Pieces Of The Game

Colonel Charles W. Scott was one of the hostages captured and imprisoned in the American embassy in Tehran, Iran in November 1979. In this first-person account, he takes the reader through the entire crisis, including the preamble, the takeover, the internment, and the build-up to the release. One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is his description of his relationship with his captors. The Colonel's resolve both frustrates and impresses those imprisoning him. He spends his time analyzing and evaluating the Iranians, eventually forging something like a friendship with Akbar, an educated and reasonable Iranian who slowly grows frustrated with the hostage situation and engages with the Colonel in both personal and political discussions. A very readable supplement to the studies of the high politics surrounding the hostage crisis.

An exploration of the relationship between games and art that examines the ways that both gamemakers and artists create game-based artworks. Games and art have intersected at least since the early twentieth century, as can be seen in the Surrealists' use of Exquisite Corpse and other games, Duchamp's obsession with Chess, and Fluxus event scores and boxes—to name just a few examples. Over the past fifteen years, the synthesis of art and games has clouded for both artists and gamemakers. Contemporary art has drawn on the tool set of videogames, but has not considered them a cultural form with its own conceptual, formal, and experiential affordances. For their part, game developers and players focus on the innate properties of games and the experiences they provide, giving little attention to what it means to create and evaluate fine art. In Works of Game, John Sharp bridges this gap, offering a formal aesthetics of games that encompasses the commonalities and the differences between games and art. Sharp describes three communities of practice and offers case studies for each. “Game Art,” which includes such artists as Julian Oliver, Cory Arcangel, and JODI (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans) treats videogames as a form of popular culture from which can be borrowed subject matter, tools, and processes. “Artgames,” created by gamemakers including Jason Rohrer, Brenda Romero, and Jonathan Blow, explore territory usually occupied by poetry, painting, literature, or film. Finally, “Artists' Games”—with artists including Blast Theory, Mary Flanagan, and the collaboration of Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman—represents a more synthetic conception of games as an artistic medium. The work of these gamemakers, Sharp suggests, shows that it is possible to create game-based artworks that satisfy the aesthetic and critical values of both the contemporary art and game communities.

Yugoslav grandmaster Svetozar Gligoric, once rated the strongest European chess player outside of Russia, has pursued a long and distinguished chess career. This highly acclaimed collection of over 100 of his best games, including classic wins against world champions and other top players such as Euwe, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, Fischer, Keres, Korchnoi, Larsen, Najdorf, and Reshevsky, now appears for the first time in English.The title of the book 'I Play Against Pieces' reflects Gligoric's thoroughly objective approach to chess, which has always been characterised by great clarity and logic, resulting in a wealth of model games. The fact that these games, replete with instructive tactics and strategies, are classified under openings will particularly benefit readers interested in the study of Queen's Pawn Openings as White and the King's Indian Defence and Ruy Lopez as Black of which Gligoric was a true connoisseur.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK Tired, stressed, and in need of more help from your partner? Imagine running your household (and life!) in a new way... It started with the Sh*t I Do List. Tired of being the “shefault” parent responsible for all aspects of her busy household, Eve Rodsky counted up all the unpaid, invisible work she was doing for her family—and then sent that list to her husband, asking for things to change. His response was...underwhelming. Rodsky realized that simply identifying the issue of unequal labor on the home front wasn't enough: She needed a solution to this universal problem. Her sanity, identity, career, and marriage depended on it. The result is Fair Play: a time- and anxiety-saving system that offers couples a completely new way to divvy up domestic responsibilities. Rodsky interviewed more than five hundred men and women from all walks of life to figure out what the invisible work in a family actually entails and how to get it all done efficiently. With 4 easy-to-follow rules, 100 household tasks, and a series of conversation starters for you and your partner, Fair Play helps you prioritize what's important to your family and who should take the lead on every chore, from laundry to homework to dinner. “Winning” this game means rebalancing your home life, reigniting your relationship with your significant other, and reclaiming your Unicorn Space—the time to develop the skills and passions that keep you interested and interesting. Stop drowning in to-dos and lose some of that invisible workload that's pulling you down. Are you ready to try Fair Play? Let's deal you in.

A group biography of seven enduring and beloved games, and the story of why—and how—we play them. Checkers, backgammon, chess, and Go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the delightful arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasurable. Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across forty years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai, the Master, the last Go champion of imperial Japan, defending tradition against “modern rationalism”; and an IBM engineer who created a backgammon program so capable at self-learning that NASA used it on the space shuttle. He delves into the history and lore of each game: backgammon boards in ancient Egypt, the Indian origins of chess, how certain shells from a particular beach in Japan make the finest white Go stones. Beyond the cultural and personal stories, Roeder explores why games, seemingly trivial pastimes, speak so deeply to the human soul. He introduces an early philosopher of games, the aptly named Bernard Suits, and visits an Oxford cosmologist who has perfected a computer that can effectively play bridge, a game as complicated as human language itself. Throughout, Roeder tells the compelling story of how humans, pursuing scientific glory and competitive advantage, have invented AI programs better than any human player, and what that means for the games—and for us. Funny, fascinating, and profound, Seven Games is a story of obsession, psychology, history, and how play makes us human.

"This novel kicks total ass. Pieces of the Game is like a deep-water, Clive Cussler treasure hunt crossed with The Great Escape, with enough intrigue and action to rival both." Paperback Warrior Shortly before the U.S. and Filipino forces surrender to the Japanese on May 6, 1942, they dump all of Manilla's silver pesos, valued at $8 million, into the deep water south of Caballo Bay. The Japanese want the fortune, so they force seven American POWs to dive into the cold depths to help recover it...or face torture and death. One man survives to tell the tale...but that harrowing adventure is only the prelude to the rest of his story, set long after the war is over, when he returns to Manilla to face an old enemy. "Lee Gifford's strength lies in his ability to tell an epic story. Pieces of the Game was like this grand cinematic experience. The opening events that eventually spills into a high-adventure military tale felt as if they were backed by a rich symphonic score." The Paperback Warrior ABOUT THE AUTHOR Maurice Lee Gifford served in the Army and later worked for Oscar Mayer in Madison, WS, Rohr Aircraft in Riverside, CA, and director of purchasing for the Hawaiian Sugar Co. in Hilo, Hawaii. He died in Prescott, AZ in 2006. This was his only published novel.

Levels of the Game is John McPhee's astonishing account of a tennis match played by Arthur Ashe against Clark Graebner at Forest Hills in 1968. It begins with the ball rising into the air for the initial serve and ends with the final point. McPhee provides a brilliant, stroke-by-stroke description while examining the backgrounds and attitudes which have molded the players' games. "This may be the high point of American sports journalism"- Robert Lipsyte, The New York Times