A little-known lecture by Levi-Strauss is the inspiration for this work. In this lecture, he intuitively suggested that in medieval Europe there once existed a set of myths, centred on the grail, which are structurally the opposite of the goatsucker myths that he famously analyzed in his mythologiques series. This work uses Levi-Strauss' inspirational lecture as a launchpad for an exploration of a group of related medieval Welsh myths, two of which have been briefly considered previously by Levi-Strauss himself. The root of the methodological approach this book employs throughout is the Structuralism of Claude Levi-Strauss; however, it has been modified to incorporate the suggestions of later neo-Structuralists. This analysis tool is applied to a group of myths, which have become conveniently--if somewhat erroneously--known as the Mabinogion. The name Mabinogion appears as part of a colophon at the end of one of the myth of Pwyll and it was later adopted first by Pugh (1835), and then by Lady Charlotte Guest (1838) as a title for their now famous translations of Welsh mythology. Consequently, the title has stuck to describe the material that is contained within their translations and, while it is a somewhat inaccurate way to describe the myths, it has the virtues of being both a succinct and widely recognised signifier. The term has come to signify eight myths, or perhaps more accurately eight groups of myths, which are all present in the late fourteenth-century manuscript Llyfr Coch Hergest (The Red Book of Hergest), and all but one of which can be found in the slightly earlier Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch (The White Book of Rhydderch). As such, the Mabinogion is the key collection of medieval Welsh mythology and an important source for early Arthurian material. Although Structuralism and the Mabinogion have attracted a good deal of attention from the academic world, there has been never been a sustained attempt to follow Levi-Strauss' intuitive insights with a methodical Structuralist analysis of this material. In the year of Levi-Strauss' centenary celebrations, this work is the first sustained attempt to follow his intuitive suggestions about several Mabinogion myths with a detailed Structuralist analysis of the Mabinogion. This work is therefore a unique anthropological presentation and analysis of the Mabinogion, which argues for a radical, new interpretation of these myths in light of the existence of a central system of interlocking symbols that has the Grail at its heart. Through the analysis, the book reveals a logical organizational principle that underlies a body of material that has previously been viewed as disparate and confusing. This underlying structure is demonstrated to be, as Levi-Strauss suggested it may, the opposite of that which Levi-Strauss himself uncovered in the Americas. The revelation of this new form of underlying structure leads to a rethinking of some important aspects of Structuralism, including the Canonical formula, at the same time as acting as a tribute to the farsightedness of Levi-Strauss. This book makes important contributions to the fields of Arthurian studies, anthropology, Celtic studies, cultural studies, medieval studies, mythology and religious studies.

This volume breaks new ground in the study of landscapes, both rural and urban. The innovative notion of this landscape collection is rupture. The book explores the ways in which societal, economic and cultural changes are transforming the meanings and understandings of landscapes. The text explores both how landscapes are contesting changes in society and changing society. The volume combines empirically fine-grained accounts of landscape rupture, from different parts of the world, with a sustained effort to explore, rethink and analytically extend the concept of rupture itself. The book therefore combines fresh empirical data with innovative theoretical approaches to open understanding of landscape as a dynamic, living entity subject to abrupt change and unpredictable disruptions. Through this dual reflection the volume is able to provide a powerful demonstration of the possibilities that are available for human action, social change and material landscape to combine.

Revised, updated and expanded, Operative Orthopaedics: The Stanmore Guide, Second Edition, is a definitive and comprehensive guide to elective orthopaedic surgery. It is suitable for junior trainees during their various orthopaedic rotations and senior trainees preparing for the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS Tr and Orth) examination. With the emphasis on surgical techniques employed, and the reasoning and evidence base behind them, this book is both a practical instruction manual and a revision tool for the examination. The procedures identified by the Specialist Advisory Committee, including areas such as tumour surgery, paediatrics and limb reconstruction, are included. Each chapter follows a simple and consistent format explaining the surgery from preoperative planning and consent, through to approaches, techniques and postoperative care. The chapters also include key references and sample Viva Questions to extend and reinforce learning. Key Features New updated surgical techniques Highly illustrated to help explain surgical concepts easily Key point boxes to facilitate learning Recommended references for FRCS (Tr and Orth) examination success Editors Timothy WR Briggs MD MBBS (Hons), MCH (Orth), FRCS (Eng), FRCS (Ed), MD (Res) Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital Trust, Stanmore, United Kingdom Jonathan Miles MBChB, FRCS (Tr & Orth) Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital Trust, Stanmore, United Kingdom William Aston BSc, MBBS, FRCS (Tr & Orth) (Edinb) Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital Trust, Stanmore, United Kingdom Heledd Havard BSc, MBBCh, MSc, FRCS (Tr & Orth) Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital Trust, Stanmore, United Kingdom Daud Chou MBBS, BSc, MSc, FRCS (Tr & Orth) Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge, United Kingdom

What is myth? Why do myths exist? What do myths do? Where are myths going? This reader is organized into four parts which explore these questions. Drawing on over 10 years of experience teaching myth in religious studies and anthropology departments in the UK, USA and Continental Europe, the editors have brought together seminal works in the theory of myth. Key features include: - a general introduction to the reader that outlines a comparative and interpretative framework - an introduction contextualizing each part and sub-section - an introduction to each reading by the editors - supporting online resources that provide discussion questions and further reading suggestions, including primary sources. From functionalism to feminism, nationalism to globalization, and psychoanalysis to spatial analysis, this reader covers the classic and contemporary theories and approaches needed to understand what myth is, why myths exist, what they do, and what the future holds for them.

This book explores the material religion of contemporary Shimla, a vibrant postcolonial city, famed for its colonial heritage, set against the backdrop of the North-Western Himalayas. Jonathan Miles-Watson demonstrates that this landscape is able to peacefully reconcile the apparent tensions of faith, heritage and identity in a way that unseats traditional theories of religion, politics and heritage. It presents a mystery that is written in space through time; the key to unlocking this mystery lies in clear view, at the city's heart, in the contemporary material religion that surrounds nominally Christian sacred sites. Although the material religion centres on landscapes that are identifiable as Christian, the book demonstrates that Hindus, atheists and Sikhs all have a role to play in the mutually constitutive relations that lie at the centre of these knots of sacred entanglement. This book builds upon over a decade of research to present an ethnographic account of devotional practices that speaks to contemporary developments in both the anthropology of Christianity and material religion. Through this exploration the book answers the mystery of Shimla's postcolonial harmony, while complicating established theories in the anthropology of religion, postcolonial studies, mythography, heritage studies and material culture.

This volume breaks new ground in the study of landscapes, both rural and urban. The innovative notion of this landscape collection is rupture. The book explores the ways in which societal, economic and cultural changes are transforming the meanings and understandings of landscapes. The text explores both how landscapes are contesting changes in society and changing society. The volume combines empirically fine-grained accounts of landscape rupture, from different parts of the world, with a sustained effort to explore, rethink and analytically extend the concept of rupture itself. The book therefore combines fresh empirical data with innovative theoretical approaches to open understanding of landscape as a dynamic, living entity subject to abrupt change and unpredictable disruptions. Through this dual reflection the volume is able to provide a powerful demonstration of the possibilities that are available for human action, social change and material landscape to combine.

Revised, updated and expanded, Operative Orthopaedics: The Stanmore Guide, Second Edition, is a definitive and comprehensive guide to elective orthopaedic surgery. It is suitable for junior trainees during their various orthopaedic rotations and senior trainees preparing for the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS Tr and Orth) examination. With the emphasis on surgical techniques employed, and the reasoning and evidence base behind them, this book is both a practical instruction manual and a revision tool for the examination. The procedures identified by the Specialist Advisory Committee, including areas such as tumour surgery, paediatrics and limb reconstruction, are included. Each chapter follows a simple and consistent format explaining the surgery from preoperative planning and consent, through to approaches, techniques and postoperative care. The chapters also include key references and sample Viva Questions to extend and reinforce learning. Key Features New updated surgical techniques Highly illustrated to help explain surgical concepts easily Key point boxes to facilitate learning Recommended references for FRCS (Tr and Orth) examination success Editors Timothy WR Briggs MD MBBS (Hons), MCH (Orth), FRCS (Eng), FRCS (Ed), MD (Res) Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital Trust, Stanmore, United Kingdom Jonathan Miles MBChB, FRCS (Tr & Orth) Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital Trust, Stanmore, United Kingdom William Aston BSc, MBBS, FRCS (Tr & Orth) (Edinb) Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital Trust, Stanmore, United Kingdom Heledd Havard BSc, MBBCh, MSc, FRCS (Tr & Orth) Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital Trust, Stanmore, United Kingdom Daud Chou MBBS, BSc, MSc, FRCS (Tr & Orth) Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge, United Kingdom

"Larry Brown wrote the way the best singers sing: with honesty, grit, and the kind of raw emotion that stabs you right in the heart. He was a singular American treasure." --Tim McGraw A career-spanning collection, Tiny Love brings together for the first time the stories of Larry Brown's previous collections along with those never before gathered. The self-taught Brown has long had a cult following, and this collection comes with an intimate and heartfelt appreciation by novelist Jonathan Miles. We see Brown's early forays into genre fiction and the horror story, then develop his fictional gaze closer to home, on the people and landscapes of Lafayette County, Mississippi. And what's astonishing here is the odyssey these stories chart: Brown's self-education as a writer and the incredible artistic journey he navigated from "Plant Growin' Problems" to "A Roadside Resurrection." This is the whole of Larry Brown, the arc laid bare, both an amazing story collection and the fullest portrait we'll see of one of the South's most singular artists.

In 1835, Lord Brougham founded Cannes, introducing bathing and the manicured lawn to the wilds of the Mediterranean coast. Today, much of that shore has become a concrete mass from which escape is an exclusive dream. In the 185 years between, the stretch of seaboard from the red mountains of the Esterel to the Italian border hosted a cultural phenomenon well in excess of its tiny size. A mere handful of towns and resorts created by foreign visitors - notably English, Russian and American - attracted the talented, rich and famous as well as those who wanted to be. For nearly two centuries of creativity, luxury, excess, scandal, war and corruption, the dark and sparkling world of the Riviera was a temptation for everybody who was anybody. Often frivolous, it was also a potent cultural matrix that inspired the likes of Picasso, Matisse, Coco Chanel, Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, James Baldwin, Catherine Mansfield, Sartre and Stravinsky. In Once Upon a Time World, Jonathan Miles presents the remarkable story of the small strip of French coast that lured the world to its shores. It is a wild and unforgettable tale that follows the Riviera's transformation from paradise and wilderness to a pollution imperilled concrete jungle.

In 1835, Lord Brougham founded Cannes, introducing bathing and the manicured lawn to the wilds of the Mediterranean coast. Today, much of that shore has become a concrete mass from which escape is an exclusive dream. In the 185 years between, the stretch of seaboard from the red mountains of the Esterel to the Italian border hosted a cultural phenomenon well in excess of its tiny size. A mere handful of towns and resorts created by foreign visitors - notably English, Russian and American - attracted the talented, rich and famous as well as those who wanted to be. For nearly two centuries of creativity, luxury, excess, scandal, war and corruption, the dark and sparkling world of the Riviera was a temptation for everybody who was anybody. Often frivolous, it was also a potent cultural matrix that inspired the likes of Picasso, Matisse, Coco Chanel, Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, James Baldwin, Catherine Mansfield, Sartre and Stravinsky. In Once Upon a Time World, Jonathan Miles presents the remarkable story of the small strip of French coast that lured the world to its shores. It is a wild and unforgettable tale that follows the Riviera's transformation from paradise and wilderness to a pollution imperilled concrete jungle.

Created as a tutorial, this book is designed to educate individuals in the basics of wine and spirits.

A "New York Times" Notable Book
"A wonderful book, and there's no one I would not urge to read it . . . This is the work of a fluid, confident and profoundly talented writer who gets more fluid, more confident and seemingly more talented even within the book itself." --Dave Eggers, "New York Times Book Review"
A highly inventive and corrosively funny story of our times, Want Not exposes three different worlds in various states of disrepair--a young freegan couple living off the grid in New York City; a once-prominent linguist, sacked at midlife by the dissolution of his marriage and his father's losing battle with Alzheimer's; and a self-made debt-collecting magnate, whose brute talent for squeezing money out of unlikely places has yielded him a royal existence, trophy wife included.
Want and desire propel these characters forward toward something, anything, more, until their worlds collide, briefly, randomly, yet irrevocably, in a shattering ending that will haunt readers long after the last page is turned.
"Shrewd, funny, and sometimes devastating . . . What "Want Not" does best, though, isn't plotting but portraits of humanity: the small epiphanies and private hurts of every person whose life, like the detritus they produce, is as beautifully mundane and unique as a fingerprint." --"Entertainment Weekly"
"An impassioned work of fiction." --"Dallas Morning News"

I have been writing since early childhood, and have compiled a book of some of my writings to further my journey and career as a musician, to say "I love you" to Taylor Swift, and to express myself with a pen. The book expresses the heartfelt trials and tribulations of life as a writer, as a man, and as a lover. It is a book to remind you to dream big, to tell you to puruse your dreams, to remind you that laughter is medicine. I am a drummer of 10 or so years and I think that will come across in the poems, in the rhythmatic ways that I love and refuse to walk away from. It is a book of prayers that I pray will reach my future lovers. Now enjoy the book, enjoy the poems, enjoy the photography, and look forward to more. We're not done yet people.

Bennie Ford, a fifty-three-year-old failed poet turned translator, is traveling to his estranged daughter's wedding when his flight is canceled. Stuck with thousands of fuming passengers in the purgatory of O'Hare International Airport, he watches the clock tick and realizes that he will miss the ceremony. Frustrated, irate, and helpless, Bennie does the only thing he can: he starts to write a letter. But what begins as a hilariously excoriating demand for a refund soon becomes a lament for a life gone awry, for years misspent, talent wasted, and happiness lost. Bennie's writing is infused with a sense of remorse for the actions of a lifetime--and made all the more urgent by the fading hope that if he can just make it to the wedding, he might have a chance to do something right.

A margarita blend of outrage, humor, vulnerability, intelligence, and regret, "Dear American Airlines "gives new meaning to the term "airport novel" and announces the emergence of a major new talent in American fiction.

'This extraordinary book brings to life an astonishing place. Beautiful prose renders brutality vivid' The Times - BOOK OF THE WEEK From Peter the Great to Putin, this is the unforgettable story of St Petersburg - one of the most magical, menacing and influential cities in the world. St Petersburg has always felt like an impossible metropolis, risen from the freezing mists and flooded marshland of the River Neva on the western edge of Russia. It was a new capital in an old country. Established in 1703 by the sheer will of its charismatic founder, the homicidal megalomaniac Peter-the-Great, its dazzling yet unhinged reputation was quickly fashioned by the sadistic dominion of its early rulers. This city, in its successive incarnations - St Petersburg; Petrograd; Leningrad and, once again, St Petersburg - has always been a place of perpetual contradiction. It was a window on to Europe and the Enlightenment, but so much of the glory of Russia was created here: its literature, music, dance and, for a time, its political vision. It gave birth to the artistic genius of Pushkin and Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, Pavlova and Nureyev. Yet, for all its glittering palaces, fairytale balls and enchanting gardens, the blood of thousands has been spilt on its snow-filled streets. It has been a hotbed of war and revolution, a place of siege and starvation, and the crucible for Lenin and Stalin's power-hungry brutality. In St Petersburg, Jonathan Miles recreates the drama of three hundred years in this absurd and brilliant city, bringing us up to the present day, when - once more - its fate hangs in the balance. This is an epic tale of murder, massacre and madness played out against squalor and splendour. It is an unforgettable portrait of a city and its people.

This book explores the material religion of contemporary Shimla, a vibrant postcolonial city, famed for its colonial heritage, set against the backdrop of the North-Western Himalayas. Jonathan Miles-Watson demonstrates that this landscape is able to peacefully reconcile the apparent tensions of faith, heritage and identity in a way that unseats traditional theories of religion, politics and heritage. It presents a mystery that is written in space through time; the key to unlocking this mystery lies in clear view, at the city’s heart, in the contemporary material religion that surrounds nominally Christian sacred sites. Although the material religion centres on landscapes that are identifiable as Christian, the book demonstrates that Hindus, atheists and Sikhs all have a role to play in the mutually constitutive relations that lie at the centre of these knots of sacred entanglement. This book builds upon over a decade of research to present an ethnographic account of devotional practices that speaks to contemporary developments in both the anthropology of Christianity and material religion. Through this exploration the book answers the mystery of Shimla’s postcolonial harmony, while complicating established theories in the anthropology of religion, postcolonial studies, mythography, heritage studies and material culture.

This massive and lavishly illustrated book is amajor critical study of David Jones, the great painter and poet. It introduces Jones's better known visual achievements and combines them with a vast amount of previously unpublished material--sketches, watercolors, carvings, engravings, inscriptions, and ephemera. The accompanying text places Jones not only in the context of 20th century British art but also in relation to continental movements. This comprehensive study covers all aspects of his visual work in the light of his experience as a soldier in the Great War, his conversion to Catholicism, and his Classical and Celtic researches, and places these against his growing cultural disaffection and the submerged drama of his life.