Welcome to our book review site www.go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The Game Changers
Why is playing games a universal human instinct? And how can those games make your life happier, healthier and more fulfilled? In this fascinating look at games through the ages, Tim Clare explores how, through play, we become fully ourselves. From Roman anti-cheating devices to organised crime card syndicates, from Pokémon’s world domination to the combative domestic bonding ritual of Monopoly, The Game Changers explains why games are more popular now than ever, and how playing them helps us learn to be better losers, make smarter decisions and become more human.
A Cultural History of Tarot
The enigmatic and richly illustrative tarot deck reveals a host of strange and iconic mages, such as The Tower, The Wheel of Fortune, The Hanged Man and The Fool: over which loom the terrifying figures of Death and The Devil. The 21 numbered playing cards of tarot have always exerted strong fascination, way beyond their original purpose, and the multiple resonances of the deck are ubiquitous. From T S Eliot and his 'wicked pack of cards' in "The Waste Land" to the psychic divination of Solitaire in Ian Fleming's "Live and Let Die"; and from the satanic novels of Dennis Wheatley to the deck's adoption by New Age practitioners, the cards have in modern times become inseparably connected to the...
Games and Gaming in Early Modern Drama
This book is a close taxonomic study of the pivotal role of games in early modern drama. The presence of the game motif has often been noticed, but this study, the most comprehensive of its kind, shows how games operate in more complex ways than simple metaphor and can be syntheses of emblem and dramatic device. Drawing on seventeenth-century treatises, including Francis Willughby’s Book of Games, which only became available in print in 2003, and divided into chapters on Dice, Cards, Tables (Backgammon), and Chess, the book brings back into focus the symbolism and divinatory origins of games. The work of more than ten dramatists is analysed, from the Shakespeare and Middleton canon to rare...
Gambling Games of the Old West
Most of the gamblers of the Old West got their start and reputations by working the circuit of the Mississippi River boats, the railhead cattle towns of Kansas, or the boomtowns that popped up around gold or silver mining. The gunfighter Ben Thompson got his start by running the Bull's Head Saloon with partner Phil Coe in Ellsworth, Kansas. Ben's friend, Bat Masterson, also started his career in the cattle towns of Texas and Kansas. In general, these legendary gamblers were known as "legitimate" or that they played a fair game without cheating. Truth be told, all of them knew the methods employed by the "sharps" to clean the pockets of the other players at the table. They had to know these "...
Monsters and Monstrosity from the Fin de Siecle to the Millennium
Zombies, vampires and ghosts feature prominently in nearly all forms of entertainment in the 21st century, including popular fiction, film, comics, television and computer games. But these creatures have been vital to the entertainment industry since the best-seller books of a century and half ago. Monsters don't just invade popular culture, they help sell popular culture. This collection of new essays covers 150 years of enduringly popular Gothic monsters who have shocked and horrified audiences in literature, film and comics. The contributors unearth forgotten monsters and reconsider familiar ones, examining the audience taboos and fears they embody.
Playing with Maps: Cartographic Games in Western Culture
This is the first serious book wholly devoted to games based on maps. The authors are experts in their respective fields: board games, playing cards and dissected puzzles. They bring an informed historical approach to the development and diffusion of these games up to about the beginning of the twentieth century, including games from Western Europe and America in all their intriguing variety. This book is an essential reference source for those wishing to research this neglected area, while those new to the field will be pleasantly surprised at the interesting and unusual maps that these games exploit.
