This series of critical pieces is variously structured, with conventional essays, extended meditations, and short analytic notes appealing to differing tastes. Indeed, the diverse format constitutes a secondary thesis: like the artists about whom they write, literary critics are obliged to discover (and execute, of course) the form best suited to convey the content. The material in this case consists of meticulous close readings of authors almost spanning the alphabetical spectrum: from Akhmatova to Yeats; from Blake and Borges to Williams and Wittgenstein – and likewise, ranging over centuries: the sixteenth through the twentieth. Shakespeare and the Modernists largely figure in these musings, which illuminate, entertain, and genuinely engage. As T.S. Eliot remarked, “Our talking about poetry is an extension of our experience of it; and as a good deal of thinking has gone to the making of poetry, so a good deal may go to the study of it.”

This volume examines the role and representation of ‘race’ and ethnicity in the media with particular emphasis on the United States. It highlights contemporary work that focuses on changing meanings of racial and ethnic identity as they are represented in the media; television and film, digital and print media are under examination. Through fourteen innovative and interdisciplinary case studies written by a team of internationally based contributors, the volume identifies ways in which ethnic, racial, and national identities have been produced, reproduced, stereotyped, and contested. It showcases new emerging theoretical approaches in the field, and pays particular attention to the role of race, ethnicity, and national identity, along with communal and transnational allegiances, in the making of identities in the media. The topics of the chapters range from immigrant newspapers and gangster cinema to ethnic stand-up comedy and the use of ‘race’ in advertising.

?The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter.? (Mark Twain) What?s the difference between: Nectar and ambrosia? Bough and branch? Astonished and surprised? Sensual and sensuous? Beside and besides? Many people use these words interchangeably but there are actually subtle and interesting differences in meaning and usage. Now from the author of Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge comes a fun and fascinating word reference book for word lovers, students, and trivia collectors alike. Readers will relish learning about these distinctions in this entertaining homage to a gift we use every day?words.

While Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are often credited with inventing American environmental writing, Matthew Wynn Sivils argues that the works of these Transcendentalists must be placed within a larger literary tradition that has its origins in early Republic natural histories, Indian captivity narratives, Gothic novels, and juvenile literature. Authors such as William Bartram, Ann Eliza Bleecker, and Samuel Griswold Goodrich, to name just a few, enabled the development of a credibly American brand of proto-environmental fiction. Sivils argues that these seeds of environmental literature would come to fruition in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers, which he argues is the first uniquely environmental American novel. He then connects the biogeographical politics of Cooper’s The Prairie with European anti-Americanism; and concludes this study by examining how James Kirke Paulding, Thomas Cole, and James Fenimore Cooper imaginatively addressed the problem of human culpability and nationalistic cohesiveness in the face of natural disasters. With their focus on the character and implications of the imagined American landscape, these key works of early environmental thought contributed to the growing influence of the natural environment on the identity of the fledgling nation decades before the influences of Emerson's Nature and Thoreau's Walden.

The digital world in which we live today is the result of several developments in automation and science, as well as modernizations and the most recent technologies. At the moment, every country desires to be completely digitised in order for the country to be legitimated in a more effective manner. The phrase “Digital India” refers to the concern about the use of different Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) such as mobile phones, personal computers, tablets, TVs, and other similar devices to promote the country’s development. The Digital India Campaign is a visionary initiative by the Indian government to transform our country into a smart, economically cautious, and digitally legitimised nation through the use of technology. To reconstruct India, the Indian government aspires to provide residents with quality and acceptable administrative services, as well as to promote coordination and synchronisation of obligations among citizens. The Digital India Campaign intends to link the people of India digitally and to convey the different government services and programmes to them via the use of information and communications technology (ICT). The notion of local self-governance is not a new one, since it has its origins in antiquity, dating back to the period of the Mauryan emperors and even before them. The path of local self-governance from the time of the dinosaurs to the present day is depicted in this study. Furthermore, in the current environment, information and communication technology (ICT) has emerged as a successful tool for the dissemination of various e-governance services, and the Government of India has formulated the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) with an adequate service delivery mechanism in this regard. After ICT was introduced, numerous apps were developed by both the federal and state governments that contributed to strengthening of public-private partnerships (PRIs) for rural transformation. The advancement of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has created a plethora of possibilities in rural India. It is feasible for information and communication technologies to make cognition sharing more convenient, and information may be easily transmitted via the use of information and communication technologies. This information might be easily accessed and used by administrators responsible for developing rural development strategies in India. Interactions between the Ministry of Panchayat Raj and Rural Development, the Government of India, and the Panchayat Raj Institutions are coordinated. In order to ensure rural development and strengthen rural local government, the primary goal of the e-panchayat is to provide a diverse range of services to its stakeholders. A series of research phases were initiated after the notion of the e-Panchayat. The stages of information gathering and planning, information and service requirements assessment, process re-engineering, and DPR (detailed project report) preparation are all included. Finally, in 2009, with the assistance of the National Information Council, the Indian government launched e-Panchayat (NIC). Along with numerous research papers, this book sheds some insight on the importance of information and communications technology (ICT) in self-governance toward the digital India. On the occasion of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav a workshop was funded by the Indian Council of Social Science Research from July 7th to 16th July,2022. The Chief Guest of The valedictory session was Hon,ble Vice Chancellor Prof. Sat Parkash Bansal and Guest of Honour Prof. Kaushal Kumar Sharama from JNU. Vice Chancellor Prof Sat Parkash Bansal motivate to all participants from whole the county to write a research paper on workshop whatever he or she learned from this workshop and send all research paper to Director of Workshop. We received nine research articles from participants and 14 research articles from another related themes like Digital India, Unnat Bharat Abhiyan, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, e-Governance State and central schemes and we published an edited book within 21 research article. I would like to thanks the Honorable Vice Chancellor, Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Professor Sat Prakash Bansal who inspired us to publish the book. I would also like to thanks ICSSR, New Delhi who gave us the opportunity to publish the edited book in this way.