‘Already loose sand had drifted over the stamped-down square which momentarily had distinguished the subaltern’s grave: no there was no sign, no mark, no indication whatsoever. There had been, here, eleven men. Now ten rode away’ In the Mesopotamian desert during World War I, the leader of a British patrol is shot and killed, by an unseen enemy. The officer is the only one who knows their orders and has not told anyone else where they are located. From then on the sergeant has to try to lead the men through a hostile desert landscape which is full of invisible Arab snipers. One by one they are picked off, and the group of diverse characters from different backgrounds has to try to come together in order to survive. The decision making process proves far from easy as tensions and prejudices from their former lives come to the fore. This thrilling tale of suspense goes right to the last page and was a best seller in the 1920s. The novel was filmed twice, by Walter Summers (as Lost Patrol in 1929) and by John Ford (as The Lost Patrol in 1934).

‘The million British dead have left no books behind. What they felt as they died hour by hour in the mud, or were choked horribly with gas, or relinquished their reluctant lives on stretchers, no witness tells. But here is a book that almost tells it……Mr Gristwood has had the relentless simplicity to recall things as they were; he was as nearly dead as he could be without dying, and he has smelt the stench of his own corruption. This is the story of millions of men – of millions.’ – H. G. Wells, from the prefaceIn The Somme and its companion The Coward, first published in 1927, the heroics of war and noble self-sacrifice are completely absent; replaced by the gritty realism of life in WWI for the ordinary soldier, and the unflinching portrayal of the horrors of war. Written under the guidance of the master storyteller H. G. Wells, they are classics of the genre.The Somme revolves around a futile attack in 1916 during the Somme campaign. Everitt, the central protagonist is wounded and moved back through a series of dressing stations to the General Hospital at Rouen. Both in and out of the line he behaves selfishly and unheroically, but despite this his circumstances and the conditions around him make his actions easy to understand. Based on A D Gristwood’s own wartime experiences, critics have said that few other accounts of the war give such an accurate picture of trench life.The Coward concerns a man who shoots himself in the hand to escape the war, during the March 1918 retreat – an offence punishable by death. He gets away with it, but is haunted by fear of discovery and self-loathing.

Gerald Vizenor weaves an engrossing historical portrayal of Native American soldiers in World War I. 'Blue Ravens' is set at the start of the twentieth century in the days leading up to the Great War in France, and continues in combat scenes at Chateau-Thierry, Montbrehain, and Bois de Fays. The novel contains many of Vizenor's recurrent cultural themes - the power and irony of trickster stories, the privilege of 'survivance' over 'victimry', natural reason and resistance. After serving in the American Expeditionary Forces, two brothers from the Anishinaabe culture return to the White Earth Reservation where they grew up. They eventually leave for a second time to live in Paris where they lead successful and creative lives. With a spirited sense of 'chance, totemic connections, and the tricky stories of our natural transience in the world' Vizenor creates an expression of presence commonly denied Native Americans. 'Blue Ravens' is a story of courage in poverty and war, a human story of art and literature from a recognized master of the postwar American novel and one of the most original and outspoken Native voices writing today. Check for the online reader's companion at blueravens.site.wesleyan.edu.

Gerald Vizenor creates masterful, truthful, surreal, and satirical fiction similar to the speculative fiction of Margaret Atwood and Neil Gaiman. In this imagined future, seven natives are exiled from federal sectors that have replaced federal reservations; they pursue the liberty of an egalitarian government on an island in Lake of the Woods. These seven narrators, known only by native nicknames, are related to characters in Vizenor’s other novels and stories. Vizenor was the principal writer of the Constitution of the White Earth Nation, and this novel is a rich and critical commentary on the abrogation of the treaty that established the White Earth Reservation in 1867, and a vivid visualization of the futuristic continuation of the Constitution of the White Earth Nation, in 2034.

One of the most notable members of the New York School—and its best-known woman—Barbara Guest began writing poetry in the 1950s in company that included John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, and James Schuyler. And from the beginning, her practice placed her at the vanguard of American writing. Guest’s poetry, saturated in the visual arts, extended the formal experiments of modernism, and played the abstract qualities of language against its sensuousness and materiality. Now, for the first time, all of her published poems have been brought together in one volume, offering readers and scholars unprecedented access to Guest’s remarkable visionary work. This Collected Poems moves from her early New York School years through her more abstract later work, including some final poems never before published. Switching effortlessly from the real to the dreamlike, the observed to the imagined, this is poetry both gentle and piercing—seemingly simple, but truly and beautifully dislocating.

Detective Peter Seymour has seen every type of death imaginable in his time in the NSW Coroner's Court and, after many years in law enforcement, the tragedies are beginning to take their toll. Dealing with death day in day out becomes too much for Seymour and this seasoned veteran starts to grapple with overwhelming feelings of fear and doubt. He decides to return to the police force hoping the operational work might offer some reprieve. Fate would have it otherwise as he is thrust straight back into an intense murder investigation. One Friday night in the year 2000, Nick Hanes is heading home after a night out with his mates. Barely 250 metres from his home, he is set upon by two men. Bashed, beaten, then murdered, Hanes dies after a senseless and random attack. Seymour is called to the St Mary's crime scene. He examines the body and discovers that there are very few clues and no leads, no witnesses. As the case unravels it takes every bit of his experience, tenacity and determination to not only discover the identity of the perpetrators but to also deal with his own demons that are beginning to spiral out of control. Deadly Paths tells the true story of two men embarking on dangerous paths. One man finds himself the victim of a violent crime, the other searching for justice for the dead man's family as he struggles with his own battle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the result of a life spent giving his all for others. Both paths are intertwined, and there is no turning back.

Winner, 2018 CCCC Outstanding Book AwardSulh is a centuries-old Arab-Islamic peacemaking process. In Shades of Sulh, Rasha Diab explores the possibilities of the rhetoric of sulh, as it is used to resolve intrapersonal, interpersonal, communal, national, and international conflicts, and provides cases that illustrate each of these domains. Diab demonstrates the adaptability and range of sulh as a ritual and practice that travels across spheres of activity (juridical, extra-juridical, political, diplomatic), through time (medieval, modern, contemporary), and over geopolitical borders (Cairo, Galilee, and Medina). Together, the cases prove the flexibility of sulh in the discourse of peacemaking—and that sulh has remarkable rhetorical longevity, versatility, and richness. Shades of Sulh sheds new light on rhetorics of reconciliation, human rights discourse, and Arab-Islamic rhetorics.

Methods in World History is the first international volume that systematically addresses a number of methodological problems specific to the field of world history. Prompted by a lack of applicable works, the authors advocate a considerable sharpening of the tools used within the field of study. Theories constructed on poor foundations run an obvious risk of reinforcing flawed assumptions, and of propping up other, more ideological, constructions. The dedicated critical approach outlined in this volume helps to mitigate such risks. Each author addresses a particular issue of method for source criticism, archaeological evidence or estimates of economies for example discussing the problems, giving practical examples, and offering solutions and ways of overcoming the difficulties involved. The perspectives are varied, the criticism focussed, and a common theme of coalescence is maintained throughout. This unique anthology will be of great use to advanced scholars of world history, and to students entering the field for the first time.

First published in 1979, Common Sense evinces a spare street-wise style rooted in the vernacular of the city. Now something of a cult classic, the book is recognized as an understated masterpiece, pushing at the edges of spoken word. This is the language of everyday, brought onto the page in such a way that we never lose the flow of speech and at the same time we become attuned to its many registers—musical, emotional, ironic. Ted Greenwald’s work has been associated with several major veins of American poetry, including the Language movement and the New York School, but it remains unclassifiable. An online reader’s companion will be available at tedgreenwald.site.wesleyan.edu.

This collection of Ted Greenwald’s poetry, edited by Miles Champion, is a sampler of some of Greenwald’s most breathtaking work. A New York poet with close ties to the New York School and the Language poets, Greenwald has written daily since the early 1960s, and none of the poems in this book are included in any of his books to date. These discrete works were written in advance of or alongside the extended explorations of a mutated triolet form that increasingly occupied him from the late 1970s on. This book can be seen as a companion to Common Sense, and provides further evidence of Greenwald’s ability to think with his ear, to hear what’s said as it arrives as a fresh sound or shape in his head. This work is singular in its pattern-making, its music-making, and its ability to simultaneously follow multiple paths. An online reader’s companion will be available at tedgreenwald.site.wesleyan.edu

Excavations at 1–2 and 3 Redcliff Street, Bristol, crossed a number of historic properties and revealed domestic and industrial remains dating from the establishment of the Redcliffe suburb in the 12th century through to the later post-medieval period. Cloth-dying was the dominant industry in Redcliffe in the 12th and 13th centuries, and the well preserved remains of dye-stuffs as well as leather shoes and off-cuts from a cobbler’s workshop were recovered from water-logged pit fills. The pits also yielded the largest assemblage of pottery of its kind from the city to date. The presence of stone-built dye-vat hearths suggest that cloth dyeing continued into the 14th century, when a pair of substantial town houses were also built. Late 14th-century remains include a furnace for lead-bronze casting, which produced cauldrons, posnets and smaller items, including candlesticks, and heralded a new phase of industry that became the pre-eminent activity for the next 200 years. The reverberatory furnaces are amongst the earliest examples of this advanced form of furnace known in Britain. In the 17th century, historic properties were amalgamated to establish a sugar refinery. Other significant aspects of the site evidence include the re-use of architectural fragments from the medieval church of St Thomas, and a large assemblage of clay-pipe kiln material. The discussion and interpretation of the excavated remains is augmented by documentary and historical research which, combined with evidence from other excavations in Redcliffe, further enriches the story of the urban development and economic history of this important suburb of Bristol.

Praise for Martha Collins: "A dazzling poet whose poetry is poised at the juncture between the lyric and ethics, Martha Collins has addressed some of the most traumatic social issues of the twentieth century . .

A lone building on a small island off Ireland's Donegal coast, St Ernan's is politely known as a "retirement home" for priests. The exiled residents are guilty of such serious offenses as entrepreneurship, criticizing the church, or getting too friendly with the flock. But things take a turn when Fr Matthew McKaye is found dead in the kitchen, a pot of potatoes boiling on the range. Has one of these isolated outcasts committed murder? Starrett soon discovers that ten clergy alone on an island can concoct a great deal of mischief, but what could the young priest have done to get himself murdered? Long-buried grievances are awakened by the ghosts of Starrett's seminarian past, and though Starrett excels at untangling facts from speculation, this investigation is going to require all the procedural discipline he can muster. "Charles makes Starrett's third case leisurely, literate, ingenious… and as old-fashioned as the idea that priests are pillars of private morality." - Kirkus Reviews "In Irish author Charles's atmospheric third Inspector Starrett mystery, Starrett investigates a murder at a home for wayward Catholic priests. They soon find that there are plenty of secrets the inhabitants and surrounding townsfolk would like to keep well buried." - Publisher's Weekly "The reader of St Ernan's Blues will learn a lot about the priests at St Ernan's and a lot about human nature." - Irish American News

Orbit connects the intimate with what is farthest from us, mixing what we can imagine with what is daily and near. Landscapes stretch from stable and fulfilling domestic interiors to the destiny of our sun as an exploding red giant. That dilemma of human fertility and love facing ultimate destruction is orchestrated by the author's provocative voice and coiled lines, which fondle and handle the reader's heart and mind in a bright light. The book insists on connecting the three eras of human experience – Then, Now, and When – at every turn. Orbit continues the unique aesthetic of Vogelsang's first five award-winning books through its "oddly direct original persona," its "mind – prophetic, wild, loony," its "language of surveillance and trembling," and the poems' ability "to find and magnify the emotion suddenly, instantaneously" (comments draw from other poets' reviews.) Vogelsang's new book Orbit is a dialogue between daily life and transcendent vision, insisting on the reality of each.

From the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of Blackberries, Blackberries and Water Street comes an astonishing new novel. A lyrical exploration of love and loss, The Birds of Opulence centers on several generations of women in a bucolic southern black township as they live with and sometimes surrender to madness.The Goode-Brown family, led by matriarch and pillar of the community Minnie Mae, is plagued by old secrets and embarrassment over mental illness and illegitimacy. Meanwhile, single mother Francine Clark is haunted by her dead, lightning-struck husband and forced to fight against both the moral judgment of the community and her own rebellious daughter, Mona. The residents of Opulence struggle with vexing relationships to the land, to one another, and to their own sexuality. As the members of the youngest generation watch their mothers and grandmothers pass away, they live with the fear of going mad themselves and must fight to survive.Crystal Wilkinson offers up Opulence and its people in lush, poetic detail. It is a world of magic, conjuring, signs, and spells, but also of harsh realities that only love -- and love that's handed down -- can conquer. At once tragic and hopeful, this captivating novel is a story about another time, rendered for our own.

The Book of Landings brings together the second and third parts of Mark McMorris’s visionary trilogy “Auditions for Utopia,”—initiated in Entrepôt—and marks two stages in the evolution of the poet’s conception of space. The first stage of the collection is the entrepôt, a space where disparate vectors of identity congregate, come into conflict, and finally merge into hybrid forms. The poetry follows a trajectory of diaspora, or exile, instigated by conquest, colonialism, wars, and political defeat in the search for Utopia. In The Book of Landings the promised dwelling has been removed from the realm of physical geography, and there is only transition—fragmentary episodes of arrival and departure, in transit from one entrepôt to another. These episodes of transit do not only compose a linear sequence only. Instead, they define a space or surface marked by repeated traversals over time—tracings and, importantly, re-tracings, by explorers, conquerors, migrants, merchants, slaves, refugees, and exiles—a city of palimpsests. An online reader’s companion will be available at markmcmorris.site.wesleyan.edu.