Vernon Lee Walker, a young Englishman from industrial Wolverhampton, meets his death on a beach on Pentecost Island in the South Pacific on the eve of Christmas 1887. Why did Vernon die, in what circumstances, and who was responsible? Was he, as once branded, simply a 'bad colonist'? Or was he a Candide, an innocent abroad, mixing invisibly with the rich and famous, manipulated by a calculating brother, unable to change the world around him? An historian finds Vernon’s letters home to England, spanning a dozen years. With decreasing frequency, these follow his trajectory, first in Melbourne and Sydney, then as he yields to the spell of the Pacific. But what happens between the lines? Does he fall in love with his brother’s wife? What does a boy not tell his mother? The novelist steps in. This is a unique fusion of authentic history and informed invention - a tragic story of colonialism in Australia and the Pacific, told with compassion, humour and a deep understanding of time and place.

The Thicket opens into intimate encounters with the more-than-human world - rivers, birds, stones - and with a "you" that is not a person, necessarily, but also not not a person: maybe God, maybe an aspect of the self, maybe neither or both. Often speaking of/to the small or overlooked (weeds by a roadside, an abandoned silo), the poems orient themselves toward edges, transitional spaces like the one where fields shift into woods. Where does one body stop? The Thicket takes an interest in becoming, one thing flowing into something else.

For many in the nineteenth century, the spoken word had a vivacity and power that exceeded other modes of communication. This conviction helped to sustain a diverse and dynamic lecture culture that provided a crucial vehicle for shaping and contesting cultural norms and beliefs. As science increasingly became part of public culture and debate, its spokespersons recognized the need to harness the presumed power of public speech to recommend the moral relevance of scientific ideas and attitudes. With this wider context in mind, The Voice of Science explores the efforts of five celebrity British Scientists—John Tyndall, Thomas Henry Huxley, Richard Proctor, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Henry Drummond—to articulate and embody a moral vision of the scientific life on American lecture platforms. These evangelists for science negotiated the fraught but intimate relationship between platform and newsprint culture and faced the demands of audiences searching for meaningful and memorable lecture performances. As Diarmid Finnegan reveals, all five attracted unrivalled attention, provoking responses in the press, on other platforms, and from church pulpits. Their lectures became potent cultural catalysts, provoking far-reaching debate on the consequences and relevance of scientific thought for reconstructing cultural meaning and moral purpose.

"In these three volumes we have one of the greatest novels not only of our generation, but of our language ..

Ultima Thule was published in 1929 and is the third novel in the 1930s trilogy, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, by Henry Handel Richardson. Writing in Sphere in 1929, Arnold Palmer said of these works: "In these three volumes we have one of the greatest novels not only of our generation, but of our language ..

Phillip Parotti's new novel offers fast-paced action in the skies over the Sinai desert in 1916. Lieutenant Devlin Collins, an Irish-American flier in the Royal Flying Corps, expecting to fly on the Western Front, instead finds himself flying antiquated two-seater bomber and photo reconnaissance missions over the Egyptian desert against the forces of the Central Powers which are trying to capture the Suez Canal. Pitted against German machines which are up-to-date and well equipped, the men of the RFC fight at a considerable disadvantage as they go forth to meet their enemy, but committed to their cause and with aggressive spirit, no matter how great the stress of battle, they proceed and prevail, continually forcing the Turks and Germans back as the army moves slowly toward Palestine. Constantly endangered by superior German machines, facing incessant ground fire during their bombing and strafing attacks, Dev and his fellow pilot Crisp drive home their attacks with unremitting determination. In the off hours from combat, Dev discovers that he has a particular talent for planning his flight's air raids. This talent manifests itself completely in the campaign's culminating attack on the German redoubts at the battle of Magdhaba, an attack so successful that when the pilots are finally pulled back for a rest after a year of fighting, Dev is promoted and invited onto the staff at GHQ is order to apply his expertise to air planning as the army moves on Gaza with the intention of driving into Palestine.

By late January of 1863, the 9th Massachusetts Battery of Light Artillery has been stationed within the Washington, D.C. defenses the entirety of its five-month existence. The soldiers are badly demoralized, inadequately trained and poorly disciplined. When the inept captain of the battery believes that he's about to be fired, he hastily resigns, and the governor of Massachusetts promptly selects a twenty-three-year-old artillery officer with battlefield experience to take command. Captain John Bigelow institutes strict discipline and rigorous training which causes the men, including Chief Bugler Charles Wellington Reed, to consider him to be a heartless tyrant. However, Captain Bigelow's methods rapidly improve their capabilities and Reed reluctantly gains respect for the new captain. Nevertheless, subtle conflict between captain and bugler remains in a manner only constrained by military protocol. In late June of 1863 the battery is collected by the Army of the Potomac as it passes the Washington defenses to thwart an invasion by Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. After days of hard marching, Bigelow's Battery arrives on the Gettysburg battlefield in the forenoon of July 2, 1863. Within hours they are immersed in violent combat during which the officers and men of the battery fight like veterans against the Confederates. Unbeknownst to Charlie, he will twice disobey a direct order from Captain Bigelow before the day is out. When furious fighting reaches a crescendo, the inexperienced light artillery battery is ordered to hold its position at all hazards, meaning until it's overrun. Without hesitation the batterymen stand to their guns and sacrifice their life's blood to gain the time necessary for a second line of artillery to be formed behind them, thus helping to prevent a disastrous defeat for the Federal Army on Northern soil. Charlie saves his captain's life and is later awarded the Medal of Honor.

August 1990, 30,000 Iraqi troops have invaded Kuwait and are in a position to influence nearly half of the world's oil supply. The United Nations condemn the aggression but it is clear that only military intervention is going to displace Saddam Hussein. Captain Joseph 'Quarry' Samuels and the Marines of Scout Platoon, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Division are tasked with discovering the strength and deployment of Iraqi troops. Quarry and his scouts are soon engaged in a game of cat and mouse with the 10,000-strong 108th Iraqi Armored Division. Operating behind enemy lines, they put themselves squarely in danger's way in order to collect the intelligence necessary to launch military operations. When hostilities end, with the greatest one-sided military victory of all time, the Marines deserve to be on their way home. However, Quarry remains in Kuwait to continue the deadly game with an old nemesis, but this time with a new ally on his side.

Much focus in research on alphabetic writing systems has been on correspondences between graphemes and phonemes. The present study sets out to complement these by examining the linguistic denotation of markers of word division in several ancient Northwest Semitic (NWS) writing systems, namely, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Moabite, and Hebrew, as well as alphabetic Greek. While in Modern European languages words on the page are separated on the basis of morphosyntax, I argue that in most NWS writing systems words are divided on the basis of prosody: ‘words’ are units which must be pronounced together with a single primary accent or stress, or as a single phrase. After an introduction providing the necessary theoretical groundwork, Part I considers word division in Phoenician inscriptions. I show that word division at the levels of both the prosodic word and of the prosodic phrase may be found in Phoenician, and that the distributions match those of prosodic words and prosodic phrases in Tiberian Hebrew. The latter is a source where, unlike the rest of the material considered, the prosody is well represented. In Part II, word division in Ugaritic alphabetic cuneiform is analysed. Here two-word division strategies are identified, corresponding broadly to two genres of text: viz, literary, and administrative documents. Word division in the orthography of literary and of some other texts separates prosodic words. By contrast, in many administrative (and some other) documents, words are separated on the basis of morphosyntax, anticipating later word division strategies in Europe by several centuries. Part III considers word division in the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition of Biblical Hebrew. Here word division is found to mark out ‘minimal prosodic words’. I show that this word division orthography is also found in early Moabite and Hebrew inscriptions. Word division in alphabetic Greek inscriptions is the topic of Part IV. Whilst it is agreed that word division marks out prosodic words, the precise relationship of these units to the pitch accent and the rhythm of the language is not so clear, and consequently this issue is addressed in detail. Finally, the Epilogue considers the societal context of word division in each of the writing systems examined, to attempt to discern the rationales for the prosodic word division strategies adopted. Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) is a project funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 677758), and based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge.

Hot on the heels of a dressing-down by the U.S. Commander Berlin, U.

It is the summer of 1945, the last and very dangerous days of World War II. The Office of Strategic Services is in close, cooperative contact with Ho Chi Minh and the fighting cadre of the Viet Minh, working against the Japanese. In the closing months of the war, the OSS parachute a team of special operations soldiers into Tonkin, northern Viet Nam. Led by Major John Guthrie and his second-in-command, Captain Edouard Parnell, both experienced officers from their earlier assignments in occupied France and Belgium, the team are tasked with working with Ho Chi Minh against the Japanese in the midst of various groups vying for control of Indochina. Guthrie and his team have to adapt to the entirely different context of Vietnamese politics in order to encourage communist operations against the Japanese. Guthrie in particular, struggles with both his personal and professional conflicts. The relationship that Guthrie and the rest of the OSS team develops with the Viet Minh leadership is of distinct annoyance to French ambitions to regain control of their colony, Indochina.Based on the little-known true story of American and Viet Minh collaboration in 1945, this novel challenges the later-accepted dogma of both those supporting and those opposing the American role in the Viet Nam conflict. This novel notes how what is seen at a later time is often inadequate to understand what actually went on. Its contemporary relevance is simply a mirror of what is always the case in international affairs: today's enemies can and may be tomorrow's friends - and most importantly, the reverse is true also.

The latest volume of the British Historic Towns Atlas series covers the internationally-renowned city of Oxford. Famed for its university and its many outstanding historic buildings, the volume presents in mapped form the history of its topographical development. From its prehistoric setting, through its contentious Anglo-Saxon foundation, the medieval establishment of its university, and its sporadic growth after that, the Atlas charts how it became a nineteenth-century city dominated by colleges, churches, university buildings, and its associated publishing industry. The Atlas is presented as a large-format portfolio containing a series of maps showing the city at key points in its history, many illustrations of its buildings and streets, maps to show its setting, and reproduction early maps of the city. A readable text introduces and explains the maps, giving the reader a thorough grounding in how and why Oxford developed, and an explanation of its changing fortunes. A supplementary chapter brings the situation up to date. Whilst many histories of the university have been written, the Atlas concentrates on the topographic development of Oxford as a settlement, and explains it in mapped form. A comprehensive gazetteer lists every building and street shown on the maps, with a short history and references for further reading.

The Story of Katrine tells the story of a young Greenlandic woman who falls in love with a Danish craftsman, who works in Greenland over a summer. When he returns to Denmark, Katrine follows him because she thinks they should get married, having had their child. It will be a big disappointment for her, but she stays in Denmark. A dramatic and sad tale of cultural unity and oppression of women. This story, which is fictionalized here, is unfortunately not unknown for Greenlanders in Denmark.

Samuel R. Delany is one of literature's most iconic voices. An acclaimed writer of literary theory, queer literature, and fiction. his works have fundamentally altered the terrain of science fiction through their formally consummate and materially grounded explorations of difference. This anthology of essays, talks, and interviews addresses topics such as sex and sexuality, race, power, literature and genre, as well as Herman Melville, John Ashbery, Willa Cather, Junot Diaz, and others. The second of two volumes, this book gathers more than twenty-five pieces on films, poetry, and science fiction. This diverse collection displays the power of a towering literary intelligence. It is a rich trove of essays, as well as a map to the mind of one of the great writers of our time.

The long memra translated here in this volume presents the seven parts of the homily on Creation in a single volume.

Indispensable volume of previously unavailable poetry by an American master Be Brave to Things shows legendary San Francisco Renaissance poet Jack Spicer at the top of his form, with his blistering intelligence, painful double-edged wit, and devastating will to truth everywhere on display. Most of the poetry here has never before been published, but the volume also includes much out-of-print or hard to find work, as well as Spicer's three major plays, which have never been collected. Here one finds major unfinished projects, early and alternate versions of well-known Spicer poems, shimmering stand-alone lyrics, and intricate extended "books" and serial poems. This new cache of Spicer material will be indispensable for any student of 20th century American poetry, proffering a trove of primary material for Spicer's growing readership to savor and enjoy. "When your body brushed against me. . ." When your body brushed against me I rememberedHow we used to catch butterflies in our handsDown in the garden.We were such patient childrenFollowing them from flower to flowerWaiting and hoping.With our cupped hands we used to catch themAnd they answered us with a soft tickleFor they never stopped flying.In bed I remembered them and cried forThe touch of their fast wings, the impatienceOf their bright colorsI am too old for such gamesBut even tonight, now your body has reminded me of butterfliesI lie here awake, pretending.