"This work provides a new history of the First Barbary War, a conflict that, in its political and diplomatic aspects, planted the seeds for the United States' ascent to a global superpower"--

Accounts of the 'historical avant-garde' and of 'high modernism' often celebrate the former for its revolutionary aesthetics or denigrate the latter for its 'proto-fascist' politics. In Literature, Politics and the English Avant-Garde, Paul Peppis shows how neither interpretation explains the writings of avant-gardists in early twentieth-century England. Peppis reads texts by writers such as Ford Madox Ford, Wyndham Lewis, Dora Marsden, and Ezra Pound alongside English political discourse between the death of Victoria and the end of the Great War. He traces the impact of nation and empire on the avant-garde, arguing that Vorticism, England's foremost avant-garde movement, used nationalism to advance literature and avant-garde literature to advance empire. Peppis's study demonstrates that these ambitions were enabled by a period conception of nationality as an essence and construct. By recovering these neglected aspects of avant-garde politics, Peppis's book opens important avenues for assessing modernist politics after the war.

Brazil has long been a country in search of its own meaning and mission. Early in their history Brazilians began to puzzle over their surroundings and their relation to them. The eighteenth century produced an entire school of nativistic writers who, with the advent of independence, became fiery nationalists, still pursuing introspective studies of their homeland. Throughout the nineteenth century, the intellectuals of Brazil determined to define their nation, its character, and its aspirations. In this now well-established tradition, José Honório Rodrigues confronts the questions of who and what the Brazilian is, what Brazil stands for, where it has been, and where it is going. This study, originally published in Portuguese as Aspirações nacionais, was especially timely at a period when strong feelings of nationalism led Brazilians to seek to define their own image, and when the revolution of rising expectations disposed them to determine what goals they were seeking and how far they were on the road to achieving them. In order to understand and explain his nation, Rodrigues poses two questions: what are the national characteristics, and what are the national aspirations? Both questions are complex, but the reader will find well-reasoned answers, with a wealth of information on growth and development and abundant statistics to substantiate these answers.

All living organisms are like biological robots. Their physical actions, organic capabilities and senses are firmly and very narrowly limited and so programmed in the DNA. Brain, the master controller of the living system, is as susceptible to external and internal stresses as all other bodily components. The brain is also abode of the mind, and the mind is the embodiment of thoughts. The scientific observation that brain and mind die simultaneously is irrefutable. Wherein the brain the mind parks itself is a mystery. The brain is more intricate than the universe and the mind exceeds the brain in complexity. Billions of neurons and trillions of synapses keep on firing, acting, reacting, storing, and communicating to and from sensory organs as long as the structure of the brain is not damaged, diseased, or dead. Brain, when overloaded with its electric charge due to intense mental activity, can explode like a bomb. Five people are known to have died when their brains blew up because of the condition called Hyper-Cerebral Electrosis (HCE). The most recent death occurred when psychic Barbara Nicole's skull burst. Chess Champion Nikolai Titov's head suddenly blew apart when he was concentrating on his move. The brain endures many mini explosions without shattering. HCE kills rarely, but sickens very often. All evil emotions cause stronger HCE than pleasant thoughts do.