With The Otherworld in Irish Literature and History, Jonathan Wooding presents a major collection of essays by some of the best-known academics in Ireland, Britain and America today.

A collection of poems by a San Francisco doctor of Latino origin. The subjects include: an immigrant's son discovers his cultural identity, a physician awakens to the suffering of his patients, and two gay Latinos fall in love.

George Forster's A Voyage Round the World presents a wealth of geographic, scientific, and ethnographic knowledge uncovered by Cook's second journey of exploration in the Pacific (1772-1775). Accompanying his father, the ship's naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster, on the voyage, George proved a knowledgeable and adept observer. The lively, elegant prose and critical detail of his account, based loosely on his father's journal, make it one of the finest works of eighteenth-century travel literature and an account of prime importance in the history of European contact with Pacific peoples. The Forsters' publications reveal the sophistication and enthusiasm they brought to their observation of Polynesian peoples as well as a sensitivity to the moral ambiguities of contact. The two volumes of George Forster's work include substantially richer descriptions of encounters with island inhabitants than either his father's classic work (Observations Made during a Voyage round the World, UH Press, 1996) or Cook's official narrative, and its confident, even visionary, style incorporates a good deal of polemic, particularly in its criticism of the treatment of islanders by Cook's crew. In addition to the range and depth of its anthropological considerations, it provides a thrilling account of life aboard one of Cook's vessels. In its author's German translation, this work becomes a classic of natural history writing, but its original English version has long been neglected by anglophone scholars. This new scholarly edition makes this important book readily available for the first time since its initial publication more than two centuries ago. But it also presents the work in fresh terms, making it more accessible and relevant to a contemporary audience. The valuable introduction and annotations draw on the wide range of anthropological and ethnohistorical scholarship published since the 1960s and contextualize the book in relation to both the cultures of Oceania documented by the Forsters and the history of European voyaging in the Pacific. Appendixes include a translation of the introduction to the German edition and the polemical pamphlets by George Forster and the ship's astronomer William Wales, in which some of the book's more controversial claims were debated. A Voyage Round the World brings the disciplines of history and anthropology to bear on Cook's voyages in an illuminating and readable fashion. This edition will help complete the corpus of basic documents on Cook's voyages--a crucial resource for researchers in cultural, Pacific, and maritime history; archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians; and most recently for scholars engaged in revisionist interpretations of eighteenth-century exploration and colonization.

The bestselling author of Blue Latitudes takes us on a thrilling and eye-opening voyage to pre-Mayflower America On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz realizes he's mislaid more than a century of American history, from Columbus's sail in 1492 to Jamestown's founding in 16-oh-something. Did nothing happen in between? Determined to find out, he embarks on a journey of rediscovery, following in the footsteps of the many Europeans who preceded the Pilgrims to America. An irresistible blend of history, myth, and misadventure, A Voyage Long and Strange captures the wonder and drama of first contact. Vikings, conquistadors, French voyageurs—these and many others roamed an unknown continent in quest of grapes, gold, converts, even a cure for syphilis. Though most failed, their remarkable exploits left an enduring mark on the land and people encountered by late-arriving English settlers. Tracing this legacy with his own epic trek—from Florida's Fountain of Youth to Plymouth's sacred Rock, from desert pueblos to subarctic sweat lodges—Tony Horwitz explores the revealing gap between what we enshrine and what we forget. Displaying his trademark talent for humor, narrative, and historical insight, A Voyage Long and Strange allows us to rediscover the New World for ourselves.

A definitive collection of interviews with one of America's most famous writers, covering his life, faith, friends, politics, and visions of the future. Ray Bradbury, the poetic and visionary author of such classics as Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, is one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. From Mikhail Gorbachev to Alfred Hitchcock to David Bowie, Bradbury’s sway on contemporary culture is towering. Acclaimed biographer and Bradbury scholar Sam Weller has spent more than a decade interviewing the author; the fascinating conversations that emerge cast a high-definition portrait of a creative genius and a futurist who longs for yesterday. Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews is the definitive collection of interviews with an American icon.