Tina S Groove

The shrewdly self-aware and empowered Tina boldly shatters the stereotype of 30-something single women as neurotics obsessed with high-powered careers or with marriage. Self-assured waitress Tina is the star of the strip Tina's Groove by cartoonist Rina Piccolo. Readers can follow the adventures-in her personal life and as she works at Pepper's restaurant-of this single, smart, attractive woman in her 30s. Supporting players include Tina's best friend, Suzanne, a fellow waitress with a busily buzzing social calendar and a penchant for offering unsolicited advice; Carlos, a man's man who talks a good game; Monica, a spacey, distracted hostess at the restaurant; Rob, the straitlaced restaurant manager; and Claud, the outlandish, storytelling, truck-driving Pepper's regular. Tina's Groove is sure to appeal to independent working women in their 30s who are hungry for a character to whom they can relate. In syndication for more than three years, the strip appears in such newspapers as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Arizona Republic, and the Toronto Star.

What did you do before Google? The rise of Google as the dominant Internet search provider reflects a generationally-inflected notion that everything that matters is now on the Web, and should, in the moral sense of the verb, be accessible through search. In this theoretically nuanced study of search technology’s broader implications for knowledge production and social relations, the authors shed light on a culture of search in which our increasing reliance on search engines influences not only the way we navigate, classify, and evaluate Web content, but also how we think about ourselves and the world around us, online and off. Ken Hillis, Michael Petit, and Kylie Jarrett seek to understand the ascendancy of search and its naturalization by historicizing and contextualizing Google’s dominance of the search industry, and suggest that the contemporary culture of search is inextricably bound up with a metaphysical longing to manage, order, and categorize all knowledge. Calling upon this nexus between political economy and metaphysics, Google and the Culture of Search explores what is at stake for an increasingly networked culture in which search technology is a site of knowledge and power.

EPISODES is a memoir like no other. Debut writer, Blaze Ginsberg, offers a unique perspective on his life as a highly-functioning autistic 21 year old. Inspired by the format of the Internet Movie Database, Blaze organizes his life events as a collection of episodes. Some episodes are still running, some are in syndication, and some have sadly come to an end. With an innovative style and approach that is all its own, EPISODES reinvents the traditional memoir; and it will inspire young readers to see the world as they've never seen it before.

In the first bilingual work on the reptiles and amphibians of the US–Mexico border, top herpetologists come together to describe the herpetofauna of the states of this region, which includes more than 600 species of toads, frogs, salamanders, turtles, sea turtles, alligators, lizards, snakes, and sea snakes that are found along the almost 2,000-mile border between the two countries. Each chapter is devoted to one state—four in the US (California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas) and six in Mexico (Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas)—with text in both English and Spanish. The chapters contain an introduction to the area, a review of the research, a sketch of the state’s physiography, and a description of the species present as well as the pertinent conservation issues they face. A color photo gallery includes images of nearly all species. Almost 40 percent of the featured native species are shared between the US and Mexico, reminding us that animals depend on the integrity of natural landscapes and proving the need for a comprehensive, bilingual reference to help lead a shared effort in the management and conservation of the borderlands.