You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
What does it mean to be a part of—rather than apart from—nature? This book is about how we interact with wildlife and the ways in which this can make our lives richer and more fulfilling. But it also explores the conflicts and contradictions inevitable in a world that is now so completely dominated by our own species. Interest in wildlife and wild places, and their profound effects on human wellbeing, have increased sharply as we face up to the ongoing biodiversity extinction crisis and reassess our priorities following a global pandemic. Ian Carter, lifelong naturalist and a former bird specialist at Natural England, sets out to uncover the intricacies of the relationship between humans...
This is the first academic book to study railway enthusiasts in Britain. Far from a trivial topic, the postwar train-spotting craze swept most boys and some girls into a passion for railways. For many in this cohort, train spotting ignited a lifetime's interest. British Railway Enthusiasm traces this postwar cohort and those who followed, as they moved through the life cycle. As the years turned these people invigorated different sectors in the world of railway enthusiasm--train spotting, railway modeling, collecting railway relics--and then, in response to widespread grief at main line steam traction's death, Britain's now-huge preserved railway industry. Today this industry finds itself riven by tensions between preserving a loved past which ever fewer people can remember and earning money from tourist visitors.
The 19th-century steam railway epitomized modernity's relentlessly onrushing advance. Ian Carter delves into the cultural impact of the train. Why, for example, did Britain possess no great railway novel? He compares fiction and images by canonical British figures (Turner, Dickens, Arnold Bennett) with selected French and Russian competitors: Tolstoy, Zola, Monet, Manet. He argues that while high cultural work on the British steam railway is thin, British popular culture did not ignore it. Detailed discussions of comic fiction, crime fiction, and cartoons reveal a popular fascination with railways tumbling from vast (and hitherto unexplored) stores of critically overlooked genres.
The campus novel is one of the best loved forms of fiction in the post-war period. But what are its characteristic themes? What are its prejudices? And what does it take for granted? Originally published in 1990, this is the first study to connect literary, historical, and sociological aspects of modern British universities. It shows that the culture celebrated in British university fiction represents a particular view of humane education which has its origins in the values of Oxbridge. Threats are seen to come from the ‘redbrick’ and ‘new’ universities, from proletarians, scientists (including sociologists), women, and foreigners. This exhilarating book makes a nonsense of sociology’s reputation for turgid and plodding analysis. Sharp-witted, shrewd, and penetrating, it will be of interest to students of sociology, literature, and for the same wide audience that appears to have an insatiable appetite for stories about university life.
Now available in paperback, this is the first academic book to study railway enthusiasts in Britain. Far from a trivial topic, the post-war train spotting craze swept most boys and some girls into a passion for railways, and for many, ignited a lifetime’s interest. British railway enthusiasm traces this post-war cohort, and those which followed, as they invigorated different sectors in the world of railway enthusiasm – train spotting, railway modelling, collecting railway relics – and then, in response to the demise of main line steam traction, Britain’s now-huge preserved railway industry. Today this industry finds itself riven by tensions between preserving a loved past which ever fewer people can remember and earning money from tourist visitors. The widespread and enduring significance of railway enthusiasm will ensure that this groundbreaking text remains a key work in transport studies, and will appeal to enthusiasts as much as to students and scholars of transport and cultural history.
For those of us who didn't live through World War II, it appears in our mind's eye in black and white. Images of the Blitz, of the D-Day landings at Normandy, the liberation of Paris, the fall of Berlin--all come to us in shadowy grays and blacks, the lack of color simultaneously heightening their drama and distancing them from us. Seen in black and white, World War II seems wholly of the past, a story that's being told much more than an experienced that men and women actually lived through. This book will help change that. Reproducing seventy-eight rare full-color images from the archives of the Imperial War Museums, it shows us a new--or at least long-forgotten--World War II. In these p...
First in “a quirky and intriguing crime series in which the eclectic cast often comes close to stealing the show from the plotline” (The Gazette). When the body of a young woman is discovered in the cowshed of Cricket Farm, the tranquility of the British countryside is shattered. Inspector Jess Campbell is on the case, but with few leads, a grumbling partner, and the new superintendent Ian Carter piling on the pressure, she’s beginning to wonder why she chose to be a detective in the first place. The shifty land-owner Eli Smith seems to have something to hide, and as Campbell delves into the gruesome past of the dilapidated farm, the mystery deepens. A flashy Mercedes spotted fleeing t...
Throughout the English-speaking world, and in the many other countries where analytic philosophy is studied, Hillel Steiner is esteemed as one of the foremost contemporary political philosophers. This volume is designed as a festschrift for Steiner and as an important collection of philosophical essays in its own right. The editors have assembled a roster of highly distinguished international contributors, all of whom are eager to pay tribute to Steiner by focusing on topics on which he himself has concentrated. Some of the contributors engage directly with Steiner's work, whereas others focus not directly on his writings but instead grapple with issues that have figured prominently therein. Each essay seeks to advance the debates in which Steiner himself has so notably participated. The study concludes with a response by Steiner himself.
Ecology is the science of ecosystems, of habitats, of our world and its future. In the latest New Naturalist, ecologist David M. Wilkinson explains key ideas of this crucial branch of science, using Britain’s ecosystems to illustrate each point.