This work comprises a collection of the writings of Ruqaiya Hasan, an influential figure in the systemic functional linguistic learning school. It discusses the relation between text and context and the realization of context in language; the 'network', which is outlined as analytic tool which can be applied at two strata of language, the lexico-grammatical and the semantic; as well as aspects of the social structure that are implicated in the way cultures and subcultures express themselves.

The America of the 1860s - a young nation at war within itself. As young men rushed forward to fight, many to die and many more to be wounded and maimed, a farming community in Western Pennsylvania offered up its sons to form a light artillery battery in the Pennsylvania Reserves. Among them were three brothers, one of whom on arrival in Washington purchased a diary to record his experiences in the first vital year of a war that defined a nation. 150 years later, that diary forms the basis of this story of the war in the Eastern Zone, of the commanders, the battles, the wins and losses. Most of all, it tells the tale of what became known and has since been commemorated as Cooper's Battery B. And of the ""great Slaughter"" that engulfed them and those around them.