawk helicopter. The explosion, which destroyed her legs and mangled her right arm, was a turning point in her life. But as Duckworth shows in Every Day Is a Gift, that moment was just one in a lifetime of extraordinary turns.

Word Workout is a practical audiobook for building vocabulary - a graduated program featuring thousands of words that begins with those known by most college graduates and ascends to words known only by the most educated, intelligent, and well-read adults. This workout is a comprehensive program, chock-full of information about synonyms, antonyms, and word origins, and replete with advice on proper usage and pronunciation.

Pete Axthelm follows the 1969 - 70 season of the New York Knicks and provides a parallel focus on basketball as it was then played in the black neighborhoods of New York City. Throughout, he writes clearly, intelligently, and passionately about the game, bringing alive the players’ efforts, accomplishments, and failures.

Valentina loves playing video games, and she’s really good at them. When a local esports team asks her to join them for an upcoming tournament, she’s thrilled. There’s just one problem—Valentina has great skills in first-person action games, but winning Kings and Castles relies on teamwork and strategy.

Should you watch public television without pledging? Exceed the posted speed limit? Hop a subway turnstile without paying? These questions illustrate the "prisoner's dilemma", a social puzzle that we all face every day. Though the answers may seem simple, their profound implications make the prisoner's dilemma one of the great unifying concepts of science. Watching poker players bluff inspired John von Neumann to construct game theory, a mathematical study of conflict and deception.

Olaf, l'adorable bonhomme de neige d'Arendelle, adore la lecture. Un jour, un message inattendu mène Olaf et ses amis Anna, Kristoff et Sven à rechercher un endroit mystérieux appelé Haus-Biblio. Cette histoire orignale Audible raconte l'aventure de nos amis jusqu'à Haus-Biblio tandis qu'ils traverseront des montagnes, qu'ils chercheront des monstres et qu'ils discuteront en compagnie de gentils moutons. Durant son voyage, Olaf se fera de nouveaux amis et découvrira de nouvelles histoires passionnantes.

If you are wondering what it takes to control your own luck and success, you may have sought knowledge from a few self-help books already. But if you still feel like you are missing out on something, yes you are! Emory Green brings you five audiobooks in one compelling bundle series, with controversial yet eye-opening topics that other mainstream psychology books won’t talk about.

One of Michiko Kakutani's (New York Times) top 10 books of 2016. A funny thing happened on the way to the digital utopia. We've begun to fall back in love with the very analog goods and ideas the tech gurus insisted that we no longer needed. Businesses that once looked outdated, from film photography to brick-and-mortar retail, are now springing with new life. Notebooks, records, and stationery have become cool again.

Video game sales as a whole have continued to grow, now raking in twice as much money per year as the entire film industry, and countless psychologists have turned their attention to the effects gaming has on us: our confidence, our identity, and our personal growth. The Psychology of Zelda applies the latest psychological findings, plus insights from classic psychology theory, to Link, Zelda, Hyrule, and the players who choose to wield the Master Sword.

In this third edition of Border Games, Peter Andreas charts the rise and transformation in policing the flow of drugs and migrants across the US-Mexico border. Recent border crackdowns and wall-building campaigns, he argues, are not unprecedented. Rather, they are the outcome of an escalatory dynamic already in motion—but now played out on a far bigger stage, with higher stakes, and in new security and political contexts. Focusing on the power of symbolic politics and policy feedback effects, Andreas traces the logic behind such buildup.

Jude is determined to fly under the radar. He just wants to draw comics, host D&D night with his friends, work at his parents’ vinyl record store, and escape high school as unscathed as possible. That is, until the night he finds himself inexplicably gifted with a bout of supernatural good luck. Suddenly, everything Jude has ever wanted is within reach. His art is being published. He helps his friend’s song become a finalist in a songwriting competition. And he wins a pair of coveted concert tickets, which he can use to ask out the popular girl he’s been crushing on since elementary school.