A palimpsest is at once easy to define and, at the same time, so infinitely various as to defy all denotation. A thrifty technique employed by the ancients to recycle scarce resources? Or a metaphor for the human mind? A text that overwrites another text? Or a culture that overwrites another culture? This concise, readable volume examines texts written by such figures as William Blake, Wilkie Collins, Edgar Allan Poe, and Frederick Douglass, in order to explore the dualistic thinking involved in the creation of literary palimpsests during the tempestuous eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Contributors to this collection analyze the alienation and disorientation caused by the tremendous social and political revolution going on throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the United States and Great Britain. Writers and philosophers of the time were charged with the task of reorienting themselves and their readers within the ever-changing social and political constructs that characterized their lives. Double Vision shows how these writers employed the use of the palimpsest in their attempts to strike a balance between preserving old ways and privileging new innovations.

Contributions to Illuminations: A Scarecrow Press Series of Guides to Research in Religion provide students and scholars, lay readers and clergy, with a road map to research in key areas of religious study. All commonly constructed with introductions to the topic and reviews of key thinkers, concepts, and events, each volume includes surveys of the primary and secondary sources, with critical evaluations of their places in the canon of thought and research on the topic. Focusing primarily on the knowledge required by today's students and scholars, each guide is a must-have for any student of religion. The twentieth century saw an explosion of wars and an accompanying explosion of literature on the morality of war. Thinking among Christian clerics and scholars on the idea of "just war" shifted with developments on the battlefield. Alternatives to just war theory, such as pacifism and realism, found new proponents in the published work of the neo-Anabaptists and Niebhurians. Meanwhile, proponents of Christian just war theory had to address challenges from competing ideologies as well as ththose presented by the changing nature of warfare. Modern Just War Theory: A Guide to Research, by scholar and librarian Michael Farrell, serves as a manual for students and scholars studying Christian just war theory, helping them navigate the wealth of just war literature produced in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Farrell's guide provides an introduction to the major developments of just war theory in the twentieth century, including sections on how to research just war theory, an overview of some of the most important theorists and developments of the twentieth century, and discussions of key search terms and related topics. Farrell then surveys and evaluates key primary and secondary sources for researchers on just war theory, as well as related sources on Christian realism and the responses of just war theorists to proponents of pacifism and secular just war theories. Modern Just War Theory will appeal to students and scholars of theology, military history, international law, and Christian ethics.

Creative work is rarely done by a lone genius. Artists, writers, scientists and other professionals often do their most creative work when collaborating within a circle of like-minded friends. Experimenting together and challenging one another, they develop the courage to rebel against the established traditions in their field. Working alone or in pairs, then meeting as a group to discuss their emerging ideas, they forge a new, shared vision that guides their work. When circles work well, the unusual interactions that occur in them draw out creativity in each of the members.
In a unique study that will become a rich source of ideas for professionals and anyone interested in fostering creative work in the arts and sciences, Michael P. Farrell looks at the group dynamics in six collaborative circles: the French Impressionists; Sigmund Freud and his friends; C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Inklings; social reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and the "Ultras" in the women's movement; the Fugitive poets; and the writers Joseph Conrad, Ford Maddox Ford, and their friends. Farrell presents vivid narrative accounts of the development of each circle and the roles each member played. He considers how circles form; how the leadership, group rituals, and interpersonal relations change as circles develop; how the dynamics of circles stimulate creative work; and why some circles flourish while others flounder.