If you're like many music lovers, you still have a lot of your music collection on old records and tape cassettes. You probably want to be able to listen to a lot of that music on your iPod, but re-purchasing all of it in digital form would cost you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. Have no fear, this book provides an easy-to-read, non-technical guide to digitizing all of those records on the cheap. You'll get an overview of the tools available to help you with the task and how to find them. From there, you'll get a gentle introduction to the world of digital audio that focuses on the task at hand with no unnecessary tech-speak. You'll also learn how to use the software that can digitize that music into your computer, including how to clean up tape hiss, hum, pops, and clicks from the material. You'll even get tips on how to organize your MP3s and which MP3 players are the best buy. By the end of the book, you'll have learned to transfer all of your old records and tapes to MP3s you can listen to on the go, remastered some of your scratched records and worn-out tapes, and learned a little bit of pro audio to boot. So what are you waiting for? Your new digital music library awaits you!

The stereotypes of men in popular culture, from hairy-chested movie stars to rough-hewn heroes, do not alone represent masculinity. In fact, there are many ways to define masculine behavior, from revealing one's feminine side to consuming vast quantities of beer. Now, a leading scholar explores the origins, structures, and dynamics of masculinity in a unique new reference work.

In a timely reminder of how the past informs the present, Baruch Kimmerling and Joel Migdal offer an authoritative account of the history of the Palestinian people from their modern origins to the Oslo peace process and beyond. Palestinians struggled to create themselves as a people from the first revolt of the Arabs in Palestine in 1834 through the British Mandate to the impact of Zionism and the founding of Israel. Their relationship with the Jewish people and the State of Israel has been fundamental in shaping that identity, and today Palestinians find themselves again at a critical juncture. In the 1990s cornerstones for peace were laid for eventual Palestinian-Israeli coexistence, including mutual acceptance, the renunciation of violence as a permanent strategy, and the establishment for the first time of Palestinian self-government. But the dawn of the twenty-first century saw a reversion to unmitigated hatred and mutual demonization. By mid-2002 the brutal violence of the Intifada had crippled Palestine's fledgling political institutions and threatened the fragile social cohesion painstakingly constructed after 1967. Kimmerling and Migdal unravel what went right--and what went wrong--in the Oslo peace process, and what lessons we can draw about the forces that help to shape a people. The authors present a balanced, insightful, and sobering look at the realities of creating peace in the Middle East.