Matthew Taylor

Sport and the Home Front contributes in significant and original ways to our understanding of the social and cultural history of the Second World War. It explores the complex and contested treatment of sport in government policy, media representations and the everyday lives of wartime citizens. Acknowledged as a core component of British culture, sport was also frequently criticised, marginalised and downplayed, existing in a constant state of tension between notions of normality and exceptionality, routine and disruption, the everyday and the extraordinary. The author argues that sport played an important, yet hitherto neglected, role in maintaining the morale of the British people and providing a reassuring sense of familiarity at a time of mass anxiety and threat. Through the conflict, sport became increasingly regarded as characteristic of Britishness; a symbol of the ‘ordinary’ everyday lives in defence of which the war was being fought. Utilised to support the welfare of war workers, the entertainment of service personnel at home and abroad and the character formation of schoolchildren and young citizens, sport permeated wartime culture, contributing to new ways in which the British imagined the past, present and future. Using a wide range of personal and public records – from diary writing and club minute books to government archives – this book breaks new ground in both the history of the British home front and the history of sport.

A tender and emotional 60's coming-of-age story, Levies of Devotion is a perfect summer porch-swing read Missing in action for over forty years, American GI Robert Clark's remains are discovered on a hillside in Vietnam. While exhuming the grave, the recovery team is surprised by a local woman in possession of letters written by Clark. The letters threaten to expose closely-held secrets and renew bitter family rivalries. And the woman in possession of the letters, she has a secret of her own. Levies of Devotion explores the lives of four youths coming of age in Western New York amidst the backdrop of Vietnam and the cultural upheaval of the 1960's. Choices made at a tender age sealing their collective destinies. Love and intimacy, courage and family expectations forge paths riddled with loss and the living reminders of loss. Richly woven with the detail of period and place, Levies of Devotion captures the emotion of first love, from seeds of desire through the harvest of wisdom.

The Big Idea shortlisted for series design in the British Design and Production AwardsModern medicine is exceptionally powerful, and has achieved unprecedented successes. But it comes at a price; individuals suffer from medicine’s failures, and the economic costs of medicine are now stratospheric. Have we got the balance wrong? Is Medicine Still Good For Us? sets out the facts about our medical establishments in a clear, engaging style, interrogating the ethics of modern practices and the impact they have on all our lives.

Structured directly around the specification of the OCR, this is the definitive textbook for students of Advanced Subsidiary or Advanced Level courses. The updated third edition covers all the necessary topics for Philosophy of Religion in an enjoyable student-friendly fashion. Each chapter includes: a list of key issues OCR specification checklist explanations of key terminology overviews of key scholars and theories self-test review and exam practice questions. To maximise students’ chances of success, the book contains a section dedicated to answering examination questions. It comes complete with diagrams and tables, lively illustrations, a comprehensive glossary and full bibliography. Additional resources are available via the companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/mayled.

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Delve into what it was like to live during the eighteenth century by reading the first-hand accounts of everyday people, including city dwellers and farmers, businessmen and bankers, artisans and merchants, artists and their patrons, politicians and their constituents. Original texts make the American, French, and Industrial revolutions vividly contemporary.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++Cambridge University LibraryT202615London: printed for J. Pridden, 1770?]. 2v., plates; 8

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Delve into what it was like to live during the eighteenth century by reading the first-hand accounts of everyday people, including city dwellers and farmers, businessmen and bankers, artisans and merchants, artists and their patrons, politicians and their constituents. Original texts make the American, French, and Industrial revolutions vividly contemporary.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++Cambridge University LibraryT202615London: printed for J. Pridden, 1770?]. 2v., plates; 8

Routledge A Level Religious Studies: AS and Year One is an engaging and comprehensive textbook for the new 2016 OCR A Level Religious Studies syllabus. Structured closely around the OCR specification, this textbook covers philosophy, ethics and Christianity, in an engaging and student-friendly way. Each chapter includes: An OCR specification checklist, to clearly illustrate which topics from the specification are covered in each chapter; Explanations of key terminology; Review questions, thought points and activities to test understanding; An overview of key scholars and theories; Chapter summaries. With a section dedicated to preparing for assessment, Routledge A Level Religious Studies: AS and Year One provides students with all the skills they need to succeed. This book comes complete with diagrams and tables, lively illustrations, a comprehensive glossary and full bibliography. The companion website hosts a wealth of further resources to enhance the learning experience.

The story of British football's journey from public school diversion to mass media entertainment is a remarkable one. The Association Game traces British football from the establishment of the earliest clubs in the nineteenth century to its place as one of the prominent and commercialised leisure industries at the beginning of the twenty first century. It covers supporters and fandom, status and culture, big business, the press and electronic media and development in playing styles, tactics and rules. This is the only up to date book on the history of British football, covering the twentieth century shift from amateur to professional and whole of the British Isles, not just England.

OCR Philosophy of Religion for AS and A2 is a textbook for students of Advanced Subsidiary or Advanced Level courses, endorsed by OCR for use with the OCR GCE Religious Studies specification. The book covers all the topics of the Philosophy of Religion component of the A Level specification in an enjoyable and student-friendly fashion. This second edition has been restructured for the revised specification and now includes new chapters on the 'Nature of God' and 'Religion and Science'. Each chapter includes:a list of key issues, to introduce students to the topic OCR specification checklist, to allow students to see which topics from the specification are covered in each chapterexplanations of key terminology discussion questions, thought points and activities exam-style practice questionsself-test review questions helpful summaries annotated further reading suggestions. To maximize students' chances of exam success, the book includes a chapter dedicated to answering examination questions. The book comes complete with lively illustrations, a comprehensive glossary, a full bibliography and a companion website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415468244.

Structured directly around the specification of the OCR, this is the definitive textbook for students of Advanced Subsidiary or Advanced Level courses. The updated third edition covers all the necessary topics for Philosophy of Religion in an enjoyable student-friendly fashion. Each chapter includes: a list of key issues OCR specification checklist explanations of key terminology overviews of key scholars and theories self-test review and exam practice questions. To maximise students’ chances of success, the book contains a section dedicated to answering examination questions. It comes complete with diagrams and tables, lively illustrations, a comprehensive glossary and full bibliography. Additional resources are available via the companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/mayled.

Gordon Hunter has dreams of a world destroyed an eon ago. He vividly remembers the eve of Atlantis's fall. When one of those dreams bursts into his house in the middle of the night, he is forced to deal with the possibility that they might not be dreams at all, but mementos of Atlantis. Have you ever felt like you didn't belong in your own skin? Have you met someone and had an instant inexplicable connection with them? Have you had dreams of a past that you can't explain? Have you ever had that feeling that you've been to a place before, even on your first visit? Maybe you, like Gordon, are one of the Aalande, the people of Atlantis, who long ago developed the technology to allow their souls to be reborn after their bodies passed on, and also the technology that allows them to reawaken those memories once and for all. Mementos of Atlantis is a novel by Matthew Taylor. The story starts in the small (fictitious) Appalachian town of Davis Junction, but Gordon's adventures soon find him circling the globe in search of an Atlantis that he knows exists. He knows because he is a reincarnated Atlantean, and his past-life memories have just been opened to him, allowing him to draw upon the experiences of a multitude of lifetimes. He must find Atlantis before his nemesis Vaeno, also a reborn Atlantean, finds it and uses the technology within for his own dark purpose. Meanwhile, Gordon needs to find a way to deal with his darkest memory, the memory that he is the person responsible for bringing about the destruction of the greatest civilization in all of history. Mixing mythology, history, fantasy, and science fiction, Mementos of Atlantis takes the reader on an adventure of mythical proportions. Mementos of Atlantis is a novel intended for adults and contains some graphic violence, coarse language, and sexually explicit scenes.

Football's journey from the playing fields of Victorian public schools to the television screens of millions is a fascinating one. From modest origins, football rapidly took a grip on the affections and loyalties of the late nineteenth-century working classes and was transformed into a business involving thousands of paying spectators and the buying and selling of 'star' performers. After the golden age of the 1940s and '50s, attendances declined towards a nadir reached in the 1980s, only to re-emerge stronger than ever with the arrival of the Premier League as a global phenomenon in the 1990s. This book takes the reader back to the world of clanking turnstiles and baggy shorts, recreating the changing experiences of watching and playing football throughout the twentieth century. Drawing on expert knowledge and rare archival material, it charts the rise, fall and rebirth of the Beautiful Game in Britain.

In reinforcement learning (RL) problems, learning agents sequentially execute actions with the goal of maximizing a reward signal. The RL framework has gained popularity with the development of algorithms capable of mastering increasingly complex problems, but learning difficult tasks is often slow or infeasible when RL agents begin with no prior knowledge. The key insight behind "transfer learning" is that generalization may occur not only within tasks, but also across tasks. While transfer has been studied in the psychological literature for many years, the RL community has only recently begun to investigate the benefits of transferring knowledge. This book provides an introduction to the RL transfer problem and discusses methods which demonstrate the promise of this exciting area of research. The key contributions of this book are: Definition of the transfer problem in RL domains Background on RL, sufficient to allow a wide audience to understand discussed transfer concepts Taxonomy for transfer methods in RL Survey of existing approaches In-depth presentation of selected transfer methods Discussion of key open questions By way of the research presented in this book, the author has established himself as the pre-eminent worldwide expert on transfer learning in sequential decision making tasks. A particular strength of the research is its very thorough and methodical empirical evaluation, which Matthew presents, motivates, and analyzes clearly in prose throughout the book. Whether this is your initial introduction to the concept of transfer learning, or whether you are a practitioner in the field looking for nuanced details, I trust that you will find this book to be an enjoyable and enlightening read. Peter Stone, Associate Professor of Computer Science