An underground classic, Grayson's debut short story collection introduced readers to the author's quirky, funny postmodern fiction and such characters as Buddy's grandfather, who wonders why no Jewish people ever win on "Bowling for Dollars" and thinks that Farrah Fawcett has a foreign accent; Sarah Lawrence of Arabia, who hides under a college student's bed while his mother and her maid won't stop cleaning his room; "Chief Justice Burger, Teen Idol"; the depressed superhero Ordinary Man, ...

Until recently the military record of Belfast nationalists inWorld War One was a part of this City’s hidden history. The revised edition of this book seeks to assist the renewed and growing interest in this important part of nationalist history that lay for decades in the shaded margins of contemporary historical events.New political circumstances in our society have made it easier to address the questions of why so many young nationalist men of that time enlisted in regiments of t...

WORLDBUILDING: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age examines the relationship between gaming and time-based media art. It is the first transgenerational show of this scope to survey how contemporary artists world-wide are appropriating the aesthetics and technology of gaming as their form of expression. Commissioned by the Julia Stoschek Foundation and curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, the exhibition features works by more than 50 artists, including Rebecca Allen, Cory Arcangel, LaTurbo Avedon, ...

"A fascinating examination of one of the best-known British forces of the Second World War . . . An efficient and increasingly professional military unit." — History of WarWhat was the Home Guard? Who were the men and women who served in it? And what can be said of their real role and significance once the popular myths have been stripped away?Despite the fame of the Home Guard—of Dad's Army—the true story of this wartime organization tends...

Australians have celebrated the Anzacs for nearly a century--but what do we really know of what war did to them? Charles Bean, historian of the citizen soldiers of the Australian Imperial Force, wrote that its history spanned 'the good and the bad'--but so far Australians have only looked at the good.Leading war historian Peter Stanley reveals the citizen soldiers the army regarded as its 'bad characters'. These were men who went absent and deserted, caught or concealed VD, got dru...

On the brink of the First World War, Scotland was regarded throughout the British Isles as 'the workshop of the Empire'. Not only were Clyde-built ships known the world over, Scotland produced half of Britain's total production of railway equipment, and the cotton and jute industries flourished in Paisley and Dundee. In addition, Scots were a hugely important source of manpower for the colonies. Yet after the war, Scotland became an industrial and financial backwater. Emigration increased ...

From the redcoat who served Charles II to the modern, camouflage-clad guard at Camp Bastion, from battlefield to barrack-room, this is a magisterial social history of the British soldier.Since 1660 the army has evolved and adapted, but the social organisation of the men has changed less, with the major combat arms retaining many of the characteristics familiar to those who fought at Blenheim, Waterloo and the Somme. The Duke of Marlborough, who built up the British army to become a...

First published in 1949, 'Guerilla Days in Ireland' is an extraordinary story of the Irish War of Independence and the fight between two unequal forces, which ended in the withdrawal of the British from twenty-six counties. Seven weeks before the Truce of July 1921, the British presence in County Cork consisted of a total of over 12,500 men. Against these British forces stood the Irish Republican Army whose flying columns never exceeded 310 riflemen in the whole of the county. These flying...

In September 1915, Keith Murdoch, then a young war journalist, wrote an 8000-word letter to the Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher. 'The Gallipoli Letter', as it came to be known, changed the course of the Gallipoli campaign.The letter, protesting against the conduct of the campaign and describing conditions at the front, is both intimate and conversational: 'I shall talk to you as if you were by my side.' It is also at times angry, passionate, vivid and very moving: 'Then in the early ...

WINNER OF THE BRITISH SPORT BOOK AWARDS - RUGBY BOOK OF THE YEARThis is the story of 15 men killed in the Great War. All played rugby for one London club; none lived to hear the final whistle. Rugby brought them together; rugby led the rush to war. They came from Britain and the Empire to fight in every theatre and service, among them a poet, playwright and perfumer. Some were decorated and died heroically; others fought and fell quietly. Together their sto...

The definitive story of the Australian campaign in Southeast Asia during World War II from one of Australia's leading military writers.'No man has the command of words needed for conveying.the courage and the cowardice; the loyalty and the treachery; the dedication and the dereliction; the strengths and the frailties; the kindness and the brutality; the integrity and depravity; the magnificence and the enormities of men, as revealed by and to those fated to pass th...

At Fromelles in July 1916 two divisions – one British and one Australian – within a few weeks of arriving in France – went into action for the first time. Their task was to prevent the Germans from moving troops to the Somme where a major British offensive was in progress, but the attack on 19/20 July was a disaster with nearly 7,000 casualties in a few hours. This account explores this battle which for many epitomises the futility of the Great War. In those few hours many...