Jahazpur is a small market town or qasba with a diverse population of more than 20,000 people located in Bhilwara District in the North Indian state of Rajasthan. With roots deep in history and legend, Shiptown (a literal translation of landlocked Jahazpur's name) today is a subdistrict headquarters and thus a regional hub for government services unavailable in villages. Rural and town lives have long intersected in Shiptown's market streets, which are crammed with shopping opportunities, many designed to allure village customers. Temples, mosques, and shrines attract Hindus and Muslims from nearby areas. In the town's densely settled center—still partially walled, with arched gateways intact—many neighborhoods remain segregated by hereditary birth group. By contrast, in some newer, more spacious residential areas outside the walls, persons of distinct communities and religions live as neighbors. Throughout Jahazpur municipality a peaceful pluralism normally prevails. Ann Grodzins Gold lived in Santosh Nagar, the oldest of Shiptown's new settlements, for ten months, recording interviews and participating in festival, ritual, and social events—public and private, religious and secular. While engaged with contemporary scholarship, Shiptown is moored in the everyday lives of the town's residents, and each chapter has at its center a specific node of Jahazpur experience. Gold seeks to portray how neighborly relations are forged and endure across lines of difference; how ancient hierarchical social structures shift in major ways while never exactly disappearing; how in spite of pervasive conservative family values, gender roles are transforming rapidly and radically; how environmental deterioration affects not only public health but individual hearts, inspiring activism; and how commerce and morality keep uneasy company. She sustains a conviction that, even in the globalized present, local experiences are significant, and that anthropology—that most intimate and poetic of the social sciences—continues to foster productive conversations among human beings.

Ann Grodzins Gold weaves together an integrated series of ethnographic sketches depicting the distinctive nature of non-urban, non-rural places; the impact locality has on belonging; the negotiations of difference required in a pluralistic society; and the ways a changing environment permeates experiences of self and place.

The Warrior Song of a Golden One has not been heard in Kaenolir for over four hundred years. During that time, the people have known peace and prosperity. But war threatens. Beyond the northern sea, Helm Stoller, Fara of Loftland, is preparing an army to follow him to Kaenolir. He covets the magic and power of Golden Ones and dragons. Colin Thorpe, Caretaker of the dragons of legend, must find a Golden One. His search leads him to Kearra Fairchild, whose heritage he traces to Kailie Fairchild. Will dragons come one more time to save Kaenolir when all else fails?

The most celebrated science fiction short story editor of our time, multi-award-winning editor and Locus Magazine critic Jonathan Strahan presents the definitive collection of best short science fiction of 2020. With short works from some of the most lauded science fiction authors, as well as rising stars, this science fiction collection displays the top talent and cutting-edge cultural moments that affect our lives, dreams, and stories. These brilliant authors examine the way we live now, our hopes, and struggles, all through the lens of the future. An assemblage of future classics, this star-studded anthology is a must-read for anyone who enjoys the vast and exciting world of science fiction.

The Mad Professor is the story of one man's battle in the 1960-70's Pacific Northwest against institutionalized bureaucracy and the strangulating effects of academic politics. Leo Bauer is first encouraged and then destroyed by the academic machine. The novel is literary, not easy to pigeonhole. The Mad Professor is a divergent novel, a confession of sorts by a man subversive to the organizations governing his life while remaining committed in his dedication to the natural world of Wisconsin, Utah, and Washington whose natural history is contemplated and analyzed. Bureaucracy represented by a community college is explored through hallucinations, stream of consciousness and magical realism. While Leo Bauer searches for authenticity life hammers him and he suffers losses of his profession, wife, reputation and assets during the Vietnam era, the time of sex, drugs, rock and roll, oil crisis and recession. Despite the somber nature of his struggle the novel has a great deal of broad and satiric humor. Leo Bauer's fantasy world becomes wilder and wilder including his exploration of a huge DNA Helix, the prophecies of a lobotomized fellow teacher, and the Curriculum of Death in which students are bombed and attacked with strafing airplanes. This digressive narrative resists linearity. Leo Bauer commences life in Wisconsin where he experiences paradise among the lakes and forests. Throughout this man searches for authenticity in a culture of false values. Librarians and booksellers should classify it as community college satire.