Author: Denis F. Sullivan File Type: pdf The Parangelmata Poliorcetica and the Geodesia, two Greek treatises on the construction of devices for siege warfare, are products of 10th-century Byzantium. The texts are presented here in critical editions based, for the first time, on the archetype manuscript Vaticanus graecus 1605 and accompanied by an English translation and commentary. The illustrations, reproduced in this edition, go beyond the traditional ground plans of the time and show elevations to represent finished devices in action.

Author: Robert Kolker File Type: epub div id=iframeContent dir=autoAward-winning investigative reporter Robert Kolker delivers a haunting and humanizing account of the true-life search for a serial killer still at large on Long Island, in a compelling tale of unsolved murder and Internet prostitution.One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert, after running through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach screaming for her life, went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the twenty-four-year-old she was a Craigslist prostitute who had been fleeing a sceneof what, no one could be sure. The Suffolk County Police, too, seemed to have paid little attentionuntil seven months later, when an unexpected discovery in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap. But none of them Shannans.There was Maureen Brainard-Barnes, last seen at Penn Station in Manhattan three years earlier, and Melissa Barthelemy, last seen in the Bronx in 2009. There was Megan Waterman, last seen leaving a hotel in Hauppage, Long Island, just a month after Shannans disappearance in 2010, and Amber Lynn Costello, last seen leaving a house in West Babylon a few months later that same year. Like Shannan, all four women were petite and in their twenties, they all came from out of town to work as escorts, and they all advertised on Craigslist and its competitor, Backpage.In a triumph of reportingand in a riveting narrativeRobert Kolker presents the first detailed look at the shadow world of escorts in the Internet age, where making a living is easier than ever and the dangers remain all too real. He has talked exhaustively with the friends and family of each woman to reveal the three-dimensional truths about their lives, the struggling towns they came from, and the dreams they chased. And he has gained unique access to the Oak Beach neighborhood that has found itself the focus of national media scrutinywhere the police have flailed, the body count has risen, and the neighbors have begun pointing fingers at one another. There, in a remote community, out of sight of the beaches and marinas scattered along the South Shore barrier islands, the womens stories come together in death and dark mystery. Lost Girls is a portrait not just of five women, but of unsolved murder in an idyllic part of America, of the underside of the Internet, and of the secrets we keep without admitting to ourselves that we keep them.ReviewKolker is a careful writer and researcher...[he paints] a far more nuanced picture of each young woman than any screaming headline could. ( Miami Herald ) Through extensive interviews with the victims families and friends, Kolker creates compassionate portraits of the murdered young women, and uncovers the forces that drove them from their respective home towns into risky, but lucrative, careers as prostitutes in a digital age. ( New Yorker ) Captivating. ( *Boston Globe* ) Robert Kolker unflinchingly probes the 21st-century innovations that facilitated these crimes ...An important examination of the socioeconomic and cultural forces that can shape a womans entry into prostitution. ( Kirkus Reviews ) Beautifully and provocatively written.... [Lost Girls] will make all but the hardest-hearted empathetic. Add a baffling whodunit that remains, as the subtitle indicates, unsolved, and you have a captivating true crime narrative thats sure to win new converts and please longtime fans of the genre. ( Publishers Weekly (starred review) ) Robert Kolkers LOST GIRLS is reportage at the highest level its miss-your-bedtime storytelling Its a wonder. ( Darin Strauss, author of Half A Life ) Lost Girls is a marvelous book, taking a complicated, trying story and making it compulsively readable. Kolker is an outstanding reporter and a sensitive narrator who does justice to a horrible tragedy by paying exactly the kind of attention that no one else did, or would. ( Nick Reding, author of Methland ) The absence of the killer is the making of this book, a constraint that allows it to become extraordinaryhumane and imaginative[Kolker] shows the dented magnificence and universal sorrow within ordinary lives, and makes you realize how much more they are worth. ( Laura Miller, Salon ) Kolker indulges in zero preaching and very little sociology his is the lens of a classic police reporter. And often in Lost Girls , the facts are eloquent in themselves. ( Newsday ) Some true crime books are exploitativeothers grasp at serious literature. Robert Kolkers new book falls into the latter category. ( New York Observer )