James Peacock

The productivity of agricultural systems is the result of human alteration of originally wild organisms over millennia. The availability of germplasm, particularly from wild relatives of crop plants, is vitally important in the development of new and improved crops for both agriculture and horticulture. The handling of these genetic resources for both immediate and future human benefits has resulted in the decades of interdisciplinary scientific research described in this book. The applications of this work and the associated operational programmes in all parts of the world are discussed in the light of their impact on the conservation of biodiversity, ecosystem rehabilitation and the future health of our planet.

The productivity of agricultural systems is the result of human alteration of originally wild organisms over millennia. The availability of germplasm, particularly from wild relatives of crop plants, is vitally important in the development of new and improved crops for both agriculture and horticulture. The handling of these genetic resources for both immediate and future human benefits has resulted in the decades of interdisciplinary scientific research described in this book. The applications of this work and the associated operational programmes in all parts of the world are discussed in the light of their impact on the conservation of biodiversity, ecosystem rehabilitation and the future health of our planet.

Focusing on literary representations of gentrification, this book analyses twenty-first century anglophone novels by authors from the United States, Canada, India, the United Kingdom and Australia. Literary texts, so adept at revealing the experiences and emotions of individuals within communities, are also important vehicles for exploring the complex relationships between individuals and the wider social, economic and political forces that lead to urban transformations including gentrification. These complexities are best revealed, this book argues, by proceeding from a forensic examination of characters’ domestic buildings and spaces. Examining novels from a broad range of writers, including Zadie Smith, Jonathan Lethem, Aravind Adiga, Michael Chabon and Irvine Welsh, this book makes a powerful case for the importance of literature in helping to understand the lived experience of gentrification.

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Delve into what it was like to live during the eighteenth century by reading the first-hand accounts of everyday people, including city dwellers and farmers, businessmen and bankers, artisans and merchants, artists and their patrons, politicians and their constituents. Original texts make the American, French, and Industrial revolutions vividly contemporary.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++British LibraryT042870Postscript dated 1791. Proposal for employment of the poor. A resetting of T042869, in this edition catchword on recto of A2: every. London: printed for the author, and sold by J. Bew, 1790 1791]. 31, 1]p.; 8

Understanding Paul Auster is a comprehensive companion to the work of a writer who effectively balances a particular combination of Jewish American identity and European sensibility across an impressive breadth of novels, screenplays, essays, and poetry. James Peacock views Auster as chiefly concerned with the individual's problematic relationship with language, a theme present from the enigmatic poetry of Auster's early career to the more inclusive and optimistic imaginings of the films Smoke and Blue in the Face and the novels Timbuktu, The Brooklyn Follies, and Man in the Dark. Peacock's study maps the evolution of Auster's fiction and its forms, goals, and influences. Peacock argues that the key event for any Auster character is the realization that language should not be restricted to documenting reality but should instead be embraced for its metaphorical qualities and constantly shifting nature. Peacock finds in Auster a view of language as inherently ethical and communal because, to use language creatively, one must be immersed in the plurality of experience and listen to the voices of others. In celebrated works such as The Invention of Solitude and The New York Trilogy, these voices include Auster's literary antecedents. Increasingly in his recent work, however, they include those of ordinary people. Peacock suggests that in the aftermath of 9/11, much of Auster's fiction places even greater importance on sympathetic relations with ordinary individuals and advocates through artistic endeavors the merits of connecting with others.

Vast and diverse, Brooklyn is often portrayed in literature as a place of traditional community values and face-to-face relations, distinct from anonymous, capital-driven Manhattan. Brooklyn Fictions discovers what such representations of the New York borough can teach us about diversity and the individual, the local and the global. Combining analysis of popular texts such as Sister Souljah’s The Coldest Winter Ever with more canonical novels such as Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude, this study draws on the work of a variety of theorists on community and globalization and uses Brooklyn as a case study for an exploration of the complex relationship between romantic ideals of community and global economic forces. With cites often depicted as sites of conflict and fear, this is a crucial contribution to our understanding of the contemporary urban community and the ethical issues involved in conceptualizing and portraying it in literature.

Vast and diverse, Brooklyn is often portrayed in literature as a place of traditional community values and face-to-face relations, distinct from anonymous, capital-driven Manhattan. Brooklyn Fictions discovers what such representations of the New York borough can teach us about diversity and the individual, the local and the global. Combining analysis of popular texts such as Sister Souljah’s The Coldest Winter Ever with more canonical novels such as Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude, this study draws on the work of a variety of theorists on community and globalization and uses Brooklyn as a case study for an exploration of the complex relationship between romantic ideals of community and global economic forces. With cites often depicted as sites of conflict and fear, this is a crucial contribution to our understanding of the contemporary urban community and the ethical issues involved in conceptualizing and portraying it in literature.

Jonathan Lethem is the first full-length study dedicated to the work of an exciting, genre-busting contemporary writer with an increasingly high profile in American literature. Examining all of Lethem’s novels, as well as a number of his short fictions, essays and critical works, this study shows how the author’s prolific output, his restlessness and his desire always to be subverting literary forms and genres, are consistent with his interest in subcultural identities. The human need to break off into small groupings, subcultures or miniature utopias is mirrored in the critical tendency to enforce generic boundaries. To break down the boundaries between genres, then, is partly to make a nonsense of critical distinctions between 'high' and 'low' literature, and partly to reflect the wider need to recognise difference, to appreciate that other people, no matter how outlandish and alien they may appear, share similar desires, experiences and problems. With this in mind, James Peacock argues that Lethem’s experiments with genre are not merely games or elaborate literary jokes, but ethical necessities, particularly when viewed in the light of the losses and traumas that shadow all of his writing. Jonathan Lethem, therefore, makes an important contribution not just to Lethem studies, but also to debates about genre and its position in postmodern or 'post-postmodern' literature. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of contemporary American writing, as well as those interested in genre fiction and literature’s relationship with subcultures.

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Delve into what it was like to live during the eighteenth century by reading the first-hand accounts of everyday people, including city dwellers and farmers, businessmen and bankers, artisans and merchants, artists and their patrons, politicians and their constituents. Original texts make the American, French, and Industrial revolutions vividly contemporary.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++British LibraryT042870Postscript dated 1791. Proposal for employment of the poor. A resetting of T042869, in this edition catchword on recto of A2: every. London: printed for the author, and sold by J. Bew, 1790 1791]. 31, 1]p.; 8