This volume of Osiris integrates gender analysis with the global history of science and medicine from the late Middle Ages to the present by focusing on masculinity. The premise is that social constructions of masculinity function simultaneously as foils for femininity and as methods of differentiating between “kinds” of men. In exploring scientific masculinities, the book asks: how has masculinity been defined, and what are the mechanisms by which it operates in science? The essa...

Sir Walter Raleigh-soldier, explorer, adventurer, lover of Queen Elizabeth-emerges from the pages of history and myth, full-blooded, passionate, and profoundly human. After unjustly languishing for years in the Tower, Raleigh undertakes one final voyage in search of gold. On his doomed quest he contends with Spanish forces, mutiny, pirates, court intrigue, and disease, all under the shadow of the executioner's blade awaiting him back home. Along the way, he also recounts his storied rise f...

Winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Guardian Fiction PrizeThe most beloved comic figure in English literature decides that history hasn’t done him justice—it’s time for him to tell the whole unbuttoned story, his way. Irascible and still lecherous at eighty-one, Falstaff spins out these outrageously bawdy memoirs as an antidote to legend, and in the process manages to recreate his own. This splendidly written novel is a feast, opening wide the look and feel of...

Addressing the need for a better understanding of astronomical phenomena while dispelling all redundant conclusionsIntroducing a novel concept on proposed logic, author Bruce Nye examines the clear logical facets that comprise planetary and cosmological dynamics while deconstructing the accepted notions on reality. His detailed analysis and unique methodology produce a mathematical language that is simple and will widen our perception of the world around us. Unveil...

Beyond the Cradle of mankind, the universe is vast, unknown, dangerous to the unwary…or those caught in the path of intrepid explorers proceeding without forethought.Thirteen authors explore what it is to pioneer the future in tales fraught with danger and remorse, tempered with hope, luck, and serendipity. We face the monsters. We face the truth. We face ourselves.Whether the frontier is that of science or space, there is no doubt that at some point one must ask …If we had...

"The range of subjects treated in this book is wonderful, even to me. It is a library of universal knowledge, and the facts contained in it are different from any other facts now in use. I have carefully guarded, all the way through, against using hackneyed and moth-eaten facts. As a result, I am able to come before the people with a set of new and attractive statements, so fresh and so crisp that an unkind word would wither them in a moment."

Drawing on a range of approaches developed by paediatric chaplaincy teams worldwide, this edited collection provides best principles, practices and skills of chaplaincy work with neonates, infants, children, young people and their families.By engaging with paediatric chaplaincy from an international, multifaith perspective, contributors from around the world and different faith traditions show what good spiritual, religious and pastoral care for children and their families looks li...

The Wit and Humor of America gathers ten volumes of American comic writing into a capacious archive of satire, burlesque, dialect sketch, parable, anecdote, verse, and social observation. Moving from early republican wit through nineteenth-century regionalism and the modern magazine sketch, it reveals humor as both entertainment and cultural criticism. Comic monologues, mock-heroic poems, and sharply observed tales sit beside enduring reflections on politics, manners, sentiment, class, and...

Our guide to the life of the Bard is an actor called Pickleherring, who asserts that as a boy he was an original member of Shakespeare's acting troupe. In an attic above a brothel in Restoration London-a half century after Shakespeare has departed the stage-Pickleherring, now an old man, sits down to write the full story of his former friend, mentor, and master. Fond, faithful Pickleherring has forgotten nothing over the years, and using sources both firsthand and far-fetched he means to s...

A concise overview of this multidisciplinary field, presenting key concepts, central issues, and current research, along with concrete examples and case studies.The emergence of the environmental humanities as an academic discipline early in the twenty-first century reflects the growing conviction that environmental problems cannot be solved by science and technology alone. This book offers a concise overview of this new multidisciplinary field, presenting concepts...

"[A] penetrating study of one of the strangest marriages in history . . . Robert Graves, author of I, Claudius, has the gift for fleshing the bare bones of history ( Kirkus Reviews).The famous poet John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, had a wife, and their story is both strange and tumultuous. Consummate historical novelist and poet Robert Graves tells the story from the perspective of the wife, Marie Powell, a young woman who married th...

Nevill Coghill’s masterly and vivid modern English verse translation with all the vigor and poetry of Chaucer’s fourteenth-century Middle EnglishA Penguin ClassicIn The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. A story-telling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a ser...