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“You may think I’m crazy, but the gun actually talks to me,” says Francis Kane, who has agreed to write the autobiography of a gun that had twelve owners. The gun, a.k.a. Michael Gunn, an M-1911 Colt .45 ACP, is a sidearm used by the U.S. military for five-plus decades. Michael fears his usefulness is coming to an end, so he wishes to have his story set to words for posterity. Michael relates the tales of his 12 owners – or “handlers” – as Francis likes to call them. There was the World War I doughboy; a French train engineer; a small French boy during the Nazi occupation; a German Luftwaffe pilot; a WWII American sergeant; a Korean soldier; a USAF Search-Air-Rescue airman in Thailand; the Hispanic gang leader in San Antonio; the young homeless woman from Louisiana; the female SWAT team member in Washington, D.C.; the African-American Philadelphia policeman; and finally, Francis Kane himself. Prior to relating its owners’ stories, Michael spins a lengthy narrative on how its creation came to life.
'Gunn's letters serve as one of the most indispensable epistolary chronicles of an era, especially in the US, of the Eisenhower fifties transforming into the revolutionary sixties and seventies, and then the revanchist, reactionary Reagan eighties and the AIDS epidemic, all seen through the lens of a gay, ex-pat English poet.' August Kleinzahler Gunn was not just the leather jacket-wearing, motorbike-riding tough that he is sometimes made out to be; nor the rambunctiously laughing happy-go-lucky bon vivant that he often showed to the world. This correspondence, meticulously transcribed and annotated by the editors, charts his contradictions and complexities, bringing alive the biographical, political and poetic landscape that informed his imaginative and heroic body of work. The letters demonstrate not only the poet's role-playing and theatricality - recounting in various voices to share his experiences as fully as possible - but also a deep literariness and humane intelligence: friendship, Gunn himself remarks, 'must be the greatest value in my life'.
Analyzes the responses of five states—Florida, Mississippi, New York, Washington, and Wisconsin—to the challenges of implementing welfare reform.
Since 1866 the Ku Klux Klan has been a significant force in Mississippi, enduring repeated cycles of expansion and decline. Klansmen have rallied, marched, elected civic leaders, infiltrated law enforcement, and committed crimes ranging from petty vandalism to assassination and mass murder. This is the definitive history of the KKK in Mississippi, long recognized as one of the group's most militant and violent realms. The campaigns of terrorism by the Klan, its involvement in politics and religion, and its role as a social movement for marginalized poor whites are fully explored.
The betrayal of his fellow prisoners by a British officer in a Japanese POW camp in Hong Kong in 1941 returns to haunt the 21st Century on the streets of London. The son of one of the POWs has been murdered by a hit-and-run driver to prevent him from finding the traitor who condemmed 1,200 men to die, locked in the hold of a sinking ship while being transported as slave labour toJapan. The hit-and-run victim leaves behind a briefcase containing his research into the identity of the traitor......and a letter. A letter adressed to John Gunn, an agent in the British Intelligence Directorate. This forcess John Gunn into a deadly conflict, not only with the Japanese, Albanian and Russian Mafias, but also with his own Direcdtorate.
Geometry and topology have been a fascination in physics since the start of the 20th century. A leading example is Einstein's geometrical theory of gravity. At the beginning of the 1970s, topological ideas entered areas of condensed matter physics. These advances were driven by new seminal ideas resolving a serious contradiction between experiment and the standard interpretation of a rigorous mathematical theorem which led to the study of new exotic topological phases of matter. Topological defect driven phase transitions in thin, two dimensional films of superfluids, superconductors and crystals have provided great insight into the mechanism governing these topological phases present in tho...
1980s Maun is reminiscent of Sir Percy Fitzpatrick’s 1880s Barberton, and Django is no less of a character than the legendary Jock of the Bushveld. Named for the hero in a spaghetti western, and oblivious to his diminutive statue, Django, a Jack Russell cross, squares up to the challenges life as a safari guide’s dog throws at him. As a pup he puts the ferocious Pitbull terrier Buford firmly in his place; the only other animal to have done so was a hyena. Django’s baptism to life in the bush takes place at the tender age of not-quite-a-year old. With Peter and Salome he embarks on an arduous trek through the Okavango Delta and it is here that his humans quickly learn to heed his warnin...
How has the culture affected the gospel of Jesus Christ, and how has that affected the witness of the church in the 21st century? This book intends to address those questions and then work toward a healthy correction to recapture the truth of the gospel, and the glory of God, and help people engage the culture instead of separating from it.
Since the early twentieth century, politically engaged and socially committed U.S. health professionals have worked in solidarity with progressive movements around the world. Often with roots in social medicine, political activism, and international socialism, these doctors, nurses, and other health workers became comrades who joined forces with people struggling for social justice, equity, and the right to health. Anne-Emanuelle Birn and Theodore M. Brown bring together a group of professionals and activists whose lives have been dedicated to health internationalism. By presenting a combination of historical accounts and first-hand reflections, this collection of essays aims to draw attention to the longstanding international activities of the American health left and the lessons they brought home. The involvement of these progressive U.S. health professionals is presented against the background of foreign and domestic policy, social movements, and global politics.
A biography of an important but little-known American scientist that evokes the issues of religious and secular beliefs and the evolution of Chinese scientific and educational institutions during the early 1900s.