The Grass Arena

The Grass Arena
Author: John Healy
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2008-07-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0141889497

John Healy's The Grass Arena describes with unflinching honesty his experiences of addiction, his escape through learning to play chess in prison, and his ongoing search for peace of mind. In his searing autobiography Healy describes his fifteen years living rough in London without state aid, when begging carried an automatic three-year prison sentence and vagrant alcoholics prowled the parks and streets in search of drink or prey. When not united in their common aim of acquiring alcohol, winos sometimes murdered one another over prostitutes or a bottle, or the begging of money. Few modern writers have managed to match Healy's power to refine from the brutal destructive condition of the chronic alcoholic a story so compelling it is beyond comparison. 'Sober and precise, grotesque, violent, sad, charming and hilarious all at once' Literary Review 'Beside it, a book like Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London seems a rather inaccurate tourist guide' Colin MacCabe

Arena

Arena
Author: Holly Jennings
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2016-04-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0698406931

A fast-paced and gripping near-future science fiction debut about the gritty world of competitive gaming... Every week, Kali Ling fights to the death on national TV. She’s died hundreds of times. And it never gets easier... The RAGE tournaments—the Virtual Gaming League’s elite competition where the best gamers in the world compete in a no-holds-barred fight to the digital death. Every bloody kill is broadcast to millions. Every player is a modern gladiator—leading a life of ultimate fame, responsible only for entertaining the masses. And though their weapons and armor are digital, the pain is real. Chosen to be the first female captain in RAGE tournament history, Kali Ling is at the top of the world—until one of her teammates overdoses. Now, she must confront the truth about the tournament. Because it is much more than a game—and even in the real world, not everything is as it seems. The VGL hides dark secrets. And the only way to change the rules is to fight from the inside...

Coffeehouse Chess Tactics

Coffeehouse Chess Tactics
Author: John Healy
Publisher: New In Chess
Total Pages: 137
Release: 2014-11-07
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 9056915355

In 1988, his autobiography ?The Grass Arena? catapulted John Healy to worldwide literary fame. That harrowing tale described how Healy by discovering chess, escaped alcoholism, violence and crime. Many fans have wondered how Healy did as a chess player. In this book Healy uses over a hundred of his own games to show how unusual tactics or defensive motifs can turn the tide in any position. Along with the games the author describes in eloquent but brutal language the beautiful, sometimes terrible world of chess. The prologue ?Blood Sport? is a fine piece of vintage Healy non-fiction. A must-buy book for chess lovers, tactics buffs and Healy fans.

You Can't Win

You Can't Win
Author: Jack Black
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2013-07-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1627932755

An amazing autobiography of a criminal from a forgotten time in american history. Jack Black was a burgler, safe-cracker, highwayman and petty thief.

The Arena Man

The Arena Man
Author: Steve Englehart
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2013-02-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0765325004

Discovering a Necklace plot to destabilize the U.S. government by using a demonic entity's powers to reawaken terrorist fears, Max August tests his magickal resources and the abilities of companions Pam and Vee to save tens of thousands of spectators in a domed stadium.

Chess Behind Bars

Chess Behind Bars
Author: Carl Portman
Publisher: Quality Chess
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2017
Genre: Chess
ISBN: 9781784830328

Chess Behind Bars offers a guide to chess in prisons that will instruct and entertain regardless of your situation. It covers almost every aspect of chess imaginable - from the rules to chess history, from puzzles to famous games, and even some tips for improvement. It is a smorgasbord of chess, seen from an unusual angle.

Adaptive Space: How GM and Other Companies are Positively Disrupting Themselves and Transforming into Agile Organizations

Adaptive Space: How GM and Other Companies are Positively Disrupting Themselves and Transforming into Agile Organizations
Author: Michael J. Arena
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2018-06-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1260118037

Lack of Agility is the kiss of death. Position your company to succeed in world of change.To edge out the competition in today’s disruptive environment, you need to ensure that your company is agile—that it can respond to change instantly and effectively. Because fast and furious change is the only thing you can count on in business today.Network expert Michael Arena helped enable GM’s legendary turnaround. In these pages, he explains how you can transform your own company through the concept of adaptive space. Based on hundreds of interviews and the author’s own groundbreaking study of dozens of organizations spanning a variety of industries, Adaptive Space shows how to position your company for today—and for the future—by enabling creativity, innovation, and novel ideas to flow freely among teams, across departments, and throughout the company. Using GM as the main case study—along with the stories of other highly adaptive organizations, like Apple, Amazon, Disney, and Gore—Arena provides a model you can follow to reinvent your company. It’s about inspiring employees to explore new ideas, empowering the most creative people and teams to spread their ideas across the organization, and operationalizing the entrepreneurial spirit so adaptability is set in stone. Hesitation is a killer in today’s business landscape. With Adaptive Space, you have everything you need to confront disruption with smart, confident actions and seize the valuable opportunities that come with change.

The Arena

The Arena
Author: Rafi Kohan
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018-09-04
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1631495135

Finalist • PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing “An inventive, fast-paced look at what have become our modern shrines in a sports-obsessed society.” —Tom Verducci In this “addictive” (Publishers Weekly) romp, intrepid sportswriter Rafi Kohan finagles access to our most beloved fields to find out just what makes them tick: from old-timer Wrigley, creakily adjusting to the twenty-first century, to the oversized monstrosity of Jerry’s World in Dallas. Investigating harrowing logistics and deeply ingrained traditions, Kohan employs his infectious “wit and style” (Christian Science Monitor) to expose the realities of building and maintaining these commercial cathedrals of sports worship. “Highly compelling” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), The Arena is a must-read for superfans, shameless bandwagoners, athletes, groundskeepers, culture junkies, and anyone who’s ever headed off eagerly to the ballpark to catch a game.

The Dark Arena

The Dark Arena
Author: Mario Puzo
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2009-02-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 030748355X

Mario Puzo won international acclaim for The Godfather and his other Mafia novels. But before creating those masterpieces, Puzo wrote his first acclaimed novel The Dark Arena–an astounding story of a war-scarred young American in a battle against corruption and betrayal. . . . After coming home at the end of World War II, Walter Mosca finds himself too restless for his civilian role in America. So he returns to Germany to find the woman he had once loved–and to start some kind of life in a vanquished country. But ahead of Walter stretches a dark landscape of defeat and intrigue, as he succumbs to the corrupting influences of a malevolent time. Now he enters a different kind of war, one in which he must make a fateful decision–between love and ambition, passion and greed, life and death. . . .

The Metal Mountain

The Metal Mountain
Author: John Healy
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre:
ISBN: 9781901538892

Fiction. London is a city of ruins and rubble: in fighting against a police state Britain has become almost a police state itself. Rationing is still in place, the black market is thriving, medical shortages have resulted in antibiotics being watered down. Though Britain was possessed of great decency there was a limit to what it might be expected to bear after suffering six years of war. The barbarities of war had changed peoples' attitudes; nobody thought of foreigners in terms of human beings. The Salvation Army were singing of salvation while the kids on the street were singing saucy songs about inn keepers' daughters and German officers that had crossed the line. New arrival seventeen-year old Bridget Kelly dreams of a world where everyone is equal. "There is no cause more dangerous" warns one council official as she sets about the task of trying to make her dream come true. She is courageous and determined and in terrible danger. Her young nephew Michael schemes and plots to win the metal mountain, a gothic edifice, a treacherous Hades, a fabulous kingdom of iron. Meanwhile, his young aunt has come under the scrutiny of the British secret police. Blackmail, betrayal and murder follow. A perverse grand tragedy with an edge of iron. "The skies darken. An urgent, brutal and ultimately tragic resolution is waiting in the railside scrapyard of THE METAL MOUNTAIN.This glittering alp of damage, an unsorted mound heaped from the discarded toys of capitalism, is as potent a symbol for our contemporary confusions as the dust heaps of Dickens. Nature is avenged and Healy has given us a brave sequel, as genuine fiction now, to The Grass Arena."--Iain Sinclair