This book is the first to engage with the full range of American travel writing about nineteenth-century Ottoman Palestine, and the first to acknowledge the influence of the late-eighteenth-century Barbary captivity narrative on nineteenth-century travel writing about the Middle East. Brian Yothers argues that American travel writing about the Holy Land forms a coherent, if greatly varied, tradition, which can only be fully understood when works by major writers such as Twain and Melville are studied alongside missionary accounts, captivity narratives, chronicles of religious pilgrimages, and travel writing in the genteel tradition. Yothers also examines works by lesser-known authors such as Bayard Taylor, John Lloyd Stephens, and Clorinda Minor, demonstrating that American travel writing is marked by a profound intertextuality with the Hebrew and Christian scriptures and with British and continental travel narratives about the Holy Land. His concluding chapter on Melville's Clarel shows how Melville's poem provides an incisive critique of the nascent imperial discourse discernible in the American texts with which it is in dialogue.

In the first critical study wholly devoted to Joseph Conrad's use of techniques associated with the literary tradition of romance, the author argues that Conrad's engagement with the genre invigorated his work throughout his career. Exploring the ways in which Conrad borrows from, alludes to, and subverts the tropes of romance, the author suggests that Conrad's ambivalent relationship with popular forms like the adventure novel is revealed in the way he uses romance conventions to disrupt narrative expectations and make visible ethical problems with Europe's colonial project. The author examines not only familiar novels like Lord Jim but also less-studied works such as Romance and The Rover, using Robert Miles's model of the 'philosophical romance' to show that for Conrad, romance is also philosophically engaged with issues of ideology. Her study enables a new appreciation of the ways in which Conrad continued to experiment, even in his later fiction, and of the ethical import of that aesthetic experimentation.

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942) was one of the most colorful and charismatic social scientists of the twentieth century. His contributions as a founding father of social anthropology and his complex personality earned him international notoriety and near-mythical status. This landmark book presents a vivid portrait of Malinowski’s early life, from his birth in Cracow to his departure in 1920 from the Trobriand Islands of the South Pacific. At the age of 36, he had already created the innovative fieldwork methods and techniques that would secure his intellectual legacy. Drawing on an exceptionally rich array of primary documents, including Malinowski’s letters and unpublished diaries and manuscripts, Michael Young provides significant new information about the anthropologist’s personality, private life, and career. The author describes Malinowski’s restless life of travel, connections with intellectuals and artists, Nietzschean belief in his own destiny, and legendary fieldwork. The singular man who emerges from these pages fascinates on every level—as a volatile friend and lover, a provocative colleague, a passionate diarist, and a brilliant thinker who pioneered radical change in the field of anthropology.

A study of Wharton's work which discusses her novels and travel books according to their specific geography or landscape rather than the date of composition. Emphasis is placed on Wharton's concern with America's place in the Western world and women's place in European society.

Dedek paints a complex portrait of America's most famous highway.

This book examines the development of the engine from a historical perspective. Originally published in Japanese, The Romance of Engines' English translation offers readers insight into lessons learned throughout the engine's history. This book belongs on the bookshelves of all engine designers, engine enthusiasts, and automotive historians. Topics covered include: Newcomen's Steam Engine The Watt Steam Engine Internal Combustion Engine Nicolaus August Otto and His Engine Sadi Carnot and the Adiabatic Engine Radial Engines; Piston and Cylinder Problems Engine Life Problem of Cooling Engine Compartments Knocking; Energy Conservation Bugatti; Volkswagon Rolls Royce Packard Daimler-Benz DB601 Engine and more!