Search results for ""author various"

Since the mid-1980s, Taiwan and mainland China have witnessed a sustained resurgence of academic and intellectual interest in ruxue—“Confucianism”—variously conceived as a form of culture, an ideology, a system of learning, and a tradition of normative values. This discourse has led to a proliferation of contending conceptions of ruxue, as well as proposals for rejuvenating it to make it a vital cultural and psycho-spiritual resource in the modern world.This study aims to show how ruxue has been conceived in order to assess the achievements of this enterprise; to identify which aspects of ru thought and values academics find viable, and why; to highlight the dynamics involved in the ongoing cross-fertilization between academics in China and Taiwan; and to examine the relationship between these activities and cultural nationalism.Four key arguments are developed. First, the process of intellectual cross-fertilization and rivalry between scholars has served to sustain academic interest in ruxue. Second, contrary to conventional wisdom, party-state support in the PRC does not underpin the continuing academic discourse on ruxue. Third, cultural nationalism, rather than state nationalism, better explains the nature of this activity. Fourth, academic discourse on ruxue provides little evidence of robust philosophical creativity.

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This book examines the representation of empathy in contemporary poetry after crisis, specifically poetry after the Holocaust, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and Hurricane Katrina. The text argues that, recognizing both the possibilities and dangers of empathy, the poems under consideration variously invite and refuse empathy, thus displaying what Anna Veprinska terms empathetic dissonance. Veprinska proposes that empathetic dissonance reflects the texts’ struggle with the question of the value and possibility of empathy in the face of the crises to which these texts respond. Examining poems from Charlotte Delbo, Dionne Brand, Niyi Osundare, Charles Reznikoff, Robert Fitterman, Wisława Szymborska, Cynthia Hogue, Claudia Rankine, Paul Celan, Dan Pagis, Lucille Clifton, and Katie Ford, among others, Veprinska considers empathetic dissonance through language, witnessing, and theology. Merging comparative close readings with interdisciplinary theory from philosophy, psychology, cultural theory, history and literary theory, and trauma studies, this book juxtaposes a genocide, a terrorist act, and a natural disaster amplified by racial politics and human disregard in order to consider what happens to empathy in poetry after events at the limits of empathy.

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Born into terrible poverty, Millie Ash's hopes for a better life are threatened by a fatal accident in Dee Williams' heartrending new sagaMillie Ash, born into terrible poverty in the backstreets of the East End, has always wanted to better herself. She gets her chance when she lands a position as a lady's companion, her charge the disabled daughter of a well-to-do London family. Millie adores her work, and even starts to develop feelings for the son of the house. But years later a tragic accident causes Millie to lose her job and, along with it, the life she so loved. As she goes from job to job, working variously as a typist, factory worker and nurse, will she ever find happiness, and love, again?

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What if Beethoven had travelled to the United States? Taking up a commission to write a Biblical oratorio for Boston's Handel and Haydn Society?As Mr. Beethoven wrestles with his librettist and his muse, he comes to rely on two women. Thankful, who conducts his conversations using Martha's Vineyard sign language, and a kindred spirit: Mrs. Hill. Meanwhile all Boston waits in anxious expectation of a first performance Mr. Beethoven will never hear. Variously admonishing the amateur music society and laughing in the company of his hosts' children, the immortal composer is brought back to the fullness of life. Griffiths invents only what is strictly possible. His historiography weaves through the text in counterpoint, making this also a story about the fragility of the past and the remaining traces of the man: Mr. Beethoven.

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Carmen Boullosa’s Cleopatra Dismounts tells three versions of the life of Cleopatra. In the first sequence, Marc Antony had just disemboweled himself, knowing they had lost the war against Octavian and believing that Cleopatra was dead. Hugging his corpse, Cleopatra castigates Octavian and history for its betrayal of her, recalling variously how she had herself delivered to Caesar in a roll of carpet, and bore his child (Caesarion); the twins and third child she bore to Marc Antony; the bitterness of the recent military defeat. At this point Diomedes, variously described as an informer and her official chronicler, intercedes, admitting that this version of the story is not true to the brilliant, accomplished woman who was the true Cleopatra really was. Telling of how he betrayed Cleopatra, by altering the histories of her reign and allowing Caesar and others to destroy or change her scrolls, he begins again with the story of Cleopatra’s flight from Pompey (the Roman leader who was placed in charge of Cleopatra and her brothers and sisters after Ptolemy Auletes, her father and ruler of Egypt, died). The girl queen (Cleopatra inherited the throne as a teenager) sneaks with several faithful servants out of the palace into a wagon, accompanied by a group of brightly costumed gladiators, on her way to Ascalon. She and her supporters carve the words “Queen of Kings” (Cleopatra’s motto in real history) into the boards of the wagon in which she is traveling, and leave it behind when they reach Rome. When they are beset by pirates, Cleopatra stages an elaborate show using some costumes the young gladiator Apollodorus, who has become part of her retinue, helped her buy. She convinces the pirates that she is Isis (a myth which was in reality part of her statecraft). She makes an alliance with them and is taken in peace to Cilicia. The third and longest version of the Cleopatra story is a delightful interlude in which Cleopatra goes live with the Amazons. Cleopatra is at war with the Ruling Council of her husband and brother Ptolemy (she was, historically, forced to marry her brother because she could not rule alone as a woman). The Ruling Council has sent an envoy to summon her to Alexandria to make peace, but when she realizes it is a trap, she flees with her retinue. She arrives in Pelusium, a trade center on the Mediterranean, where many merchants have been stranded by bad weather, and where, as if by magic, she sees a replica of the cart, carved with the words “Queen of Kings,” she left behind in Rome. Chased by the “reception committee” of the Ruling Council, she escapes on the back of a magical bull. He carries her across the Mediterranean to the land of the Amazons, who take her in. The Amazons welcome her into their society of women, eschewing marriage and traditional female roles to live as warriors and hunters. They sing her the stories of their joining the Amazons and of the many myths that surround them. She meets a group of aged poets, kidnapped by the Amazons to write verses for them, because they love poetry and music. She learns that one Amazon, Orthea, is in love with a god who has the power of extreme heat and cold, and who caused an earthquake that day. The Amazons go to bed, falling into each other’s arms and making love. Though initially disgusted, eventually Cleopatra falls asleep in the protective (and erotic) embrace of Hippolyta, the Amazons’ queen. The next day, the Amazons go to battle a group of rebellious male warriors who charge the Amazons and seek, ultimately, to follow the Sirens. Charging them on their horses, driving cattle at them, the Amazons battle the men. One of their prized poets, however, in an act of suicide, surrenders himself to the Sirens, who devour him before everyone. This breaks the spell and the men cease their clamoring to get to the Sirens. Cleopatra sees Orthea consummating her passion for the god, which kills her. The Cyrene male warriors, who withstood the Sirens’ onslaught in their fort by plugging the windows with rocks and mud, invite Cleopatra and the Amazons to their court to celebrate their successful protection of so many men. Hippolyta declines but sends Cleopatra with her blessing. Once there, she is joyfully reunited with the gladiator Apollodorus and her faithful maidservant and right hand Charmian. The Cyrenes offer to ally with her against her enemies in Ptolemy’s Ruling Council. The alliance between Cleopatra and Caesar (wherein she was smuggled to him rolled up in a carpet, and he assisted her in defeating her enemies in Egypt, part of history) is presaged. At the close of the piece, Cleopatra returns to bid goodbye to the Amazons. She finds them naked, covered in blood, having just sacrificed a horse. Hippolyta is holding the horse’s castrated penis. She repudiates her earlier alliance with the Amazons and returns to Cyrene alone, to her military campaign to become the queen history knows.

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‘Tanbûr Long-Necked Lutes Along the Silk Road and Beyond’ explores the origin, history, construction, and playing techniques of tanbûrs, a musical instrument widely used over vast territories and over many centuries. The diffusion of the tanbûr into the musical cultures along the Silk Road resulted in a variety of tanbûrs with two or more, occasionally doubled or tripled courses, a varying number and variously tuned frets, each having its own characteristic sound, playing technique, and repertory. Since the last century, tanbûrs spread beyond the Silk Road while new versions continue to appear due to changing musical and tonal demands made on them. Similar or identical instruments are also known by other names, such as saz or bağlama, dotâr or dutâr, setâr, dömbra, and dambura.

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William Powell wrote The Anarchist Cookbook in 1969 at the age of nineteen. It included everything from making bombs to brewing LSD in the bathroom. On publication, it was hailed variously as "outrageous," "extremely dangerous," "communist," and "the most irresponsible publishing venture in American history." It also became an overnight bestseller. Powell's memoir chronicles the atmosphere of the 1960's counterculture—the Civil Rights Movement was at its height and the federal government was engaged in a brutal and entirely unnecessary war in Southeast Asia. The zeitgeist was radicalization, and the watchword was revolution, and Powell left an enduring record of his thoughts and anger in the shape of The Anarchist Cookbook . The Cookbook: Coming of Age in Turbulent Times portrays Powell's rebellious adolescence, political radicalization, the publication of the book, the firestorm of controversy that followed, and how it shadowed his entire life. He explores his feelings and the lessons learned, and how he went on to help hundreds of children all over the world in education.

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Expert analysis of American governance challenges and recommendations for reform Two big ideas serve as the catalyst for the essays collected in this book. The first is the state of governance in the United States, which Americans variously perceive as broken, frustrating, and unresponsive. Editor James Perry observes in his Introduction that this perception is rooted in three simultaneous developments: government's failure to perform basic tasks that once were taken for granted, an accelerating pace of change that quickly makes past standards of performance antiquated, and a dearth of intellectual capital that generate the capacity to bridge the gulf between expectations and performance. The second idea hearkens back to the Progressive era, when Americans revealed themselves to be committed to better administration of their government at all levels—federal, state, and local. These two ideas—the diminishing capacity for effective governance and Americans' expectations for reform—are veering in opposite directions. Contributors to Public Service and Good Governance for the Twenty-First Century explore these central ideas by addressing such questions as: what is the state of government today? Can future disruptions of governance and public service be anticipated? What forms of government will emerge from the past and what institutions and structures will be needed to meet future challenges? And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, what knowledge, skills, and abilities will need to be fostered for tomorrow's civil servants to lead and execute effectively? Public Service and Good Governance for the Twenty-First Century offers recommendations for bending the trajectories of governance capacity and reform expectations toward convergence, including reversing the trend of administrative disinvestment, developing talent for public leadership through higher education, creating a federal civil service to meet future needs, and rebuilding bipartisanship so that the sweeping changes needed to restore good government become possible. Contributors: Sheila Bair, William W. Bradley, John J. DiIulio, Jr., Angela Evans, Francis Fukuyama, Donald F. Kettl, Ramayya Krishnan, Paul C. Light, Shelley Metzenbaum, Norman J. Ornstein, James L. Perry, Norma M. Riccucci, Paul R. Verkuil, Paul A. Volcker.

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An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched. The world-famous French singer Édith Piaf (1915-63) was never just a singer. Dozens of biographies of her, of variable quality, have seldom got beyond the well known and usually contested ‘facts’ of her life. This book suggests new ways of understanding her. A ‘cultural history’ of Piaf means exploring her cultural, social and political significance as a national and international icon, looking at her shifting meanings over time, at home and abroad. How did she become a star and a myth? What did she come to mean in life and in death? At the centenary of her birth and more than fifty years after her passing, why do we still remember her work and commemorate her through the work of others, from Claude Nougaro and Elton John to Ben Harper and Zaz, as well as in films, musicals, documentaries and tribute acts around the world? What does she mean today? The book proposes the notion of an imagined Piaf. To a large extent, she was her own invention, not only by virtue of her talent but because she produced narratives about herself, building a mystery. But she was also the invention of others: of those she worked with but above all of her audiences, who made their own meanings from her carefully staged performances. Since her death, the world has been free to imagine new Piafs. From the 1930s until today, she has variously embodied conceptions of the ‘popular’ and of ‘chanson’ as a new kind of middlebrow, of gender, sexuality, national identity and the human condition.

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How was the remote past of Britain imagined in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? What part did the visual arts play in that process? In this book Sam Smiles argues that the ancient Britain of the romantic imagination was a contested world, variously seen as a noble epoch of wisdom and patriotism and as a period of unredeemed savagery and barbarism. The arts, says Smiles, not only reflected these historical debates but actively contributed to them by attempting to bring the archaic past to life.Smiles examines the interplay of antiquarian research, historiography, and the visual arts in constructing an image of Britain from prehistoric times to the arrival of the Saxons. He discusses such topics as the lengthening of prehistoric time in the contemporary view, the status of antiquarian learning, and the celebration of ancestral peoples as an offshoot of the growing sense of national identity. He describes the Celtic revival during the late eighteenth century, with its iconography that fashioned a pictorial repertoire for megaliths, bards, Druids, and the patriotic leaders Boadicea and Caractacus, who fought off the Romans. He also explains why the Victorians downgraded the Celts and replaced them with the Saxons, preferred by Victorians because they were Christians, because they were English (rather than British), and because they had established organized kingdoms. Illustrated with images from a wide range of sources, this is the first major interdisciplinary examination of the British image of antiquity that has a particular significance for art historians and historians alike. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British ArtPublished for the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art

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The thirteenth book in Dorothy L Sayers' classic Lord Peter Wimsey series, introduced by crime writer Natasha Cooper - a must-read for fans of Agatha Christie's Poirot and Margery Allingham's Campion Mysteries. They plan to have a quiet country honeymoon. Then Lord Peter Wimsey and his bride Harriet Vane find the previous owner's body in the cellar.Set in a country village seething with secrets and snobbery, this is Dorothy L. Sayers' last full-length detective novel. Variously described as a love story with detective interruptions and a detective story with romantic interruptions, it lives up to both descriptions with style.'She brought to the detective novel originality, intelligence, energy and wit.' P. D. James

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A dizzying trip through the mind(s) of the provocative and influential thinker Nick Land.During the 1990s British philosopher Nick Land's unique work, variously described as “rabid nihilism,” “mad black deleuzianism,” and “cybergothic,” developed perhaps the only rigorous and culturally-engaged escape route out of the malaise of “continental philosophy” —a route that was implacably blocked by the academy. However, Land's work has continued to exert an influence, both through the British “speculative realist” philosophers who studied with him, and through the many cultural producers—writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers—who have been invigorated by his uncompromising and abrasive philosophical vision.Beginning with Land's early radical rereadings of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kant and Bataille, the volume collects together the papers, talks and articles of the mid-90s—long the subject of ru

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In this ambitious collection, Kevin Stein enters the volatile intersection of private lives and larger public history. In poems variously formal and experimental, improvisational and narrative, wisely silly and playfully forlorn, Stein renders the human carnival flexed across the tattooed bulk of “history’s bicep.” Musical and refreshingly unaffected, Stein’s poems yoke the domains of high and low art. His poems address subjects by turns surprising, edgy, and humorous. They offer musings on the Slinky and the atomic bomb, elegies for a miscarried pregnancy and the late physicist Edward Teller, reflections on night-shift factory work and President Eisenhower’s golf caddy, and meditations on the politics of post-colonialism and a youthful antiwar streaking incident. Against this vivid backdrop parades a motley cast of American characters seeking wiry balance in a fragile world.

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This up-to-date and lively text focuses on a wide range of issues, such as politics as theater, the economic forces shaping contemporary political media, the rhetoric of the "War on Terrorism," and the growth of new media. Separate chapters explore a range of contexts, including the presidency, Congress and the courts, foreign news reporting, and political art. The text concludes with ways to open up additional pathways for imagining our national life, ranging from Internet-supported activism to innovative uses of documentary film. Center Stage: Media and the Performance of American Politics examines political and mediated communication as forms of representational theater. Taking the dramatic orientation to politics seriously, Woodward explores how American civic culture is variously enriched and diminished by the ways practitioners and journalists organize narratives, or stories, about our civic life.

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZEIn this astonishing collection of essays, the award-winning poet and novelist Kei Miller explores the silence in which so many important things are kept. He examines the experience of discrimination through this silence and what it means to breach it: to risk words, to risk truths. And he considers the histories our bodies inherit - the crimes that haunt them, and how meaning can shift as we move throughout the world, variously assuming privilege or victimhood. Through letters to James Baldwin, encounters with Liam Neeson, Soca, Carnival, family secrets, love affairs, white women's tears, questions of aesthetics and more, Miller powerfully and imaginatively recounts everyday acts of racism and prejudice. With both the epigrammatic concision and conversational cadence of his poetry and novels, Things I Have Withheld is a great artistic achievement: a work of beauty which challenges us to interrogate what seems unsayable and why - our actions, defence mechanisms, imaginations and interactions - and those of the world around us.

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Glass is hard and brilliant, and can be cut and polished like a gem. When variously shaped and colored pieces are combined to create a design or image, the results can be stunning. Creating these glass works can use one of two different methods: lead and copper foil (the method made famous by Louis Comfort Tiffany). This book demystifies both in detail by explaining the underlying principles of this specialized field, providing an overall view of the methods and techniques from an educational viewpoint, and building confidence for working directly with glass. Step-by-step instruction for six different leaded glass projects is included, covering the complete process. From the initial plan to the finished object, each step is broken into simple and easy to follow procedures. Once mastered, these steps are readily applicable for creating your own leaded glass pieces from your own designs! A collected gallery of inspirational leaded glass projects and a section of resources completes this valuable guide.

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With an emphasis on peer–produced content and collaboration, Wikipedia exemplifies a departure from traditional management and organizational models. This iconic "project" has been variously characterized as a hive mind and an information revolution, attracting millions of new users even as it has been denigrated as anarchic and plagued by misinformation. Have Wikipedia's structure and inner workings promoted its astonishing growth and enduring public relevance? In Common Knowledge?, Dariusz Jemielniak draws on his academic expertise and years of active participation within the Wikipedia community to take readers inside the site, illuminating how it functions and deconstructing its distinctive organization. Against a backdrop of misconceptions about its governance, authenticity, and accessibility, Jemielniak delivers the first ethnography of Wikipedia, revealing that it is not entirely at the mercy of the public: instead, it balances open access and power with a unique bureaucracy that takes a page from traditional organizational forms. Along the way, Jemielniak incorporates fascinating cases that highlight the tug of war among the participants as they forge ahead in this pioneering environment.

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This comprehensive, introductory textbook is unique in exploring the emergence of the Hebrew Bible in the broader context of world history. It particularly focuses on the influence of pre-Roman empires, empowering students with a richer understanding of Old Testament historiography. Provides a historical context for students learning about the development and changing interpretations of biblical texts Examines how these early stories were variously shaped by interaction with the Mesopotamian and Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenistic empires Incorporates recent research on the formation of the Pentateuch Reveals how key biblical texts came to be interpreted by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths Includes numerous student-friendly features, such as study questions, review sections, bibliographies, timelines, and illustrations and photos

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The history of projected images at the turn of the seventeenth century reveals a changing perception of chance and order, contingency and form. In Projecting Spirits, Pasi Väliaho maps how the leading optical media of the period—the camera obscura and the magic lantern—developed in response to, and framed, the era's key intellectual dilemma of whether the world fell under God's providential care, or was subject to chance and open to speculating. As Väliaho shows, camera obscuras and magic lanterns were variously employed to give the world an intelligible and manageable design. Jesuit scholars embraced devices of projection as part of their pursuit of divine government, whilst the Royal Society fellows enlisted them in their quest for empirical knowledge as well as colonial expansion. Projections of light and shadow grew into critical metaphors in early responses to the turbulences of finance. In such instances, Väliaho argues, "projection" became an indispensable cognitive form to both assert providence, and to make sense of an economic reality that was gradually escaping from divine guidance. Drawing on a range of materials—philosophical, scientific and religious literature, visual arts, correspondence, poems, pamphlets, and illustrations—this provocative and inventive work expands our concept of the early media of projection, revealing how they spoke to early modern thinkers, and shaped a new, speculative concept of the world.

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In her third book of poems, Sinead Morrissey builds on the achievement of her award-winning collection, "Between Here and There", by expanding the lyric into new territories and admitting new voices. The theme of imprisonment is variously addressed: in the actual prisons of eighteenth-century Europe; in the prison of our own limited perceptions of experience, particularly of other cultures when abroad; in the prison of the mortal human body itself. Alongside the intimate interiors of human relationships, the poems are also interested in broader discourses, particularly history, and range in scope from the Royalist convictions of a woman wearing a Scold's Bridle during England's interregnum, to the story of the number zero. Form and content, as well as the personal and the political, are blended throughout this collection with imagination and consummate skill. As in her previous two books, travel remains a source of inspiration: one exhilarating poem details, in nine 'chapters', a six-thousand-mile train journey across China in which the conflicting faces of a rapidly changing country jostle for space.The collection ends with a compelling act of ventriloquism, as Morrissey recounts, in the first person, the life and works of the great prison reformer John Howard, and details his vision for the moral regeneration of the corrupted human soul.

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Welsh Environments in Contemporary Poetry' examines the question of how recent English-language poetry from Wales has responded to the diverse physical environments of Wales. The first volume to offer a sustained assessment of Welsh poetry in English within the context of recent developments in environmental literary criticism, this book also draws on aspects of human geography to explore the rich contemporary poetics of Welsh space and place. Opening with an examination of poets from the 1960s as well as the early work of R.S. Thomas, 'Welsh Environments in Contemporary Poetry' subsequently concentrates on the poetry of writers who have come to prominence since the 1970s: Gillian Clarke, Ruth Bidgood, Robert Minhinnick, Mike Jenkins, Christine Evans, and Ian Davidson.Close reading of key texts reveals the way in which these writers variously create Welsh places, landscapes, and environments - fashioning rural and urban spaces into poetic geographies that are both abundantly physical and inescapably cultural. Far from reducing Wales to mere scenery, the poetry that emerges from this book engages with the environments of Wales, not just for their own sake, but as a crucial way of exploring key issues in Welsh culture - from the negotiation of female identity in a land of masculine myths to the exploration of Welsh space in a global context.

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Hollywood certainly isn't your typical police precinct, but in Hollywood Moon, follow-up to Hollywood Station and Hollywood Crows, the cops of that surreal place seem called upon to deal with an even greater share of weirdness than normal. Drag queens in delicto flagrante behind dumpsters, dead hobos pushed around in wheelchairs, men in massage parlours receiving unspeakable injuries from Barbie dolls. That's not to say that the cops themselves don't have their own peculiarities: Hollywood Nate still dreams of movie stardom, but worries as he gets older that he's too good-looking to be a character actor. Then there's Aaron Sloane, forever lusting after his beautiful partner Sheila Montez, and Dana Vaughn, a tough no-nonsense cop who can't stand the fact that former chauvinist pig turned 'guardian angel' Lee Murillo won't stop following her around after she saved his life. But there's a darker side to all that weirdness - and when the enigmatic crook Dewey Gleason, known variously to his associates as 'Jacob Kessler' and 'Bernie Graham', hatches an audacious kidnap plan, without knowing that one of the hired help lives a double life as a serial sex attacker, things start to get very dangerous indeed.

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Serge Diaghilev was the Russian impresario who is often said to have invented the modern art form of ballet. Commissioning such legendary names as Nijinsky, Fokine, Stravinsky, and Picasso, this intriguingly complex genius produced a series of radically original art works that had a revolutionary impact throughout the western world.Off stage and in its wake came scandal and sensation, as the great artists and mercurial performers involved variously collaborated, clashed, competed while falling in and out of love with each other on a wild carousel of sexual intrigue and temperamental mayhem. The Ballets Russes not only left a matchless artistic legacy - they changed style and glamour, they changed taste, and they changed social behaviour.The Ballets Russes came to an official end after many vicissitudes with Diaghilev's abrupt death in 1929. But the achievements of its heroic prime had established a paradigm that would continue to define the terms and set the standards for the next. Published to mark the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Diaghilev's birth, Rupert Christiansen - leading critic and self-confessed 'incurable balletomane' - presents this freshly researched and challenging reassessment of a unique phenomenon, exploring passionate conflicts and outsize personalities in a story embracing triumph and disaster.

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This book reveals and interprets the rich diversity of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Chinese approaches to their own past and the modern West through the lens of the woman question. Writers and activists who engaged in debates over this question variously appropriated biographies of women—a genre with a 2,000-year history in China and a new political salience in the early twentieth century. Judge maps the ways these individuals used historical Chinese and modern Western women's biographies to promote competing visions of female virtue, talent, and heroism, and, ultimately, to advance competing evaluations of China's ritual teachings, cultural heritage, and national future. She concludes by applying the hermeneutics of historical change she develops for the turn of the twentieth century to the turn of the twenty-first century, as women's issues continue to foreground Chinese conceptions of the past, the West, and the nation.

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This book is about religious change. More particularly it is about the changes brought about when Christianity was introduced to a remote tribal group in the highlands of what is now Irian Jaya, Indonesia. These people who are members of a tribal group that has become known as the Western Dani, entered into a process, through their contact with missionaries, that has been the shared experience of hundreds of tribal groups for the past two thousand years. This process has been variously labelled as the "indigenizing of Christianity," the "inculturation of Christianity,^D> " or as the "contextualizing of Christianity." This book uses the term vernacular Christianity in order to emphasize the anthropological perspective that characterizes the study, and the socio-cultural processes that transpire when two belief systems come in contact. Through the use of ethnographical methodology, this study seeks to ascertain as accurately as possible the Dani perspective on what they do and what they believe in their religious perspectives, commonly spoken of as an emic perspective. It records both their pre-Christian beliefs, as well as their own vernacular form of Christianity. It is a study that also seeks to represent the position of the missionaries, often citing their own records at length. Chapter topics include detailed studies of Dani cosmology, myths, religious rituals, sacred paraphernalia, religious specialists, and the problem of cargoism in socio-religious change. Co-published with the American Society of Missiology.

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What is love's real intent? Why can love be so ruthlessly selective? How is it related to sex, beauty, and goodness? And is the child now the supreme object of love? In addressing these questions, Simon May develops a radically new understanding of love as the emotion we feel towards whomever or whatever we experience as grounding our life--as offering us a possibility of home in a world that we supremely value. He sees love as motivated by a promise of "ontological rootedness," rather than, as two thousand years of tradition variously asserts, by beauty or goodness, by a search for wholeness, by virtue, by sexual or reproductive desire, by compassion or altruism or empathy, or, in one of today's dominant views, by no qualities at all of the loved one. After arguing that such founding Western myths as the Odyssey and Abraham's call by God to Canaan in the Bible powerfully exemplify his new conception of love, May goes on to re-examine the relation of love to beauty, sex, and goodness in the light of this conception, offering among other things a novel theory of beauty--and suggesting, against Plato, that we can love others for their ugliness (while also seeing them as beautiful). Finally, he proposes that, in the Western world, romantic love is gradually giving way to parental love as the most valued form of love: namely, the love without which one's life is not deemed complete or truly flourishing. May explains why childhood has become sacred and excellence in parenting a paramount ideal--as well as a litmus test of society's moral health. In doing so, he argues that the child is the first genuinely "modern" supreme object of love: the first to fully reflect what Nietzsche called "the death of God." Readers will find Love "Excitingly new, yet immediately recognizable--that's the paradox at the very heart of love, and it is what Simon May has achieved." --Los Angeles Review of Books

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Nietzsche's Ecce Homo was published posthumously in 1908, eight years after his death, and has been variously described ever since as useless, mad, or merely inscrutable. Against this backdrop, Nicholas D. More provides the first complete and compelling analysis of the work, and argues that this so-called autobiography is instead a satire. This form enables Nietzsche to belittle bad philosophy by comic means, attempt reconciliation with his painful past, review and unify his disparate works, insulate himself with humor from the danger of 'looking into abysses', and establish wisdom as a special kind of 'good taste'. After showing how to read this much-maligned book, More argues that Ecce Homo presents the best example of Nietzsche making sense of his own intellectual life, and that its unique and complex parody of traditional philosophy makes a powerful case for reading Nietzsche as a philosophical satirist across his corpus.

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In Beyond Casablanca, Kevin Dwyer explores the problems of creativity in the Arab and African world, focusing on Moroccan cinema and one of its key figures, filmmaker M. A. Tazi. Dwyer develops three themes simultaneously: the filmmaker's career and films; filmmaking in postcolonial Morocco; and the relationship between Moroccan cinema, Third World and Arab cinema, and the global film industry. This compelling discussion of Moroccan cinema is founded upon decades of anthropological research in Morocco, most recently on the Moroccan film sector and the global film industry, and exhibits a sensitivity to the cultural, political, social, and economic context of creative activity. The book centers on a series of interviews conducted with Tazi, whose career provides a rich commentary on the world of Moroccan cinema and on Moroccan cinema in the world. The interviews are framed, variously, by presentations of Moroccan history, society, and culture; the role of foreign filmmakers in Morocco; thematic discussions of cinematic issues (such as narrative techniques, the use of symbols, film as an expression of identity, and problems of censorship); and the global context of Third World filmmaking.

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Jenny King was born in London during the Blitz. Her parents, both teachers, encouraged her to write poetry as a child and overcame wartime paper rationing to make her a book to write them in. Her poems view the world calmly, thoughtfully. They consider memory, peace and its opposite, the inwardness and variety of the natural world, and how an individual relates to others. All the poems are concerned with the interest and excitement of language itself. Some use traditional patterns in unexpected ways, sometimes including rhyme, sometimes in more fluid forms. They work for clarity and memorable perception. Accessible language and natural rhythms are always important though used variously. Looking into the known - or half known - past of family history, the poem can disclose the fallibility of memory but also how present relates to past and how the present with its difficulties intrudes on any consideration of how to live. These poems result from a long writing life and study of both past and contemporary poets.

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Derby has been variously described as the crossroads of history', the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution', the real ale capital of the world', Jubilee City' and the most haunted place in the country'. It is all of these and much, much more. For over a century it was an important railway-manufacturing centre, and the city has made a significant contribution to the artistic and cultural life of the country, particularly famed Enlightenment artist Wright of Derby. Britain's first factory was established in Derby in 1721, and in 1745 Derby became the southernmost point reached by Bonnie Prince Charlie in his abortive attempt to overthrow King George II and seize the Crown. In the twentieth century Derby became the home of Rolls-Royce, which alone has contributed to a number of world-beating achievements. But Derby's greatest asset is its people. The inventiveness of individual engineers, artists and scientists has been supported by the craftsmanship and skill of t he workforce through

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Dr Jean Michel Massing is a Reader in the History of Art and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. The first volume of Studies in Imagery, Text and Images, consists of 25 "studies grouped under four sections: Classical Art and its Nachleben; Symbolic Languages; Saints and Devils; Comets, Dreams and Stars. The topics include the Celto-Roman "goddess Epona, the Calumny of Apelles and its reconstructions, the Triumph of Caesar, proverb illustration, the art of memory, emblematic and didactic imagery, the temptations of St Anthony, as well as dreams and celestial phenomena. They span a wide range of periods, from classical antiquity to the nineteenth century. Vol. 2, The World Discovered, deals variously with the relationship of European with non-European cultures, cartography in medieval and early modern times, the representation of foreign lands and people, and the collecting of exotic artefacts. A central theme involves the imagery of black Africans from the Middle Ages up to the nineteenth century.

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Dr Jean Michel Massing is a Reader in the History of Art and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. The first volume of Studies in Imagery, Text and Images, consists of 25 "studies grouped under four sections: Classical Art and its Nachleben; Symbolic Languages; Saints and Devils; Comets, Dreams and Stars. The topics include the Celto-Roman "goddess Epona, the Calumny of Apelles and its reconstructions, the Triumph of Caesar, proverb illustration, the art of memory, emblematic and didactic imagery, the temptations of St Anthony, as well as dreams and celestial phenomena. They span a wide range of periods, from classical antiquity to the nineteenth century. Vol. 2, The World Discovered, deals variously with the relationship of European with non-European cultures, cartography in medieval and early modern times, the representation of foreign lands and people, and the collecting of exotic artefacts. A central theme involves the imagery of black Africans from the Middle Ages up to the nineteenth century.

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This is a book of theory written from Africa. Its concern is the development of concepts for an understanding of emancipatory politics in Africa in particular, and in the Third World in general. ‘Politics’ here means consciousness, ideology, practice, choices and thought. The two core concepts which the book develops are the idea of ‘excess’ and that of ‘political sequence’. These are both made necessary by the underlying commitment to the axiom that ‘people think’ – that people are capable of thinking rationally beyond their interests as de?ned by their social location within a matrix of social relations regulated by the state. Drawing on the work of Alain Badiou and Sylvain Lazarus, the category of the sequence is used to provide an alternative to historicism in which ‘politics’ exists only as historical sequences which are discontinuous.These concepts are deployed variously in the history of anti-colonial and national liberation struggles and in contemporary experiences on the African continent. The book asserts that Africans, rather than having simply been the victims of modern history, have contributed to the universal history of humanity and continue to do so in original and inventive ways which provide important pointers for thinking human emancipation worldwide in the 21st century.

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Enter the extraordinary world of Arthurian legend in an adventure overflowing with knightly chivalry, the danger of jousting and the warmth of true love. But the Legend of Parzival is more than the tale of one knight's epic journey to find the elusive Holy Grail; along the way Parzival faces a challenging journey of self-discovery. He must conquer his ignorance and pride, and learn humility and compassion before he is finally worthy of becoming a Grail Knight.This accessible prose retelling of the medieval German epic brings the wonderful story of the Arthurian knight (known variously as Parzival, Parsifal and Percival) to life for today's readers, while faithfully preserving the story, characters and tone of Wolfram von Eschenbach's thirteenth century narrative poem.In Steiner-Waldorf education, Parzival's quest is seen as a metaphor for the difficult journey through life, which speaks strongly to the adolescent, and its study is at the heart of the Class 11 curriculum. As a hugely experienced Steiner-Waldorf teacher, Robin Cook's engaging retelling will provide valuable inspiration for other teachers and students, as well as enjoyment and enrichment for all readers.

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Plucking Chrysanthemums is a critical study of the life and works of Narushima Ryūhoku (1837–1884): Confucian scholar, world traveler, pioneering journalist, and irrepressible satirist. A major figure on the nineteenth-century Japanese cultural scene, Ryūhoku wrote works that were deeply rooted in classical Sinitic literary traditions. Sinitic poetry and prose enjoyed a central and prestigious place in Japan for nearly all of its history, and the act of composing it continued to offer modern Japanese literary figures the chance to incorporate themselves into a written tradition that transcended national borders. Adopting Ryūhoku’s multifarious invocations of Six Dynasties poet Tao Yuanming as an organizing motif, Matthew Fraleigh traces the disparate ways in which Ryūhoku drew upon the Sinitic textual heritage over the course of his career. The classical figure of this famed Chinese poet and the Sinitic tradition as a whole constituted a referential repository to be shaped, shifted, and variously spun to meet the emerging circumstances of the writer as well as his expressive aims. Plucking Chrysanthemums is the first book-length study of Ryūhoku in a Western language and also one of the first Western-language monographs to examine Sinitic poetry and prose (kanshibun) composition in modern Japan.

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Shortlisted for the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction 2019Shortlisted for the Mascara Literary Review's Avant Garde Awards 2020The Flight of Birds is a novel in twelve stories, each of them compelled by an encounter between the human and animal worlds. The birds in these stories inhabit the same space as humans, but they are also apart, gliding above us. The Flight of Birds: A Novel in Twelve Stories explores what happens when the two worlds meet. Joshua Lobb’s stories are at once intimate and expansive, grounded in an exquisite sense of place. The birds in these stories are variously free and wild, native and exotic, friendly and hostile. Humans see some of them as pets, some of them as pests, and some of them as food. Through a series of encounters between birds and humans, the book unfolds as a meditation on grief and loss, isolation and depression, and the momentary connections that sustain us through them. Underpinning these interactions is an awareness of climate change, of the violence we do to the living beings around us, and of the possibility of transformation.The Flight of Birds will change how you think about the planet and humanity’s place in it.

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Trust occupies a unique place in contemporary discourse. Seen as both necessary and virtuous, it is variously depicted as enhancing the social fabric, lowering crime rates, increasing happiness, and generating prosperity. It allows for complex political systems, permits human communication, underpins financial instruments and economic institutions, and generally holds society together. Against these overwhelmingly laudable qualities, mistrust often goes unnoticed as a positive social phenomenon, treated as little more than a corrosive absence, a mere negative of trust itself. With this book, Matthew Carey proposes an ethnographic and conceptual exploration of mistrust that raises it up as legitimate stance in its own right. While mistrust can quickly ruin relationships and even dissolve extensive social ties, Carey shows that it might have other values. Drawing on fieldwork in Morocco's High Atlas Mountains as well as comparative material from regions stretching from Eastern Europe to Melanesia, he examines the impact of mistrust on practices of conversation and communication, friendship and society, and politics and cooperation. In doing so, he demonstrates that trust is not the only basis for organizing human society and cooperating with others. The result is a provocative but enlightening work that makes us rethink social issues such as suspicion, doubt, and uncertainty.

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Newly updated to incorporate recent additions to the English language, the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins provides a fascinating exploration of the origins and development of over 3,000 words in the English language. Drawing on Oxford's unrivalled dictionary research programme and language monitoring it brings to light the intriguing and often unusual stories of some of our most used words and phrases. The A-Z entries include the first known use of the term along with examples, related lexes, and expressions which uncover the etymological composition of each word. Also featured are 22 special panels that give overviews of broad topic areas, 5 of which are completely new and that variously cover words from Oceania, word blends, eponyms, and acronyms. New findings in the OED since the previous edition have also been added, including emoji, mansplain, meeple, meme, and spam. An absorbing resource for language students and enthusiasts, but also an intriguing read for any person interested in the development of the English language, and of language development in general. It also includes an extended introduction on the history of the English language.

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Given that Enlightenment rationality developed in Europe as European nations aggressively claimed other parts of the world for their own enrichment, scholars have made rationality the subject of postcolonial critique, questioning its universality and objectivity. In On Reason, the late philosopher Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze demonstrates that rationality, and by extension philosophy, need not be renounced as manifestations or tools of Western imperialism. Examining reason in connection to the politics of difference—the cluster of issues known variously as cultural diversity, political correctness, the culture wars, and identity politics—Eze expounds a rigorous argument that reason is produced through and because of difference. In so doing, he preserves reason as a human property while at the same time showing that it cannot be thought outside the realities of cultural diversity. Advocating rationality in a multicultural world, he proposes new ways of affirming both identity and difference.Eze draws on an extraordinary command of Western philosophical thought and a deep knowledge of African philosophy and cultural traditions. He explores models of rationality in the thought of philosophers from Aristotle, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Hobbes to Noam Chomsky, Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and Jacques Derrida, and he considers portrayals of reason in the work of the African thinkers and novelists Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Wole Soyinka. Eze reflects on contemporary thought about genetics, race, and postcolonial historiography as well as on the interplay between reason and unreason in the hearings of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He contends that while rationality may have a foundational formality, any understanding of its foundation and form is dynamic, always based in historical and cultural circumstances.

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In the first major critical reading of Italian American narrative literature in two decades, Fred L. Gardaphé presents an interpretive overview of Italian American literary history. Examining works from the turn of the twentieth century to the present, he develops a new perspective—variously historical, philosophical, and cultural—by which American writers of Italian descent can be read, increasing the discursive power of an ethnic literature that has received too little serious critical attention. Gardaphé draws on Vico’s concept of history, as well as the work of Gramsci, to establish a culture-specific approach to reading Italian American literature. He begins his historical reading with narratives informed by oral traditions, primarily autobiography and autobiographical fiction written by immigrants. From these earliest social–realist narratives, Gardaphé traces the evolution of this literature through tales of “the godfather” and the mafia; the “reinvention of ethnicity” in works by Helen Barolini, Tina DeRosa, and Carole Maso; the move beyond ethnicity in fiction by Don DeLillo and Gilbert Sorrentino; to the short fiction of Mary Caponegro, which points to a new direction in Italian American writing.The result is both an ethnography of Italian American narrative and a model for reading the signs that mark the “self-fashioning” inherent in literary and cultural production. Italian Signs, American Streets promises to become a landmark in the understanding of literature and culture produced by Italian Americans. It will be of interest not only to students, critics, and scholars of this ethnic experience, but also to those concerned with American literature in general and the place of immigrant and ethnic literatures within that wide framework.

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The Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1937 led some thirty million Chinese to flee their homes in terror, and live—in the words of artist and writer Feng Zikai—“in a sea of bitterness” as refugees. Keith Schoppa paints a comprehensive picture of the refugee experience in one province—Zhejiang, on the central Chinese coast—where the Japanese launched major early offensives as well as notorious later campaigns. He recounts stories of both heroes and villains, of choices poorly made amid war’s bewildering violence, of risks bravely taken despite an almost palpable quaking fear.As they traveled south into China’s interior, refugees stepped backward in time, sometimes as far as the nineteenth century, their journeys revealing the superficiality of China’s modernization. Memoirs and oral histories allow Schoppa to follow the footsteps of the young and old, elite and non-elite, as they fled through unfamiliar terrain and coped with unimaginable physical and psychological difficulties. Within the context of Chinese culture, being forced to leave home was profoundly threatening to one’s sense of identity. Not just people but whole institutions also fled from Japanese occupation, and Schoppa considers schools, governments, and businesses as refugees with narratives of their own.Local governments responded variously to Japanese attacks, from enacting scorched-earth policies to offering rewards for the capture of plague-infected rats in the aftermath of germ warfare. While at times these official procedures improved the situation for refugees, more often—as Schoppa describes in moving detail—they only deepened the tragedy.

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First published in 1974, The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock grew out of a magazine article coauthored by Jan Reid. His first book was a sensation in Texas. It portrayed an Austin-based live music explosion variously described as progressive country, cosmic cowboys, and outlaw country. The book has been hailed as a model of how to write about popular music and the life of performing musicians. Written in nine months, Reid's account focuses on predecessors of the 1960s and the swarm of newborn venues, the most enduring one the justly famed Armadillo World Headquarters; profiles of singer-songwriters that included Jerry Jeff Walker, Michael Martin Murphey, Steven Fromholz, B.W. Stevenson, Willis Alan Ramsey, Bobby Bridger, Rusty Wier, Kinky Friedman, and the one who became an international star and one of America's most treasured performers, Willie Nelson; and the rowdy heat-stricken debut of Willie's Fourth of July Picnics.Though Reid has resisted the writerly trend of specialization in his career, his debut brought him back to popular music and musicians' lives in Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, Texas Tornado: The Music and Times of Doug Sahm, and now a related novel, The Song Leader. The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock is a landmark of popular culture in Texas and the Southwest. Readers will be glad to once more have it back.

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Philip Hook takes the lid off the world of art dealing to reveal the brilliance, cunning, greed and daring of its practitioners. In a richly anecdotal narrative he describes the rise and occasional fall of the extraordinary men and women who over the centuries have made it their business to sell art to kings, merchants, nobles, entrepreneurs and museums. From its beginnings in Antwerp, where paintings were sometimes sold by weight, to the rich hauteur of the contemporary gallery in London, Paris and New York, art dealing has been about identifying what is intangible but infinitely desirable, and then finding clients for whom it is irresistible. Those who have purveyed art for a living range from tailors, spies and the occasional anarchist to scholars, aristocrats, merchants and connoisseurs, each variously motivated by greed, belief in their own vision of art and its history, or simply the will to win. The cast of characters includes Paul Durand-Ruel, the Impressionists' champion; Herwath Walden, who first brought Modernism into the limelight; Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, high priest of Cubism; Leo Castelli, dealer-midwife to Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art; and Peter Wilson, the charismatic Sotheby's chairman who made the auction room theatre. Philip Hook's history is one of human folly, greed and duplicity, interspersed with ingenuity, inspiration and acts of heroism. Rogues' Gallery is learned, witty and irresistibly readable.

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For much of cycling's "Fabulous Fifties" it was Brian Robinson alone who flew the flag for Britain abroad - that is until three young men set out to emulate his success, starting from ground zero. This book tells the story of how, along with fellow Yorkshireman Vic Sutton and South Londoner John Andrew, the intrepid Tony Hewson set off to conquer the European racing scene, first off in an old, battered, converted ex-WD ambulance, then in an oil-leaking pre-war Wolseley with a caravan in tow. Variously mistaken for gypsies, terrorists, undertakers, even market traders, these were our original cash-starved, have-a-go pioneers, whose inspiration prompted Tom Simpson and succeeding generations of would-be stars to cross the Channel. It is an often hilarious sometimes sad but never bitter saga of daring-do that found the trio rubbing shoulders with Coppi, Anquetil, Van Looy and the other greats of the era. It tells of how Andrews won a place in the prestigious Mercier-BP trade team and of how Sutton conquered the headlines with a brilliant display of climbing in the mountaains of the 1959 Tour and its relates Hewson's own pickings of primes and placings in after-Tour criteriums.It also provides a wonderfully evocative insight into what life was like in France and Belgium back in that far-off era.

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Carry Walt Whitman’s wisdom with you in this inspirational guide that features 60 selections from his most insightful poems. Walt Whitman, the great American poet of the 19th century (1819–1892), celebrated his body, the land, the commonest of people, the plants and leaves, and the cosmos in Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855. Working variously as a printer, journalist, teacher, and Civil War nurse, Whitman traveled across the continent, soaking the ink of the wilds and the urban into his pen. His poetry is an invitation into the wilds of Nature and human nature. In Meditations of Walt Whitman, editor Chris Highland pairs 60 short selections from Whitman’s poetry with a relevant quote from a historical or contemporary writer and thinker, from Aristotle to Alice Walker, Lord Byron to Arthur C. Clarke. Take this pocket-size guide with you on backpacks, nature hikes, and camping trips. Let Whitman’s words enrich your experience as you ponder the wilderness from riverbank, mountaintop, or as you relax beside your campfire. Inside you’ll find: 60 inspiring selections of poetry from Walt Whitman Relevant text from other philosophical minds Short excerpts for convenient reading This sampler from Whitman’s poems draws from the heart of each passage. Let Whitman’s words accompany you on your own trails of discovery and help you discover the earth, your likeness.

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The work of the classic philosophers is well known. But what do contemporary thinkers say about what it is to be a human being? In his serious, challenging, and remarkably accessible new book, Nicholas Fearn turns to contemporary philosophers to ask the age old questions: Who am I? What do I know? What should I do? In his search for higher meaning, Fearn consults with thinkers from around the world (including John Searle, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Singer, Richard Rorty, Daniel Dennett, Noam Chomsky, Derek Parfit, Nick Bostrom, among many others) to create an impressive survey of recent thought. Variously, they believe that free will, identity, and consciousness are not what they seem; that the difference between virtue and wickedness can be a matter of sheer luck; and that, one day, we will all be vegetarians. Fearn discovers that the topics haven’t changed, though our world has. Or has it? Moving deftly from pop culture to the writings of Plato, Philosophy is a brilliant and entertaining guide to the current state of the philosophical thought.

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In France, Mattie feels 20 again. In Poland, Magda revisits her impoverished family. In Uzbekistan, Diana lets a fellow tourist kiss her. In Germany, Lynn loses her luggage on the Düsseldorf train.The Hopeful Traveller is a collection of short stories about—and told by—single women who have put the past behind them but are still looking for their anchor in the present. It includes bitter-sweet accounts of the freedoms of postwar life, of foreign travel, of the rekindling of old friendships and of the search for new ones. The stories speak of cosmopolitan, self-confident, well-heeled characters, in an era just before the birth of feminism, conventional in their expectations of men, always just a step away from displacement and alienation.Set variously in Paris, Kalisz, Samarkand, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Erfurt, Singapore and London, these stories, from a much-admired veteran writer, offer a teasing mix of realism and fantasy, wish-fulfilment and regret. Some of these stories have appeared in translation in overseas annuals and collections.

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In 1945, Eddy Sackville-West, Desmond Shawe-Taylor and Eardley Knollys - writers for the New Statesman and a National Trust administrator - purchased Long Crichel House, an old rectory with no electricity and an inadequate water supply. In this improbable place, the last English literary salon began. Quieter and less formal than the famed London literary salons, Long Crichel became an idiosyncratic experiment in communal living. Sackville-West, Shawe-Taylor and Knollys - later joined by the literary critic Raymond Mortimer - became members of one another's surrogate families and their companionship became a stimulus for writing, for them and their guests. Long Crichel's visitors' book reveals a Who's Who of the arts in post-war Britain - Nancy Mitford, Benjamin Britten, Laurie Lee, Cyril Connolly, Somerset Maugham, E.M. Forster, Cecil Beaton, Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson - who were attracted by the good food, generous quantities of drink and excellent conversation. For Frances Partridge and James Lees-Milne, two of the twentieth century's finest diarists, Long Crichel became a second home and their lives became bound up with the house.Yet there was to be more to the story of the house than what critics variously referred to as a group of 'hyphenated gentlemen-aesthetes' and a 'prose factory'. In later years the house and its inhabitants were to weather the aftershocks of the Crichel Down Affair, the Wolfenden Report and the AIDS crisis. The story of Long Crichel is also part of the development of the National Trust and other conservation movements. Through the lens of Long Crichel, archivist and writer Simon Fenwick tells a wider story of the great upheaval that took place in the second half of the twentieth century. Intimate and revealing, he brings to life Long Crichel's golden, gossipy years and, in doing so, unveils a missing link in English literary and cultural history.

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