Surreal Beckett situates Beckett‘s writings within the context of James Joyce and Surrealism, distinguishing ways in which Beckett forged his own unique path, sometimes in accord with, sometimes at odds with, these two powerful predecessors. Beckett was so deeply enmeshed in Joyce’s circle during his early Paris days (1928 - late 1930s) that James Knowlson dubbed them his "Joyce years." But Surrealism and Surrealists rivaled Joyce for Beckett’s early and continuing attention, if not affect...

Shakespeare’s Returning Warriors – and Ours takes its primary inspiration from the contemporary U.S. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) crisis in soldiers transitioning from battlefields back into society. It begins by examining how ancient societies sought to ease the return of soldiers in order to minimize PTSD, though the term did not become widely used until the early 1980s. It then considers a dozen or so Shakespearean plays that depict such transitions at the start, focus...

In Forms of Modern British Fiction six individualistic and strongminded critics delineate the "age of modernism" in British fiction. Dating the age and the movement from later Hardy works through the deaths of Joyce and Woolf, they present British fiction as a cohesive, self-contained unit of literary history.Hardy appears as the first of the modern British novelists, Lawrence as the central, and Joyce and Woolf as the last. The writers and the modern movement are framed b...

The Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa has been acclaimed throughout the literary world as one of Latin America's finest writers, yet until recently little has been written about his work in English. While his work has the subject of an increasing flow of critical commentary in Spanish and his major novels have been translated into English, this is the first full-scale critical treatment of Vargas Llosa published in the English language. These articles by a number of established writers and criti...

Gathering accurate data probably constitutes one of the most important aspects of crime investigation and prevention. How do we put the data to use? How can we improve our methods of handling the information we collect? By describing a project for the development and implementation of a computerized crime-mapping system in the Chicago area, this book makes a significant contribution toward a more efficient and intelligent use of crime data to understand and prevent crime in a community set...

Gary L. FriedmanWorried about all of the noise being made about Artificial Intelligence? Don't know whether to believe the hype or the apocalyptic predictions? Losing sleep over our all-too-certain dystopian future? In this collection of essays, 24 experts from a variety of different fields provide perspective and insight into what AI is and isn't, contrasting the crucial differences of AI vs. Human Intelligence (it's more nuanced than you think), and the surprising ways they can w...

This open access book provides an in-depth exploration of the Arabian Gulf, explaining the pivotal role of conflict in shaping this geopolitically significant region over the past century. Understanding the historical context of conflicts in this region helps explain the major ongoing tensions between major players such as Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and external powers like the UK, the United States and more recently China. The narrative spans major historical events, from the two World Wars...

In the tradition of E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel, James Wood's How Fiction Works is a scintillating study of the magic of fiction--an analysis of its main elements and a celebration of its lasting power.Here one of the most prominent and stylish critics of our time looks into the machinery of storytelling to ask some fundamental questions: What do we mean when we say we "know" a fictional c...

The Professional Protection Officer: Security Strategies, Tactics and Trends (8th Edition) is the definitive reference and instructional text for career oriented security officers in both the private and public sectors. The first edition originated with the birth of the International Foundation for Protection Officers (IFPO) in 1988, which has been using the book as the official text since that time. Each subsequent edition (seven) has brought new and enlightened information to the protect...

In 1953, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot premiered at a tiny avant-garde theatre in Paris; within five years, it had been translated into more than twenty languages and seen by more than a million spectators. Its startling popularity marked the emergence of a new type of theatre whose proponents—Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Pinter, and others—shattered dramatic conventions and paid scant attention to psychological realism, while highlighting their characters’ inability to understan...

Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference. In this Very Short Introduction the renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores the concept of beauty, asking what makes an object - either in art, in nature, or the human form - beautiful, and examining how we can compare differing judgements of beauty when it is evident all around...

Is a tower block, your unmade bed, your lavatory basin, or the bicycle chained to the gate next door a work of art? Why should a novel have a beginning, a middle, and an end; or even a story? Whether we recognise it or not, virtually every aspect of our life today has been influenced in part by the aesthetic legacy of Modernism. In this Very Short Introduction Christopher Butler examines how and why Modernism began, explaining what it is and showing how it has gradually informed a...