A Matter of Matter

A Matter of Matter
Author: L. Ron Hubbard
Publisher: Galaxy Press LLC
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2012-05-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1592126588

When it comes to big dreams and schemes, young Chuck Lambert would give Walter Mitty a run for his money. In fact, Chuck’s biggest dream of all is really out of this world. Because he’s got his eyes on a prize in the sky. Chuck wants to buy a planet of his own. . . . Madman Murphy, the King of Planetary Realtors, is more than happy to oblige. He’s got a whole galaxy of planets for sale. All Chuck needs is money . . . and a lot of it. Eleven years later, saving every penny he can scrape up, Chuck’s dream comes true. He takes possession and takes off for Planet 19453X. . . . One problem: Madman Murphy has sold Chuck a world of trouble. Because on Planet 19453X the water is undrinkable, the air is unbreathable, and the laws of physics don’t apply. Has Chuck’s dream turned into a nightmare? Not quite. As he’s about to discover, sometimes, to fulfill your true desire, it’s simply a matter of digging a little deeper. . . . By the time A Matter of Matter appeared in 1949, L. Ron Hubbard’s stature as a writer was well established. As author and critic Robert Silverberg puts it: he had become a “master of the art of narrative.” Hubbard’s editors urged him to apply his gift for succinct characterization, original plot, deft pacing and imaginative action to the genre of science fiction and fantasy. The rest is Sci-Fi history. Also includes the science fiction adventures, The Conroy Diary, in which the man who opens up the universe to mankind also opens himself to charges of fraud and tax evasion; The Obsolete Weapon, the story of an American GI involved in the 1943 invasion of Italy who slips back in time and finds himself fighting a different kind of battle—as a gladiator in ancient Rome; and The Planet Makers, in which a great deal is at stake for the engineers who make planets habitable, but one of them has a surprising plan all his own. "… this is a real corker, pulp fiction at its most entertaining."—Booklist * An International Book Awards Finalist

A Matter of Matter (Stories from the Golden Age)

A Matter of Matter (Stories from the Golden Age)
Author: L. Ron Hubbard
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2011-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1459629426

Chuck Lambert is taken advantage of by an unsavory real estate swindler of a galactic economy that sells unwary customers like him a planet where they can't sit down, because there's something the matter with its matter. But even though swindled, Chuck may just end up getting the last laugh....

A Gentleman's Murder

A Gentleman's Murder
Author: Christopher Huang
Publisher: Inkshares
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2018-07-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1942645953

Featuring a half-Chinese detective protagonist, A GENTLEMAN'S MURDER is a must for those who love mysteries and reads like a Christie-esque whodunit with a modern eye toward the historical treatment of Chinese veterans and post-war racism.

What's the Matter with White People?

What's the Matter with White People?
Author: Joan Walsh
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2013-04-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1476733139

A CLEAR-EYED, COGENT CLARION CALL FOR ENDING THE DIVISIVE CLASS WARS THAT THREATEN THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS DREAM In What’s the Matter with White People? Walsh argues that the biggest divide in America today is based not on party or ideology but on two competing explanations for why middle-class stability has been shaken since the 1970s. One side sees an America that has spent the last forty years bankrupting the country by providing benefits for the underachieving, the immoral, and the undeserving—no matter the cost to the majority of Americans. The other side sees an America that has spent the last forty years catering to the wealthy while allowing only a nominal measure of progress for the downtrodden. Using her extended Irish-Catholic working-class family as a case in point and explaining her own political coming-of-age, Walsh shows how liberals unwittingly collaborated in the “us versus them” narrative and how the GOP’s renewed culture war now scapegoats segments of its own white demographic. Part memoir, part political history, What’s the Matter with White People? is essential reading to combat political and cultural polarization and to build a more just and prosperous multiracial America in the years to come. WITH A NEW AFTERWORD

The Golden Age

The Golden Age
Author: John C. Wright
Publisher: Tor Books
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2003-04-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429915609

The Golden Age is Grand Space Opera, a large-scale SF adventure novel in the tradition of A. E. Van vogt and Roger Zelazny, with perhaps a bit of Cordwainer Smith enriching the style. It is an astounding story of super science, a thrilling wonder story that recaptures the excitements of SF's golden age writers. The Golden Age takes place 10,000 years in the future in our solar system, an interplanetary utopian society filled with immortal humans. Within the frame of a traditional tale-the one rebel who is unhappy in utopia-Wright spins an elaborate plot web filled with suspense and passion. Phaethon, of Radamanthus House, is attending a glorious party at his family mansion to celebrate the thousand-year anniversary of the High Transcendence. There he meets first an old man who accuses him of being an impostor and then a being from Neptune who claims to be an old friend. The Neptunian tells him that essential parts of his memory were removed and stored by the very government that Phaethon believes to be wholly honorable. It shakes his faith. He is an exile from himself. And so Phaethon embarks upon a quest across the transformed solar system--Jupiter is now a second sun, Mars and Venus terraformed, humanity immortal--among humans, intelligent machines, and bizarre life forms that are partly both, to recover his memory, and to learn what crime he planned that warranted such preemptive punishment. His quest is to regain his true identity. The Golden Age is one of the major, ambitious SF novels of the year and the international launch of an important new writer in the genre. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Flicker

Flicker
Author: Theodore Roszak
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 609
Release: 2005
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 155652577X

From the golden age of art movies and underground cinema to X-rated porn, splatter films, and midnight movies, this breathtaking thriller is a tour de force of cinematic fact and fantasy, full of metaphysical mysteries that will haunt the dreams of every moviegoer. Jonathan Gates could not have anticipated that his student studies would lead him to uncover the secret history of the movies--a tale of intrigue, deception, and death that stretches back to the 14th century. But he succumbs to what will be a lifelong obsession with the mysterious Max Castle, a nearly forgotten genius of the silent screen who later became the greatest director of horror films, only to vanish in the 1940s, at the height of his talent. Now, 20 years later, as Jonathan seeks the truth behind Castle's disappearance, the innocent entertainments of his youth--the sexy sirens, the screwball comedies, the high romance--take on a sinister appearance. His tortured quest takes him from Hollywood's Poverty Row into the shadowy lore of ancient religious heresies. He encounters a cast of exotic characters, including Orson Welles and John Huston, who teach him that there's more to film than meets the eye, and journeys through the dark side of nostalgia, where the Three Stooges and Shirley Temple join company with an alien god whose purposes are anything but entertainment.

The Golden Age, Book 1

The Golden Age, Book 1
Author: Roxanne Moreil
Publisher: First Second
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2020-02-11
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1250777038

A medieval saga with political intrigue reminiscent of Game of Thrones, The Golden Age is an epic graphic novel duology from Roxanne Moreil and Cyril Pedrosa about utopia and revolution. In the kingdom of Lantrevers, suffering is a way of life—unless you’re a member of the ruling class. Princess Tilda plans to change all that. As the rightful heir of late King Ronan, Tilda wants to deliver her people from famine and strife. But on the eve of her coronation, her younger brother, backed by a cabal of power-hungry lords, usurps her throne and casts her into exile. Now Tilda is on the run. With the help of her last remaining allies, Tankred and Bertil, she travels in secret through the hinterland of her kingdom. Wherever she goes, the common folk whisper of a legendary bygone era when all men lived freely. There are those who want to return to this golden age—at any cost. In the midst of revolution, how can Tilda reclaim her throne?

The Golden Age

The Golden Age
Author: Gore Vidal
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2001-09-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0375724818

The Golden Age is Vidal's crowning achievement, a vibrant tapestry of American political and cultural life from 1939 to 1954, when the epochal events of World War II and the Cold War transformed America, once and for all, for good or ill, from a republic into an empire. The sharp-eyed and sympathetic witnesses to these events are Caroline Sanford, Hollywood actress turned Washington D.C., newspaper publisher, and Peter Sanford, her nephew and publisher of the independent intellectual journal The American Idea. They experience at first hand the masterful maneuvers of Franklin Roosevelt to bring a reluctant nation into the Second World War, and, later, the actions of Harry Truman that commit the nation to a decade-long twilight struggle against Communism—developments they regard with a decided skepticism even though it ends in an American global empire. The locus of these events is Washington D.C., yet the Hollywood film industry and the cultural centers of New York also play significant parts. In addition to presidents, the actual characters who appear so vividly in the pages of The Golden Age include Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, Wendell Willkie, William Randolph Hearst, Dean Acheson, Tennessee Williams, Joseph Alsop, Dawn Powell—and Gore Vidal himself. The Golden Age offers up U.S. history as only Gore Vidal can, with unrivaled penetration, wit, and high drama, allied to a classical view of human fate. It is a supreme entertainment that is not only sure to be a major bestseller but that will also change listeners' understanding of American history and power.

After the Golden Age

After the Golden Age
Author: Carrie Vaughn
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2012-01-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780765364609

High School Summer Reading List 2015.

Five Golden Rules

Five Golden Rules
Author: John Casti
Publisher:
Total Pages: 264
Release: 1996
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN:

In Five Golden Rules, John L. Casti serves as curator to a brilliant collection of 20th-century mathematical theories, leading us on a fascinating journey of discovery and insight. Probing the frontiers of modern mathematics, Casti examines the origins of some of the most important findings of this century. This is a tale of mystery and logic, elegance and reason; it is the story of five monumental mathematical breakthroughs and how they shape our lives. All those intrigued by the mathematical process, nonacademics and professionals alike, will find this an enlightening, eye-opening, and entertaining work. High school algebra or geometry - and enthusiasm - are the only prerequisites. From the theorem that provided the impetus for modern computers to the calculations that sent the first men to the Moon, these breakthroughs have transformed our lives. Casti illustrates each theorem with a dazzling array of real-world problems it has helped solve - how to calculate the shape of space, optimize investment returns, even chart the course of the development of organisms. Along the way, we meet the leading thinkers of the day: John von Neumann, L. E. J. Brouwer, Marston Morse, and Alan Turing, among others. And we come to understand the combination of circumstances that led each to such revolutionary discoveries as the Minimax Theorem, which spawned the exciting field of game theory, and the Simplex Method, which underpins the powerful tools of optimization theory.