Managers face challenges and tough decisions on a daily basis. Effective managers are those who carefully analyze the problem or opportunity, identify and create value decisions and implement those decisions for successful results. The 12 Rules of Smart Management provides readers with Systematic Methods and Response Techniques to aid them in developing quality management decisions and strengthening twelve key areas of management, which are essential to effective managers and the managemen...

Would you like to feel more in control of your happiness?Would you like to smile more?Have you ever upgraded your phone or TV or car? Very likely. We often want the latest version, expecting it to work better and give us more happiness, confidence, pride and pleasure. But how often do we upgrade the most valuable thing we possess, our minds. Let's not put up with an inferior model mind when we can create a modern, upgraded one. You are not stuck with mind you've got. You ca...

Hidden within the enigmatic walls of her gothic tattoo atelier, the fierce and ambitious Sindy Sinclair practices an otherworldly art form. With unparalleled precision, she etches intricate and haunting designs into the flesh of her clientele. However, when a mysterious stranger bestows upon her a cursed symbol pulsing with ancient magic, Sindy's insatiable thirst for power propels her into a dark pact. As the malevolent tattoo weaves its tendrils of influence, Sindy's allure blossoms, whi...

Watching Doctor Who explores fandom's changing attitudes towards Doctor Who. Why do fans love an episode one year but deride it a decade later? How do fans' values of Doctor Who change over time? As a show with an over fifty-year history, Doctor Who helps us understand the changing nature of notions of 'value' and 'quality' in popular television. The authors interrogate the way Doctor Who fans and audiences re-interpret the value of particular e...

Split into four sections, Seeing Fans analyzes the representations of fans in the mass media through a diverse range of perspectives. This collection opens with a preface by noted actor and fan Orlando Jones (Sleepy Hollow), whose recent work on fandom (appearing with Henry Jenkins at Comic Con and speaking at the Fan Studies Network symposium) bridges the worlds of academia and the media industry. Section one focuses on the representations of fans in documentaries and ne...

The multiverse has portaled into the mainstream. Entering the Multiverse unpacks the surprising growth of the multiverse in media and popular culture today, and explores how the concept of alternate realities and parallel worlds has acted as a metaphor for centuries.Edited by leading media and popular culture scholar Paul Booth, this collection explores the many different manifestations of the multiverse across different genres, media, fan-created works, and cultural theor...

The 21st century has seen a board game renaissance. At a time when streaming television finds millions of viewers, video games garner billions of dollars, and social media grows ever more intense, little has been written about the rising popularity of board games. And yet board games are one of our fastest growing hobbies, with sales increasing every year. Today's board games are more than just your average rainy-day mainstay. Once associated solely with geek subcultures, complex and strat...

Fans are everywhere: from Fifty Shades of Grey to Veronica Mars, from Comic-Con to sitcom, from niche to Geek Chic, fans are becoming the most visible and important audience of the twenty-first century. For years the media industries ignored fans and fan activities, but now they’re paying attention and a lot of money to develop a whole new wave of products intended to harness the power of fandom. What impact do such corporate media efforts have on fan practice and fan ide...

This text provides a comprehensive and authoritative introduction to the burgeoning discipline of Human-Computer Interaction for students, academics, and those from industry who wish to know more about the subject. Assuming very little knowledge,the book provides an overview of the diverse research areas that are only gradually building into a coherent and well -structured field. It aims to explain the underlying causes of the cognitive, social and organizational problems typically encount...

The discipline of fan studies is famously undisciplined. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t structured. This is the first comprehensive primer for classroom use that shows students how to do fan studies in practical terms. With contributions from a range of established and emerging scholars, coeditors Paul Booth and Rebecca Williams pull together case studies that demonstrate the wide array of methodologies available to fan studies scholars, such as auto/ethnography, immersion, interv...

Adventures Across Space and Time brings together key academic, critic and fan writings about Doctor Who alongside newly-commissioned work addressing contemporary issues and debates to form a comprehensive guide to the wider Whoniverse.The perennially popular BBC series holds a unique place in the history of television and of TV fandom: the longest running science-fiction show, the series and its fan communities have tracked social and cultural changes over its 60 ...

This edited volume provides a single coherent overview of vocabulary teaching and learning in relation to each of the four skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking).Each of the four sections presents a skill area with two chapters presented by two leading experts in the field, relating recent advances in the field to the extent that each skill area relates differently to vocabulary and how this informs pedagogy and policy. The book opens with a summary of recent advances in th...