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An Iraq War veteran’s firsthand account of surviving a deadly insurgent ambush against the 1st Cavalry Division—and battling through the aftermath. It was known as Black Sunday—April 4, 2004, when units of America’s 1st Cavalry Division saw their routine deployment turn into a harrowing and costly fight. Enraged, motivated, and well-armed insurgents crammed the alleys, streets, and buildings of Sadr City. In that fight, a surging mob of militants ambushed one small unit of the Black Knight battalion. The heroic rescue attempt proved fatal for many of the determined soldiers who braved the gauntlet. Cav veteran Matt Fisk—who fought through Black Sunday and survived—gives a gut-level, over-the-rifle-sights view of a short, violent period when one of the safest places in the war zone suddenly turned into a cauldron of death and destruction, leaving eight US troops dead and dozens wounded—only the beginning of a lengthy siege aimed at defeating the Mahdi Army. Fisk’s rugged deployment with colorful and courageous fellow soldiers would result in some serious problems when he returned home, testing his coping skills. He turned to the VA for help—and wound up with the same frustration that plagues so many of today’s returning combat veterans. It’s all here in Black Knights, Dark Days—and it’s all brutally honest. “A gripping, astonishing insider’s account of the April 4, 2004, ambush of a First Cavalry Platoon in Sadr City that changed the course of the Iraq War. With great candor and skill, Matt Fisk interweaves the chaos and adrenaline of modern combat with the continuing battles with PTSD at home. An intense, vivid, deeply personal portrait of men at war that is up there with the very best books of the genre.” —Mikko Alanne, screenwriter and producer, The Long Road Home, The 33

This open access book argues, from a detailed consideration of the Christian Scriptures, that God intends that sin occur. It swims against the tide of current thinking in philosophy of religion, arguing for an unfashionable conclusion. The book begins by considering the history of views on the question, paying particular attention to the Reformed or Calvinistic tradition. The heart of the book is a detailed examination of key passages from the Christian Scriptures that, it is argued, show that God does intend that sin occur. It also discusses in detail two alternative views that could be used to reinterpret these texts, one view that God intends only that the substratum of the sinful action occur, not the sin itself, and the other that God acts because a sin will occur but not intending that that sin occur. The book argues that these interpretative strategies, even when combined together, do not produce a plausible interpretation of the texts adduced.

A history of audiobooks, from entertainment & rehabilitation for blinded World War I soldiers to a twenty-first-century competitive industry. Histories of the book often move straight from the codex to the digital screen. Left out of that familiar account are nearly 150 years of audio recordings. Recounting the fascinating history of audio-recorded literature, Matthew Rubery traces the path of innovation from Edison’s recitation of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” for his tinfoil phonograph in 1877, to the first novel-length talking books made for blinded World War I veterans, to today’s billion-dollar audiobook industry. The Untold Story of the Talking Book focuses on the social impact of audiobooks, not just the technological history, in telling a story of surprising and impassioned conflicts: from controversies over which books the Library of Congress selected to become talking books—yes to Kipling, no to Flaubert—to debates about what defines a reader. Delving into the vexed relationship between spoken and printed texts, Rubery argues that storytelling can be just as engaging with the ears as with the eyes, and that audiobooks deserve to be taken seriously. They are not mere derivatives of printed books but their own form of entertainment. We have come a long way from the era of sound recorded on wax cylinders, when people imagined one day hearing entire novels on mini-phonographs tucked inside their hats. Rubery tells the untold story of this incredible evolution and, in doing so, breaks from convention by treating audiobooks as a distinctively modern art form that has profoundly influenced the way we read. Praise for The Untold Story of the Talking Book “If audiobooks are relatively new to your world, you might wonder where they came from and where they’re going. And for general fans of the intersection of culture and technology, The Untold Story of the Talking Book is a fascinating read.” —Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times “[Rubery] explores 150 years of the audio format with an imminently accessible style, touching upon a wide range of interconnected topics . . . Through careful investigation of the co-development of formats within the publishing industry, Rubery shines a light on overlooked pioneers of audio . . . Rubery’s work succeeds in providing evidence to ‘move beyond the reductive debate’ on whether audiobooks really count as reading, and establishes the format’s rightful place in the literary family.” —Mary Burkey, Booklist (starred review)

The fully updated and revised third edition of this widely used text provides a comprehensive survey of leading perspectives in the field including an entirely new chapter on Realism by Jack Donnelly. The introduction explains the nature of theory and the reasons for studying international relations in a theoretically informed way. The nine chapters which follow--written by leading scholars in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand--provide thorough examinations of each of the major approaches currently prevailing in the discipline.

Focusing on the playwriting careers of Henry Fielding, Samuel Foote, and Charles Macklin, the three most controversial and heavily censored satiric dramatists of the century, Disciplining Satire pays particular attention to what type of satiric expression the law encouraged, not just to what it prohibited."--BOOK JACKET.

Matthew Hannah's book focuses on late nineteenth-century America, the period of transformation which followed the Civil War and gave birth to the twentieth century. This was a time of industrialization and urbanization. Immigration was on the increase and traditional hierarchies were being challenged. Using a combination of empirical and theoretical material, Hannah explores the modernization of the American federal government during this period. Discussions of gender, race and colonial knowledge engage with Foucault's ideas on 'governmentality'. The empirical strands of the narrative surround the career and writing of Francis A. Walker. A hugely influential figure at that time, Walker was Director of the 1870 and 1880 US censuses, Commissioner of Indian affairs and a prominent political economist and educator. Through an analysis of his work, Hannah enriches previous interpretations of the period, demonstrating that the modernization of the American national state was a thoroughly spatial and explicitly geographical project.

In Signs of Light, Matthew Lauzon traces the development of very different French and British ideas about language over the course of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and demonstrates how important these ideas were to emerging notions of national character. Drawing examples from a variety of French and English language works in a wide range of areas, including language theory, philosophy, rhetoric, psychology, missionary tracts, and literary texts, Lauzon explores how French and British thinkers of the day developed arguments that certain kinds of languages are superior to others. The nature of animal language and British and French understandings of the languages of North American Indians were vigorously debated. Theories of animal language juxtaposed the apparent virtues of transparency and wit; considerations of savage language resulted in eloquence being regarded as an even higher accomplishment. Eventually, the French language came to be prized for its wit and sociability and English for its simple clarity and vigor. Lauzon shows that, besides concerns about establishing the clarity of introspective representations, questions about the energetic communication of sincere emotion and about the sociable communication of wit were crucial to language theories during this period. A richly interdisciplinary work, Signs of Light is a compelling account of a formative period in language theory.