Kai Strand's 3-Book Box Set (Super Villain Academy)


Book Description

King of Bad Jeff Mean would rather set fires than follow rules or observe curfew. He wears his bad boy image like a favorite old hoodie; that is until he's recruited by Super Villain Academy - where you learn to be good at being bad. In a school where one kid can evaporate all the water from your body and the girl you hang around with can perform psychic sex in your head, bad takes on a whole new meaning. Jeff wonders if he's bad enough for SVA. He may never find out. Classmates vilify him when he develops good manners. Then he's kidnapped by those closest to him and left to wonder who is good and who is bad. His rescue is the climactic episode that balances good and evil in the super world. The catalyst - the girl he's crushing on. A girlfriend and balancing the supers is good, right? Or is it...bad? Polar Opposites The supers are balanced. Academies have altered their curriculum to teach both sides of the super power spectrum. All's well in the super world. Right? When Mystic kidnaps Oceanus, Jeff learns it isn't all right. Turning to the newly balanced supers for assistance, he panics to find they've done nothing to rescue Oceanus. When no ransom request follows, he worries Mystic's plan never included returning his girlfriend. Frustrated, he's forced to work with the only super willing to help. Oceanus' ex-villain, ex-boyfriend, Set. Mystic isn't the only one hiding something. Nothing about Jeff is balanced. Temper flares result in scorched clothing or flying furniture, and his charm has become an indiscriminating people-magnet. Jeff is convinced, or maybe just hopeful, that his lack of control is directly related to Oceanus being gone. But will he and Set find her before Jeff loses control completely and will they find her alive? Super Bad The world is in chaos. Violence and thievery reign. And with the supers still balanced, it's only getting worse. Without good versus evil, the supers care less and less. In order to restore purpose, the world needs its super heroes and its super villains, but the one who balanced them in the first place is missing. Sandra's concern over finding her brother Jeff, isn't her only problem. Her pathetic excuse for super powers has left her needing a new ankle. And though she's still very much committed to her boyfriend, Source, she's growing unreasonably attracted to Set, the boy who double-crossed Jeff by stealing his girlfriend. When Sandra is taken and held as bait by some kids who want to unbalance the super world, it becomes the inciting event that changes things for supers everywhere and forces them to answer the question, "Hero or villain?"




King of Bad


Book Description

Jeff Mean would rather set fires than follow rules or observe curfew. He wears his bad boy image like a favorite old hoodie; that is until he's recruited by Super Villain Academy - where you learn to be good at being bad. In a school where one kid can evaporate all the water from your body and the girl you hang around with can perform psychic sex in your head, bad takes on a whole new meaning. Jeff wonders if he's bad enough for SVA. He may never find out. Classmates vilify him when he develops good manners. Then he's kidnapped by those closest to him and left to wonder who is good and who is bad. His rescue is the climactic episode that balances good and evil in the super world. The catalyst - the girl he's crushing on. A girlfriend and balancing the supers is good, right? Or is it...bad?




Folk Devils and Moral Panics


Book Description

'Richly documented and convincingly presented' -- New Society Mods and Rockers, skinheads, video nasties, designer drugs, bogus asylum seeks and hoodies. Every era has its own moral panics. It was Stanley Cohen's classic account, first published in the early 1970s and regularly revised, that brought the term 'moral panic' into widespread discussion. It is an outstanding investigation of the way in which the media and often those in a position of political power define a condition, or group, as a threat to societal values and interests. Fanned by screaming media headlines, Cohen brilliantly demonstrates how this leads to such groups being marginalised and vilified in the popular imagination, inhibiting rational debate about solutions to the social problems such groups represent. Furthermore, he argues that moral panics go even further by identifying the very fault lines of power in society. Full of sharp insight and analysis, Folk Devils and Moral Panics is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand this powerful and enduring phenomenon. Professor Stanley Cohen is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. He received the Sellin-Glueck Award of the American Society of Criminology (1985) and is on the Board of the International Council on Human Rights. He is a member of the British Academy.




Super Bad


Book Description

The world is in chaos. Violence and thievery reign. And with the supers still balanced, it's only getting worse. Without good versus evil, the supers care less and less. In order to restore purpose, the world needs its super heroes and its super villains, but the one who balanced them in the first place is missing. Sandra's concern over finding her brother Jeff, isn't her only problem. Her pathetic excuse for super powers has left her needing a new ankle. And though she's still very much committed to her boyfriend, Source, she's growing unreasonably attracted to Set, the boy who double-crossed Jeff by stealing his girlfriend. When Sandra is taken and held as bait by some kids who want to unbalance the super world, it becomes the inciting event that changes things for supers everywhere and forces them to answer the question, "Hero or villain?"




Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy


Book Description

This classic work of comparative history explores why some countries have developed as democracies and others as fascist or communist dictatorships Originally published in 1966, this classic text is a comparative survey of some of what Barrington Moore considers the major and most indicative world economies as they evolved out of pre-modern political systems into industrialism. But Moore is not ultimately concerned with explaining economic development so much as exploring why modes of development produced different political forms that managed the transition to industrialism and modernization. Why did one society modernize into a "relatively free," democratic society (by which Moore means England)? Why did others metamorphose into fascist or communist states? His core thesis is that in each country, the relationship between the landlord class and the peasants was a primary influence on the ultimate form of government the society arrived at upon arrival in its modern age. “Throughout the book, there is the constant play of a mind that is scholarly, original, and imbued with the rarest gift of all, a deep sense of human reality . . . This book will influence a whole generation of young American historians and lead them to problems of the greatest significance.” —The New York Review of Books




Tom Swift and His Flying Lab


Book Description

Tom Swift and his father travel to a South American country in their flying space lab to look for uranium and keep it from falling into the hands of a group of dangerous rebels.




Eleanor & Park


Book Description

#1 New York Times Best Seller! "Eleanor & Park reminded me not just what it's like to be young and in love with a girl, but also what it's like to be young and in love with a book."-John Green, The New York Times Book Review Bono met his wife in high school, Park says. So did Jerry Lee Lewis, Eleanor answers. I'm not kidding, he says. You should be, she says, we're 16. What about Romeo and Juliet? Shallow, confused, then dead. I love you, Park says. Wherefore art thou, Eleanor answers. I'm not kidding, he says. You should be. Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits-smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you'll remember your own first love-and just how hard it pulled you under. A New York Times Best Seller! A 2014 Michael L. Printz Honor Book for Excellence in Young Adult Literature Eleanor & Park is the winner of the 2013 Boston Globe Horn Book Award for Best Fiction Book. A Publishers Weekly Best Children's Book of 2013 A New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of 2013 A Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Book of 2013 An NPR Best Book of 2013




The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 4, 1945 to the Present


Book Description

The fourth volume of The Cambridge History of America and the World examines the heights of American global power in the mid-twentieth century and how challenges from at home and abroad altered the United States and its role in the world. The second half of the twentieth century marked the pinnacle of American global power in economic, political, and cultural terms, but even as it reached such heights, the United States quickly faced new challenges to its power, originating both domestically and internationally. Highlighting cutting-edge ideas from scholars from all over the world, this volume anatomizes American power as well as the counters and alternatives to 'the American empire.' Topics include US economic and military power, American culture overseas, human rights and humanitarianism, third-world internationalism, immigration, communications technology, and the Anthropocene.




New Mutants


Book Description

Collects New Mutants (1983) #18-20, X-Force (1991) #99 material from X-Force (2008) #7-10. The visionary talents of writer Chris Claremont and legendary illustrator Bill Sienkiewicz bring the Demon Bear that has haunted Danielle Moonstar’s dreams to horrifying life! It took her parents, and now it has returned for Dani — and only the combined efforts of her fellow New Mutants can stop it from finishing the job! Sink your teeth into a true classic! Then, Dani’s nightmare returns years later as San Francisco — and her new team X-Force, come under attack from a similarly unholy ursine!




Comparing the Literatures


Book Description

Paperback reprint. Originally published: 2020.