Unlikely Enemies


Book Description

unLikely Enemies is a tale of parental trials endured when grown children resist the inevitable and the necessary to leave the nest. Robb and Lorraine Mellenn were reaching retirement age. They had worked hard and planned well. So had their good friends, Clark and Merrill Justyne and the Harris’, Adele and Neil. But they had all overlooked something in their planning. None would be able to begin retirement until each of their adult children moved out from their homes. The Mellenn's son, Tennenbaum, led the pack in finding the most inventive ways to keep the status quo. As a result, the parents take action. The men ban together as do the women. Each gender executes their own scheme to teach their adult kids to be financially alert and independent. And the various outlandish plots against their offspring always ends askew, and their adultlings unwilling to budge. And, why should they? They're perfectly comfortable where they are, well cared for, under their parents' roofs. It is only with the unexpected death of Tennenbaum's beloved grandparent that Tennenbaum and the other grown children, at long last, find their way into adulthood. In a final twist, the parents' plans to begin their Golden Years are further delayed this time of their own making.




Enemies in Love


Book Description

A “New & Noteworthy” selection of The New York Times Book Review “Alexis Clark illuminates a whole corner of unknown World War II history.” —Walter Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci “[A]n irresistible human story. . . . Clark's voice is engaging, and her tale universal.” —Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power and American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House A true and deeply moving narrative of forbidden love during World War II and a shocking, hidden history of race on the home front This is a love story like no other: Elinor Powell was an African American nurse in the U.S. military during World War II; Frederick Albert was a soldier in Hitler's army, captured by the Allies and shipped to a prisoner-of-war camp in the Arizona desert. Like most other black nurses, Elinor pulled a second-class assignment, in a dusty, sun-baked—and segregated—Western town. The army figured that the risk of fraternization between black nurses and white German POWs was almost nil. Brought together by unlikely circumstances in a racist world, Elinor and Frederick should have been bitter enemies; but instead, at the height of World War II, they fell in love. Their dramatic story was unearthed by journalist Alexis Clark, who through years of interviews and historical research has pieced together an astounding narrative of race and true love in the cauldron of war. Based on a New York Times story by Clark that drew national attention, Enemies in Love paints a tableau of dreams deferred and of love struggling to survive, twenty-five years before the Supreme Court's Loving decision legalizing mixed-race marriage—revealing the surprising possibilities for human connection during one of history's most violent conflicts.




The Best of Enemies


Book Description

C. P. Ellis grew up in the poor white section of Durham, North Carolina, and as a young man joined the Ku Klux Klan. Ann Atwater, a single mother from the poor black part of town, quit her job as a household domestic to join the civil rights fight. During the 1960s, as the country struggled with the explosive issue of race, Atwater and Ellis met on opposite sides of the public school integration issue. Their encounters were charged with hatred and suspicion. In an amazing set of transformations, however, each of them came to see how the other had been exploited by the South's rigid power structure, and they forged a friendship that flourished against a backdrop of unrelenting bigotry. Rich with details about the rhythms of daily life in the mid-twentieth-century South, The Best of Enemies offers a vivid portrait of a relationship that defied all odds. By placing this very personal story into broader context, Osha Gray Davidson demonstrates that race is intimately tied to issues of class, and that cooperation is possible--even in the most divisive situations--when people begin to listen to one another.




Prize and Prejudice


Book Description

This journal examines privateering and naval prizes in Atlantic Canada in the maritime War of 1812 - considered the final major international manifestation of the practice. It seeks to contextualise the role of privateering in the nineteenth century; determine the causes of, and reactions to, the War of 1812; determine the legal evolution of prize law in North America; discuss the privateers of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and the methods they utilised to manipulate the rules of prize making during the war; and consider the economic impact of the war of maritime communities. Ultimately, the purpose of the journal is to examine privateering as an occupation in order to redeem its historically negative reputation. The volume is presented as six chapters, plus a conclusion appraising privateering, and seven appendices containing court details, prize listings, and relevant letters of agency.




The Woman Who Smashed Codes


Book Description

National Bestseller NPR Best Book of the Year “Not all superheroes wear capes, and Elizebeth Smith Friedman should be the subject of a future Wonder Woman movie.” —The New York Times Joining the ranks of Hidden Figures and In the Garden of Beasts, the incredible true story of the greatest codebreaking duo that ever lived, an American woman and her husband who invented the modern science of cryptology together and used it to confront the evils of their time, solving puzzles that unmasked Nazi spies and helped win World War II. In 1916, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the U.S. government, and he soon asked Elizebeth to apply her language skills to an exciting new venture: code-breaking. There she met the man who would become her husband, groundbreaking cryptologist William Friedman. Though she and Friedman are in many ways the "Adam and Eve" of the NSA, Elizebeth’s story, incredibly, has never been told. In The Woman Who Smashed Codes, Jason Fagone chronicles the life of this extraordinary woman, who played an integral role in our nation’s history for forty years. After World War I, Smith used her talents to catch gangsters and smugglers during Prohibition, then accepted a covert mission to discover and expose Nazi spy rings that were spreading like wildfire across South America, advancing ever closer to the United States. As World War II raged, Elizebeth fought a highly classified battle of wits against Hitler’s Reich, cracking multiple versions of the Enigma machine used by German spies. Meanwhile, inside an Army vault in Washington, William worked furiously to break Purple, the Japanese version of Enigma—and eventually succeeded, at a terrible cost to his personal life. Fagone unveils America’s code-breaking history through the prism of Smith’s life, bringing into focus the unforgettable events and colorful personalities that would help shape modern intelligence. Blending the lively pace and compelling detail that are the hallmarks of Erik Larson’s bestsellers with the atmosphere and intensity of The Imitation Game, The Woman Who Smashed Codes is page-turning popular history at its finest.




Making Enemies


Book Description

Whom a prime minister or president will not shake hands with is still more noticed than with whom they will. Public identity can afford to be ambiguous about friends, but not about enemies. Barker examines the accounts of how enmity functions in the cultivation of identity, how essential or avoidable it is, and what the global consequences are.




Kuraj


Book Description

Born in the late 1930s on the Central Asian steppe, Naja is the daughter of a clan chieftain of the Tushan nomads, proud descendants of Genghis Khan. When her fiercely independent father, U'lan, hears of Stalin's plan to bring the Tushan under state control and make them settle permanently in collective farms, he pledges to join forces with the invading German army. It is a pledge of honor that will take her father to the hell of Stalingrad and change Naja's life forever by eventually bringing her, at the age of nine, to ruined postwar Cologne. From there she must learn to adapt to a strange new culture, and to the strange family that has taken her in. But as Naja gradually grows more comfortable in this alien world, the memories of her young life on the steppe call out to her. She begins a difficult search for her past-and the past of her people-with only the word kuraj (Tushan for tumbleweed) as her talisman and guide. Silvia di Natale was born in Genoa in 1951 and moved to Germany in 1973, where she lives with her husband and son. She teaches and works as an ethnosociologist. Kuraj is her first novel. "An extraordinary epic of emigration, capture, ruin, flight and return-a revelation."-Corriere della Sera "Extraordinary and gripping."-Repubblica




Game AI Uncovered


Book Description

Game AI Uncovered: Volume One kicks off a brand-new series of books that focus on the development of artificial intelligence in video games. This volume brings together the collected wisdom, ideas, tricks, and cutting-edge techniques from 20 of the top game AI professionals and researchers from around the world. The techniques discussed in these pages cover the underlying development of a wide array of published titles, including Hood: Outlaws and Legends, The Escapists 2, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Call of Duty: Strike Team, GTI+ Club, Split/Second, Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed, Luna Abyss, Medal of Honor Heroes I & II, Age of Empires IV, Watch Dogs, Battlefield 2042, Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville, Dead Space, and more. Contained within this volume are overviews and insight covering a host of different areas within game AI, including situational awareness, pathfinding, tethering, squad behaviours, coordination, auto-generating navigation link data, fluid movement, combining behaviour and animation systems, pedal control for cars, tactical positioning, level of detail, infinite axis utility systems, hierarchical state machines, bots for testing, reactive behaviour trees, and more. Beginners to the area of game AI, along with professional developers, will find a wealth of knowledge that will not only help in the development of your own games but will also spark ideas for new approaches. This volume includes chapters written by Andy Brown, Dr Allan Bruce, Richard Bull, Laurent Couvidou, Steven Dalton, Michele Ermacora, Jonas Gillberg, Dale Green, Johan Holthausen, Dr Aitor Santamaría Ibirika, Dr Nic Melder, Sarat Rallabandi, Bruno Rebaque, John Reynolds, Paul Roberts, David Rogers, Andrea Schiel, Huw Talliss, Dr Tommy Thompson, and David Wooldridge. .




Papilio


Book Description




How to Use Your Enemies


Book Description

'Better mad with the crowd than sane all alone' In these witty, Machiavellian aphorisms, unlikely Spanish priest Baltasar Gracián shows us how to exploit friends and enemies alike to thrive in a world of deception and illusion. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658). Gracián's work is available in Penguin Classics in The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence.