Author: Simon Dixon File Type: mobi FromCatherine II of Russia (172996) might have been forgotten as a German-born Romanov brood mare but for her unscrupulous seizure of the Russian throne in 1762 and subsequent lengthy reign as the quintessential Enlightenment monarchachievements that have fascinated posterity ever since. For her remarkable story, British historian Dixon, steeped in Catherines setting, positions his work between the scholarly and the salacious and accents courtier politics and the autocrats sensibilities. After recounting the palace coup that brought Catherine to power, Dixon develops her approach to wielding it through her interactions with builders, diplomats, generals, lackeys, and pen pals, such as Voltaire, on the receiving end of her reforming zeal. With the building boom in St. Petersburg, constitutional changes, and territorial expansion that accompanied her reign as backdrops to his portrait, Dixon sympathetically educes Catherines personal life that is, the train of swains caught up in heras one chapter title puts itsearch for emotional stability. An appreciation of the person Catherine the Great that is full of insightful perceptions. --Gilbert Taylor ReviewThere is lots new in this superb biography . . . [Dixon] manages to be scholarly, refreshing, commonsensical and compelling, vividly portraying the charismatic Empress and her times. (Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Sashenka and Young Stalin ) Like Catherine herself, Simon Dixons new biography is attractive, engaging, and very intelligent. It wears its scholarship lightly, too, but established fans of the Russian empress will find plenty of new material and those who are meeting her for the first time will be dazzled. (Catherine Merridale, author of Ivans War and Night of Stone Death and Memory in Russia )

Author: Elyse Graham File Type: pdf Many of todays digital platforms are designed according to the same model they encourage users to create content for fun (a mode of production that some have termed playbour) and to earn points. On Facebook, for example, points are based on a users number of friends and how many likes and shares a comment receives. New cultural and literary formations have arisen out of these feedback and reward systems, with surprising effects on amateur literary production. Drawing on social-text analysis, platform studies, and game studies, Elyse Graham shows that embedding game structures in the operations of digital platforms a practice known in corporate circles as gamification can have large cumulative effects on textual ecosystems. Making the production of content feel like play helps to drive up the volume of text being written, and as a result, gamification has gained widespread popularity online, especially among social media platforms, fan forums, and other sites of user-generated content. The Republic of Games argues that a consequence of this profound increase in the volume of text being produced is a reliance on self-contained, user-based systems of information management to deal with the mass of new content. Opening up new avenues of analysis in contemporary media studies and the humanities, The Republic of Games sifts through the gamified patterns of writing, interacting, and meaning-making that define the digital revolution. **About the Author Elyse Graham is assistant professor of digital humanities at Stony Brook University.