Mentored by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis and published under the renowned Scribner editor Maxwell Perkins, Thomas Boyd attained only modest success as a novelist and biographer. He is known most widely for his World War I novel Through the Wheat, which critics, praising its realistic depiction of war and battle, compared to the Red Badge of Courage. How does a writer like Boyd, with his prominent literary friends, political ideals, professional aspirations, complicated personal life, and early death, fall so easily into obscurity? In this first full biography of Thomas Boyd, Brian Bruce explores the events of Boyd's life and rescues him from the realm of insignificance. The 1920s were a magical and very attractive time for critics and historians of American literature. Hollywood and the radio would soon end the careers enjoyed by many writers, like Boyd, and the nature of the book market would change forever in ways that mark the novel's descent from a privileged position of cultural importance or influence. Richly based on correspondence, this book not only illuminates a forgotten writer, but also captures the publishing world at a mercurial peak.

The advent of email and texting has dramatically changed the way we communicate. In essence, we have lost "touch" in our dealings with each other. This change may have been speeded by newer technologies, but telegraphs and telephones had a great impact in our perceptions of time and place. Before mass communication, the way we ordered and embedded knowledge and the possibilities of social interaction were defined by the extended human experience of living in towns. Can this experience be replicated with new technologies? The topics discussed include Lines of Communication in Medieval Dublin/Places of Power: The Spreading of Official Information and the Social Uses of Space in Fifteenth-Century Paris/Ferry services and Social Life in Early Modern Norwegian Towns/Networking Ireland in the Nineteenth-century: The Role of Cartography/Harbor, Rail and Telegraph: The Post Office and Communication in Nineteenth-century Dublin/The Tramway and the Urban Development of Zagreb in the Period of Modernization/Migrant Development of Communication Space in Sydney

Transport of Delight is a true interdisciplinary work, and includes a thorough analytical assessment of the Los Angeles rail program, with a focus on the Long Beach Blue Line light rail-the first of the new projects to go ahead. En route, it shows that ridership forecasting for this project was not only biased and statistically invalid, but in fact done to justify decisions made on other grounds. This unusual book develops a novel theory of myth to explain the construction of rail passenger transit in Los Angeles when it had little to offer the needs of a dispersed autopolis, whose urgent but dispersed public transportation needs could have been better served by developing the regional bus system. The author conducted interviews and performed the detective work necessary to reveal an unlikely logic that held together a network of symbols, images, and metaphors that together present powerful mythical beliefs in the guise of truth. A political analysis shows how consensus was reached to proceed with the light rail to Long Beach, but political explanations are ultimately found lacking, because they cannot explain why decision-makers would want to put the rail in place. It is only when provocative metaphors-of the need to connect communities and to restore a mythical balance to a dysfunctional transportation system-and symbols-of escape from the pressure cooker of poverty, of urban success, power and, indeed sexual acumen-are surfaced, that we realize that Los Angeles' Transport of Delight is the result of the very human need to transcend complexity by providing mythical creations that appear to offer easy answers to society's deepest problems.

Tropical mountain forests are very rich in species and are generally considered as hotspots of biodiversity. They are also of great ecological importance as sources of water and other ecosystem services for millions of people living in the tropics. However, these valuable forest ecosystems are now increasingly being fragmented, reduced and disturbed by human interventions. This book originated from a lecture series on the tropical mountain forest organized by the Göttingen Centre of Biodiversity and Ecology and held at the University of Göttingen, Germany during the summer term of 2007. The volume presents a synthesis of current ecological research in Germany on the tropical mountain forest, from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Walter R. Miles (1885-1978) was an American experimental psychologist very much interested in laboratory apparatus and procedures and their applications to human behavior. Early in his career, Miles received an appointment as a research scientist at the Carnegie Nutrition Laboratory in Boston, Massachusetts. When Miles arrived at the Carnegie Nutrition Laboratory in 1914, work was well underway on the physiological effects of various nutrients on the human body. Miles began studies on the effects of alcohol on physiological and psychological functioning. The First World War severed many of the relationships that the Carnegie Laboratory had with research counterparts in Europe. After the war, efforts were made to reestablish these ties. From April through August of 1920, Miles visited 57 laboratories and institutes in 9 different countries throughout Europe. A fastidious observer and note taker, Miles documented his journey in exquisite detail. At every stop, he observed, recorded, and interacted with key figures in European physiology and psychology. He gathered all this information together into a highly-detailed report of more than 300 pages. The report, part of the Walter Miles Papers available at the Archives of the History of American Psychology at the University of Akron, was never formally published. Now available in print, this title provides unique information about the workings of major centers of physiological and psychological research in early 20th century Europe. The book is introduced by C. James Goodwin, a renowned Miles' scholar.

The poems of The Wild Rose Asylum offer a multi-faceted consideration of the historical phenomenon of Ireland’s Magdalen asylums, the largest and most controversial of which were run for 150 years, until 1996, by the Catholic Church. In poems that embrace both traditional and experimental forms, Rachel Dilworth’s work explores complex factors involved in the loss by thousands of Irish women of years of their lives, numerous aspects of their identities, and countless future possibilities to confinement and arduous unpaid laundry labor as “penitents” in these facilities for so-called “fallen” women. Pervaded by a cutting awareness of an incarceration of the spirit, as well as of the beauty and naturalness of so many women’s development being suppressed and denied, these poems navigate individual and collective voice and silences, the held and withheld and disappeared or ignored, with a grace and unflinching attention. Humane and wide-ranging, The Wild Rose Asylum is a researched act of witness to an issue rife with loss—poems that seek to be “bird enough to dive far/into the heart of it and bring up something.

In Winter Morning with Crow, it is Clare Rossini's consciousness (attentive, prescient, inspired) that makes her miraculous art, makes a poetry so pure and spare, so free of artifice or contrivance, that it seems to reinvent the page. This is poetry that restores to us something we have lost. It returns beauty, and faith in beauty, then reminds us (as the great painters remind us) that we are not meant to possess it-or the objects of our love. The wisdom of these poems is as ancient as Buson's crows painted against a stark landscape, the whiteness of winter morning. Clare Rossini is, with this extraordinary first book, already a master.

Lynn Powell’s earlier work has deservedly brought her prestigious prizes and a loyal following. Now, in The Zones of Paradise, Powell extends her range and raises her language to a new intensity. These poems travel from Australia to New Mexico, from the Garden of Eden to her own back yard in Ohio, and everywhere they tremble with the restless exploration of desire, thwarted or fulfilled: “my heart another / Magellan of memory and want.” The Zones of Paradise may offer a vision of what it is like to live in “the fallout of The Fall,” but Powell’s lines dazzle with their sensuous intelligence and vivid wit, introducing an undaunted Eve who can announce, “I want to take April as my personal savior.” In poems that embrace both the risks and pleasures of experience, Lynn Powell celebrates the only world we know.