United Kingdom Books

Whether visiting London for your first time or you feel you know it very well, this is a brilliant starting point to determining which museums are worthy of your time. Blue Guide is easy to read and navigate. It's very objective in its presentation. It alphabetically lists museums and galleries from the world famous to small hidden treasures and describes them in very good detail, whether it takes one or twenty pages. If you only take one book to London, take this. The concierge and free (or cheap)resources available there (like Time Out magazine) can help you with shopping, navigating public transport, dining, performing arts, etc. It will not only help determine which museums, but you'll know which bits of the museums you'll most want to see.

A very concise and practical source of information about medicines and their use.

Body 115: The mystery of the last victim of the King's Cross Fire by Paul Chambers is a fascinating story of London's 1987 King's Cross Underground station fire. 31 people died in the horrible blaze, but one individual remained unidentified for over 15 years. Chambers looks at the fire and the endless efforts of England's authorities to give a name to the final victim.

Contents: Flashover; Rescue and Recovery; Identifying Characteristics; Dr. West's Examinations; The Search for Names; Inquest; The Unidentified Body; Sugita No. 5; A Lone Fingerprint; Do You Know This Man?; The Public Hearing; Vagrancy; Dentures; Accusations and Recriminations; Missing Persons; The Itinerant Seaman; The Mystery of Mr Brown; The Perfect Candidate?; Unconvential Detectives; New Leads; "Some Sort of Closure"; Epilogue; Notes and Sources; Biblography; Index

The story begins with a random (though stupid) act that occurred numerous times each day... Someone lit up their cigarette on the wooden escalators and dropped the match off to the side. Normally the match would go out, but this time it slipped through a crack, landed in a grease/fluff trough, and started to burn. 20 minutes later, the fire had reached the flashover point and anyone left in the area was doomed to die. Once the fire was extinquished, the search for bodies began. 31 victims were found, and the gruesome task of identification started. Due to the intense heat of the fire, many of the bodies were charred beyond recognition, and personal items were nothing but ashes. Incredibly, officials were able to put names to all but one body in relatively short order. But it was that one body, referred to as "body 115", that led to a 15 year mystery.

Rather than just a narrative about body 115, Chambers takes the reader through the different forensic techniques and their history. Rather than just talk about matching fingerprints, you learn how fingerprinting was born and developed as a crime investigation technique. You learn about how DNA profiling evolved and figured into this case. There was also an attempt to recreate facial construction using individuals who broke ground in that area. Again, you'll learn about how that all came to be.

Body 115 is not overly dramatic, nor does it seem to suffer from 20-20 hindsight. It's a well-written story of a horrible event in London's history, and I really couldn't put it down.

Gallagher attempts to organize British Victorian novels and economic criticism with two well-defined conceptual tools: bioeconomics and somaeconomics. The first covers those concerned with looking at Victorian economic writings from the vantage point of life and death (Malthus), while the latter follows the lines of utilitarianism initiated by Bentham and having to do with questions of pleasure and pain. These concepts are applied to the developments (and rejections) of political economy over the span of the XIXth century. What was most helpful to me is her use of these concepts in relation to her readings of Dickens's Our Mutual Friend (bioeconomic) and Hard Times (somaeconomic) while comparing these novels to the work of John Ruskin (Munera Pulveris,1871 is used to help elucidate Dickens's last novel Our Mutual Friend).

Gallagher has a great skill in combining her grasp of theory in both economics and literature to her sound readings of Malthus, Ricardo, Ruskin, Dickens, and Eliot. There are other treats as well. Throughout the book she includes excellent observations on other writers (i.e. Herbert Spencer) that generally don't receive much attention. Gallagher states in her introduction that students of literature (esp. from the early XXthc. to the present) have generally overlooked the great political economists of the XIXth century in part because of the "packaging" of their thought as ideological, irrelevant, or simply useless. Such labels should never prevent us from engaging with these texts. This practice can be noted even in editing practices, where little or no information is given about economic issues that determine the outcome of realist novels. Here I would signal a great exception in some British editing practices, esp. those influenced by Ian Small. Today we can no longer afford to dismiss economic thought from our analyses (nor should we have in the past!) of literary works and certainly not from our editing practices. To do so is essentially to misread, or to cause to misread, and thereby to treat the Victorians unhistorically. Any Victorianist should know this. When I began looking at some of the anthologies from two or more decades ago I find small pieces from Ruskin, Morris, Marx, and Engels. Rarely Smith, Ricardo, or Jevons. The new economic criticism does not ignore these "Other" contributions to the development of economics. Gallagher's readings attempt to go beyond simple models of production, distribution, and consumer economics to consider the effects of other economic thought as well.

Gallagher does not treat the late XIXth century with as much detail as she does the High Victorian period. For those interested in the period following 1871 (the year that marks the shift, the "Marginalist Revolution") I would recommend (for late British) Regenia Gagnier and Ian Small. Walter Benn Michaels (The Gold Standard) is still the best for late XIXth c. American literature and economics. I also highly recommend Gallagher's The Industrial Revolution of English Fiction (1988) which will provide a broader context for The Body Economic.

Academic accounts of regional conflicts are often dry and tedious reads. Dr. van Hartesveldt's retelling of the history of this conflict is engaging and accessible. He gives life to the stories of the men who fought in this bitter struggle and provides an understanding of the importance of the Boer war in the greater story of the rise and fall of the British empire. An enjoyable and enlightening read.

Read this one

Lord Bolingbroke is one of the most fascinating figures of the 18th century. The works collected in this volume, most importantly his "Dissertation upon Parties" and "The Idea of a Patriot King," are undeniable classics of political philosophy. Throughout, Bolingbroke expresses a strong devotion to liberty and voices even more severe criticism of government. Yet, it is surely an odd mixture, as Bolingbroke is indeed also a Tory, although, a rather Whiggish Tory if I might say so. The influence and significance of these works is hard to overestimate. In particular, they had a profound impact on the American colonists, including such giants as Jefferson and John Adams. Above all, Bolingbroke was also a fine writer, and his work is a pleasure to read.

In a well-written and engaging work, Prof. Adams brings to life one of the most overlooked British politicians of the early 20th Century, Andrew Bonar Law. What is so amazing about this obscurity is the fact of the immense effect Bonar Law had on British politics. He played a pivotal role in toppling the Asquith government during World War I, but his most lasting legacy was his involvement with Ulster and the Irish Question. Adams rightly states that the existence of Northern Ireland is Bonar Law's greatest achievement. (NOTE: This is not a value judgement in any way of the Irish Question, simply a fact) Despite being an 'academic' work, this book is very easy to read and filled with wry humor that makes potentially dry history come to life. I highly recommend this work.

Oh, what a read! To say I couldn't put it down is like saying there is high-level corruption in government--it goes without saying. You just can't get enough of the swashbuckling hijinks and japes of Bonnington. They never pall. Who cares about the paintings, it's the biography that thrills.

While mostly concerned with the university presses this book investigates the changes that the digital revolution has brought to book publishing.

This includes:

The rise and fall of the (...) and its thoughts of e-books.

The advent of the super on-line stores with all but infinite inventory - amazon.com and barnsandnoble.com.

The advent of the super chains - (...)

Print on Demand publishing.

With all of these changes underway, the total book output (conventional printed on paper editions) has continued to rise. In 2002 there were 147,120 new books published in the U.S.

Books covering the printing industry in depth do not come around very often. This book represents new research into a revolution that is still in process.