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They’re impossible—yet they exist! These optical illusions could never take shape in real life, but on the page they fool perception and entice the eye. “The book is written for a general audience and does an excellent job of classifying and describing the impossible objects...An excellent introduction to impossible objects.”—Mathematics Teacher.

A selection from the original slang dictionary The Vulgar Tongue, including such gems as "Bitch Bobby" (a country wench) and lobcock (a large relaxed penis or a dull inanimate fellow) If someone called you a beetle-browed bastardly gullion and told you to shut your bone box, would you be offended? If you lived in 1785, you most certainly would! Harking back to a time when insults and rude words were considerably more colorful, this collection is one that no true aspiring vulgarite or rude language lover should be without.

It's endless fun! Opening this beautiful 2-color, lie-flat hardcover spiral book is like unlocking a treasure chest filled with puzzles and creative activities. Begin by taking the seven high-quality wooden tans (NOT cheap and sharp plastic) out of the resealable case bound sturdily inside. Now, you're ready to play--and to solve up to 500 mysterious tangram puzzles, using the seven simple shapes that can be put together again and again in countless figures and forms. Sometimes they're easily solved; other times, the puzzles are baffling. Decide just how hard you want a game to be! Set the clock and challenge your friends to a race, or do these brain stumpers on your own by arranging the pieces so they all touch, lie flat, or don't overlap. Make two separate shapes from a single set. If you happen to feel artistic, tell a story with the tangrams or create beautiful silhouettes for pure pleasure. One thing is for sure: you'll always find this ancient test-of-wits enjoyable, fascinating, and perplexing.

Shimmering like a mirage in the desert, indistinct figures confound the mind. The amorphous shapes, in enchanting hues on glowing backgrounds, captivate the imagination. Select from silvery white with teal, dark yellow and light tan, or warm white with grey, black, brown, and tan or three more handsome color stories. Stella (CZ2408 - CZ2411) makes an appropriate companion. Color: Off White & Dark Blue. Material: Paper.

Shimmering like a mirage in the desert, indistinct figures confound the mind. The amorphous shapes, in enchanting hues on glowing backgrounds, captivate the imagination. Select from silvery white with teal, dark yellow and light tan, or warm white with grey, black, brown, and tan or three more handsome color stories. Stella (CZ2408 - CZ2411) makes an appropriate companion. Color: Dark Taupe & Gold. Material: Paper.

An ambient jazz album, seductive and cool that honours the female principle Review Chris Spector MIDWEST RECORD: Al Gromer Khan/Kula Jazz: While some hide behind ars gratia artis, others have the touch and depth to continue to confound and surprise no matter where the muse takes them and aren't bounded by time. The companion piece to an art installation, this is like the 50s world jazz east meets west stuff as filtered through contemporary ears and electronics by and old pro that doesn't let the

Emily Braun and Elizabeth Cowling with contributions by Claire Le Thomas and Rachel Mustalish The age-old tradition of pictorial illusionism known as trompe l'oeil ("deceive the eye") employs visual tricks that confound the viewer's perception of reality and fiction, truth and falsehood. This radically new take on Cubism shows how Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris both parodied and paid homage to classic trompe l'oeil themes and motifs. The authors connect Cubist works to trompe l'oeil specialists of earlier centuries by juxtaposing more than one hundred Cubist paintings, drawings, and collages with related compositions by old masters. The informed and engaging texts trace the changing status of trompe l'oeil over the centuries, reveal Braque's training in artisanal trompe l'oeil techniques as an integral part of his Cubist practice, examine the material used in Gris's collages, and discuss the previously unstudied trompe l'oeil iconography within Cubist still lifes. Emily Braun is Distinguished Professor of Art History at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and Curator of the Leonard A. Lauder Collection. Elizabeth Cowling is Professor Emeritus and Honorary Fellow in the History of Art at the University of Edinburgh.

Follow Fry, Leela, Bender, and the crew of Planet Express as they fend off hostile takeovers, risk life and limb on a no–holds–barred game show, protect New New York City from the Santa Robot's annual slay ride, save the world from the fiendish machinations of Robot Devil, confound terminators from an altered future bent on destroying the past, form a superhero team and rid the universe of marauding break dancers, and fight off the effects of aging with a mind– bending transformation that could spell the end of all they hold dear. Take flight to the future of Futurama and leave the past behind ... today!

Two decades of lockouts, soaring ticket prices, and on-ice tinkering have convinced many hard-core fans that the NHL’s long-time commissioner Gary Bettman is the devil in disguise, but this book examines his motivations, peels back his often prickly demeanor, and explains how he manages to lead, confound, and keep order. It details the unlikely ascension of a fatherless Jewish kid from Long Island—who never played hockey and can barely skate—to the sport’s biggest job. The seven-fold increase in gross revenue during Bettman’s 20-year tenure as NHL commissioner makes him a business success story, and on his watch, professional hockey has also expanded far beyond its regional strongholds. By taming the NHL’s famously fractious owners, all but busting its players’ union, and enforcing a lawyerly discipline even on trash talk, Bettman has become a figure of almost unrivaled power in the business of sports, and this biography delves into how his influence shapes rival leagues in other countries, dictates the schedule of the Olympic Winter Games, and spills onto the ice itself.

When it comes to the vagaries of language in American politics, its uses and abuses, its absurdities and ever-shifting nuances, its power to confound, obscure, and occasionally to inspire, William Safire is the language maven we most readily turn to for clarity, guidance, and penetrating, sometimes lacerating, wit.Safire's Political Dictionary is a stem-to-stern updating and expansion of the Language of Politics, which was first published in 1968 and last revised in 1993, long before such terms as Hanging Chads, 9/11 and the War on Terror became part of our everyday vocabulary. Nearly every entry in that renowned work has been revised and updated and scores of completely new entries have been added to produce an indispensable guide to the political language being used and abused in America today.Safire's definitions--discursive, historically aware, and often anecdotal--bring a savvy perspective to our colorful political lingo. Indeed, a Safire definition often reads like a mini-essay in political history, and readers will come away not only with a fuller understanding of particular words but also a richer knowledge of how politics works, and fails to work, in America. From Axis of Evil, Blame Game, Bridge to Nowhere, Triangulation, and Compassionate Conservatism to Islamofascism, Netroots, Earmark, Wingnuts and Moonbats, Slam Dunk, Doughnut Hole, and many others, this language maven explains the origin of each term, how and by whom and for what purposes it has been used or twisted, as well as its perceived and real significance.For anyone who wants to cut through the verbal haze that surrounds so much of American political discourse, Safire's Political Dictionary offers a work of scholarship, wit, insiderhood and resolute bipartisanship.

Poetry. Music. "Kearney's collection of opera libretti explodes with verbal inge-nuity, graphically lunging out at us like Marvel Comics sound effects meets Italo-Futurist cut-up. Stuck in a domestic cell or a tenement, his characters bust out in song that riddles and rages and confounds. Kearney is our generation's lyric and sonic pugilist."—Cathy Park Hong

Eric Wilson’s work poses crucial challenges to social theory, unsettling our understanding of the nature of the liberal democratic state. In The Spectacle of the False Flag, he urges the reader to examine the, often unconsidered, deep state practices that confound conventional notions of the state as monolithic or uniform. This compelling volume traces deep state conflicts and convergences through central cases in the development of American political economic power—JFK/Dallas, LBJ/Gulf of Tonkin, and Nixon/Watergate. Rigorously documented and unflinchingly analyzed, The Spectacle of the False Flag provides a stunning example of a new criminological practice—one that takes the state seriously, making the inner workings of the state rather than its effects the primary object of study. Drawing upon a wealth of historical records and developing the theoretical insights of Guy Debord’s writings on spectacular society, Wilson offers a glimpse into a necessary criminology to come.

Wish kids came with instructions? At least you can take heart—and have a laugh—in the knowledge that the little dears confound and amuse all of us. Nothing captures our rollicking relationship with them—and theirs with the adult world—quite like New Yorker cartoons. The magazine's brilliant cartoonists (a good number of whom are rumored to have never completely left childhood behind) lead us from the hospital nursery, through toddlerhood, into the school years and beyond-to that long-lasting challenge of being an adult with parents. Selected by Robert Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker, this collection brings together 126 great cartoons (from artists including George Booth, Roz Chast, Leo Cullum, William Hamilton, Gahan Wilson, Jack Ziegler, and many more). The introduction from the one-and-only Roz Chast gives us a riot of insight and delight-which, come to think of it, is not a bad description of childhood.

Nothing in all the vast, created universe could prepare us for God coming down as a helpless infant, or for Jesus the son of God intentionally positioning himself as a mere servant, identifying with the lowest of lows. It's enough to confound the mind, to make the heart contrite. This Advent, God’s great surprise changes everything. The Leader Guide contains everything needed to guide a group through the 4-week study for Advent, including session plans and discussion questions, as well as multiple format options.

On October 23, 1852, Professor Augustus De Morgan wrote a letter to a colleague, unaware that he was launching one of the most famous mathematical conundrums in history--one that would confound thousands of puzzlers for more than a century. This is the amazing story of how the "map problem" was solved. The problem posed in the letter came from a former student: What is the least possible number of colors needed to fill in any map (real or invented) so that neighboring counties are always colored differently? This deceptively simple question was of minimal interest to cartographers, who saw little need to limit how many colors they used. But the problem set off a frenzy among professional mathematicians and amateur problem solvers, among them Lewis Carroll, an astronomer, a botanist, an obsessive golfer, the Bishop of London, a man who set his watch only once a year, a California traffic cop, and a bridegroom who spent his honeymoon coloring maps. In their pursuit of the solution, mathematicians painted maps on doughnuts and horseshoes and played with patterned soccer balls and the great rhombicuboctahedron. It would be more than one hundred years (and countless colored maps) later before the result was finally established. Even then, difficult questions remained, and the intricate solution--which involved no fewer than 1,200 hours of computer time--was greeted with as much dismay as enthusiasm. Providing a clear and elegant explanation of the problem and the proof, Robin Wilson tells how a seemingly innocuous question baffled great minds and stimulated exciting mathematics with far-flung applications. This is the entertaining story of those who failed to prove, and those who ultimately did prove, that four colors do indeed suffice to color any map.

The roller-coaster life of the flamboyant creator of General MotorsWilliam C. Durant did big things the big way: he overreached, but, until his final failure, he picked up the pieces time after time to confound his competitors. From a turbulent childhood in the small town of Flint, Michigan, to his phenomenal success in creating General Motors, Durant's meteoric career easily rivals the success stories of modern legends like Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch, and Bill Gates. With his trademark smile and personal charisma, Durant assembled General Motors in a few short years, buying companies at the rate of one every thirty days. Durant's deal-making artistry even tempted Henry Ford, and had Durant upped his acquisition price Ford would be a division of GM today.Durant's story illuminates the conflict between innovation and control of innovation -of the uneasy alliances struck again and again between inventors and their sources of capital. His years of heady success building General Motors were marked by epic struggles with bankers. But he depended on only a few sources of big money to finance his exploding business, and pitted himself against forces he underestimated or refused to consider. Gambling on a run on GM stock, he was finally forced into a buyout that ousted him from his role in the GM empire.Into the dramatic tale of this early twentieth-century mogul come the fascinating automotive pioneers -Henry Ford, David Buick, Charles Nash, Albert Champion, Louis Chevrolet, and Alfred P. Sloan. On Wall Street, J. P. Morgan turned down Durant's request for a loan while Pierre du Pont invested in Durant's expansion. Tracing the fortunes of a man and his era, The Deal Maker is a fast-paced, rousing tale of Durant's dizzying success and ultimate failure.

New York City cabdrivers hold a unique place in American culture writ large. Cabbies proverbially counsel, console, and confound. Sometimes perceived as the key to street-level opinion or mysterious savants who don’t speak much English, the hackers who move New Yorkers have been integral to the city’s growth and culture since the mid-nineteenth century when they first began shuttling residents, workers, and visitors in horse-drawn carriages. Their importance grew with the introduction of gasoline-powered cars early last century and continues to the present day, when more than 12,000 licensed yellow cabs operate in Manhattan alone.Taxi! is the first book-length history of New York City cabdrivers and the community they compose. From labor unrest and racial strife among cabbies to ruthless competition and political machinations, this deftly woven narrative captures the people—lower-class immigrants, for the most part—and their struggle to attain a piece of the American dream. Hodges tells their tale through contemporary news accounts, Hollywood films, social science research, and the words of the cabbies themselves. Taxi! provides a new perspective on New York’s most colorful emissaries.

The locked room mystery is a subgenre of detective fiction in which a crime is committed under apparently impossible circumstances. Greenberg and Pronzini's novel is a collection of these "locked room mysteries," and is sure to entertain—and confound—its readers.

Encountering the fiery wrath of redheaded Rory Callahan, a woman who both confounds and thrills him, Thomas Graham finds his normally unshakable confidence challenged and vows to walk the length of the Union Pacific line to win her over. Original.

When a scheming American capitalist is found dead in the garden of his English country house, two immediate matters confound amateur detective Philip Trent: why is the dead man not wearing his false teeth and why is his young widow seemingly relieved at his death? The newly widowed Mabel Manderson, ‘The Lady in Black’, has a disarming effect on the refreshingly fallible and imaginative Trent, in this classic detective story that twists and turns as a result of the irresistible combination of ingenious deductions and misplaced assumptions.