The short-lived Ministry of Information (MoI, 1939–1946) had an outsized impact. It played a key role in the Allied war effort, and its work has reverberated in British culture ever since: from its much darker version (as the 'Ministry of Truth') in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four to memes based on the slogan 'Keep Calm and Carry On'. But despite its long legacy, it has been the subject of only limited scholarly investigation. This multi-authored volume offers the first comprehensiv...

Did you know that funnel-web spiders can bite through fingernails? That most piranhas are vegetarian? That killer bees are the result of an experiment gone wrong? That a man with athlete's foot once fed parts of his decaying foot to his pet Venus flytrap - and it ate it? Yep, I know a lot of cool stuff. Welcome to my world, where one weird thing leads to another.

Though brief in length, George Eliot’s (Mary Ann Evans) Silas Marner is a beautifully nuanced tale. It touches on many themes such as social acceptance, the harshness of legalistic religion, the equally harsh consequences of familial expectations and the power of a simple but fierce redemptive love.The touching story is gently unfolded by Eliot in writing which beautifully captures the tragic disfunctions of the Cass family and the humorous characters of Raveloe who slowly grow to ...

This book is both a celebration of the life and career of the eminent literary scholar, critic, and journalist John Sutherland and an extension of Sutherland’s work in various fields, including nineteenth- and twentieth-century Anglo-American literature, the publishing industry, and its impact upon creativity and literary puzzles. With contributions from over twenty-five distinguished critics, literary journalists and scholars, this book goes beyond merely describing Sutherland’s work. The...

The relationship between military leaders and political leaders has always been a complicated one, especially in times of war. When the chips are down, who should run the show, the politicians or the generals?In Supreme Command, Eliot Cohen examines four great democratic war statesmen, Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion, to reveal the surprising answer—the politicians. The generals may think they know how to win, but the statesmen are the o...