Molly Truran's first book was a best seller. It was a spiritual musing she called . . .The Greater Family. "We are all connected," she wrote, "We are all the same person." And the book resonated within American popular culture. . . so deeply that Molly soon appeared on talk shows; she hosted live chats on the Internet; and weekly magazine covers regularly framed her face. She was a star. And she was eleven years old. In the summer of Molly's first success, Will Needham moved into the seaside cottage next to Molly's grand house on the Westchester side of Long Island Sound. He became popular in the neighborhood, especially with Molly's family, but particularly with Molly, herself. Will put it best, saying, "This, then, is Molly's story, or at least a part of her story. Events have been missed, make no mistake. I was, after all, not an omnipresence. I could not have been everywhere, and I wasn't. I simply lived next door. So gaps there must inevitably be and gaps there certainly are. As for my part, I can only describe what I have seen. I can only speak to what I've heard. And while it is true that this little girl's story is here filtered through my eyes, I will recount our experiences of that memorable summer, as I believe they happened . . . Letting Time, God, and the haggard others have their say in the end."

Located among the beautiful rolling hills of Sussex County, the rural farmland of Wantage Township has been providing fruits of nature since before the Revolutionary War. The town of Sussex (formerly Deckertown) was a significant milk-shipping center that has long provided fresh agricultural products to the nearby cities. Set between the Kittatinny Ridge and the Hamburg Mountains, Wantage was settled in the early 1700s and incorporated as a township in May 1754. The township contained many hamlets, including Beemerville, Libertyville, Mount Salem, Colesville, and, until October 14, 1891, the village of Deckertown, which officially became Sussex Borough on March 2, 1902. As the area grew and developed busy main streets with stores and railroad stations, agriculture and livestock farms thrived--even producing famed horse Goldsmith Maid, known as the "Queen of the Trotters." Family roots have always run deep in these communities, and some notable family names include Decker, Kilpatrick, Cortwright, Beemer, Von Bunschooten, and Kanouse. Today, Sussex and Wantage continue to boast the rural traditions that have attracted families for decades.

Though James Joyce was steeped in philosophy and humanism, he has received too little attention from contemporary philosophers in comparison to many of the other titans of modernist fiction. This book probes the possibilities for thinking philosophically about Joyce's masterpiece, Ulysses, presenting readings by renowned scholars such David Hills, Garry L. Hagberg, Vicki Mahaffey, Martha C. Nussbaum, Sam Slote, Wendy J. Truran, and Philip Kitcher, who also provides an introduction to the volume that considers broader themes and situates Ulysses as a work of philosophical interest. For the central characters of Ulysses--Leopold Bloom, Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus, "How to live?" is an urgent question. Each must either start anew, or attempt to recover lost paths. Chapters plumb the depths of the philosophical quandaries that present themselves to these characters--reflections on death and overcoming disgust, Leopold Bloom's evocations of conscious thought, the dominance of vision in our thinking about the senses, identity, and the possibility of revising one's values are only a handful of the subjects covered in the volume. Ulysses is an intrinsically and deeply philosophical work, and these readings provide new inroads and firm orientation for Joyce's project. Readers will come away with renewed appreciation for one of our greatest works of literature in the English language, and deepened understanding of Joyce's attempt to offer alternative ways of structuring and enriching the world of our experience.

The Flight of the Emu tells the story of Australian birding in the twentieth century. The Emu is the journal of the former Royal Australasian Ornithologists' Union, now known as Birds Australia. In this engrossing book, Libby Robin describes the achievements and the increasing importance of ornithology in Australia-both amateur and professional-over the past hundred years. From Bass Strait to the Kimberley, collectors have searched for and identified hundreds of species of Australian birds. This is a discipline in which exceptional amateur contributions have helped to shape science. Libby Robin explores the tensions between amateur and professional ornithologists, and discusses issues of conservation and environmental management, scientific collecting, smuggling and bird protection. She tells stories from campouts, expeditions and congresses derived from oral history, letters and 'reading between the lines' of published reports. The search for the Night Parrot, the protection of the Lyrebird, the identification of the Noisy Scrub-bird, have all involved enthusiastic bird lovers as well as scientists. Ornithological research takes place in museums, universities, government agencies, community groups and the CSIRO. Bird-banding has introduced many people to the passion of ornithology, as well as providing a method of valuable data-collection about birds. The Flight of the Emu also details international scientific expeditions and the influences of Australian birds on international debates. 'Birdos' have a great sense of humour, and the pleasure and fun of bird watching, whether it be serious scientific observation, 'twitching' or just a relaxing hobby, comes through strongly in this clear, friendly and richly-illustrated book.

A comparative study of two classic literary works, from a specialist in Joyce and Homer Time and Identity in “Ulysses” and the “Odyssey” offers a unique in-depth comparative study of two classic literary works, examining essential themes such as change, the self, and humans’ dependence on and isolation from others. Stephanie Nelson shows that in these texts, both Joyce and Homer address identity by looking at the paradox of time—that people are constantly changing yet remain the same across the years. In Nelson’s analysis, both Ulysses and the Odyssey explore dichotomies including the permanence of names and shifting of stories, independence and connection, and linear and cyclical narrative. Nelson discusses Homer’s contrast of ordinary to mythic time alongside Joyce’s contrast of “clocktime” to experienced time. She analyzes the characters Odysseus and Leopold Bloom, alienated from their previous selves; Telemachus and Stephen Dedalus, trapped by the past; and Penelope and Molly Bloom, able to recast time through weaving, storytelling, and memory. These concepts are also explored through Joyce’s radically different narrative styles and Homer’s timeless world of the gods. Nelson’s thorough knowledge of ancient Greece, Joyce, narratology, oral tradition, and translation results in a volume that speaks across literary specializations. This book makes the case that Ulysses and the Odyssey should be read together and that each work highlights and clarifies aspects of the other. As Joyce’s characters are portrayed as both flux and fixity, readers will see Homer’s hero fight his way out of myth and back into the constant changes of human existence. A volume in the Florida James Joyce Series, edited by Sebastian D. G. Knowles