Samuel Butler (1835-1902), Victorian satirist, critic, and visual artist, possessed one of the most original and inquiring imaginations of his age. The author of two satires, Erewhon (1872) and The Way of All Flesh (1903), Butler's intellectually adventurous explorations along the cultural frontiers of his time appeared in volume after eccentric volume. Author of four works on evolution, he was one of the most prolific evolutionary speculators of his time. He was an innovative travel writer and art historian who used the creative insights of his own painting, photography, and local knowledge to invent, in works like Alps and Sanctuaries (1881), a vibrant Italian culture that contrasted with the spiritually frigid experience of his High Church upbringing. Despite his range and achievement, there remains surprisingly little contemporary analytical commentary on Butler's work. Samuel Butler, Victorian against the Grain is an interdisciplinary collection of essays that provides a critical overview of Butler's career, one which places his multifaceted body of work within the cultural framework of the Victorian age. The essays, taken together, discuss the formation of Victorian England's ultimate polymath, an artistic and intellectual ventriloquist who assumed an extraordinary range of roles - as satirist, novelist, evolutionist, natural theologian, travel writer, art historian, biographer, classicist, painter, and photographer.

Discusses the relationship between humans and machines, pondering the implications of humans becoming more mechanical and of computer robots being programmed to think. He describes early Greek and Chinese automatons and discusses ideas of previous centuries and of individuals on this subject.

In this two-volume work, writing for a general audience, Dr Michael Gurvitch proposes a unifying concept of electronics which combines the history of electronics with the science of evolution. Drawing on his long experience in scientific development, Gurvitch illuminates electronics from the inside using the point of view of a practicing scientist. What is elusive and often overlooked becomes palpable, engaging and even humorous with the author's tireless and methodical exposition of fundamental scientific roots from which electronics grew and continues to grow.This set contains both volumes of Brave New e-World, presenting the historical review of electronics from the middle of the 18th century to the present day. From the telegraph to the quantum computer and superconductors, Gurvitch combines personal recollections with scientific knowledge to advance the final thesis: the representation of a new non-biological evolution in electronics. This is all done in an intellectually engaging way: spiced by historical anecdotes, warmed by Gurvitch's enthusiastic love for science, and completed with the full participation of the reader. The concluding argument on electronic evolution is alarming, but it might prove to be a necessary concern in the continual development of electronic technologies.