A group of resourceful kids start solution-seekers.com, a website where cybervisitors can get answers to questions that trouble them. But when one questioner asks the true meaning of Christmas, the kids seek to unravel the mystery by journeying back through the prophecies of the Old Testament. What they find is a series of S words that reveal a spectacular story! With creative characters, humorous dialogue and great music, The S Files is a children's Christmas musical your kids will love performing.

In The Twilight of Common Dreams, Todd Gitlin places the debates of the moment in a sweeping historical context and - sparing no sides - he argues that these highly charged conflicts are a sideshow, obscuring a seismic transformation in American political life. The Left, which once stood for universal values, has come to be identified with the special needs of distinct "cultures" and select "identities." The Right, long associated with privileged interests, now claims to defend the needs of all. The consequences are clear: since the late 1960s, while the Right has been busy taking the White House, the Left has been marching on the English department. With dazzling range and acuteness, Gitlin's analysis moves through American history and modern thought, from academic squabbles to the crisis in the Democratic party, from embattled school boards to the right-wing exploitation of those scarlet letters, "PC." In the end, he maintains, the culture wars are evasions of America's deepest trauma - inequality - and he eloquently contends that America is lost unless its obsession with cultural differences can be transcended in the name of the common good.

A pioneer of the New Queer Cinema, Todd Haynes (b. 1961) is a leading American independent filmmaker. Whether working with talking dolls in a homemade short (Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story) or with Oscar-winning performers in an HBO miniseries (Mildred Pierce), Haynes has garnered numerous awards and nominations and an expanding fan base for his provocative and engaging work. In all his films, Haynes works to portray the struggles of characters in conflict with the norms of society. Many of his movies focus on female characters, drawing inspiration from genres such as the woman's film and the disease movie (Far from Heaven and Safe); others explore male characters who transgress sexual and other social conventions (Poison and Velvet Goldmine). The writer-director has drawn on figures such as Karen Carpenter, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Bob Dylan in his meditations on American and British music, celebrity, and the meaning of identity. His 2007 movie I'm Not There won a number of awards and was notable for Haynes's decision to cast six different actors (one of whom was a woman) to portray Dylan. Gathering interviews from 1989 through 2012, this collection presents a range of themes, films, and moments in the burgeoning career of Todd Haynes. JULIA LEYDA, Tokyo, Japan, is associate professor of English at Sophia University. She has published in Television and New Media, Bright Lights Film Journal, La Furia Umana, Contemporary Women's Writing, Cinema Journal, and other journals.

'THE BOOK EVERY VOTER MUST READ' Mail on Sunday 'Meticulous and highly readable ... Funny and devastating' Daily Telegraph 'The most compelling in-depth study so far' Guardian A gripping expose of the man, his politics and what Corbyn in Downing Street could mean for Britain

Robert Maxwell was driven by an obsession to be remembered by posterity, to create and re-create his own life in order to become part of the Establishment. Tom Bower's compelling portrait, the subject of numerous libel suits brought by Maxwell in Britain before his death, is now published for the first time--in a thoroughly updated edition--in the United States. It provides a fascinating look at the man who was relentless in his attempts to obtain media power and respectability, attempts that would eventually destroy him. Born into a life of poverty, an outsider forever trying to get in, Robert Maxwell was plagued by a deep sense of alienation. His career as publisher, printer, politician, financier, industrialist, and tycoon extraordinary was charged with both magnificent coups and controversial setbacks. He built his fortune on a mixture of engineered leaks and secrecy at the expense of long-term stability. Accused of everything from creative bookkeeping to outright fraud, Maxwell withstood each debacle until the end, surviving troubles that would have felled a less determined personality. Bower describes the many suspect strategies of Maxwell's business dealings while he was alive and the disintegration of his empire after his death, focusing along the way on Maxwell's often nebulous business dealings and his immense skills at bullying and deception. Beginning with Maxwell's early years, Bower describes in depth the period after World War II during which Maxwell made a fortune out of barter deals and the export of scientific journals from Germany, which became the basis for his Pergamon Press flagship; the Pergamon-Leasco affair in the late 1960s (involving two millionaires, Maxwelland Saul Steinberg), an ill-fated takeover deal that fell apart with Maxwell declared unfit to hold office in a public company; and his revival of the loss-making British Printing Corporation. The author explains Maxwell's numerous acquisitions and his competitive obsession with Rupert Murdoch. We learn of the mysteries surrounding Maxwell's private banking in Liechtenstein, his strange links with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the notorious "Mirrorgate" affair and Maxwell's close relationship with Israel. Going beyond recent media coverage, the author provides up-to-the-minute facts on missing corporate assets and pension funds as well as the nefarious share-support schemes. In this powerful biography, Tom Bower comes as close as anyone ever will to understanding Robert Maxwell and his demons.

This is an account of how the KGB first compromised, then controlled, the MI6 intelligence network in the Baltic States. Between 1944 and 1955 MI6 thought it had established a major spy network inside the Soviet Union, but the book offers evidence of how the KGB had in fact organized a massive sting operation; of how, for more than a decade, British agents were dropped by boat on the Soviet coast, and many of them lost their lives; and of how, once the betrayal was revealed, MI6 officers abandoned their agents in Russia, hoping that the bungle could be explained away by Kim Philby's treachery. The book's evidence is based on newly-declassified information from Washington, Bonn and Stockholm, access to KGB files and officers, and more than 200 interviews. The author's other books include "Maxwell: the Outsider".

Britain's leading investigative writer and biographer, Tom Bower turns the full beam of his formidable powers on one of the most controversial figures of present day: Mohamed Al Fayed. Owner of Harrods, bereaved father of Dodi and instigator of the 'cash for questions' sensation, this book was originally published in 1998 to wide acclaim. But with the recent heinous accusations of sexual misconduct coming to light, this new revised and updated edition will offer a new focus of Tom's trademark acerbic insight on this controversial figure.

Tom Mangold is known to millions as the face of BBC television's flagship current affairs programme Panorama. His memoir, Splashed, is packed with revelations about some of the stories which made the headlines during his long journey from print to Panorama. His intent was to uncover some of the more raucous and downright absurd events that marked his life in journalism alongside some of the more serious work which made his name. He describes his national service in Germany through his years in the '50s on Fleet Street's most ruthless newspapers, a period where cheque book journalism ruled and shamelessness could be viewed as a major skill for any would-be journalist. Mangold then moves on to his illustrious career at the BBC, where he developed a reputation for his war reporting and his involvement in a series of major investigations. He then moved to the Panorama team where he worked for twenty-six years.Mangold takes us backstage at Panorama and reveals a world not quite as serious as the stories it broadcast each and every week.From world exclusives with fallen women to chaotic interviews with Presidents, Splashed unveils significant revelations about some of the stories which made the headlines during his long journey from print to Panorama.

In his many works of history, Tom Segev has challenged the entrenched understanding of crucial moments in Israel's past. Now, in a short, sharp, polemical book, Segev has turned his sights from Israeli history to confront some revered assumptions about the country today.Drawing on personal experience as well as all kinds of artifacts from Israeli popular culture -- shopping malls, fast food, public art, television, religious kitsch -- Segev offers a controversial point of view: the sweeping Americanization of the country, rued by most, has had an extraordinarily beneficial influence, bringing not only McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts but the virtues of pragmatism, tolerance, and individualism. And, in the fierce battle over the future of Zionism, Segev welcomes the diffusion of national identity and ideology that has taken place in the last decade as a harbinger of a new spirit of compromise and openness.At a time of crisis, as Israelis and Palestinians retreat to their most embattled positions, Segev's colorful, provocative book is sure to spark heated debate.

A bus driver recognises the voice of the speaking clock as that of his long lost wife.

Arriving at the library to continue work on his dictionary, Johnson is horrified to discover that the place appears to have been ransacked. Paper is everywhere, so much paper in fact that even the body of his wife, Brenda is hidden from view. Together with his collaborator, Bunyans, they conclude that the vandalism is in fact the work of Brenda, scorned for her lack of talent as a lexicographer. The true explanation, however, lies outside the window and beyond, when the significance of the white flannelled cricketer becomes clear.

Essays reflecting the dialogue conducted by a group of Jews and Christians at the Sternberg Center for Judaism, from 1988-1992

The dramatic rescue of Tony Bullimore from the Southern Ocean in January 1997 was an exhilarating climax to an extraordinary survival story. Bullimore's follow-up to the book of his rescue, "Saved", is a relaxed, warm anthology of yachting yarns.