Best of
Abandoned

1981

Foundation / Foundation and Empire / Second Foundation / The Stars, Like Dust / The Naked Sun / I, Robot


Isaac Asimov - 1981
    . .The Stars, Like DustA masterpiece of suspense and drama: Biron Farrill sets out on a dangerous quest through the galaxies to find "Rebellion World" and its key to man's future peace.The Naked SunEarth's very existence is at stake when a murder takes place on power-hungry Solaria.  One of the greatest detective stories in the science fiction canon.I, RobotThe classic vision of a future where robots are so sophisticated that mankind is threatened with redundancy. Stories include: Robbie, Runaround, Reason, Catch That Rabbit, Liar!, Little Lost Robot, Escape!, Evidence, and The Evitable Conflict.

The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease, Other Dementias, and Memory Loss in Later Life


Nancy L. Mace - 1981
    In addition to the practical and compassionate guidance that have made The 36-Hour Day invaluable to caregivers, the fourth edition is the only edition currently available that includes new information on medical research and the delivery of care.The new edition includes:-new information on diagnostic evaluation-resources for families and adult children who care for people with dementia-updated legal and financial information-the latest information on nursing homes and other communal living arrangements-new information on research, medications, and the biological causes and effects of dementiaAlso available in a large print editionPraise for The 36-Hour Day:

Sixty Stories


Donald Barthelme - 1981
    Here are urban upheavals reimagined as frontier myth; travelogues through countries that might have been created by Kafka; cryptic dialogues that bore down to the bedrock of our longings, dreams, and angsts. Like all of Donald's work, the sixty stories collected in this volume are triumphs of language and perception, at once unsettling and irresistible.

Water Music


T. Coraghessan Boyle - 1981
    Boyle's riotous first novel, now in a new edition for its 25th anniversary Twenty five years ago, T.C. Boyle published his first novel, Water Music, a funny, bawdy, extremely entertaining novel of imaginative and stylistic fancy that announced to the world Boyle's tremendous gifts as a storyteller. Set in the late eighteenth century, Water Music follows the wild adventures of Ned Rise, thief and whoremaster, and Mungo Park, a Scottish explorer, through London's seamy gutters and Scotland's scenic highlands to their grand meeting in the heart of darkest Africa. There they join forces and wend their hilarious way to the source of the Niger.

The Book of Ebenezer Le Page


G.B. Edwards - 1981
    Eighty years old, Ebenezer has lived his whole life on the Channel Island of Guernsey, a stony speck of a place caught between the coasts of England and France yet a world apart from either. Ebenezer himself is fiercely independent, but as he reaches the end of his life he is determined to tell his own story and the stories of those he has known. He writes of family secrets and feuds, unforgettable friendships and friendships betrayed, love glimpsed and lost. The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is a beautifully detailed chronicle of a life, but it is equally an oblique reckoning with the traumas of the twentieth century, as Ebenezer recalls both the men lost to the Great War and the German Occupation of Guernsey during World War II, and looks with despair at the encroachments of commerce and tourism on his beloved island.G. B. Edwards labored in obscurity all his life and completed The Book of Ebenezer Le Page shortly before his death. Published posthumously, the book is a triumph of the storyteller’s art that conjures up the extraordinary voice of a living man.

The Soul of a New Machine


Tracy Kidder - 1981
    Tracy Kidder got a preview of this world in the late 1970s when he observed the engineers of Data General design and build a new 32-bit minicomputer in just one year. His thoughtful, prescient book, The Soul of a New Machine, tells stories of 35-year-old "veteran" engineers hiring recent college graduates and encouraging them to work harder and faster on complex and difficult projects, exploiting the youngsters' ignorance of normal scheduling processes while engendering a new kind of work ethic.These days, we are used to the "total commitment" philosophy of managing technical creation, but Kidder was surprised and even a little alarmed at the obsessions and compulsions he found. From in-house political struggles to workers being permitted to tease management to marathon 24-hour work sessions, The Soul of a New Machine explores concepts that already seem familiar, even old-hat, less than 20 years later. Kidder plainly admires his subjects; while he admits to hopeless confusion about their work, he finds their dedication heroic. The reader wonders, though, what will become of it all, now and in the future. —Rob Lightner

Critical Path


R. Buckminster Fuller - 1981
    Buckminster Fuller is regarded as one of the most important figures of the 20th century, renowned for his achievements as an inventor, designer, architect, philosopher, mathematician, and dogged individualist. Perhaps best remembered for the Geodesic Dome and the term "Spaceship Earth," his work and his writings have had a profound impact on modern life and thought.Critical Path is Fuller's master work--the summing up of a lifetime's thought and concern--as urgent and relevant as it was upon its first publication in 1981. Critical Path details how humanity found itself in its current situation--at the limits of the planet's natural resources and facing political, economic, environmental, and ethical crises.The crowning achievement of an extraordinary career, Critical Path offers the reader the excitement of understanding the essential dilemmas of our time and how responsible citizens can rise to meet this ultimate challenge to our future.

Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy


Robert Anton Wilson - 1981
    It's a wise and wacky look at our recent past seen through a fun-house mirror...it's a satire on our violent, inexplicable, wonderful world...and it's a mind trip inward to expose our deepest hopes and fears.The missing plutonium a terrorist group turns into nuclear devices, the Mad Fishmonger, the future America called Unistat, our hero Benny "Eggs" Benedict, and the Invisible Hand are real but beyond the Black Hole, out of space, out of time—in the universe next door.

Midnight's Children


Salman Rushdie - 1981
    Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight’ s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.

The Green Letters


Miles J. Stanford - 1981
    The book is grounded in Scripture and enlivened by quotations from noted authors. "Not I, but Christ" is its theme. The author makes this arresting statement regarding the dynamics of the Christian life: "God . . . doesn't intend to help us live the Christian life. Immaturity considers the Lord Jesus a Helper. Maturity knows Him to be life itself." Perhaps the greatest drama in the world is the slow and subtle growth of character in the Christian. Beauty of character can be developed only through years of reflection and experience in the Word of God as the life of Christ is increasingly lived by faith. The Christian life is a healthy, robust kind of life. It advances also through trials, for in one who has faith even suffering is not wasted, but becomes a means for increasing spiritual vigor and strength.

Notes on: To Kill a Mocking Bird


Rosamund Metcalf - 1981
    

The Bible Way to Receive the Holy Spirit


Kenneth E. Hagin - 1981
    Many say this book contains the clearest explanation of how to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit they've ever read!

Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man


Fannie Flagg - 1981
    There, at The End of the Road of the South, the family malt shop freezer holds unspeakable things, society maven Mrs. Dot hosts Junior Debutante meetings and shares inspired thoughts for the week (such as “sincerity is as valuable as radium”), and Daisy Fay’s Daddy hatches a quick-cash scheme that involves resurrecting his daughter from the dead in a carefully orchestrated miracle. Along the way, Daisy Fay does a lot of growing up, emerging as one of the most hilarious, appealing, and prized characters in modern fiction.

City Kid


Mary MacCracken - 1981
    It won the School Library Journal Best Book Award. Another exploration of the very real and painful world of the learning-disabled child.

Hoops


Walter Dean Myers - 1981
    His coach, Cal, knows Lonnie has what it takes to be a pro-basketball player, but warns him about giving in to the pressure. Cal knows because he, too, once had the chance--but sold out.As the Tournament nears, Lonnie learns that some heavy bettors want Cal to keep him on the bench so that the team will lose the championship. As the last seconds of the game tick away Lonnie and Cal must make a decision. Are they willing to blow the chance of a lifetime?

Sword of the Lamb


M.K. Wren - 1981
    Unrecognized by the Elite, the ruling class, an undercurrent of rebellion is surging through the enslaved Bond class. It’s a threat that could bring down all of civilization, creating a third Dark Age.Lord Alexand, first born of the House of DeKoven Woolf, stands to inherit a vast industrial empire along with a seat on the Directorate, the Concord’s ruling body. But he sees the writing on the wall and realizes that if the Bonds explode into total rebellion, there will be nothing to inherit, and the toll in human suffering will be beyond calculation. He makes a terrible choice then: He chooses to “die” and join the Society of the Phoenix, a clandestine organization whose existence is known to only a few Directorate Lords, who consider membership treason and punishable by death.

The Game of Our Lives


Peter Gzowski - 1981
    These were the days when the young Oilers, led by a teenaged Wayne Gretzky, were poised on the edge of greatness, and about to blaze their way into the record books and the consciousness of a nation. While the story of the early Oilers embodies the book, The Game of Our Lives is much more than a retelling of one season in the life of an NHL team.Unlike any book ever written in the annals of hockey, Gzowski beautifully weaves together the anatomy of a modern NHL team with the magnificent history of the game to create one of the best books about hockey in Canada. Here are the great teams and the great players through the ages—Morenz, Richard, Howe, Orr, Hull—the men whose rare and indefinable genius on the ice exemplified the speed, grit and innovation of the game.The Game of Our Lives is the best book on the Canadian passion for hockey; a wondrously perceptive account of the hold the game has on Canadians. —Jack Granatstein, The National Post

Ellis Island and Other Stories


Mark Helprin - 1981
    Winner of the Prix de Rome and the National Jewish Book Award, these ten stories and the title novella, "Ellis Island," exhibit tremendous range and versatility of style and technique, yet are closely unified in their beauty and in their concern with enduring and universal questions.

VALIS


Philip K. Dick - 1981
    Dick's incomparable final trio of novels (the others being The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer). This disorienting and bleakly funny work is about a schizophrenic hero named Horselover Fat; the hidden mysteries of Gnostic Christianity; and reality as revealed through a pink laser. VALIS is a theological detective story, in which God is both a missing person and the perpetrator of the ultimate crime.

Recollected Essays, 1965-1980


Wendell Berry - 1981
    These eleven essays, selected by the author from five previous collections.

The Beatitudes: An Exposition of Matthew 5: 1-12


Thomas Watson - 1981
    Watson's attractive style, vast store of quotes and anecdotes, vitality of presentation and easily-read exposition all contribute to make his works popular.

Pride And Prejudice


Diana Stewart - 1981
    At the turn of eighteenth-century England, a spirited young woman copes with the suit of a snobbish gentleman as well as the romantic entanglements of two of her four sisters.

Downbelow Station


C.J. Cherryh - 1981
    J. Cherryh's Union-Alliance novels, while separate and complete in themselves, are part of a much larger tapestry—a future history spanning 5,000 years of human civilization. A blockbuster space opera of the rebellion between Earth and its far-flung colonies, it is a classic science fiction masterwork.

The Complete Paratime


H. Beam Piper - 1981
    Beam Piper, the creator of the Terrohuman Future History and the bestselling Fuzzy novels, come the parallel worlds of Paratime—collected for the first time in one volume.Infinite worlds allowed for infinite evil—unless the doorway to those worlds was most carefully guarded. The Paratime Police are an elite force of men and women charged with defending a million unsuspecting Earths from their more developed—and more ruthless—neighbors in parallel continua. From the original Paratime, which introduced the unceasing struggles of the time-traveling heroes, to Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, the last Paratime story of a state trooper’s conquest of an alternate Earth...The Complete Paratime is a grand science fiction experience.

Way-farer


Dennis Schmidt - 1981
    But Way-farer is more than that: it is a novel that may well change the way you view reality itself.According to every reading it was a paradise planet—a warm and fecund world far more desirable than the teeming, polluted warrens of the planet-city that Earth had become. Yet when the last of the one-way transports had landed its cargo of Pilgrims, the men of Earth were to learn of a danger that no machine could detect, and against which no machine could defend them—the Mushin, mental entities that stimulate and amplify the dark streak of violence that lies near the core of every human being.Seven generations would pass before a descendant of the scattered remnant of the original colonists would be ready to face the power of the Mushin. But first he would have to learn to wield the weapon that is no weapon—and that only where there is no Will, is there a Way…His name is Jerome. This is his story. He is the WAY-FARER.

Byzantium Endures


Michael Moorcock - 1981
    Born in Kiev on the cusp of the twentieth century, he discovers the pleasures of sex and cocaine and glimpses a sophisticated world beyond his horizons before the storm of the October Revolution breaks. Still a student at St Petersburg, he is deflected into more immediate concerns, caught up in the rip-tide of history.

Lionheart: A Novel of Richard I


Martha Rofheart - 1981
    He was a King unbeaten in battle. His sword carved out a godlike legend from the battlefields of France to the blood-soaked sands of the Holy Land. He was England’s most romantic and heroic king, a passionate and sensitive man, great warrior, poet and musician, and a charismatic leader, blindly adored by the knights he commanded, deeply loved by more than one woman. But one woman captured his heart. She was a woman unchallenged in the lists of love. Blondelza, as daringly independent as she was beautiful. She lived by her wits and talent on the stage, and refused to yield to any man who was not her equal. In a royal court brimming with political intrigue, delicate alliances, and fierce jealousies, these two came together though all their world conspired to keep them apart — two proud and free spirits held in thrall by a passion that threatened to consume them both… In this masterly novel set in the time of the bloody Crusades and the intricate Courts of Love, the fiery Plantagenet rulers come to life: Richard’s father, the boorish womanizer, King Henry II; his mother, a legendary beauty and a unique woman of the medieval world, Eleanor of Aquitaine; his brothers the princes, vying for land and loyalty and power. And at the very centre is Richard himself and the woman he loved above all others, the talented and free-spirited Blondelza, mother of his illegitimate son, who mocked the laws of God and man. “STIRRING AND DRAMATIC!”- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY  “VIBRANT AND COLOURFUL” – LIBRARY JOURNAL Martha Rofheart (1917–1990) was an American writer of historical novels, an actress and early in her career, a model. She is also the author of ‘Fortune Made His Sword’ and ‘Glendower Country’. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

Conversations


Czesław Miłosz - 1981
    He survived the Soviet invasion of his beloved Lithuania, escaped to Nazi-occupied Warsaw where he joined the Socialist resistance, then witnessed the Holocaust and the razing of the Warsaw Ghetto. After persecution and censorship triggered his defection in 1951, he found not relief but the anguish of solitude and obscurity.In the years of loneliness and labor, Milosz continued writing poems and essays, learning to love his privacy and preoccupations and enjoying the devotion of his students at the University of California, Berkeley. International fame came like lightning when Milosz won the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature.Czeslaw Milosz: Conversations collects pieces from a wide range of sources over twenty-five years and includes an unpublished interview between Milosz and his friend and fellow Nobel Laureate poet Joseph Brodsky. This volume acquaints us with a man whose work, life, and thought defy easy characterization. He is a sensualist with a scholar's penchant for history, as likely to celebrate Heraclitus as the hooks on a woman's corset. He is a devout but doubting Catholic, and a thinker tinged with a heretical sensibility.Cynthia L. Haven is a literary critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to the Washington Post Book World, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Her work also has been published in Civilization, the Georgia Review, the Kenyon Review, and the Cortland Review.

The Killing of Karen Silkwood: The Story Behind the Kerr-McGee Plutonium Case


Richard Rashke - 1981
    Silkwood was a union activist concerned about health and safety issues at the plant, and her death at age twenty-eight was considered by many to be highly suspicious. Was it Kerr-McGee's revenge on a troublesome whistle-blower? Or was it part of a much larger conspiracy reaching from the Atomic Energy Commission to the FBI and the CIA? Richard Rashke leads us through the myriad of charges and countercharges, theories and facts, and reaches conclusions based solely on the evidence in hand.Originally published in 1981, his book offers a vivid, edgy picture of the tensions that racked this country in the 1970s. However, the volume is not only an important historical document. Complex, fascinating characters populate this compelling insider's view of the nuclear industry. The issues it explores—whistle-blowers, worker safety, the environment, and nuclear vulnerability—have not lost relevance today, twenty-six years after Silkwood's white Honda Civic was found trapped in a concrete culvert near Oklahoma City. For this second edition, Rashke has added a preface and three short chapters that explore what has been learned about Silkwood since the book's original publication, explain what happened to the various actors in the drama, and discuss the long-term effects of the events around Silkwood's death.

Hers the Kingdom


Shirley Streshinsky - 1981
    It was here, with her handsome aristocratic husband, Owen, and her crippled sister Lena, that Willa would build her empire.The Malibu, where the mountains meet the sea. A sprawling ranch pounded by the raging Pacific, it would grow to shelter the generations of a might California dynasty.Willa's dynasty. Through the boom days of the railroads, from the dance halls of San Francisco, to the revolutionary fires of China, through the bitter losses of war and the terrible secrets of a forbidden love, Willa would fight. For pride, for passion, for her children and her men...for the vast cherished acres of the Malibu, her kingdom, her home, her destiny.Like GONE WITH THE WIND and THE THORN BIRDS, a once-in-adecade story that will sweep you away into another woman's life.

The Memoirs of Alice Guy-Blaché


Alice Guy-Blaché - 1981
    Alice Guy Blach� was not only the world's first female director, but in 1896, she became the first of either sex to direct a fictional film. As the first director with the Gaumont Company in Paris, Alice Guy Blach� served as an influential figure in French film history, making more than 300 films, including some of the earliest sound subjects from the turn of the century. She continued her career in the United States, founding the Solax Company in 1910, and producing and directing 350 more films. Complementing the text are reprints of contemporary articles on Alice Guy Blach� from the American trade press, a reminiscence by her daughter, a brief evaluation of the career of her husband, Herbert Blach� and a complete filmography.

Salome in Full Score


Richard Strauss - 1981
    "It is virtuoso display of the creation of atmospheric colour by instrumental means." There are, of course, other reasons — it is enough to say that since opening night (December 9, 1905) it has ranked among the basic works of 20th-century music.Salome (after the Oscar Wilde play) was Richard Strauss's first great operatic success, and like many of his works, caused controversy. The problem was that Strauss succeeded too well in capturing what fin-de-siècle decadence was seen in Wilde — succeeded via an "instrumental inventiveness that is breathtaking" (Grove). The orchestral virtuosity is vividly apparent in the parts for percussion and for certain less commonly used instruments — heckelphone (here first introduced), xylophone, contrabassoon — which found their raison de'étre in Salome.There can be no question that this edition presents the definitive score. It reprints Strauss's own copy, obtained on loan from the vaults of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester — a large-sized, limited, numbered edition signed by the publisher and very likely the one Strauss used on the conducting podium. For this edition the cast and instrumentation information has been translated into English; with clear notes, wide margins, and durable binding, this inexpensive reprint will serve many years on the podium, music stand, or library shelf, enabling musicians and listeners to discover its beauties (including Salome's famous "Dance of the Seven Veils") for themselves. It is the authoritative way to experience, in the words of one critic, "the most febrile opera or music-drama ever written."

The Message of Hosea


Derek Kidner - 1981
    Why would he ask this of one of his special spokesman? Because he wanted to teach Hosea, the nation of Israel and all of us today a lesson we will not forget, a lesson that is painful yet joyous. Hosea's somber portrait of the human condition is our lesson in pain. All of us have played the harlot by forsaking God and his ways. The picture is not pretty but it's true. Yet Hosea clear illustration of God's love for us brings joy. While we are yet sinners, God comes to us and loves us. Derek Kidner imaginatively takes us through the unfolding story of Hosea and his wife, Gomer explaining the basic message, pointing out the subtleties and encouraging readers to live lives worthy of the God who loves the loveless.

The Song of Phaid the Gambler


Mick Farren - 1981
    International.If you know the CIA are bugging the line and charging you for their time.If you know the cat is watching you and reporting back to Control.If you know that paranoids are the only people who really know what is happening.If you hold these truths to be self-evident, then let The Song of Phaid the Gambler into your life and know that you are not alone.

Dear Fred


K.M. Peyton - 1981
    To Laura's parents, her passionate hero-worship was an embarrassment. The only people who understood her feelings were Uncle Harry and his strange protege, Tiger, a runaway boy with a lithe body and fiery nature who kissed Laura secretly behind the stable door.

Helen Steiner Rice's Poems of Faith


Helen Steiner Rice - 1981
    Joyously celebrating the peace that comes to those who put their trust in God, this warmly illustrated, full-color book features 90 favorite verses by America's all-time favorite inspirational poet.

Language Intervention Strategies in Aphasia and Related Neurogenic Communication Disorders


Roberta Chapey - 1981
    Topics include: assessment of language and communication, principles of language intervention, restorative approaches to language intervention, cognitive neuropsychological approach implications, functional intervention, and treatment for each syndrome. Other approaches and therapy for associated neuropathologies of speech and language related functions are also discussed. For more information, visit http://connection.LWW.com/go/chapey.

The Shy Child: A Parent's Guide to Preventing and Overcoming Shyness from Infancy to Adulthood


Philip G. Zimbardo - 1981
    regard themselves as "shy." Yet, shyness can be cured, says Dr. Philip Zimbardo, the nation's leading authority on shyness. With co-author Shirley Radl, Dr. Zimbardo presents a program for overcoming and preventing shyness from infancy to adulthood. The Shy Child is based on pioneering research conducted at the Stanford Shyness Clinic, including surveys of people in the U.S. and abroad, interviews with children, parents, teachers, and systematic experimental research that compared the behavior of shy to non-shy people. This book documents which parenting "style" encourages self-confidence in a child, helps with the problems of being shy and provides methods for building a child's trust and self-esteem. It explores the role that school plays in contributing to a child's shyness, and suggests ways to improve the quality of the classroom experience for every child. The Shy Child is the only book to provide an effective program for conquering shyness in childhood, before it has a chance to limit a child's options and determine the course of the child's life.

Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries: English Literature and its Background, 1760-1830


Marilyn Butler - 1981
    Butler relates the French and American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the expansion of agriculture, trade, and industry, and growing economic and social pressures to the cultural forces which shaped their work. She reveals the common factors which engaged the separate efforts of so many individual creative minds, and the fierce personal and artistic politics of an age in the midst of profound change. Demonstrating that the literature produced during this dynamic, restless time is not as homogenous as is generally assumed, Butler illuminates the ways in which these various experimental works reflected radically new sensibilities and aspirations.

Medieval English Gardens


Teresa McLean - 1981
    This illustrated survey of gardening lore from the era between the Norman Conquest and the Renaissance reveals a wealth of ancient secrets. Drawn from obscure sources — scraps of parchment from account rolls, charters, surveys, and registers — the book provides hitherto inaccessible knowledge about the plans, organization, and common uses of gardens in the pre-industrial world. Both an excellent work of scholarship and a fascinating read, the book examines the location, ownership, purpose, layout, overall appearance, fashions, and workmanship of English gardens. It further explores the gardens' colorful and fragrant contents, describing castle gardens, pleasure gardens, lovers' gardens, and secret gardens. Other subjects include infirmary gardens, herbariums, kitchen gardens, and flowery meads in addition to the cultivation of orchards, vineyards, and beehives.

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Space Technology


Kenneth W. Gatland - 1981
    

Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army and the Indian, 1848-1865


Robert M. Utley - 1981
    Between 1848 and 1865 the men in blue fought nearly all of the western tribes. Robert Utley describes many of these skirmishes in consummate detail, including descriptions of garrison life that was sometimes agonizingly isolated, sometimes caught in the lightning moments of desperate battle.

Color Drawing: A Marker/Colored-Pencil Approach for Architects, Landscape Architects, Interior and Graphic Designers, and Artists


Michael E. Doyle - 1981
    Beautifully illustrated in color. "An excellent book. Highly recommended".--Library Journal. Illustrated.

Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process


Peter Elbow - 1981
    Here, Peter Elbow emphasizes that the essential activities underlying good writing and the essential exercises promoting it are really not difficult at all.Employing a cookbook approach, Elbow provides the reader (and writer) with various recipes: for getting words down on paper, for revising, for dealing with an audience, for getting feedback on a piece of writing, and still other recipes for approaching the mystery of power in writing. In a new introduction, he offers his reflections on the original edition, discusses the responses from people who have followed his techniques, how his methods may differ from other processes, and how his original topics are still pertinent to today's writer. By taking risks and embracing mistakes, Elbow hopes the writer may somehow find a hold on the creative process and be able to heighten two mentalities--the production of writing and the revision of it.From students and teachers to novelists and poets, Writing with Power reminds us that we can celebrate the uses of mystery, chaos, nonplanning, and magic, while achieving analysis, conscious control, explicitness, and care in whatever it is we set down on paper.

Islamic Life & Thought


Seyyed Hossein Nasr - 1981
    The author has brought together studies dealing with the practical as well as intellectual aspects of Islam in both their historical and contemporary reality. The contemporary significance of themes such as religion and secularism, the meaning of freedom, and the tradition of Islamic science and philosophy is given particular attention.

The Time Machine / The War of the Worlds / The Island of Dr. Moreau


H.G. Wells - 1981
    802,701, he is initially delighted to find that suffering has been replaced by beauty, contentment, and peace. Entranced at first by the Eloi, an elfin species descended from man, he soon realizes that these beautiful people are simply remnants of a once-great culture--now weak and childishly afraid of the dark. They have every reason to be afraid: in deep tunnels beneath their paradise lurks another race descended from humanity--the sinister Morlocks. And when the scientist's time machine vanishes, it becomes clear he must search these tunnels if he is ever to return to his own era.The War of the WorldsThe night after a shooting star is seen streaking through the sky from Mars, a cylinder is discovered on Horsell Common in London. At first, naive locals approach the cylinder armed just with a white flag only to be quickly killed by an all-destroying heat-ray, as terrifying tentacled invaders emerge. Soon the whole of human civilisation is under threat, as powerful Martians build gigantic killing machines, destroy all in their path with black gas and burning rays, and feast on the warm blood of trapped, still-living human prey. The forces of the Earth, however, may prove harder to beat than they at first appear.The Island of Dr MoreauA shipwreck in the South Seas, a palm-tree paradise where a mad doctor conducts vile experiments, animals that become human and then "beastly" in ways they never were before -- it's the stuff of high adventure. It's also a parable about Darwinian theory, a social satire in the vein of Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's Travels), and a bloody tale of horror.As H. G. Wells himself wrote about this story, "The Island of Dr. Moreau is an exercise in youthful blasphemy. Now and then, though I rarely admit it, the universe projects itself towards me in a hideous grimace. It grimaced that time, and I did my best to express my vision of the aimless torture in creation."

Forward into Battle: Fighting Tactics From Waterloo To Vietnam


Paddy Griffith - 1981
    It showed that Wellington's infantry had won by their mobility rather than their musketry, that the bayonet did not become obsolete in the nineteenth century as is often claimed, and that the tank never supplanted the infantryman in the twentieth. A decade later, the author has been able to fill out many parts of his analysis and has extended it into the near future. The Napoleonic section includes an analysis of firepower and fortification, notably at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Additional discussions of the tactics of the American Civil War have been included. The evolution of small-unit tactics in the First World War is next considered, then the problem of making an armored breakthrough in the Second World War. Following is a discussion of the limitations of both the helicopter and firepower in Vietnam. The author points to some of the lessons learned by the U.S. military and the doctrine which resulted from that experience. Concluding is a glimpse at the strangely empty battlefield landscape that might be expected in any future high technology conflict. From the Trade Paperback edition.