Dust On The Nettles

This book takes a particular perspective on the nature of poetry and follows this through to proposals for teaching. It focuses attention on how the use of language in short poems can set up conditions for individual interpretation and the representation of reality in ways other than those which are established by normal social convention. This view of poetry, it is argued, leads to a recognition of its essential role in education, and provides a set of principles for an approach to teaching it which integrates the study of language and literature.

An introduction to the study of style in language, offering practical advice on how to stylistically analyse texts.

The first book ever on the much maligned nettles of the world presents a story of these followers of mankind and his cattle throughout history. This study centres on the most abundant and sub-cosmopolitan common stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), but also deals with other nettles throughout the world. Tropical tormentors rich in species include the notorious nettle trees with their formidable stings which fascinated the Europeans after their discovery by botanists on the round-the-world trips of exploration in the 17-19th centuries. Many people on their travels will have met the nettle trees of the Indo-Malay region and other stinging nettles in North and South America, India, etc., which sting and have beautiful flowers but are called nettles; these are also dealt with. The first microscopists and their descriptions of the beautiful stinging hair; the uncovering of the mechanism of its action and the more recent elucidation of the toxins causing the characteristic symptoms is a fascinating one and takes up 3 chapters. The book includes the 100 major scientific works published on the common stinging nettle and never brought to the notice of the general public before. The author spent six years studying the ecology of the nettle patch, its invertebrate herbivores (mainly insects) and vertebrate herbivores (cattle, deer, etc.,) and their interactions with other plants: its secret life is recorded in line drawings and photographs (1000+ individual items). It was not possible to publish these in colour but they are in full colour on a CD-ROM (300 dpi) at the back of the book. Covered also are nettle folklore, fibre use in World War I & II, as a food, fodder, herbal medicine, growth as a competitor plant, habitats, sex (unique exploding stamens), breeding systems, variation, evolution etc.!! Some the world's most beautiful butterflies would not exist without nettles.

Studies writers from the 1920s with regard to their political radicalism. Draws on the works of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Patrick Hamilton, among others, to identify the decade as a time of both political activism and of deliberately transgressive behavior, particularly among women. Meets head-on the argument of earlier commentators who take for granted the post-war decade as defined by cynicism and hedonism, and looks at the work and lifestyles of those determined to find ways out of despair. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In Ecology without Nature, Timothy Morton argues that the chief stumbling block to environmental thinking is the image of nature itself. Ecological writers propose a new worldview, but their very zeal to preserve the natural world leads them away from the "nature" they revere. The problem is a symptom of the ecological catastrophe in which we are living. Morton sets out a seeming paradox: to have a properly ecological view, we must relinquish the idea of nature once and for all. Ecology without Nature investigates our ecological assumptions in a way that is provocative and deeply engaging. Ranging widely in eighteenth-century through contemporary philosophy, culture, and history, he explores the value of art in imagining environmental projects for the future. Morton develops a fresh vocabulary for reading "environmentality" in artistic form as well as content, and traces the contexts of ecological constructs through the history of capitalism. From John Clare to John Cage, from Kierkegaard to Kristeva, from The Lord of the Rings to electronic life forms, Ecology without Nature widens our view of ecological criticism, and deepens our understanding of ecology itself. Instead of trying to use an idea of nature to heal what society has damaged, Morton sets out a radical new form of ecological criticism: "dark ecology."

Nick Kellaway runs a secretive hedge fund, based in offices in Mayfair and Geneva. He has grown rich through managing other people’s money in unconventional ways. In the summer of 2007, he sets detailed plans in place to profit from the gathering financial storm clouds as the global economy sinks into recession. But Nick has never been quite allowed to forget the road not taken. Nor has he entirely forgotten Janice Day – supposedly killed in her youth – with whom he once dreamed of travelling that alternative road. On the evening of 25th July 2007, a phone call from a woman claiming to be her reawakens a concealed past that has never ceased to haunt Nick and now threatens to disrupt everything about the rich financier’s lifestyle he now lives. Readers are taken on Nick’s troubled journey, from the revolutionary student politics of the 1960s and 70s – through rape, murder, espionage, financial scams and brushes with terrorism – to the great financial crisis of 2008. As his world is stripped bare, there is no place left to hide. Or is there? Dust on the Nettles is a multi-layered psychological drama where fiction mingles with real historical events. It will appeal to readers of thrillers.

This fascinating study explores the imagination, life and work of Edward Thomas (1878-1917).