Lost In The New West

Lost in the New West investigates a group of writers – John Williams, Cormac McCarthy, Annie Proulx and Thomas McGuane – who have sought to explore the tensions inherent to the Western, where the distinctions between old and new, myth and reality, authenticity and sentimentality are frequently blurred. Collectively these authors demonstrate a deep-seated attachment to the landscape, people and values of the West and offer a critical appraisal of the dialogue between the contemporary West and its legacy. Mark Asquith draws attention to the idealistic young men at the center of such works as Williams's Butcher's Crossing (1960), McCarthy's Blood Meridian (1985) and Border Trilogy, Proulx's Wyoming stories and McGuane's Deadrock novels. For each writer, these characters struggle to come to terms with the difference between the suspect mythology of the West that shapes their identity and the reality that surrounds them. They are, in short, lost in the new West.

This anthology examines Love's Labours Lost from a variety of perspectives and through a wide range of materials. Selections discuss the play in terms of historical context, dating, and sources; character analysis; comic elements and verbal conceits; evidence of authorship; performance analysis; and feminist interpretations. Alongside theater reviews, production photographs, and critical commentary, the volume also includes essays written by practicing theater artists who have worked on the play. An index by name, literary work, and concept rounds out this valuable resource.

A bold account of the decline of the West's economic supremacy and radical solutions to reverse the drift. Bestselling author Dambisa Moyo gives a fresh insider's perspective on the erosion of Western power over the past 50 years. She examines how the West's flawed financial decisions and blinkered political and military choices have resulted in an economic and geopolitical seesaw that is now poised to favour the emerging world. Moyo is uniquely positioned to examine the West's errors and the techniques the emerging countries used to rise on the global economic stage: As a former economist and banker she gives a new perspective on the dramatic shifts in the global economy Her "Wall Street" vantage point captures the nuances of what role the financial sector had in the decline of Western power Her world view as someone neither from the West nor from any of the emerging countries produces an unbiased, non-Western analysis Moyo daringly claims that the West can no longer afford to regard the up-and-comers simply as menacing gatecrashers and proposes radical solutions it needs to adopt in order to reassert itself as a global economic power.

In the early 1970s, empowered by the civil rights and women's movements, a new group of women writers began speaking to the American public. Their topic, broadly defined, was the postmodern American West. By the mid-1980s, their combined works made for a bona fide literary groundswell in both critical and commercial terms. However, as Krista Comer notes, despite the attentions of publishers, the media, and millions of readers, literary scholars have rarely addressed this movement or its writers. Too many critics, Comer argues, still enamored of western images that are both masculine and antimodern, have been slow to reckon with the emergence of a new, far more "feminine," postmodern, multiracial, and urban west. Here, she calls for a redesign of the field of western cultural studies, one that engages issues of gender and race and is more self-conscious about space itself_especially that cherished symbol of western "authenticity," open landscape. Surveying works by Joan Didion, Wanda Coleman, Maxine Hong Kingston, Leslie Marmon Silko, Barbara Kingsolver, Pam Houston, Louise Erdrich, Sandra Cisneros, and Mary Clearman Blew, Comer shows how these and other contemporary women writers have mapped new geographical imaginations upon the cultural and social spaces of today's American West.

In comparison to the South, the far West, and New England, the Midwest's history has been sadly neglected. The Lost Region demonstrates the regions importance, the depth of historical work once written about it, and the lessons that can be learned from some of its prominent historians, all with the intent of once again finding the forgotten center of the nation and developing a robust historiography of the Midwest. Book jacket.

Filled with unforgettable stories of emperors, generals, and religious patriarchs, as well as fascinating glimpses into the life of the ordinary citizen, Lost to the West reveals how much we owe to the Byzantine Empire that was the equal of any in its achievements, appetites, and enduring legacy. For more than a millennium, Byzantium reigned as the glittering seat of Christian civilization. When Europe fell into the Dark Ages, Byzantium held fast against Muslim expansion, keeping Christianity alive. Streams of wealth flowed into Constantinople, making possible unprecedented wonders of art and architecture. And the emperors who ruled Byzantium enacted a saga of political intrigue and conquest as astonishing as anything in recorded history. Lost to the West is replete with stories of assassination, mass mutilation and execution, sexual scheming, ruthless grasping for power, and clashing armies that soaked battlefields with the blood of slain warriors numbering in the tens of thousands.

A reassessment of the military's role in developing the Western territories moves beyond combat stories and stereotypes to focus on more non-martial accomplishments such as exploration, gathering scientific data, and building towns.

In A Lucky Survivor from a Lost Land, Becker recounts his life story--his birth in Germany in a town just forty-five miles from the Polish border, his experience of the affects of World War II, and his membership in the Junior Hitler Youth. He recalls scrounging for work in the mines, escaping through the Iron Curtain from Soviet-controlled East Germany to West Germany when he was nearly fifteen, finding his dream job at sea, immigrating to the United States in 1956, and working in a career in the shipping industry.