Michael Robbins

The debut collection of a poet whose savage, hilarious work has already received extraordinary notice. Since his poems first began to appear in the pages of "The New Yorker" and "Poetry," there has been a lot of excited talk about the fresh and inventive work of Michael Robbins. Equal parts hip- hop, John Berryman, and capitalism seeking death and not finding it, Robbins's poems are strange, wonderful, wild, and completely unlike anything else being written today. As allusive as the Cantos, as aggressive as a circular saw, this debut collection will offend none but the virtuous, and is certain to receive an enormous amount of attention.

The universal quest to create cosmologies – to comprehend the relationship between mind and world - is inevitably limited by the social, cultural and historical perspective of the observer, in this instance western psychoanalysis. In this book Michael Robbins attempts to transcend such contextual limitations by putting forward a primordial form of mental activity that co-exists alongside thought and is of equal importance in human affairs. This book challenges the western assumption that knowledge is synonymous with rational thought and that the aspect of mind that is not thought is immature, irrational, regressive and pathological. Robbins illustrates the central role of primordial mental activity in spiritual cultures analogous to that of thought in western culture as well as its significant contributions to numerous other phenomena including dreaming, language, creativity, shamanism and psychosis. In addition to his extensive clinical experience as a psychoanalyst Robbins draws on first-hand contact with Maori and other shamanistic cultures. Vividly illustrated by first and second hand accounts, this book will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, those with a psychological interest in spiritual cultures as well as those in the fields of developmental psychology, cultural anthropology, neuroscience, aesthetics and linguistics.

The universal quest to create cosmologies – to comprehend the relationship between mind and world - is inevitably limited by the social, cultural and historical perspective of the observer, in this instance western psychoanalysis. In this book Michael Robbins attempts to transcend such contextual limitations by putting forward a primordial form of mental activity that co-exists alongside thought and is of equal importance in human affairs. This book challenges the western assumption that knowledge is synonymous with rational thought and that the aspect of mind that is not thought is immature, irrational, regressive and pathological. Robbins illustrates the central role of primordial mental activity in spiritual cultures analogous to that of thought in western culture as well as its significant contributions to numerous other phenomena including dreaming, language, creativity, shamanism and psychosis. In addition to his extensive clinical experience as a psychoanalyst Robbins draws on first-hand contact with Maori and other shamanistic cultures. Vividly illustrated by first and second hand accounts, this book will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, those with a psychological interest in spiritual cultures as well as those in the fields of developmental psychology, cultural anthropology, neuroscience, aesthetics and linguistics.

Few people know much about Middlesex; it is commonly thought of as one large and featureless suburb. Yet it has a history of great interest, crowded with important events and famous characters, from Julius Caesar at Brentford to Winston Churchill at Harrow. Its history also includes minor curiosities of the past—the devil of Edmonton, the witch of Finchley, the miser of Harrow Weald, the highwaymen of Hounslow Heath—amid the varied incidents of local life in places that are now London dormitories. First published in 1953, at the time this book was the most comprehensive history and description of an English county ever attempted in a single volume. Its first part describes the county's natural situation and its earliest history and surveys its economic life, in particular its almost vanished agriculture and its modern industrial development. There are chapters on particular aspects of Middlesex's history, inhabitants, and buildings. The second part—virtually a book in itself—is a lively gazetteer of the places in contemporary Middlesex, from Acton to Yiewsley. The whole work is fully indexed and referenced, and includes tables of population and a detailed bibliography (both updated for this edition), line maps, diagrams, and 48 pages of superb photographs. Michael Robbins had a lifelong love of the county of his birth, and tramped many miles along Middlesex roads while researching and writing this book; he believed there was no other way of getting to know the county. It remains the standard work on the local history of the county—a book for all who know and love Middlesex.

This is not merely the story of the origins of the world's largest urban passenger transport system: it is also, as it must be, the story of the growth of London itself from teh early days of the nineteenth century. This volume traces the developmen down to 1900 of every kind of public transport which either produced the great expansion of London in this period, or took up the opportunities it offered. Passenger transport is related throughout to the social, economic, and historical factors which shaped its course. This is more than a history of the founding and operation of this or that bus, railway or tram company. It is an authentic portrait of an age of prodigious energy, which, for better or worse, made London what it is and laid the foundations for today's London Transport system. This book was first published in 1963.

Covers the history and development of the railways and the transforming effect which they had on the world. A lively and readable account, peppered with fascinating facts. Written by an authoritative and important figure in the world of railways.