Joe Dirt

• Special Features: * Director's Commentary.
• * David Spade's Commentary.
• * Outtakes and Bloopers Reel.
• * Deleted and Alternate Scenes.
• * Filmographies. * Production Notes. * and more!

All products are BRAND NEW and factory sealed. Fast shipping and 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed.David Spade, Dennis Miller, Brittany Daniel, and Christopher Walken star in this irreverent cult classic. Extras include director's commentary, Spade's commentary, outtakes and bloopers reel, and deleted scenes and alternate scenes.Another of those cut-and-paste comedies from Adam Sandler's production company starring one of Sandler's erstwhile Saturday Night Live colleagues, The Adventures of Joe Dirt finds the magnificently caustic David Spade emasculated by a sentimental script and shapeless, haphazard cutting. Spade plays the title character, a white-trash orphan in searc! h of the parents who abandoned him at the Grand Canyon. The humor is supposed to come from Joe's misadventures, his redneck gullibility, and his encounters with such figures as a serial killer, a wacked-out janitor (Christopher Walken), and a lovable gal (Jamie Pressly) who may, unfortunately, turn out to be his sister. But the squishier requirements of the story, requiring the audience to feel deeply for the pain of Spade's caricature, are an irritant and force Spade to veer from the nastier stuff he does so well. With Kid Rock, Dennis Miller. --Tom Keogh

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GoldenEye (Special Edition)

• 1995 - MGM / UA - Ian FLeming's James Bond / 007 - Special Edition
• Goldeneye - Pierce Brosnan / Sean Bean / Famke Janssen
• Director: Martin Campbell - Widescreen - 2 Hours 10 Minutes
• Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound / Special Features
• Like New - Limited Edition - Collectible

Description:

Experience Bond action once again as the GoldenEye story comes to life with an updated single player storyline with GoldenEye 007 for Nintendo Wii from Activision.

1995 - MGM / UA - Goldeneye - DVD Video - Stars: Pierce Brosnan / Sean Bean / Izabella Scorupco / Famke Janssen / Joe Don Baker - Director: Martin Campbell - Length: 2 Hours 10 Minutes - Special Edition : Widescreen - Special Features - All Original Artwork & Liner Notes - Rated PG - Like New - CollectiblePierce Brosnan assumed the role of James Bond for t! he first time in this 17th entry in the series. Brosnan looks a little light on the big screen under any circumstances, and he does take some getting used to as 007. But this busy film keeps him hopping as freelance terrorists from the former Soviet Union get their hands on super-high-tech weapons. The film's challenge is to bring free-spirited Bond up to date in the age of AIDS and in the aftermath of the cold war, and on both counts director Martin Campbell (The Mask of Zorro) succeeds with a cheeky hint of irony. The best moment in the film is a chase scene that finds Bond tearing up the streets of Moscow in a tank. But Brosnan's most interesting contributions are reminiscent of the dark streak that occasionally showed up in Sean Connery's Bond. The DVD release has optional full-screen and widescreen presentations, optional French and Spanish soundtracks, theatrical trailer, Dolby sound. --Tom Keogh

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Blindness

• TESTED

From Nobel Prizeâ€"winning author José Saramago, a magnificent, mesmerizing parable of loss

 

A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" that spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and assaulting women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides her chargesâ€"among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tearsâ€"through the barren streets, and their procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. As Blindness reclaims the age-old story of a plague, it evokes the vivid and trembling horrors of the twentieth century, leaving readers with a powerful vision of the human spirit that's bound both by weakness and exhilarating strength.In an unnamed city in an unnamed country, a man sitting in hi! s car waiting for a traffic light to change is suddenly struck blind. But instead of being plunged into darkness, this man sees everything white, as if he "were caught in a mist or had fallen into a milky sea." A Good Samaritan offers to drive him home (and later steals his car); his wife takes him by taxi to a nearby eye clinic where they are ushered past other patients into the doctor's office. Within a day the man's wife, the taxi driver, the doctor and his patients, and the car thief have all succumbed to blindness. As the epidemic spreads, the government panics and begins quarantining victims in an abandoned mental asylum--guarded by soldiers with orders to shoot anyone who tries to escape. So begins Portuguese author José Saramago's gripping story of humanity under siege, written with a dearth of paragraphs, limited punctuation, and embedded dialogue minus either quotation marks or attribution. At first this may seem challenging, but the style actually contributes to! the narrative's building tension, and to the reader's involve! ment.

In this community of blind people there is still one set of functioning eyes: the doctor's wife has affected blindness in order to accompany her husband to the asylum. As the number of victims grows and the asylum becomes overcrowded, systems begin to break down: toilets back up, food deliveries become sporadic; there is no medical treatment for the sick and no proper way to bury the dead. Inevitably, social conventions begin to crumble as well, with one group of blind inmates taking control of the dwindling food supply and using it to exploit the others. Through it all, the doctor's wife does her best to protect her little band of blind charges, eventually leading them out of the hospital and back into the horribly changed landscape of the city.

Blindness is in many ways a horrific novel, detailing as it does the total breakdown in society that follows upon this most unnatural disaster. Saramago takes his characters to the very edge of humanity and then pushes ! them over the precipice. His people learn to live in inexpressible filth, they commit acts of both unspeakable violence and amazing generosity that would have been unimaginable to them before the tragedy. The very structure of society itself alters to suit the circumstances as once-civilized, urban dwellers become ragged nomads traveling by touch from building to building in search of food. The devil is in the details, and Saramago has imagined for us in all its devastation a hell where those who went blind in the streets can never find their homes again, where people are reduced to eating chickens raw and packs of dogs roam the excrement-covered sidewalks scavenging from corpses.

And yet in the midst of all this horror Saramago has written passages of unsurpassed beauty. Upon being told she is beautiful by three of her charges, women who have never seen her, "the doctor's wife is reduced to tears because of a personal pronoun, an adverb, a verb, an adjective, mere gra! mmatical categories, mere labels, just like the two women, the! others, indefinite pronouns, they too are crying, they embrace the woman of the whole sentence, three graces beneath the falling rain." In this one woman Saramago has created an enduring, fully developed character who serves both as the eyes and ears of the reader and as the conscience of the race. And in Blindness he has written a profound, ultimately transcendent meditation on what it means to be human. --Alix Wilber

A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers-among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears-through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horror! s of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses-and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit. The stunningly powerful novel of man's will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature

 

The e-book includes a sample chapter from the late Nobel Prize winner's final work, Cain.In an unnamed city in an unnamed country, a man sitting in his car waiting for a traffic light to change is suddenly struck blind. But instead of being plunged into darkness, this man sees everything white, as if he "were caught in a mist or had fallen into a milky sea." A Good Samaritan offers to drive him home (and later steals his car); his wife takes him by taxi to a nearby eye clinic where they are ushered past other patients into the doctor's office. Within a day the man's wife, the taxi driver, the doctor and his patients, and the car thief have ! all succumbed to blindness. As the epidemic spreads, the gove! rnment p anics and begins quarantining victims in an abandoned mental asylum--guarded by soldiers with orders to shoot anyone who tries to escape. So begins Portuguese author José Saramago's gripping story of humanity under siege, written with a dearth of paragraphs, limited punctuation, and embedded dialogue minus either quotation marks or attribution. At first this may seem challenging, but the style actually contributes to the narrative's building tension, and to the reader's involvement.

In this community of blind people there is still one set of functioning eyes: the doctor's wife has affected blindness in order to accompany her husband to the asylum. As the number of victims grows and the asylum becomes overcrowded, systems begin to break down: toilets back up, food deliveries become sporadic; there is no medical treatment for the sick and no proper way to bury the dead. Inevitably, social conventions begin to crumble as well, with one group of blind inmates! taking control of the dwindling food supply and using it to exploit the others. Through it all, the doctor's wife does her best to protect her little band of blind charges, eventually leading them out of the hospital and back into the horribly changed landscape of the city.

Blindness is in many ways a horrific novel, detailing as it does the total breakdown in society that follows upon this most unnatural disaster. Saramago takes his characters to the very edge of humanity and then pushes them over the precipice. His people learn to live in inexpressible filth, they commit acts of both unspeakable violence and amazing generosity that would have been unimaginable to them before the tragedy. The very structure of society itself alters to suit the circumstances as once-civilized, urban dwellers become ragged nomads traveling by touch from building to building in search of food. The devil is in the details, and Saramago has imagined for us in all its ! devastation a hell where those who went blind in the streets ! can neve r find their homes again, where people are reduced to eating chickens raw and packs of dogs roam the excrement-covered sidewalks scavenging from corpses.

And yet in the midst of all this horror Saramago has written passages of unsurpassed beauty. Upon being told she is beautiful by three of her charges, women who have never seen her, "the doctor's wife is reduced to tears because of a personal pronoun, an adverb, a verb, an adjective, mere grammatical categories, mere labels, just like the two women, the others, indefinite pronouns, they too are crying, they embrace the woman of the whole sentence, three graces beneath the falling rain." In this one woman Saramago has created an enduring, fully developed character who serves both as the eyes and ears of the reader and as the conscience of the race. And in Blindness he has written a profound, ultimately transcendent meditation on what it means to be human. --Alix Wilber

A city is hit by ! an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers-among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears-through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses-and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit. The stunningly powerful novel of man's will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature

 

The e-book includes a sample chapter from the late Nobel Prize winner's final work, Cain.In Blindness, a city is! overcome by an epidemic of blindness that spares only one wom! an. She becomes a guide for a group of seven strangers and serves as the eyes and ears for the reader in this profound parable of loss and disorientation. We return to the city years later in Saramago’s Seeing, a satirical commentary on government in general and democracy in particular. Together here for the first time, this beautiful edition will be a welcome addition to the library of any Saramago fan.

From acclaimed director Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener) comes this extraordinarily intense and gritty thriller that will change your vision of the world forever. Led by a powerful all-star cast featuring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Danny Glover, this unflinching story begins when a plague of blindness strikes and threatens all of humanity. One woman (Moore) feigns the illness to share an uncertain fate in quarantine, where society is breaking down as fast as their crumbling surroundings. Based on Nobel Prize-winning Jos‚ Saramago's novel -- let Blindnes! s lead you on a journey where the only thing more terrifying than being blind is being the only one who can see.

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Fix, Freeze, Feast: The Delicious, Money-Saving Way to Feed Your Family

• ISBN13: 9781603427265
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Buy groceries in bulk, prepare family-friendly dishes, package in meal-sized freezer bags, then stock the freezer with ready-to-defrost-and-serve tasty homemade meals. This is the winning system of Fix, Freeze, Feast, a cookbook that has already attracted an enthusiastic following among busy families.

Millions of shoppers save money by buying groceries in bulk - trays of boneless chicken breasts, pairs of flank steaks, flats of ripe tomatoes. But savings can quickly turn to losses if those bulk quantities spoil in the refrigerator or lie forgotten - unlabeled and unrecognizable under lays of ice crystals - in the back of the freezer.

In the new paperback edition of Fix, Freeze, ! Feast, authors Kati Neville and Lindsay Tkacsik offer a complete system for taking full advantage of bulk purchasing and advance preparation to ensure no food is ever wasted. They show how easy it is to get organized, prepare ahead, and be ready to put healthful, satisfying meals on the dinner table (or breakfast table, or even brunch table!) at a moment's notice. Theirs is a cookbook price-conscious shoppers will love and warehouse club members shouldn't be without.

Cooks will find 125 delicious, healthful recipes to choose from Each one includes directions for dividing, preparing, and storing raw ingredients; a second set of simple direction is included for thawing, cooking, and enjoying the food. Designed for the way people cook today, Fix, Freeze, Feast meals are lighter and fresher than traditional bulk-cooking recipes, with a focus on simple stews and stir-fries, quick grilled or broiled main courses, and popular ethnic meals such as Beef Fajitas and! Cashew Chicken Stir-Fry. Fix, Freeze, Feast, also incl! udes rea dy-to-bake cookie doughs, soups, side dishes, smoothies, and snacks. With these innovative techniques and recipes, dinner is always in the freezer!

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Blood: The Last Vampire

• Condition: Used, Very Good
• Format: DVD
• AC-3; Color; Dolby; Dubbed; DVD; Subtitled; Widescreen; NTSC

The deadliest assassin to stand the test of time. From a Producer of Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon comes Blood: The Last Vampire, based on the cult hit anime series. Demons have infested Earth. And only one warrior stands between the dark and the light: Saya, a half-human, half-vampire samurai who preys on those who feast on human blood. Joining forces with the shadowy society known as the Council, Saya is dispatched to an American military base, where an intense series of swordfights leads her to the deadliest vampire of all. And now after 400 years, Saya's greatest hunt is about to begin.

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The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

• ISBN13: 9780375725609
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Trapped in an elevator high above Philadelphia, five people discover that the Devil is among them â€" and no one can escape their fate. This chilling, supernatural thriller from M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs) will keep you on the edge of your seat all the way to a heart-stopping ending with a truly wicked twist.Trapped in an elevator high above Philadelphia, five people discover that the Devil is among them â€" and no one can escape their fate. This chilling, supernatural thriller from M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs) will keep you on the edge of your seat all the way to a heart-stopping ending with a truly wicked twist.

Erik Larsonâ€"author of #1 bestseller In the Garden ! of Beastsâ€"intertwines the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.

Author Erik Larson imbues the incredible events surrounding the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with such drama that readers may find themselves checking the book's categorization to be sure that The Devil in the White City is not, in fact, a highly imaginative novel. Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor. Burnham's challenge was immense. In a short period of time, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to construct the famous "White City" around which the fair was! built. His efforts to complete the project, and the fair's in! credible success, are skillfully related along with entertaining appearances by such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison. The activities of the sinister Dr. Holmes, who is believed to be responsible for scores of murders around the time of the fair, are equally remarkable. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims. Combining the stories of an architect and a killer in one book, mostly in alternating chapters, seems like an odd choice but it works. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's skillful writing. --John Moe

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Before and After

• Two of Hollywood's brightest stars, Meryl Streep (THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, DEATH BECOMES HER), and Liam Neeson (SCHINDLER'S LIST) deliver spellbinding performances in this riveting, suspense-filled thriller! A small, close-knit community is rocked by a shocking murder -- and the only suspect is the teenage son of a respected local family. Suddenly, Dr. Carolyn Ryan (Streep) and her h

Two parents deal with the effects when their son is accused of murdering his girlfriend. Studio: Buena Vista Home Video Release Date: 05/09/2006 Starring: Meryl Streep Edward Furlong Run time: 108 minutes Rating: Pg13 Director: Barbet Schroeder

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Endgame

• RISE AGAINST ENDGAME

Greece isn't the only country drowning in debt. The Debt Supercycleâ€"when the easily managed, decades-long growth of debt results in a massive sovereign debt and credit crisisâ€"is affecting developed countries around the world, including the United States. For these countries, there are only two options, and neither is goodâ€"restructure the debt or reduce it through austerity measures. Endgame details the Debt Supercycle and the sovereign debt crisis, and shows that, while there are no good choices, the worst choice would be to ignore the deleveraging resulting from the credit crisis. The book:

• Reveals why the world economy is in for an extended period of sluggish growth, high unemployment, and volatile markets punctuated by persistent recessions
• Reviews global markets, trends in population, government policies, and ! currencies

Around the world, countries are faced with difficult choices. Endgame provides a framework for making those choices.

Q&A with Authors John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper

Author John Mauldin

What is the debt supercycle?
Over a period of about sixty years, debt levels grew faster than incomes. This increase in debt became particularly pronounced in the 1980s, 90s and finally went parabolic after the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to 1% after the Nasdaq crash. The increase in debt was not just a US phenomenon. As interest rates fell structurally with ! the fall in inflation from 1982 onwards, people took on more d! ebt beca use it became more manageable. However, by 2008 the burden of debt became too much to bear and the debt supercycle came to an end. People started deleveraging and banks started collapsing due to low levels of capital and large losses from loans people couldn't pay back.

How does the sovereign debt crisis play into this?
The rapid contraction in debt levels due to default and deleveraging lead to a fall in economic activity as people started saving and cutting spending. Governments immediately stepped in and backed bank debt with explicit guarantees. Governments also started borrowing and spending to transfer money to the private sector, for example via unemployment insurance. So in a very real sense, private borrowing was replaced with public borrowing. Debt was added onto more debt. Rather than free itself of debt, the system now has more debt. The sovereign debt crisis is the recognition that most of this debt will not be paid back, and g! overnments are making promises to pay debt and other obligations, for example general spending and pensions, that they simply lack the ability to fulfill.

What is the impact of the end of the debt supercycle?

Author Jonathan Tepper

The end of the debt supercycle and the beginning of the sovereign debt crisis present problems and challenges for investors and governments. Governments will need to either 1) inflate, 2) default or 3) devalue, which is similar to inflate. That is the way governments have historically dealt with too much debt. Some countries will experience deflation and others inflation, depending on what choices governments make. C! urrently governments have only bad and worse choices. Let's ! hope the y can choose wisely.

What do you predict for the next ten years?
Central banks globally have shown a predisposition to print money to solve problems. We forsee rising inflation in many parts of the world, reductions in real income as people lose purchasing power due to higher food and fuel prices and more macroeconomic volatility. Some countries that do not control their own money supply or are running pegs may experience deflation as they are forced to delever and cannot increase the money supply to counteract the weight of deleveraging.

You cite the events in Greece as an example of a country continuing to run massive deficits. Is there an example of a country making a better choice?
The UK is making some of the right steps to control spending, but even the UK could be more draconian. In nominal and real terms, government spending in aggregate will not be cut in the UK. Also, Iceland has made positive steps by defa! ulting on its debt effectively. Default is a good way to cure too much debt.
Endgame is acclaimed biographer Frank Brady’s decades-in-the-making tracing of the meteoric ascentâ€"and confounding descentâ€"of enigmatic genius Bobby Fischer.  Only Brady, who met Fischer when the prodigy was only 10 and shared with him some of his most dramatic triumphs, could have written this book, which has much to say about the nature of American celebrity and the distorting effects of fame.  Drawing from Fischer family archives, recently released FBI files, and Bobby’s own emails, this account is unique in that it limns Fischer’s entire lifeâ€"an odyssey that took the Brooklyn-raised chess champion from an impoverished childhood to the covers of Time, Life and Newsweek to recognition as “the most famous man in the world” to notorious recluse.
 
At first all one noticed was how gifted Fischer was.  Possessing a 181 I.Q. and rema! rkable powers of concentration, Bobby memorized hundred! s of che ss books in several languages, and he was only 13 when he became the youngest chess master in U.S. history.   But his strange behavior started early.  In 1972, at the historic Cold War showdown in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he faced Soviet champion Boris Spassky, Fischer made headlines with hundreds of petty demands that nearly ended the competition.
 
It was merely a prelude to what was to come.
 
Arriving back in the United States to a hero’s welcome, Bobby was mobbed wherever he wentâ€"a figure as exotic and improbable as any American pop culture had yet produced.  No player of a mere “board game” had ever ascended to such heights.  Commercial sponsorship offers poured in, ultimately topping $10 millionâ€"but Bobby demurred.  Instead, he began tithing his limited money to an apocalyptic religion and devouring anti-Semitic literature. 
 
After years of poverty and a stint living on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, Bobby remerged in 1992 to play S! passky in a multi-million dollar rematchâ€"but the experience only deepened a paranoia that had formed years earlier when he came to believe that the Soviets wanted him dead for taking away “their” title.  When the dust settled, Bobby was a wanted manâ€"transformed into an international fugitive because of his decision to play in Montenegro despite U.S. sanctions.  Fearing for his life, traveling with bodyguards, and wearing a long leather coat to ward off knife attacks, Bobby lived the life of a celebrity fugitive â€" one drawn increasingly to the bizarre.  Mafiosi, Nazis, odd attempts to breed an heir who could perpetuate his chess-genius DNAâ€"all are woven into his late-life tapestry.
 
And yet, as Brady shows, the most notable irony of Bobby Fischer’s strange descent â€" which had reached full plummet by 2005 when he turned down yet another multi-million dollar paydayâ€"is that despite his incomprehensible behavior, there were many who re! mained fiercely loyal to him.  Why that was so is at least pa! rtly the subject of this bookâ€"one that at last answers the question: “Who was Bobby Fischer?”Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2011: There may be no one more qualified than Frank Brady to write the definitive biography of Bobby Fischer. Brady's Profile of a Prodigy (originally published in 1969) chronicled the chess icon's early years, a selection of 90 games, and (in later editions) his 1972 World Championship match with Boris Spassky. With Endgame, published two years after Fischer's death, Brady's on-and-off proximity to Fischer lends new depth to the latter's full and twisted life story. Though Fischer's pinnacle artistry on the chessboard may often be discussed in the same breath with his eventual paranoia and outspoken anti-Semitism, the particular turns and travels of his post-World Championship years (half his life) lend his story most of its vexing oddity: the niggling insistence on seemingly arbitrary conditions for hi! s matches, the years on the lam after flagrantly disregarding U.S. economic sanctions, his incarceration in Japan, his eventual citizenship and quiet demise in Iceland. All told, Fischer's life was like none other, and told through the lens of Brady's personal familiarity and access to new source material, results in an utterly engaging read. --Jason Kirk

Guest Reviewer: Dick Cavett

Dick Cavett is the host of “The Dick Cavett Show”---which aired on ABC from 1968 to 1975 and on public television from 1977 to 1982---Dick Cavett is the author, most recently, of Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets. The co-author of Cavet! t (1974) and Eye on Cavett (1983), he has also a! ppeared on Broadway in Otherwise Engaged and Into the Woods, and as narrator in The Rocky Horror Show, and has made guest appearances in movies and on TV shows including Forrest Gump and The Simpsons. His column appears in the Opinionator blog on The New York Times website. Mr. Cavett lives in New York City and Montauk, N.Y.

Even if you don’t give a damn about chess, or Bobby Fischer, you’ll find yourself engrossed by Frank Brady‘s book about Fischer, which reads like a novel.

The facts of Bobby’s life (I knew him from several memorable appearances on “The Dick Cavett Show” on both sides of the Big Tournament) are presented in page-turner fashion. Poor Bobby was blessed and cursed by his genius, and his story has the arc of a Greek tragedy---with a grim touch of mad King Lear at the end.

The brain power and concentrated days and nights Bobby spent studying the game left much of him undeve! loped, unable to join conversations on other subjects. Later in his life, unhappy with his limited knowledge of things beyond the chess board, he compensated with massive study---applying that same hard-butt dedication to other fields: politics, classics, religion, philosophy and more. He found a hide-away nook in a Reykjavic bookstore---barred from his homeland, Iceland had welcomed him back---where he read in marathon sessions. (After he was recognized, he never went back to his cozy cul de sac.)

In Brady’s telling the high drama of the Spassky match quickens the pulse; the contest that made America a chess-crazed land was seen by more people than the Superbowl. People skipped school and played sick in vast numbers, glued to watching Shelby Lyman explain what was happening. The fanaticism was worldwide. The match was seen as a Cold War event, with the time out of mind chess-ruling Russian bear vanquished.

Arguably the best known man on the planet at his! triumphant peak, Bobby is later seen in this account riding b! uses in Los Angeles, able to pay his rent in a dump of an apartment only because his mother sent him her social-security checks. The details of all this are stranger than fiction, as is nearly everything in the life of this much-rewarded, much-tortured genius.

I liked him immensely, knowing only the tall, broad-shouldered, athletically strong and handsome six-foot-something articulate and yes, witty, youth that Bobby was before the evil times set in, with deranged anti-Semitic outbursts and other mental strangeness preceding his too early end at age 64.

I can’t ever forget the moment on the show when in amiable conversation I asked him what, in chess, corresponded to the thrill in another sort of event; like, say, hitting a homer in baseball. He said it was the moment when you “break the other guy’s ego.” There was a shocked murmur from the audience and the quote went around the world.

Frank Brady’s Endgame is one of those books that makes y! ou want your dinner guests to go the hell home so you can get back to it.

The long-awaited companion piece to Derrick Jensen's immensely popular and highly acclaimed works A Language Older Than Words and The Culture of Make Believe. Accepting the increasingly widespread belief that industrialized culture inevitably erodes the natural world, Endgame sets out to explore how this relationship impels us towards a revolutionary and as-yet undiscovered shift in strategy. Building on a series of simple but increasingly provocative premises, Jensen leaves us hoping for what may be inevitable: a return to agrarian communal life via the disintegration of civilization itself.

Samuel Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969; his literary output of plays, novels, stories and poetry has earned him an uncontested place as one of the greatest writers of our time. Endgame, originally written in French and translated into English by Beckett himself, is! considered by many critics to be his greatest single work. A ! pinnacle of Beckett’s characteristic raw minimalism, it is a pure and devastating distillation of the human essence in the face of approaching death.

Greece isn't the only country drowning in debt. The Debt Supercycleâ€"when the easily managed, decades-long growth of debt results in a massive sovereign debt and credit crisisâ€"is affecting developed countries around the world, including the United States. For these countries, there are only two options, and neither is goodâ€"restructure the debt or reduce it through austerity measures. Endgame details the Debt Supercycle and the sovereign debt crisis, and shows that, while there are no good choices, the worst choice would be to ignore the deleveraging resulting from the credit crisis. The book:

• Reveals why the world economy is in for an extended period of sluggish growth, high unemployment, and volatile markets punctuated by persistent recessions
• Reviews global markets, trends in population, g! overnment policies, and currencies

Around the world, countries are faced with difficult choices. Endgame provides a framework for making those choices. Q&A with Authors John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper

Author John Mauldin

What is the debt supercycle?
Over a period of about sixty years, debt levels grew faster than incomes. This increase in debt became particularly pronounced in the 1980s, 90s and finally went parabolic after the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to 1% after the Nasdaq crash. The increase in debt was not just a US phenomenon. As interest rates fell st! ructurally with the fall in inflation from 1982 onwards, peopl! e took o n more debt because it became more manageable. However, by 2008 the burden of debt became too much to bear and the debt supercycle came to an end. People started deleveraging and banks started collapsing due to low levels of capital and large losses from loans people couldn't pay back.

How does the sovereign debt crisis play into this?
The rapid contraction in debt levels due to default and deleveraging lead to a fall in economic activity as people started saving and cutting spending. Governments immediately stepped in and backed bank debt with explicit guarantees. Governments also started borrowing and spending to transfer money to the private sector, for example via unemployment insurance. So in a very real sense, private borrowing was replaced with public borrowing. Debt was added onto more debt. Rather than free itself of debt, the system now has more debt. The sovereign debt crisis is the recognition that most of this debt will ! not be paid back, and governments are making promises to pay debt and other obligations, for example general spending and pensions, that they simply lack the ability to fulfill.

What is the impact of the end of the debt supercycle?

Author Jonathan Tepper

The end of the debt supercycle and the beginning of the sovereign debt crisis present problems and challenges for investors and governments. Governments will need to either 1) inflate, 2) default or 3) devalue, which is similar to inflate. That is the way governments have historically dealt with too much debt. Some countries will experience deflation and others inflation, depending on ! what choices governments make. Currently governments have onl! y bad an d worse choices. Let's hope they can choose wisely.

What do you predict for the next ten years?
Central banks globally have shown a predisposition to print money to solve problems. We forsee rising inflation in many parts of the world, reductions in real income as people lose purchasing power due to higher food and fuel prices and more macroeconomic volatility. Some countries that do not control their own money supply or are running pegs may experience deflation as they are forced to delever and cannot increase the money supply to counteract the weight of deleveraging.

You cite the events in Greece as an example of a country continuing to run massive deficits. Is there an example of a country making a better choice?
The UK is making some of the right steps to control spending, but even the UK could be more draconian. In nominal and real terms, government spending in aggregate will not be cu! t in the UK. Also, Iceland has made positive steps by defaulting on its debt effectively. Default is a good way to cure too much debt.
Greece isn't the only country drowning in debt. The Debt Supercycleâ€"when the easily managed, decades-long growth of debt results in a massive sovereign debt and credit crisisâ€"is affecting developed countries around the world, including the United States. For these countries, there are only two options, and neither is goodâ€"restructure the debt or reduce it through austerity measures. Endgame details the Debt Supercycle and the sovereign debt crisis, and shows that, while there are no good choices, the worst choice would be to ignore the deleveraging resulting from the credit crisis. The book:

• Reveals why the world economy is in for an extended period of sluggish growth, high unemployment, and volatile markets punctuated by persistent recessions
• Reviews global markets, trends in population, go! vernment policies, and currencies

Around the worl! d, count ries are faced with difficult choices. Endgame provides a framework for making those choices.Limited edition pressing. 2011 album from the Chicago-based Punk act. The lyrics of the album touch on real world events, such as Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. According to Mcllrath, although the lyrics discuss grim topics, they actually take on a positive view and were written from the perspective of: 'What if the place on the other side of this transition is a place we'd all rather be living in?' Mcllrath tweeted a clarifying message stating that the record is not a concept record and, fret not, has absolutely nothing to do with the Dixie Chicks. The first single from the album is 'Help Is On The Way',

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