William Wyrd, an introverted history professor at long remove from his youthful days as a Marine sniper, is drafted to serve overseas in the U.S. military at age thirty-nine. Already in a relationship made tenuous by the demands of dual professional careers and their own dearth of interpersonal experience, he and his wife are completely estranged by the blunder on the part of the government. But is this merely human error at work, a bad mix of circumstances-or tangling of the skein of Fate? In the tradition of Robert Ludlum's Bourne Identity and follow-up novels, this literary action-adventure tale tests whether one's present choices, and even ultimate destiny, need be determined by one's past.CLOTHO'S LOOM tracks the struggles of a husband and wife to reunite against forces arrayed to keep them apart. Will decides to keep his reactivation a secret, and deal with the claims from his dark past alone. Assured by faceless authorities that there has been no mistake, and given a date to report, he falls in with political undesirables and succumbs to their attempt to recruit him. He soon embarks on a quest for identity that leads him around the globe. Meanwhile, his partner, pregnant and abandoned, must navigate the no-less-treacherous task of survival at a highly politicized law office, dominated by two temperamentally opposite bosses, and the glass ceiling they erect over her. The narrative proceeds in an alternating chapter structure, paralleling Will's masculine adventures with those of a woman enduring both professional and domestic perils. The common solution: a razing of egos, and the tempering of two spirits into alloy, alchemized by the common love of a child.

Clothes protect our vulnerable skin and they keep us warm or cool. They help us show that we are young or old, rich or poor, at work or play, and whether we may be good to know. But though they are basic, much as food and shelter are - and also may be beautiful - they have long had a bad press in serious, moral and philosophical writing. The main reason for this is that they are external to us, a cover we may hide behind, and one on which some people spend too much money, perfecting a pompous plumage of vanity: also they, and the fashions for them, may not last long. Nonetheless, when we choose our own clothes, we know the choice is a sensitive matter and far from being merely superficial. John Harvey considers the overlapping values that clothes have for us. Clothes both cover and advertise the bodies within them. They help make us the men and women we are, and help us to attract each other. They enroll us in groups, from our own circle to our generation worldwide; and they show just how, as individuals, we want to be noticed. Clothes, like their wearers, may compete in claiming power. They may also, on and off the catwalk, compete to claim the spotlight. In sum they show how we think we matter - and they can matter themselves in ways that may be intimate and even crucial to us. At all times clothes have demanded attention, even when they have been castigated for their vanity, and contemporary opinion is still divided. Are clothes the most frivolous of consumer disposables - or are they, however extravagant, art? Though we wear and see them every day, the value that they have for us is multiple and fugitive and hard to catch exactly. "Clothes" attempts to sort the many-coloured wardrobe which marks off mankind from other creatures.

In a first of its kind, this book attempts a comprehensive account of the old Vedic society with particular focus on the physical conditions of life during the Bronze Age in north western South Asia. Based primarily on textual evidence, the narrative relates wherever necessary to the known archaeological information from the area. With territorial kingdoms, walled urban places, specialized production of craft goods, large scale trade by land and sea, a broad spectrum service sector and a high end surplus producing peasant economy supporting all of these situates the Aryan discourse on an entirely different platform. The book shows that the Aryans of the Rigveda with diverse forms of speech, physical features and funerary behaviour were far from the monolithic concept of a single people and a single culture. Hopefully, the book will help readers to escape the broad misinformation long circulating in history texts for schools, general readers and specialists. Extensive citations are also intended to enable interested readers to access the text on their own and ascertain for themselves what is true and what is false.

A heavily illustrated classic on the evolution of the handloom is now reissued in a handy paper edition.