Download or read book The Beasts of Electra Drive written by Rohan Quine and published by EC1 Digital. This book was released on 2018-04-11 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Hollywood Hills mansions and Century City towers, to South Central motels and the oceanside refinery, The Beasts of Electra Drive by Rohan Quine spans a mythic L.A., following seven spectacular characters (or Beasts) from games designer Jaymi’s game-worlds. The intensity of those Beasts’ creation cycles leads to their release into real life in seemingly human forms, and to their combative protection of him from destructive rivals at mainstream company Bang Dead Games. Grand spaces of beauty interlock with narrow rooms of terror, both in the real world and in cyberspace. A prequel to Quine’s other five tales (and Winner in the NYC Big Book Award 2021, and a Finalist in the IAN Book of the Year Awards 2018), The Beasts of Electra Drive is a unique explosion of glamour and beauty, horror and enchantment, exploring the mechanisms and magic of creativity itself. Jaymi is an independent games designer living on Electra Drive in the Hollywood Hills. Opposed to him are his former colleagues at Bang Dead Games. Their mounting competitiveness regarding his own extravagant game-creation reaches a point where they attack him physically with a flying drone. Bang Dead is preparing the global release of a game called Ain’tTheyFreaky!, centring on five tabloid-flavoured social-media “Newsfeeds” for the victimisation of certain people by others—the “Gal Score”, “Guy Score”, “Trivia Score”, “Arts Score” and “Cosy Score”. Jaymi decides to fight back, for self-protection and to counteract this game’s destructive effects. He takes an irrevocable step: after creating Amber, the most dangerous of the characters (or Beasts, as he calls them) who will populate Jaymi’s project The Platinum Raven, he releases Amber from that game, such that Amber slithers out from Jaymi’s computer monitor. Appearing human, this now-incarnated Beast is sent to stalk Ain’tTheyFreaky!’s creators in real life. While Amber terrorises them, Jaymi creates a second Beast, Evelyn, a woman of ease and freedom, from his project The Imagination Thief. Incarnated too, she joins Amber in sabotaging a Bang Dead venture in the physical world. As Jaymi’s output spawns three more titles—The Host in the Attic, Apricot Eyes and Hallucination in Hong Kong—he jumps into the creation cycles and subsequent incarnations of five more varied and human-seeming Beasts. These are Shigem, Kim, the Platinum Raven, Scorpio, and his own simulacrum the Jaymi Beast. Targeted by a more lethal drone attack than the first one, he decides that his Beasts’ missions must escalate: they will infiltrate the very substance of Ain’tTheyFreaky!. Evelyn, Shigem and Kim therefore sneak into one of the game’s visual environments (a mythically seedy Downtown L.A.), where they try to put an end to some of the casually-programmed cruelty in the game. Shigem shames one Bang Dead programmer into secretly working for Jaymi instead; and Kim persuades another high-ranking Bang Dead employee to join Jaymi likewise. Five of the Beasts proceed to sabotage Ain’tTheyFreaky! at code level, turning its own server farm into a radically different kind of environment than before. Their sabotage takes aim at the game in such a way as to break it down into its constituent glyphs and pixels—then electrifies these, recombining them into brand-new forms of such enchanted love and wickedness and originality that they’d certainly have been forbidden by Bang Dead. Amid the resultant conflict, a Beast is sent to kill a human; a Beast is arrested, before escaping and wreaking revenge; and another human is lashed to the top of the transmitter tower above the Hollywood Sign, where... After the ensuing convulsions of destruction and violent creation have run their course, Jaymi’s Beasts slip away to their appointed onscreen destinations, one by one; and he is left alone again, just as he was before he brought them into being. As he fires up his newly-completed game The Imagination Thief for the first time, however, it is clear that neither he nor the world around him will ever quite be as before.
Download or read book Tragedy and Civilization written by Charles Segal and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on comprehensive analyses of all of Sophocles' plays, on structuralist anthropology, and on other extensive work on myth and tragedy, Charles Segal examines Sophocles both as a great dramatic poet and as a serious thinker. He shows how Sophoclean tragedy reflects the human condition in its constant and tragic struggle for order and civilized life against the ever-present threat of savagery and chaotic violence, both within society and within the individual. Tragedy and Civilization begins with a study of these themes and then proceeds to detailed discussions of each of the seven plays. For this edition Segal also provides a new preface discussing recent developments in the study of Sophocles.
Download or read book The Electra of Euripides written by Euripides and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Little Black Book of Murder written by Nancy Martin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Society columnist Nora Blackbird is thrust into the world of celebrity tabloid gossip when a billionaire buys the farm…. Nora’s assigned to write a profile on billionaire fashion designer Swain Starr, who recently retired to build a high-tech organic farm with his new wife, Zephyr, a former supermodel. But before Nora can get the story, the mogul is murdered. And now her boss wants her to snap up an exclusive on who killed Starr before the cops do. But solving this murder won’t be easy with a family as colorful as Nora’s. Mick, her sort-of husband, is associating with unsavory characters from his past. Her sister Libby is transforming into a stage mom for her diabolical twins. And Emma, the youngest Blackbird, is mysteriously kicked out of the house by Mick. Nora’s home life may be hogging the spotlight, but there’s also a matter of Starr’s missing pig, which just might be the key to solving this mystery and the way Nora can bring home the bacon….
Download or read book Hallucination in Hong Kong written by Rohan Quine and published by EC1 Digital. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Hallucination in Hong Kong by Rohan Quine, sliding from joy to nightmare and back, a plane-flight frames a journey into Jaymi’s and Angel’s polarised identities and perceptions, where past and present merge in an obsessive fantasy of love, death, horror and apocalyptic beauty. At take-off, warmed by the presence of his friend Angel beside him, Jaymi starts to doze, and enters a fog of horror in seeming to remember that their destination lies in the past, not ahead ... forcing him to explore those hellish possible events lying beneath the surface of our present and future, always ready to break through into reality. A Distinguished Favorite in the NYC Big Book Award 2021. As their plane takes off, Jaymi is warmed by the presence of his beloved friend Angel beside him. They are bound for Hong Kong, to perform a grand concert of unearthly music from a stage set high on the Peak. Jaymi starts to doze ... and enters a fog of horror in seeming to remember that this concert lies in their distant past, not their imminent future: it happened nine years ago, and straight after that triumphant occasion there occurred unexpected disaster and the permanent catatonia of Angel. Those terrible events were rendered all the more poignant by the idyllic chapter they had experienced upon first meeting and falling in love, which he now recalls in great detail. In reality (it would seem), Jaymi is on this flight alone, on a mission to put a compassionate end to Angel’s life, in view of his continued catatonia. And in an atmosphere of escalating nightmare and disjunction, incongruously set against the beauty of night-time Hong Kong as seen from the Peak and the Midlevels, this grim mission of euthanasia is accomplished – perhaps. That nightmare atmosphere is magnified by the obsessive flicker of Jaymi’s mind through complex permutations of his own possible guilt at betraying Angel, and the latter’s possible knowledge of this guilt ... because hadn’t there actually been a mirror on the ceiling above the bench where Angel lay supine years ago, unnoticed by Jaymi at the time but in fact revealing to Angel certain things about Jaymi’s movements that he hadn’t known Angel could see? Sliding from joy to nightmare, then back to a joy stained by the flavour of vanishing nightmare, Hallucination in Hong Kong explores those hellish possible events lying beneath the surface of our present and future, always ready to break through into reality if they become so inclined. In this journey, it conjures up from Jaymi’s and Angel’s polarised identities and perceptions an obsessive fantasy of dark androgyny, ironic horror and apocalyptic beauty. Rohan Quine, Hallucination in Hong Kong, literary fiction, magical realism, dark fantasy, horror, gay, Hong Kong, catatonia, plane flight, The Peak, concert, imagination, transgender, contemporary
Download or read book The Host in the Attic written by Rohan Quine and published by EC1 Digital. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Host in the Attic by Rohan Quine is a hologram of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, digitised and reframed in cinematic style, set in London’s Docklands in a few years’ time. High-flyer Jaymi discovers a secret novel online called The Imagination Thief, written by a woman named Alaia; and they meet and fall in love. In his attic he hides the prototype of a new worldwide Web-browsing hologram, for whose appearance he was the model. While this hologram deteriorates into ever more terrifying corruption, Jaymi’s appearance remains forever sweet and youthful, despite his escalating evil ... until the inevitable reckoning unfolds. A Distinguished Favorite in the NYC Big Book Award 2021. Brilliant software engineer Rik and executive Jaymi work at digital agencies in London (surely unaware that their fates are destined to echo those of Basil and Dorian, respectively the painter and the subject of The Picture of Dorian Gray). Rik uses Jaymi’s appearance as the model or “skin” for a cutting-edge interactive hologram that navigates the Web in enhanced ways, tailored to every user. The dissolute bigwig “Champagne” Marc makes this into a business reality, and through his cynical eloquence electrifies Jaymi with the knowledge that Jaymi will hereby become the face of the Web. Throughout the film-shoot of Jaymi for the making of the skin, these honeyed words of Marc (like those of Wilde’s Lord Henry to Dorian during the portrait’s creation) light powerful fires of vanity and hubris behind Jaymi’s eyes. As this holographic Web-guide’s hold over global information grows to a near monopoly, Jaymi is lionised, finding no door closed. But he yearns for still more: to see what the hologram itself can see online. So by trickery he succeeds in getting hold of a unique copy of the prototype hologram, with all regular filters removed. In private files online he thereby discovers a not-yet-published novel that will come to be called The Imagination Thief, by Alaia Danielle, with whom he has an intense romance (echoing Wilde’s actress Sibyl Vane with Dorian). But when Jaymi brutally dumps her, triggering her suicide, he is shocked to observe, on the same evening, that the face on his private prototype hologram has become crueller. Fascinated, he realises its appearance is changing in accordance with his own behaviour – and he hides it in his attic. For years he uses his unique online access for ever more megalomaniacal ends, ruining the lives of many whom he lures down into excess, addiction and suicide. While the hologram in the attic deteriorates into quite terrifying corruption, Jaymi’s appearance remains as sweet and youthful as the day he was filmed ... until the inevitable reckoning unfolds. Keywords: literary fiction, magical realism, dark fantasy, horror, Dorian Gray, hologram, London, Docklands, attic, The Imagination Thief, corridor, Ontario Tower, imagination, contemporary
Download or read book Dark Age written by Pierce Brown and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 907 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The bestselling author of Morning Star returns to the Red Rising universe with the thrilling sequel to Iron Gold. “Brown’s plots are like a depth charge of nitromethane dropped in a bucket of gasoline. His pacing is 100% him standing over it all with a lit match and a smile, waiting for us to dare him to drop it.”—NPR (Best Books of the Year) He broke the chains. Then he broke the world…. A decade ago Darrow led a revolution, and laid the foundations for a new world. Now he’s an outlaw. Cast out of the very Republic he founded, with half his fleet destroyed, he wages a rogue war on Mercury. Outnumbered and outgunned, is he still the hero who broke the chains? Or will he become the very evil he fought to destroy? In his darkening shadow, a new hero rises. Lysander au Lune, the displaced heir to the old empire, has returned to bridge the divide between the Golds of the Rim and Core. If united, their combined might may prove fatal to the fledgling Republic. On Luna, the embattled Sovereign of the Republic, Virginia au Augustus, fights to preserve her precious demokracy and her exiled husband. But one may cost her the other, and her son is not yet returned. Abducted by enemy agents, Pax au Augustus must trust in a Gray thief, Ephraim, for his salvation. Far across the void, Lyria, a Red refugee accused of treason, makes a desperate bid for freedom with the help of two unlikely new allies. Fear dims the hopes of the Rising, and as power is seized, lost, and reclaimed, the worlds spin on and on toward a new Dark Age. Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga: RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER
Download or read book Late Sophocles written by Thomas Van Nortwick and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible examination of the evolution of key Sophoclean characters
Download or read book Apricot Eyes written by Rohan Quine and published by EC1 Digital. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Apricot Eyes by Rohan Quine, a cat-and-mouse pursuit through the New York City night involves a preacher, a psychic and a dominatrix, broadcast live on air – until a horror is unearthed, bringing two of them together and the third to a sticky end. Beneath a waterfront waste ground in the Bronx, a monstrous population is being fattened up, by the preacher, for malign purposes. Jaymi and Scorpio are on his tracks, however, in a blast of fun that trumpets boldness, tolerance and voltage, celebrating the mystery and dangers furled just behind the surface of the everyday. A Distinguished Favorite in the NYC Big Book Award 2021. Having partially regained a power of second sight that he’d once possessed but lost, Jaymi Peek uses this ability in a live weekly television show online, where he channels onto the screen those unexpected places, hidden colours and hatching plans that he can perceive throughout New York City. He applies this sight to the task of relocating his old friend Scorpio, who has gone missing, but succeeds in catching only a glimpse of him in some unidentified corner of the city’s underbelly. Across a subway station, Jaymi notices an unwelcome visitor from his and Scorpio’s past – Kev Banton, who has now become a prominent evangelical preacher intent upon a moral cleansing of the population. Jaymi tails Kev discreetly through the subway, and is surprised when Kev’s journey ends at a waterfront waste ground in an industrial corner of the Bronx, where Kev slips out of sight amid an odd hum of underground engines... The monstrous population beneath this waste ground, and the malign purposes for which the preacher and his wife have been feeding it, are revealed in the course of a triangular cat-and-mouse pursuit involving Jaymi, Scorpio and the preacher. This unfolds in Scorpio’s physical pursuit of Kev through the crackle and night-pulse of the streets, from Times Square to the marginalised fringes of the city; in Jaymi’s psychic pursuit of Scorpio, whether streaking up high through the skyscrapers’ shine or secreted on a tanker as it rattles through the Bronx; and on screen, in the colourised shimmer of what Jaymi broadcasts live. In its rollicking journey through these hidden planes of New York, to the simplicity and sensuality of its ending, Apricot Eyes is a blast of fun that trumpets boldness, tolerance and voltage, celebrating the mystery and dangers furled just behind the surface of the everyday. Rohan Quine, Apricot Eyes, literary fiction, magical realism, dark fantasy, horror, gay, New York, worms, Bronx, subway, Hunts Point, imagination, transgender, contemporary
Download or read book Merci Su rez Changes Gears written by Meg Medina and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2019 Newbery Medal Thoughtful, strong-willed sixth-grader Merci Suarez navigates difficult changes with friends, family, and everyone in between in a resonant new novel from Meg Medina. Merci Suarez knew that sixth grade would be different, but she had no idea just how different. For starters, Merci has never been like the other kids at her private school in Florida, because she and her older brother, Roli, are scholarship students. They don’t have a big house or a fancy boat, and they have to do extra community service to make up for their free tuition. So when bossy Edna Santos sets her sights on the new boy who happens to be Merci’s school-assigned Sunshine Buddy, Merci becomes the target of Edna’s jealousy. Things aren't going well at home, either: Merci’s grandfather and most trusted ally, Lolo, has been acting strangely lately — forgetting important things, falling from his bike, and getting angry over nothing. No one in her family will tell Merci what's going on, so she’s left to her own worries, while also feeling all on her own at school. In a coming-of-age tale full of humor and wisdom, award-winning author Meg Medina gets to the heart of the confusion and constant change that defines middle school — and the steadfast connection that defines family.
Download or read book Vladimir written by Julia May Jonas and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NPR, Washington Post, Time, People, Vulture, Guardian, Vox, Kirkus Reviews, Newsweek, LitHub, and New York Public Library Best Book of the Year * “Delightful…cathartic, devious, and terrifically entertaining.” —The New York Times * “Timely, whip-smart, and darkly funny.” —People (Book of the Week) A provocative, razor-sharp, and timely debut novel about a beloved English professor facing a slew of accusations against her professor husband by former students—a situation that becomes more complicated when she herself develops an obsession of her own... “When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.” And so we are introduced to our deliciously incisive narrator: a popular English professor whose charismatic husband at the same small liberal arts college is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extra-marital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir, a celebrated, married young novelist who’s just arrived on campus, their tinder box world comes dangerously close to exploding. With this bold, edgy, and uncommonly assured debut, author Julia May Jonas takes us into charged territory, where the boundaries of morality bump up against the impulses of the human heart. Propulsive, darkly funny, and wildly entertaining, Vladimir perfectly captures the personal and political minefield of our current moment, exposing the nuances and the grey area between power and desire.
Download or read book The Unicorn Emergency 8 written by Lucy Coats and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-27 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How will Demon, official Beast Keeper of Mount Olympus, heal a herd of sick unicorns before it's too late? Demon has just returned from a trip to Asgard when a brand-new set of disasters fall into his lap. Not only does he have a groggy volcano monster to deal with, but something seems to be wrong with the unicorns, too. Demon's only clue is a mysterious note saying "Unicorn Emergency!" left on his bed. What does it mean? And how will Demon figure out the problem and fix it before time runs out?
Download or read book Le Deuxi me Sexe written by Simone de Beauvoir and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1989 with total page 791 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic manifesto of the liberated woman, this book explores every facet of a woman's life.
Download or read book The Imagination Thief written by Rohan Quine and published by EC1 Digital and the Firsty Group. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Imagination Thief by Rohan Quine is about a web of secrets, triggered by the stealing and copying of people’s imaginations and memories. It’s about the magic that can be conjured up by images of people, in imagination or on film; the split between beauty and happiness in the world; and the allure of various kinds of power. A Distinguished Favorite in the NYC Big Book Award 2021, it celebrates some of the most extreme possibilities of human imagination, personality and language, exploring the darkest and brightest flavours of beauty living in our minds. Alone in his skyscraper office one night, Jaymi undergoes a transformation that will change his life: he acquires the power to see into others’ minds, and then to control and project their thoughts. Realising the potential of this gift, he hypnotises a media mogul into agreeing to broadcast an electrifying extravaganza of sound and vision emanating from Jaymi, the like of which has never been witnessed before, that will captivate millions. However, one of the mogul’s underlings has more subversive plans for milking Jaymi’s talent, involving the theft of others’ imaginations and intimate memories for commercial gain. The broadcasting of his visions plunges Jaymi and his best friend Alaia on a journey into the underbelly of Asbury Park – a seaside town once full of life but now half-forgotten. The town’s entire oceanfront is now almost a ghost town: ruled by gangsters and drug dealers, headed by Lucan, it is populated by lost souls and the beautiful who have fallen on hard times. Blackmailed into thieving the most private and primal memories and experiences from these people’s imaginations, Jaymi discovers a web of secrets and provocations simmering beneath the surface of the town, about to explode. When a waxwork of Lucan’s decapitated head is anonymously planted in his own bar, fear bubbles up, as everyone becomes a suspect in this unforgivable challenge to Lucan’s dominance. Then when another provocative waxwork appears – a naked full-body modelling of Lucan’s beautiful but tortured lover, Angel – Jaymi knows he must use his own gift to discover the perpetrator before Lucan does. Delving into and celebrating the most beautiful and extreme possibilities of human imagination, personality and love, The Imagination Thief is literary fiction, with a touch of magical realism and a dusting of horror. It explores the universal human predicaments of power, beauty, happiness, hopelessness, good and evil. Keywords: literary fiction, magical realism, dark fantasy, horror, gay, Asbury Park, psychic, New York, broadcast, imagination, transgender, contemporary, enhanced ebook
Download or read book Antigone written by Sophocles and published by . This book was released on 1853 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Platinum Raven written by Rohan Quine and published by EC1 Digital. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Platinum Raven by Rohan Quine is a triple convulsion whereby our heroine Raven escalates herself into the Chocolate Raven and then the Platinum Raven, from London to Dubai to the tower in the hills in the desert – then back down again, forever changed. The daydreams of the downtrodden Raven propel her into a fantasy life as a more glamorous version of herself: a party girl living in the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. This latter’s imagination then spawns a yet more empowered and intense version of herself, as empress of a sequence of events whose fusion of extraordinary beauty, violence and sensuality is bewitching... A Distinguished Favorite in the NYC Big Book Award 2021. In her cubicle high in the Shard in London, a sweet-natured, raven-haired receptionist named Raven is even more rudely mistreated than usual for a Monday morning. Recovering from this, her daydreams propel her into the fantasy life of a richer and more glamorous version of herself, who lives higher up in the world’s tallest skyscraper – the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai. Raven thinks of this woman as the Chocolate Raven, owing to her chocolate-coloured hair, which frames a face that’s just like her own; and straightaway, Raven cannot get enough of watching this glamorous creature. The Chocolate Raven is a party girl whose lifestyle has a certain flash, albeit a certain flatness too. Standing on the vertiginous 152nd-Level terrace of the Burj Khalifa, she gazes across the desert at dusk, to the rock-slopes of the Hajar Mountains – and a mad-faced nightclub tower of shadow sprouts up, there on those slopes, from her gaze. This tower is run by a woman with a face just like the Chocolate Raven’s, but with platinum-blonde instead of chocolate-coloured hair, who lives a yet more empowered and intensely-coloured life: for she is the Platinum Raven, no less. And tonight she will preside over the launch of a revolutionary new club drug called mirror mist. Between this uber-glamorous Platinum Raven and her companions Scorpio and Amber, there unfolds a sequence of events whose fusion of extraordinary beauty and violence and sensuality so bewitches the watching Chocolate Raven, that she is miserably desolate as soon as these events finish at dawn when the rising desert sun destroys that nocturnal tower on the rock-slopes. She therefore sets out on a mission to regain the voltage of the vanished building and the allure of its exotic denizens ... whereupon a stark piece of evidence of the Platinum Raven’s realm is channelled through the Chocolate Raven and is pulled right back down to earth in the original daydreamer Raven herself. Rohan Quine, The Platinum Raven, literary fiction, magical realism, dark fantasy, horror, gay, Dubai, Burj Khalifa, Shard, towers, imagination, transgender, contemporary, fairy tale
Download or read book The Last Days of Detroit written by Mark Binelli and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * It was 'the most modern city in the world, the city of tomorrow'. But the Fifties witnessed one of the greatest economic slides of the last century, as Detroit, formerly a beacon of the capitalist dream, degenerated into the urban wilderness it is today, where trees grow from the rooftops of derelict buildings and wild pheasants roam the long-empty parking lots. * By the end of the nineteenth century Detroit was thriving. 1913 saw the arrival of Henry Ford and the Model T plant, mass-producing cars and transforming the area into the Silicon Valley of its day. By the mid-1950s General Motors had become the single biggest employer on earth, and Detroit the fourth largest city in America. * But by the time Berry Gordy founded Motown Records in 1960 - creating Detroit's other great assembly line - the cracks were already beginning to show- big industry was looking elsewhere for cheaper sites, cheaper labour and better tax breaks; urban planning was in meltdown; corruption was rife; racial tensions were running high. * The 1967 riots - at the time the worst in US history - left 43 dead, more than 7,000 arrested and 3,000 buildings destroyed. Detroit, a former beacon of the capitalist dream, had degenerated into an urban wilderness where unemployment ran at 50%. With more guns in the city than people, the murder rate was the highest in America - three times that of New York. * Mark Binelli returned to live in his native Detroit after a break of many years. He tells the story of the boom and the bust - and of the new society to be found emerging from the debris- Detroit with its urban farms and vibrant arts scene - Detroit as a laboratory for the post-industrial, post-recession world. Here's what an iconic rust-belt city now looks like and how it might transform and regenerate itself in the twenty-first century.