In Transversal Ecocritical Praxis: Theoretical Arguments, Literary Analysis, and Cultural Critique, Patrick D. Murphy, Ph.D, utilizes ecocriticism and ecofeminism to develop his concept of transversal practice: an interdisciplinary combination of theory and applied criticism. He begins by explaining the necessity for cutting across disciplinary boundaries of all kinds in order to address the ecological dimensions of culture and literature. The dialogical foundation of this orientation is e...

In Ecocritical Explorations, Patrick D. Murphy explores environmental literature and environmental cultural issues through both theoretical and applied criticism. He engages with the concepts of referentiality, simplicity, the nation state, and virtual reality in the first section of the book, and then goes on to interrogate these issues in contemporary environmental literature, both American and international. He concludes his argument with a discussion of the larger frames of fa...

Persuasive Aesthetic Ecocritical Praxis continues Patrick D. Murphy's focus on transversal ecocritical praxis by considering literature and cinema in terms of the persuasive force of aesthetic activity and whether or not artistic production and its criticism can be considered forms of activism. Murphy argues that literature and other forms of aesthetic production hold out the promise of being able to move some individuals deeply through both affective and intellectual engagement in ways th...

What accounts for the power of stories to both entertain and illuminate? This question has long compelled the attention of storytellers and students of literature alike, and over the past several decades it has opened up broader dialogues about the nature of culture and interpretation. This third edition of the bestselling Essentials of the Theory of Fiction provides a comprehensive view of the theory of fiction from the nineteenth century through modernism and postmodernism to th...

The launch of the All for Ireland League in 1910 sent shock waves through Irish nationalism and led to widespread rioting and violence in Cork City and County. It represented the first breakaway from John Redmond’s Irish parliamentary party but, more importantly, challenged one of the central weaknesses of nationalism itself: the failure to build an inclusive vision of an independent nation and the belief that it could ignore the wishes of unionists.Drawing on a wide range of prima...

This book reflects the personal prejudices I have developed in twenty years of reading the scientific literature. I like monographs; good ones assemble a great deal of information in a logical sequence and in enough detail to enable one to see why current beliefs are held. For this purpose, it is entirely useless to write "as Smith has shown21 ,81,117 •••• " That only means that one must go to the library and turn up Smith's original papers, and one's object in reading a monograph is preci...

In the 1950s, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters empowered poor immigrants who had grown up in the crowded blocks of the central city to move upward and outward to comfortable suburbs. It delivered unprecedented benefits to workers—especially to those in retail, services, and light manufacturing—locking in hourly pay that bought the patio furniture sets, the pontoon boats, and the station wagons that defined the consumer culture of the decade. Yet suburban comfort came with strict,...

A collection of short essays that view life, family, gut checks and day to day events through the eyes of the author with the hopes that you will walk away with knowing how to...Pull The Trigger on Life, Career, and not being a D-Bag  

Two worlds on a razor’s edgeThe racially charged streets of 1990s Boston have hit a record-high murder rate. With dominating drug lord Whitey Bulger out of the picture, several rising-talent gang leaders vie for the throne, leaving in their war’s wake more bodies than the corrupt police bother to deal with.Patrick, an Irish Catholic boxer fresh out of prison for something he didn’t do, returns to his old neighborhood and barely recognizes it with the prolif...

Focused on faith and woven with Christian, ecumenical, and patriotic themes, Our Immigrants' Son is an exploration and celebration of family.The genres of prose poetry and historical fiction very cleverly takes you through the author's rich Irish American history. It begins in misty Ireland and takes you through generations of the Murphy clan while also teaching you how to write your family story.The storyteller is US Navy Captain, John Francis Patrick Murphy, Retired, a di...

Montague Rhodes James authored some of the most highly regarded ghost stories of all time—classics such as “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” that have been adapted many times over for radio and television and have never gone out of print. But while James is best known as a fiction writer and storyteller, he was also a provost of King’s College, Cambridge, and Eton College, and a legendary and influential scholar whose pioneering work in the study of biblical texts and medieval ma...

Violent mutiny was common in seafaring enterprises during the Age of Discovery—so common, in fact, that dealing with mutineers was an essential skill for captains and other leaders of the time. Mutinies in today's organizations are much quieter, more social and intellectual, and far less violent, yet the coordinated defiance of authority springs from dissatisfactions very similar to those of long-ago shipboard crews. This highly original book mines seafaring logs and other archives of fift...