Going Postal

“[Pratchett’s] books are almost always better than they have to be, and Going Postal is no exception, full of nimble wordplay, devious plotting and outrageous situations, but always grounded in an astute understanding of human nature.” — San Francisco Chronicle The 33rd installment in acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, a splendid send-up of government, the postal system, and everything that lies in between. Suddenly, condemned arch-swindler Moist von Lipwig found himself with a noose around his neck and dropping through a trapdoor into . . . a government job? By all rights, Moist should be meeting his maker rather than being offered a position as Postmaster by Lord Vetinari, supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork. Getting the moribund Postal Service up and running again, however, may prove an impossible task, what with literally mountains of decades-old undelivered mail clogging every nook and cranny of the broken-down post office. Worse still, Moist could swear the mail is talking to him. Worst of all, it means taking on the gargantuan, greedy Grand Trunk clacks communication monopoly and its bloodthirsty piratical headman. But if the bold and undoable are what's called for, Moist's the man for the job—to move the mail, continue breathing, get the girl, and specially deliver that invaluable commodity that every being, human or otherwise requires: hope. The Discworld novels can be read in any order but Going Postal is the first book in the Moist von Lipwig series.

'Always push your luck because no one else would push it for you.' Imprisoned in Ankh-Morpork, con artist Moist von Lipwig is offered a choice: to be executed or to accept a job as the city's Postmaster General. It's a tough decision, but he's already survived one hanging and isn't in the mood to try it again. The Post Office is down on its luck: beset by mountains of undelivered mail, eccentric employees, and a dangerous secret order. To save his skin, Moist will need to restore the postal service to its former glory, with the help of tough talking activist Adora Belle Dearheart. Who happens to be very attractive, in an 'entire womanful of anger' kind of way. But there's new technology to compete against and an evil chairman who will stop at nothing to delay Ankh-Morpork's post for good . . . 'One of the best expressions of his unstoppable flow of comic invention' The Times Going Postal is the first book in the Moist von Lipwig series, but you can read the Discworld novels in any order.

"You Get To A Point Where You Can Take Just So Much." EDMOND, OK-Postal employee Patrick Henry Sherrill fatally shoots 14 co-workers before turning the gun on himself. ESCONDIDO, CA-Postal employee John Merlin Taylor murders his wife in her sleep before executing 2 colleagues at work. RIDGEWOOD, NJ-Postal employee Joseph H. Harris breaks into his boss's house and slashes her to death with a samurai sword after losing his job. ROYAL OAK, MI-Postal employee Thomas Mellvane shoots and kills three supervisors following his dismissal, then pumps a bullet into his own head. GOING POSTAL Are they vengeful, cool-blooded killers? Or model employees driven beyond the brink of madness? Bloody massacres across America have struck like an epidemic, leaving a stunned nation in shock and mourning as growing numbers of disgruntled postal workers savagely strike out at the bosses who criticized or fired them. With this deadly violence on the rise, true crime author Don Lassester travels coast to coast probing the lives and grisly crimes of these enraged killers. Including first-hand accounts by the survivors and witnesses, GOING POSTAL asks who's to blame as it explores this horrifying, exclusively American phenomenon that is turning post offices into ticking time bombs. With 12 pages of shocking photographs!

Going Postal examines the phenomenon of rage murder that took America by storm in the early 1980's and has since grown yearly in body counts and symbolic value. By looking at massacres in schools and offices as post-industrial rebellions, Mark Ames is able to juxtapose the historical place of rage in America with the social climate after Reaganomics began to effect worker's paychecks. But why high schools? Why post offices? Mark Ames examines the most fascinating and unexpected cases, crafting a convincing argument for workplace massacres as modern day slave rebellions. Like slave rebellions, rage massacres are doomed, gory, sometimes inadvertently comic, and grossly misunderstood. Going Postal seeks to contextualize this violence in a world where working isn't—and doesn’t pay—what it used to. Part social critique and part true crime page-turner, Going Postal answers the questions asked by commentators on the nightly news and films such as Bowling for Columbine.

Postal stickers have long been a preferred substrate used by street artists to get up. Of course, because stickers from the US Postal Service, UPS, DHL and FEDEX are so readily available, so many of these stickers get lost in the fray. That's where graffiti photography legend Martha Cooper comes in. Shooting the origins of hip-hop and graffiti cultures since the late 1970s in New York City, and later all over the world, Cooper's well-trained eyes know how to recognize deft sticker art. Here then is a collection of more than 200 photographs of some of Cooper's favorite handmade postal stickers from around the world, whether done by some of the scene's better-known artists or the anonymous. Going Postal documents how an old-school method has burgeoned into another rich facet of the world's graffiti cultures.

Moist von Lipwig was a con artist, a fraud and a man faced with a life choice: be hanged, or put Ankh-Morpork's ailing postal service back on its feet. It was a tough decision. With the help of a golem who has been at the bottom of hole in the ground for over two hundred years, a pin fanatic and Junior Postman Groat, he's got to see that the mail gets through. In taking on the evil chairman of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, and a midnight killer, he's also got to stay alive. Getting a date with Adora Bell Dearheart would be nice, too. In the mad world of the mail, can a criminal succeed where honest men have failed and died? Perhaps there's a shot at redemption for man who's prepared to push the envelope...

A brilliant probe into the political and psychological effects of our changing relationship with social media Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. We write to the machine as individuals, but it responds by aggregating our fantasies, desires and frailties into data, and returning them to us as a commodity experience. The Twittering Machine is an unflinching view into the calamities of digital life: the circus of online trolling, flourishing alt-right subcultures, pervasive corporate surveillance, and the virtual data mines of Facebook and Google where we spend considerable portions of our free time. In this polemical tour de force, Richard Seymour shows how the digital world is changing the ways we speak, write, and think. Through journalism, psychoanalytic reflection and insights from users, developers, security experts and others, Seymour probes the human side of the machine, asking what we’re getting out of it, and what we’re getting into. Social media held out the promise that we could make our own history–to what extent did we choose the nightmare that it has become?

'FOR THE ENEMY IS NOT TROLL, NOR IS IT DWARF, BUT IT IS THE BALEFUL, THE MALIGN, THE COWARDLY, THE VESSELS OF HATRED, THOSE WHO DO A BAD THING AND CALL IT GOOD ...' In the city of Ankh-Morpork, tension is rising between dwarf and troll communities. A dwarven fanatic has been stoking the flames of an old hatred born of the Battle of Koom Valley -an ancient war between the races that neither side has quite got over. When the dwarf is murdered, with a troll the only witness, Commander Sam Vimes of the City Watch must solve the case before history repeats itself. With his beloved Watch crumbling around him and war drums sounding, Vimes must unravel every clue, outwit every assassin and brave any darkness to find the solution. But darkness is following him ... And at six o'clock every day he must go home to read a bedtime story to his son. There are some things you have to do. 'Consistently funny, consistently clever and consistently surprising in its twists and turns' SFX Thud! is the seventh book in the City Watch series, but you can read the Discworld novels in any order.