Nigel Smith

With literature waning in the interest of so many, is Shakespeare the only poet the public can still appreciate? John Milton, as this book makes clear, speaks more powerfully to the eternal questions and to the important concerns of our time. The Milton of this volume is an author for all Americans—conservative, liberal, radical—not only because he was a favorite of the founding fathers, his voice echoing through their texts and our very foundation, but also because his visionary writing embodies the aspirations that have guided Americans seeking ideals of ethical and spiritual perfection. Nigel Smith makes a compelling case for Milton’s relevance to our present situation. In direct and accessible terms, he shows how the seventeenth-century poet, while working to write the greatest heroic poem in the English language, also managed to theorize about religious, political, and civil liberty in ways that matter as much today as they did in Puritanical times. Through concise chapters that chart Milton’s life at the center of the English and European literary and political scenes—as well as his key themes of free will, freedom and slavery, love and sexual liberty, the meaning of creation, and the nature of knowledge—Smith’s work brings Milton, his poetry, and his prose home to readers of our day. A provocative and enlightening introduction, for newcomers and informed readers alike, this book rediscovers and redefines Milton for a new generation, one that especially needs and deserves to know him.

As the depredation of the planet's greatest storehouse of biodiversity-the Amazon region-continues apace, it is vitally important to understand the implications of the immense devastation the area has undergone. Describing the stunning diversity of plant an animal life found in and along the rivers, and showing how this wealth is being plundered, Floods of Fortune offers the first holistic view of the conservation drama unfolding in the Amazonian floodplain. Enriched with nearly 100 beautiful and arrested color photographs as well as an investigation of the cultural history of the region's human habitation, the book helps readers comprehend the complex environmental and social problems associated with Amazonian development and offers solutions that reconcile development with conservation.

Electricity is highly desired by low-income households, but it is all too often only obtained by the richer people in developing countries. The tremendous sacrifices and high payments that low-income households are often prepared to make to obtain even small amounts indicate the importance that they attach to electricity. Low-cost Electrification looks at why, in most developing countries, efforts to provide electricity to poor households have had only limited success and recommends some appropriate solutions. This Working Paper draws on the experience of experts involved in low-cost electrification snd evidence collected from six developing countries. The paper contains a complete review of the problems faced by poor users which include high connection costs, high costs of house wiring, and houses failing to meet standard requirements, as well as a review of the constraints faced by power utilities such as high capital costs and high revenue-collection costs. The paper suggests a number of new and practical approaches, and ways to implement them, which can make electirifcation more economic for the utility, and spread the benefits of electrification more equitably across the social spectrum. Low-cost Electrification is part of the Intermediate Technology Working Papers series which is designed to make the information that Intermediate Technology is generating about technology and development accessible to a brader readership across the development sector.

The years of the British Civil War and Interregnum constituted a turning point not only in the political, social, and religious history of seventeenth-century England but also in the use and meaning of English language and literature. At a time of crisis and constitutional turmoil, literature itself acquired new functions and played a dynamic part in the fragmentation of religious and political authority. Nigel Smith argues that the upheaval in divine and secular authority provided both motive and opportunity for transformations in the nature and meaning of literary expression. The increase in pamphleteering and journalism brought a new awareness of print; with it, existing ideas of authorship and authority collapsed. Through literature, people revised their understanding of themselves and attempted to transform their predicaments. Smith examines literary output ranging from the masterworks of the age—Milton's Paradise Lost, Hobbes's Leviathan, Marvell's poetry—to a host of less well-known writings. He examines the contents of manuscripts and newspapers sold on the streets, published drama, epics and romances, love poetry, praise poetry, psalms and hymns, satire in prose and verse, fishing manuals, and histories. He also analyzes religious polemic and the language of political controversy, demonstrating how, as literary genres changed, they often acquired new vitality. Ranging wider than any other work on this period, this highly original book explores the effect of politics on the practice of writing and the impact of literature on patterns of historical change.

Exploring in depth such specific areas as local food taboos, methods of preparation of food dishes, statistics of protein intake, and the productivity of fisheries, Man, Fishes, and the Amazon will prove to be an important source of research, as well as an invaluable case study, for anthropologists, ichthyologists, and geographers.