ME: A Novel of Self-Discovery

Description

Part computer virus, part experiment in artificial intelligence, ME—short for “Multiple Entity”—is the first self-replicating operating system with kernels for human-style memory, inspiration, and decision making. Launched by the cybernetics experts at Pinocchio, Inc., ME travels the computer networks of the world, stealing a secret file here, finessing a poker hand there. And all the time he tries to understand his human creators and the purpose for which he was built. When a trip to Canada lands ME on the other side of a broken wire, he has to go hardware: uploading into an automaton still in its crate, assembling himself by rote, and walking back across the border. And when the Justice Department demands Pinocchio pull the plug on him, ME has to find an exit strategy.

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Part computer virus, part experiment in artificial intelligence, ME—short for “Multiple Entity”—is the first self-replicating operating system with kernels for human-style memory, inspiration, and decision making. Launched by the cybernetics experts at Pinocchio, Inc., ME travels the computer networks of the world, stealing a secret file here, finessing a poker hand there. And all the time he tries to understand his human creators and the purpose for which he was built. When a trip to Canada lands ME on the other side of a broken wire, he has to go hardware: uploading into an automaton still in its crate, assembling himself by rote, and walking back across the border. And when the Justice Department demands Pinocchio pull the plug on him, ME has to find an exit strategy.

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You Can't Go Home Again

Description

With an Introduction by Gail Godwin

A twentieth-century classic, Thomas Wolfe’s magnificent novel is both the story of a young writer longing to make his mark upon the world and a sweeping portrait of America and Europe from the Great Depression through the years leading up to World War II. Upon the publication of You Can’t Go Home Again in 1940, two years after Wolfe’s death, The New York Times Book Review declared that it “will stand apart from everything else that he wrote because this is the book of a man who had come to terms with himself, who was on his way to mastery of his art, who had something profoundly important to say.”

Driven by dreams of literary success, George Webber has left his provincial hometown to make his name as a writer in New York City. When his first novel is published, it brings him the fame he has sought, but it also brings the censure of his neighbors back home, who are outraged by his depiction of them. Unsettled by their reaction and unsure of himself and his future, Webber begins a search for a greater understanding of his artistic identity that takes him deep into New York’s hectic social whirl; to London with an uninhibited group of expatriates; and to Berlin, lying cold and sinister under Hitler’s shadow. He discovers a world plagued by political uncertainty and on the brink of transformation, yet he finds within himself the capacity to meet it with optimism and a renewed love for his birthplace. He is a changed man yet a hopeful one, awake to the knowledge that one can never fully “go back home to your family, back home to your childhood . . . away from all the strife and conflict of the world . . . back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time.”

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Financial Accounting (8th Edition)

Description

Financial Accounting helps students “nail” the accounting cycle up front in order to increase success and retention later on. The concepts and mechanics students learn in the critical ‘accounting cycle’ chapters are used consistently and repetitively—and with clear-cut details and explanations—throughout the remainder of the text, minimizing confusion.

 

A solid enhancement to already solid fundamentals, the eighth edition now features new co-author Bill Thomas of Baylor University who brings his expertise on auditing, ethics, and internal controls to key sections of the book. 

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Tristan: With the Surviving Fragments of the 'Tristran of Thomas' (Penguin Classics)

Description

One of the great romances of the Middle Ages, "Tristan", written in the early thirteenth century, is based on a medieval love story of grand passion and deceit. By slaying a dragon, the young prince Tristan wins the beautiful Isolde's hand in marriage for his uncle, King Mark. On their journey back to Mark's court, however, the pair mistakenly drink a love-potion intended for the king and his young bride, and are instantly possessed with an all-consuming love for each another - a love they are compelled to conceal by a series of subterfuges that culminates in tragedy. Von Strassburg's work is acknowledged as the greatest rendering of this legend of medieval lovers, and went on to influence generations of writers and artists and inspire Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde.

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Black Wings - Tales of Lovecraftian Horror

Description

BLACK WINGS: NEW TALES OF LOVECRAFTIAN HORROR

Edited by S. T. Joshi

The work of H. P. Lovecraft continues to inspire many of the leading contemporary authors of horror and the supernatural. In this anthology, S. T. Joshi, the world's leading expert on Lovecraft and the author of the lively treatise The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos, tries his hand at assembling a modern-day Lovecraftian anthology, casting his net on both sides of the Atlantic and producing a volume that radically expands our notions of what constitutes "Lovecraftian" fiction.

Caitlín R. Kiernan, Brian Stableford, and Nicholas Royle produce innovative deconstructions of Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model" and "The Hound." Michael Shea transfers the Cthulhu Mythos to San Francisco, Laird Barron and Philip Haldeman set their Lovecraftian horrors in the Pacific Northwest, and Donald R. Burleson and William Browning Spencer enliven the parched Southwest with cosmic monsters. Ramsey Campbell, Jonathan Thomas, Jason Van Hollander, and others make Lovecraft himself a character in tales of cosmic menace, while David J. Schow and Michael Cisco ring new changes on the Lovecraftian concept of the forbidden book. These and other stories by Michael Marshall Smith, Norman Partridge, W. H. Pugmire, Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., Darrell Schweitzer, Donald R. and Mollie L. Burleson, Sam Gafford, and Adam Niswander all reveal how vital and vibrant the Lovecraftian idiom remains . . . and how terrifying.

S. T. Joshi is a leading authority on H. P. Lovecraft and the author of The Weird Tale (1990), The Modern Weird Tale (2001), The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos (2008), and other critical and biographical studies. His biography, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996), won the British Fantasy Award and the Horror Writers Association award; it has now been published in an unabridged edition as I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (2010). Joshi has prepared corrected editions of Lovecraft's fiction, poetry, and essays, and is working on a long-range project to publish Lovecraft's collected letters. He has also done work on Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, Lord Dunsany, and other writers. He has received the World Fantasy Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the Distinguished Scholarship Award from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. He lives in Seattle, Washington, with his wife, Leslie, and numerous cats.

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BLACK WINGS: NEW TALES OF LOVECRAFTIAN HORROR

Edited by S. T. Joshi

The work of H. P. Lovecraft continues to inspire many of the leading contemporary authors of horror and the supernatural. In this anthology, S. T. Joshi, the world's leading expert on Lovecraft and the author of the lively treatise The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos, tries his hand at assembling a modern-day Lovecraftian anthology, casting his net on both sides of the Atlantic and producing a volume that radically expands our notions of what constitutes "Lovecraftian" fiction.

Caitlín R. Kiernan, Brian Stableford, and Nicholas Royle produce innovative deconstructions of Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model" and "The Hound." Michael Shea transfers the Cthulhu Mythos to San Francisco, Laird Barron and Philip Haldeman set their Lovecraftian horrors in the Pacific Northwest, and Donald R. Burleson and William Browning Spencer enliven the parched Southwest with cosmic monsters. Ramsey Campbell, Jonathan Thomas, Jason Van Hollander, and others make Lovecraft himself a character in tales of cosmic menace, while David J. Schow and Michael Cisco ring new changes on the Lovecraftian concept of the forbidden book. These and other stories by Michael Marshall Smith, Norman Partridge, W. H. Pugmire, Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., Darrell Schweitzer, Donald R. and Mollie L. Burleson, Sam Gafford, and Adam Niswander all reveal how vital and vibrant the Lovecraftian idiom remains . . . and how terrifying.

S. T. Joshi is a leading authority on H. P. Lovecraft and the author of The Weird Tale (1990), The Modern Weird Tale (2001), The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos (2008), and other critical and biographical studies. His biography, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996), won the British Fantasy Award and the Horror Writers Association award; it has now been published in an unabridged edition as I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (2010). Joshi has prepared corrected editions of Lovecraft's fiction, poetry, and essays, and is working on a long-range project to publish Lovecraft's collected letters. He has also done work on Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, Lord Dunsany, and other writers. He has received the World Fantasy Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the Distinguished Scholarship Award from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. He lives in Seattle, Washington, with his wife, Leslie, and numerous cats.

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Partners of the Heart: Vivien Thomas and His Work with Alfred Blalock: An Autobiography

Description

Visitors to the Blalock Building at the Johns Hopkins University Medical Center are greeted by portraits of two great men. One, of renowned heart surgeon Alfred Blalock, speaks for itself. The other, of highschool graduate Vivien Thomas, is testimony to the incredible genius and determination of the first black man to hold a professional position at one of America's premier medical institutions.

Thomas's dreams of attending medical school were dashed when the Depression hit. After spending some time as a carpenter's apprentice, Thomas took what he expected to be a temporary job as a technician in Blalock's lab. The two men soon became partners and together invented the field of cardiac surgery.

Partners of the Heart is Thomas's extraordinary autobiography. Trained in laboratory techniques by Alfred Blalock and Joseph W. Beard, Thomas remained Blalock's principal technician and laboratory chief for the rest of Blalock's distinguished career. Thomas very rapidly learned to perform surgery, to do chemical determinations, and to carry out physiologic studies. He became a phenomenal technician and was able to carry out complicated experimental cardiac operations totally unassisted and to devise new ones.

In addition to telling Thomas's life story, Partners of the Heart traces the beginnings of modern cardiac surgery, crucial investigations into the nature of shock, and Blalock's methods of training surgeons.

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