The five armistices arranged in the fall of 1918 determined the course of diplomatic events for many years. The armistice with Germany, the most important of the five, was really a peace treaty in miniature. Bullitt Lowry, basing his account on a close study of newly available archives in Great Britain, France, and the United States, offers a detailed examination of the process by which what might have been only simple orders to cease fire instead became extensive diplomatic and military instructions to armies and governments. He also assesses the work of the leading figures in the profess, as well as supporting casts of generals, admirals, and diplomatic advisors.

War, armed conflict in general, and military service have likely inspired more textual testimonies than any other human event. Wars shatter every boundary imaginable—from national boundaries to bodily ones—confusing distinctions between social castes as well as between friends and foes, men and women, humans and animals, humans and machines, and even the living and the dead, making it difficult to classify what texts actually fall into the category “military autobiography.”

Arrow Talk makes a significant contribution to the understanding of Melanesian culture and contemporary sociopolitical issues in Papua New Guinea. In a post modern era in which culture has been dismissed by many anthropologists as a reification, this book makes a cogent argument for cultural holism by showing how symbolic, psychological, religious and linguistic factors have combined to shape Melpa responses to the political and economic crises they have had to face in the waning years of the millennium. This analysis also contributes notably to the development of anthropological perspectives on colonial and post colonial historical processes.

Featuring more than 100 photographs taken by Richard W. Burry, Art and History in the Ohio Judicial Center is the first book to celebrate the building’s impressive architectural detail and highlight its 200 Art Deco– and Beaux Arts–style murals, reliefs, and mosaics. Burry tells the story of the public art in the Ohio Judicial Center and provides illuminating historical context, helping the present-day reader to understand the building’s art not only from a contemporary perspective but also through the eyes of those living almost a century ago.

In this thoughtfully researched and beautifully written study, Danielle St. Hilaire argues that we can find frameworks for understanding the intersection of emotion, ethics, and literature that unite modern discourses of aesthetic autonomy with seemingly incompatible ethical theories that have largely fallen out of contemporary discussions regarding the value of literature.

This exploration of the artistry of Romeo Celleghin reveals the pressing need to undertake research and documentation of religious and sacred artwork before records and art pieces are lost or forgotten forever. Whitelaw’s discoveries help illuminate the path for others and have not only recovered the beauty of Celleghin’s art, but remind us to be vigilant in honoring and preserving the significant works of art that enhance our houses of worship.

Published in 1589, The Arte of English Poesie can be considered the first full-scale work of poetic criticism in England—“a noble monument,” in Professor Hathaway’s words, “astraddle the rude beginnings of the speculative aspects of English literary culture.” Its three main parts are a treatise on poets and poetry, an analysis of English prosody, and a discussion of rhetorical ornamentation—all treated compactly and thoroughly. While little of its thought was strikingly new for its time, since it drew on traditions going back through the Middle Ages to classical roots, its value lay in its synthesis of these ideas and its summation of an aesthetic movement. As such it provides important insights into the aesthetic philosophy of the English Renaissance.

The Hasslers, in their analyses of the letters, explore Machen’s versatility as a writer and offer an interpretation of his group and its opposition to literary modernism. This extensive publication of his letters will fascinate fans of horror fiction, for whom Machen is an early classic, and scholars of fantasy, science fiction, and literature in general. Book collectors and historians of bookselling and collecting also will find much of interest here.

Arthur Mervyn has long puzzled students and scholars with its seeming diffuseness, resulting from its original serial publication. Critics agree, however, that the power of this novel lies not so much in its portrait of “right virtue,” which was Brown’s primary aim, as in its realistic descriptions of the yellow fever epidemic and the ensuing panic that swept Philadelphia in the summer of 1793. The ambiguities of Arthur Mervyn’s character and the precarious nature of the revolutionary 1790s make this novel a particularly apt subject for lively discussion and future scholarship and make this revised edition an excellent classroom text.

This comprehensive new three-volume guide to the early art and artists of Ohio is a compendium of hard-to-find information. The result of more than twelve years of research in community archives, newspapers, business directories, census returns, genealogical records, and manuscripts, Artists in Ohio, 1787-1900 is the most ambitious and complete attempt ever made to document the state’s artistic origins and growth. The authors have uncovered and remedied innumerable gaps and erros in standard reference works. They have also brought to light new information about thousands of forgotten men and women, once well-known in their communities, who achieved success in either the fine arts or the decorative and “practical” arts of photography, ornamental penmanship, tombstone carving, china painting, illustrating, cartooning, and the execution of panoramas and theatrical scenery.