In the late 18th century, Limestone, Tennessee, saw a quick succession of fascinating events. Washington College Academy, named after Pres. George Washington, was opened in 1780. In 1786, Limestone was the birthplace of Davy Crockett, America's most famous frontiersman and folk hero, and in 1792, the community's signature stone dwelling, the Colonel Gillespie House, was built. A Civil War battle was later fought in the town. Limestone prospered in the early 20th century as a watering stop for livestock trains but then declined as a rural trading center with the popularity of the automobile. Through fire, floods, war, and economic downturn, this unincorporated community's rural spirit enabled Limestone to successfully meet the needs of its citizens into the 21st century.

Poems by 60 poets involved in The Practice of Poetry course( students, tutors and visiting poets)at the University of Warwick from 2000 to 2010; poems arranged alphabetically, with an introduction by David Morley. Poems by Peter Belgvad, Zoe Brigley, James Brookes, Phil Brown, Peter Carpenter, Swithun Cooper, Jane Holland, Luke Kennard, Anna Lea, Michael McKimm,Glyn Maxwell, David Morley, Jon Morley, Ruth Padel, Fiona Sampson, George Szirtes, George Ttoouli, Simon Turner and others.

The 1990s was the decade in which the Soviet Union collapsed and Francis Fukuyama declared the 'end of history'. Nelson Mandela was released from prison, Google was launched and scientists in Edinburgh cloned a sheep from a single cell. It was also a time in which the president of the United States discussed fellatio on network television and the world's most photographed woman died in a car crash in Paris. Radical pop band The KLF burned a million quid on a Scottish island, while the most-watched programme on TV was Baywatch. Anti-globalisation protestors in France attacked McDonald's restaurants and American survivalists stockpiled guns and tinned food in preparation for Y2K. For those who lived through it, the 1990s glow in the memory with a mixture of proximity and distance, familiarity and strangeness. It is the decade about which we know so much yet understand too little. Taking a kaleidoscopic view of the politics, social history, arts and popular culture of the era, James Brooke-Smith asks - what was the 1990s? A lost golden age of liberal optimism? A time of fin-de-siecle decadence? Or the seedbed for the discontents we face today?

Guy Debord's silver-tongue-in-cheek autobiography mixes precision and pastiche in a whirlwind account of philosophy, exploit, and inebriation. From the stark professions of Volume I to the illustrated sequences of Volume 2, Panegyric confronts us with a figure who strategically, demonically tried to wrest life from the disabling modern 'spectacle.'

The Gunman, originally published as The Prone Gunman, is now a major motion picture starring Sean Penn. This is the official movie tie-in edition. The film, opening March 20th, 2015, also stars Javier Bardem, Idris Elba and Ray Winstone, and is directed by Pierre Morel (Taken). About The Gunman: Terrier is a hired killer who wants out of the game, so he can settle down and marry his childhood sweetheart. But the Organization won't let him go: they have other plans for him. In a violent tale that shatters as many illusions as bodies, Jean-Patrick Manchette subjects his characters and the reader alike to a fierce exercise in style. This tightly plotted, corrosive parody of "the success story" is widely considered to be Manchette's masterpiece, and was named a New York Times "Notable Book" in 2002. The Gunman is a classic of modern noir. Also available in its original edition titled The Prone Gunman, along with Manchette's Three to Kill, published by City Lights in 2002. "For Manchette and the generation of writers who followed him, the crime novel is no mere entertainment, but a means to strip bare the failures of society, ripping through veils of appearance, deceit, and manipulation to the greed and violence that are the society's true engines." Boston Globe "There's not a superfluous word or overdone effect . . . one of the last cool, compact and shockingly original crime novels Manchette left as his legacy to modern noir fiction." New York Times Jean-Patrick Manchette was a French crime novelist credited with reinventing and reinvigorating the genre. He wrote ten short novels in the 1970s and early 80s, and is widely recognized as the foremost French crime fiction author of that time. His stories are violent, existentialist explorations of the human condition and French society. Jazz saxophonist and screenwriter, Manchette was also a left-wing activist influenced as much by the writings of the Situationist International as by Dashiell Hammett.

Martin Terrier is a hired killer who wants out of the game--so he can settle down and marry his childhood sweetheart. After all, that's why he took up this profession But the Organization won't let him go: they have other plans. Once again, the gunman must assume the prone shooting position. A tour de force, this violent tale shatters as many illusions about life and politics as bodies.

Jean-Patrick Manchette (1942-1995) rescued the French crime novel from the grip of stodgy police procedurals, restoring the noir edge by virtue of his post-1968 leftism. Manchette is a totem to a generation of French mystery writers, and his stories have inspired several films, including Claude Chabrol's "Nada."

Also Available by Jean-Patrick Manchette
"Three to Kill"
TP $11.95, 0-87286-395-6 - CUSA

The British public school is an iconic institution, a training ground for the ruling elite and a symbol of national identity and tradition. But beyond the elegant architecture and evergreen playing fields is a turbulent history of teenage rebellion, sexual dissidence, and political radicalism. James Brooke-Smith wades into the wilder shores of public-school life over the last three hundred years in Gilded Youth. He uncovers armed mutinies in the late eighteenth century, a Victorian craze for flagellation, dandy-aesthetes of the 1920s, quasi-scientific discourse on masturbation, Communist scares in the 1930s, and the salacious tabloid scandals of the present day. Drawing on personal experience, extensive research, and public school representations in poetry, school slang, spy films, popular novels, and rock music, Brooke-Smith offers a fresh account of upper-class adolescence in Britain and the role of elite private education in shaping youth culture. He shows how this central British institution has inspired a counterculture of artists, intellectuals, and radicals--from Percy Shelley and George Orwell to Peter Gabriel and Richard Branson--who have rebelled against both the schools themselves and the wider society for which they stand. Written with verve and humor in the tradition of Owen Jones's The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It, this highly original cultural history is an eye-opening leap over the hallowed iron gates of privilege--and perturbation.