Intense attention has been paid to Detroit as a site of urban crisis. This crisis, however, has not only yielded the massive devaluation of real estate that has so often been noted; it has also yielded an explosive production of seemingly valueless urban property that has facilitated the imagination and practice of alternative urbanisms. The first sustained study of Detroit’s alternative urba…
Two Twelfth-Century Texts on Chinese Painting presents two texts in translation that provide dual insight into the Painting Academy of Emperor Hui-tsung and the literati school of painting.The Shan-shui ch’un-ch’uan chi is a treatise for beginning landscape painters dated to the Hsüan-ho era. The treatise was written by Han Cho, a reputed member of the Academy, but the text was not specifi…
In May 2000 I was fired from my job as a reporter on a finance newsletter because of an obsession with a videogame. It was the best thing that ever happened to me." So begins this story of personal redemption through the unlikely medium of electronic games. Quake, World of Warcraft, Eve Online and other online games not only offered author Jim Rossignol an excellent escape from the tedium of…
Silent Hill: The Terror Engine, the second of the two inaugural studies in the Landmark Video Games series from series editors Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, is both a close analysis of the first three Silent Hill games and a general look at the whole series. Silent Hill, with its first title released in 1999, is one of the most influential of the horror video game series. Perron situates …
Play Redux excels in tying together intellectual traditions that are rooted in literary studies, cognitive science, play studies and several other fields, thereby creating a logical whole. Through this, the book makes service to several academic communities by pointing out their points of contact. This is clearly an important contribution to a growing academic field, and will no doubt become im…
Myst and Riven is well-written, interesting, on-topic, insightful, and a real pleasure to read.” —Edward Castronova, Indiana UniversityVideo games have become a major cultural force, and within their history, Myst and its sequel Riven stand out as influential examples. Myst and Riven: The World of the D’ni is a close analysis of two of the most popular and significant video games in the h…
Upon its premiere in 1992, Midway's Mortal Kombat spawned an enormously influential series of fighting games, notorious for their violent "fatality" moves performed by photorealistic characters. Targeted by lawmakers and moral reformers, the series directly inspired the creation of an industrywide rating system for video games and became a referendum on the wide popularity of 16-bit home consol…
Three circuits of ditches comprise the Windmill Hill enclosure, which was re-examined in 1988 as part of wider research into the area's Neolithic sequence and environment, and the context in which monuments were built, used and abandoned. Detailed results are set out by category and theme, and abundant environmental evidence is presented covering soils, land snails, plant remains, charcoals, po…
The writings of Mao Zedong have been circulated throughout the world more widely, perhaps, than those of any other single person this century. The “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art” has occupied a prominent position among his many works and has been the subject of intense scrutiny both within and outside China. This text has undoubted importance to modern Chinese liter…
The twentieth century has spawned a great interest in Indonesian music, and now books, articles, and manuscripts can be found that expound exclusively about karawitan (the combined vocal and instrumental music of the gamelan). Scholar Judith Becker has culled several key sources on karawitan into three volumes and has translated them for the benefit of the Western student of the gamelan traditi…