E. C. Large (1902-1976) was—in chronological order—an industrial chemist, writer, and plant scientist. Best known for his 1940 history of plant diseases, The Advance of the Fungi, it is his long-out-of-print late-1930s oeuvre that will fascinate a new generation of readers. God's Amateur: The Writing of E.C. Large is a long-overdue critical revaluation of the fictional creations of a liberal free thinker whose exacting, imaginative prose is often compared to that of George Orwell. Featuring an account of Large's life; a full bibliography of published writings; and a selection of shorter pieces—travel essays, reportage, reveries, book reviews—God's Amateur reveals the full extent of Large's ambitions as a writer. An extended essay by Stuart Bailey (editor of Dot Dot Dot) discusses the writings from a wider contemporary perspective.

The first reference to literary and cultural representations of war in 20th-century English & US literature and film.Covering the two World Wars, the Spanish Civil War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the War on Terror, this Companion reveals the influence of modern wars on the imagination.These newly researched and innovative essays connect ’high’ literary studies to the engagement of film and theatre with warfare, extensively covers the literary and cultural evaluation of the technologies of war and open the literary field to genre fiction.Divided into 5 sections: 20th-Century Wars and Their Literatures; Bodies, Behaviours, Cultures; The Cultural Impact of the Technologies of Modern War; The Spaces of Modern War & Genres of War Culture.Key Features: * All-new original essays commissioned from major critics and cultural historians.* Reflects the way war studies are currently being taught and researched: in the volume’s approach, structure and breadth of coverage.* For scholars: core arguments and detailed research topics.* For students: Historically grounded topic- and genre-based essays, useful forstudying the modern period and war modules.

“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University