"A crown is but the open flower in sunshine's bright." Inside our thought holds most of the riddle of existence; we interact primarily with the objectively real, but always in companionship with the part of ourselves that is like an unclear halo. We know it is truly our own, but, in great part, clouded. It is the marvelous self that is non-corporal. It is the spiritual unit of our being, and while troubling and source to much sorrow, it is triumphant, as we die to its revealing, we, then, rising, as the grande phoenix out her ashes to the upward. It is truly a source of secrets, an entrance, however painful, for the Holy into our being; it allows a concept of beauty to blossom in heinous circumstance, and allows night to be born into a knowing glory, solitude, in onliness, to present honorable messages of truth. Therefore, the bog, the marsh, the heath, in purple or grey – the bramble, yet the swamp – these are familiar settings for research and truth. Our cognitive skills and their enlightening studies in classrooms, everyday walks, traumatic events, as well as alternations in natural rhythming – these we bring inside ourselves to see what we may see – perhaps a rose; the rose grows into much of itself, into its rarity of beauty, within the dark, and as a metaphor of truth, more out of solitude and personal embracing of ultimately finding.

When a skull, deformed and corrupted by dark Graces, is discovered, former Shadowknight Tylar must discover the mystery behind it, a quest the leads him into the heart of the Hinterland, a desolate region from which no Shadowknight has ever returned. Reprint.

Reflecting womanhood in its many shades my poetry paints different pictures of the eternal female. Sometimes she is the mother nurturing her child, sometimes she is the protector defending her ideals. The rest of the poems are a commentary on our environment and political setup. As citizens, we cannot hope to lead insulated lives. We must tolerate and sometimes surrender ourselves to the mainstream cacophony. This is a sincere attempt to voice a few concerns as a part of the teeming multitude, not as a dreamer but as a firm believer.

Drawing on sources such as diaries, advice manuals and autobiographies, this work shows how travelling salesmen from the early-18th century to the 1920s shaped the customs of life on the road and helped to develop the modern consumer culture in the United States.

This interdisciplinary book brings together eleven original contributions by scholars in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, America and Japan which represent innovative and important research on the relationship between cities and their hinterlands. They discuss the factors which determined the changing nature of port-hinterland relations in particular, and highlight the ways in which port-cities have interacted and intersected with their different hinterlands as a result of both in- and out-migration, cultural exchange and the wider flow of goods, services and information. Historically, maritime commerce was a powerful driving force behind urbanisation and by 1850 seaports accounted for a significant proportion of the world’s great cities. Ports acted as nodal points for the flow of population and the dissemination of goods and services, but their role as growth poles also affected the economic transformation of both their hinterlands and forelands. In fact, most ports, irrespective of their size, had a series of overlapping hinterlands whose shifting importance reflected changes in trading relations (political frameworks), migration patterns, family networks and cultural exchange. Urban historians have been criticised for being concerned primarily with self-contained processes which operate within the boundaries of individual towns and cities and as a result, the key relationships between cities and their hinterlands have often been neglected. The chapters in this work focus primarily on the determinants of port-hinterland linkages and analyse these as distinct, but interrelated, fields of interaction. Marking a significant contribution to the literature in this field, Port-Cities and their Hinterlands provides essential reading for students and scholars of the history of economics.

Moundville, near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is one of the largest pre-Columbian mound sites in North America. Comprising twenty-nine earthen mounds that were once platforms for chiefly residences and public buildings, Moundville was a major political and religious center for the people living in its region and for the wider Mississippian world. A much-needed synthesis of the rapidly expanding archaeological work that has taken place in the region over the past two decades, this volume presents the results of multifaceted research and new excavations. Using models deeply rooted in local ethnohistory, it ties Moundville and its people more closely than before to the ethnography of native southerners and emphasizes the role of social memory, iconography, and ritual practices both at the mound center and in the rural hinterland, providing an up-to-date and refreshingly nuanced interpretation of Mississippian culture. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series