Horn Of Mortal Danger

Danger Sound Klaxon! reveals the untold story of the Klaxon automobile horn, one of the first great electrical consumer technologies of the twentieth century. Although its metallic shriek at first shocked pedestrians, savvy advertising strategies convinced consumers across the United States and western Europe to adopt the shrill Klaxon horn as the safest signaling technology available in the 1910s. The widespread use of Klaxons in the trenches of World War I, however, transformed how veterans heard this car horn, and its traumatic association with gas attacks ultimately doomed this once ubiquitous consumer technology. By charting the meteoric rise and eventual fall of the Klaxon, Matthew Jordan highlights how perceptions of sound-producing technologies are guided by, manipulated, and transformed through advertising strategies, public debate, consumer reactions, and governmental regulations. Jordan demonstrates in this fascinating history how consumers are led toward technological solutions for problems themselves created by technology.

This volume moves the debate about literature and geography in a new direction by showing the significance of spatial settings in the enormous and complex field of popular fiction. Approaching popular genres as complicated systems of meaning, the collected essays model key theoretical and critical approaches for interrogating the meaning of space and place across diverse genres, including crime, thrillers, fantasy, science fiction, and romance. Including topics such as classic English ghost stories, blockbuster Antarctic thrillers, prize-winning Montreal crime fiction, J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, and China Miéville’s Bas-Lag, among others, this book brings together analyses of the real-and-imagined settings of some of the most widely read authors and texts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to show how they have an immeasurable impact on our spatial awareness and imagination.

In this era of supersonic jets, ubiquitous McDonalds, and pervasive Panasonics, in our coddled jacuzzi culture, our cybernetic society of acronyms and first names, does the spirit of quest endure? Indeed, from rain forests, across oceans, steppes, savannahs, and saharas to the peaks of the Andes or Himalayas, American writers still test the limits of human existence. They test spirit, flesh, marrow, and imagination in a timeless quest for meaning beyond civilization, at the razor edge of mortality. And they return with sun-cracked skin and gazes honed on horizons to tell us the tale. "Ihab Hassan's new book on quests turns out to be a quest of his own. He takes us through an invigorating range of today's American writers as they test themselves against the far corners of our tattered planet. Hassan shows us how their quests (and, incidentally, his own) entwine risks, commitments, and desperate exercises in belief, how their aspirations are human but uniquely American. This is a book everyone interested in American culture can learn from--and enjoy. Hassan's voice is one of graceful wisdom and passionate elegance, a refreshing landfall in today's turgid sea of criticism." --Norman N. Holland, University of Florida

The Secret in Medieval Literature explores the many secret agents, actions, creatures, and other beings influencing human existence. Medieval poets had a clear sense of the alternative dimension (the secret) and allowed it to enter quite frequently into their texts.

In this fascinating and exciting overview, Donald B. Freeman explores the role of the Pacific Ocean in human history. Covering over one third of the globe, the Pacific Ocean plays a vital role in the lives and fortunes of more than two billion people who live on its rim-lands and islands. It has played a crucial part in shaping the histories of the different Pacific cultures, towards which it has appeared in a variety of different guises. Exploring the ocean’s place in human history, this wide ranging book draws together the long and varied physical, economic, cultural and political history of the Pacific, from Prehistory through to the present day. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to show the changing viewpoints of those who explored, exploited and settled the Pacific, including the inhabitants of its Asian and American rim-lands. The book draws on new research in a variety of areas, such as early Pacific migrations, impacts of European colonization, the effects of climate change, and current economic and political developments. It provides a uniquely broad overview that will be of vital interest to students and to all those with an interest in World History.