A heritage of conflict in author-character relations emerges through works by Dostoevsky, Mauriac, O'Connor, and DeLillo, where the issue of a character's freedom from the author's perspective proves essential to understanding narrative form.

"Arranged chronologically by decade, from the 1890s to the 1990s, each decade is divided into two different types of writing: critical/documentary and imaginative writing, and is accompanied by a headnote which situates it thematically and chronologically. The Reader is also structured for thematic study by listing all the pieces included under a series of topic headings. The wide range of material encompasses writings of well-known figures in the Irish canon and neglected writers alike. This will appeal to the general reader, but also makes Irish Writing in the Twentieth Century ideal as a core text, providing a unique focus for detailed study in a single volume."--BOOK JACKET.

A study of Australian nurse Sister Elizabeth Kenny and her efforts to have her unorthodox methods of treating polio accepted as mainstream polio care in the United States during the 1940s. A case study of changing clinical care, and an examination of the hidden politics of philanthropies and medical societies.

This book provides a thorough analysis of terpsichorean lexis in Renaissance drama. Besides considering not only the Shakespearean canon but also the Bard’s contemporaries (e.g., dramatists as John Marston and Ben Jonson among the most refined Renaissance dance aficionados), the originality of this volume is highlighted in both its methodology and structure. As far as methods of analysis are concerned, corpora such as the VEP Early Modern Drama collection and EEBO, and corpus analysis tools such as #LancsBox are used in order to offer the widest range of examples possible from early modern plays and provide co-textual references for each dance. Examples from Renaissance playwrights are fundamental for the analysis of connotative meanings of the dances listed and their performative, poetic and metaphoric role in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century drama. This study will be of great interest to Renaissance researchers, lexicographers and dance historians.

“Al Ovies combines an impressive array of source material and intricate analysis to craft a historical gem. This is a must-read for anyone interested in Civil War cavalry and later war actions in the Eastern Theater.” — Scott Patchan, author of The Last Battle of Winchester The second installment of Al Ovies’ The Boy Generals trilogy, George Custer, Wesley Merritt and the Cavalry of the Army of the Potomac, from the Gettysburg Retreat through the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864, encompasses a period jammed with tumultuous events for the cavalry on and off the battlefield and a significant change of command at the top. Once below the Potomac River, the Union troopers raced down the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains but were unable to prevent General Lee’s wounded Army of Northern Virginia from reaching Culpeper. The balance of the 1863 was a series of maneuvers, raids, and fighting that witnessed the near-destruction of the Michigan Cavalry Brigade at Buckland Mills and the indecisive and frustrating efforts of the Bristoe Station and Mine Run campaigns. Alfred Pleasonton’s controversial command of the mounted arm ended abruptly, only to be replaced by the more controversial Philip H. Sheridan, whose combustible personality intensified the animosity burning between George Custer and Wesley Merritt. Victory and glory followed the Cavalry Corps during the early days of Overland campaign, particularly at Yellow Tavern, where Rebel cavalier Jeb Stuart was mortally wounded. The “spirited rivalry” between Custer and Merritt, in turn, took a turn for the worse. At Trevilian Station, the bitterness and rancor permeating their relationship broke into the open to include harsh official reports critical of the other’s actions. Merritt’s elevation to temporary command of the 1st Cavalry Division cemented their rancor. Just as their relationship worsened, so too did the tenor of the war darken as the sieges of Richmond and Petersburg ground on, and Confederate partisan Col. John S. Mosby intensified guerrilla operations that disrupted Union logistics in the Shenandoah Valley. When Gen. Ulysses Grant demanded that Sheridan escalate retribution, the cavalry commander delivered his infamous edict to “eat out Virginia clear and clean as far as they go, so that crows flying over it for the balance of the season will have to carry their provender with them.” Much of the gritty task fell on the shoulders of the boy generals. Adolfo Ovies’ well-researched and meticulously detailed account of the increasingly dysfunctional relationship between Custer and Merritt follows the same entertaining style in the first installment. The Boy Generals changes the way Civil War enthusiasts will understand and judge the actions of the Union’s bold riders.

All who lived in the early 1950s remember the fear of polio and the elation felt when a successful vaccine was found. Now David Oshinsky tells the gripping story of the polio terror and of the intense effort to find a cure, from the March of Dimes to the discovery of the Salk and Sabin vaccines--and beyond.Here is a remarkable portrait of America in the early 1950s, using the widespread panic over polio to shed light on our national obsessions and fears. Drawing on newly available papers of Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin and other key players, Oshinsky paints a suspenseful portrait of the race for the cure, weaving a dramatic tale centered on the furious rivalry between Salk and Sabin. Indeed, the competition was marked by a deep-seated ill will among the researchers that remained with them until their deaths. The author also tells the story of Isabel Morgan, perhaps the most talented of all polio researchers, who might have beaten Salk to the prize if she had not retired to raise a family. As backdrop to this feverish research, Oshinsky offers an insightful look at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which was founded in the 1930s by FDR and Basil O'Connor. The National Foundation revolutionized fundraising and the perception of disease in America, using "poster children" and the famous March of Dimes to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from a vast army of contributors (instead of a few well-heeled benefactors), creating the largest research and rehabilitation network in the history of medicine. The polio experience also revolutionized the way in which the government licensed and tested new drugs before allowing them on the market, and the way in which the legal system dealt with manufacturers' liability for unsafe products. Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, Oshinsky reveals that polio was never the raging epidemic portrayed by the media, but in truth a relatively uncommon disease. But in baby-booming America--increasingly suburban, family-oriented, and hygiene-obsessed--the specter of polio, like the specter of the atomic bomb, soon became a cloud of terror over daily life.Both a gripping scientific suspense story and a provocative social and cultural history, Polio opens a fresh window onto postwar America.

Labor strife in piedmont mills had left eight dead in the summer of 1929, prompting the AFL–affiliated United Textile Workers of America (UTW) to strike an uneasy deal with the North Carolina governor. Their mutual goal was to root out and destroy the efforts of a rival communist organization, the National Textile Workers Union (NTWU), and thus erase Bolshevism in Dixie. The stage was set for a new round of conflict that would unfold over the next half-decade, not only in North Carolina but in several surrounding states. In this follow-up to Unraveled, his account of the 1929 events, Travis Sutton Byrd deftly explores a complex story of labor relations, political transitions, and emergent class consciousness in the industrial South. He seeks to answer why, with the coming of the Depression and New Deal initiatives to combat it, the region proved to be such a vexing battleground for labor organizers, whether mainstream or radical. This book examines the initiation and failure of the AFL/UTW’s “Organize the South Campaign” and the attendant rise and demise of “Coalitionism”—a fusion between organized labor, progressive Republicans, and disaffected Democrats. It also documents the evolution of contradictory impulses—trade unionism and collective bargaining versus individualism and “right-to-work” doctrine—and pays special attention to the now-forgotten High Point, North Carolina, hosiery strike of 1932, which achieved its goals in remarkable fashion even though it never regularized under either the UTW or the NTWU. The story culminates in 1934, when a general strike swept the country in a desperate effort to force the reform promised by the National Recovery Act. Drawing especially on regional newspaper accounts to show how the key actors— millhands, owners, organizers, and politicians—understood the events, Tangled is a thoroughly engrossing chronicle that carries vital lessons for today’s labor leaders and policymakers.

At a time when Indians were merely red devils in the minds of most American settlers, Ernest Thompson Seton--the Chief--assumed the role of their steadfast advocate. Seton's high regard for Indians and their spiritual, peaceful relationship with nature was manifested in his "Woodcraft" youth activities, which were the basis for Scouting.