John Lang

In this first book-length study of Ron Rash's fiction and poetry, John Lang explores the nature and scope of Rash's achievements, introducing readers to the major themes and stylistic features of his work as well as the literary and cultural influences that shaped it. After a brief survey of Rash's life and career, Lang traces Rash's development through his fourteen books of poetry and fiction published through 2013.Beginning with Rash's first three collections of short fiction, Lang analyzes the author's literary style and techniques as well as Rash's richly detailed settings and characters drawn from the mountain South, primarily western North Carolina and upstate South Carolina. Then, in an assessment of Rash's four volumes of poetry, Lang investigates their thematic and linguistic grounding in Appalachia and emphasizes their universal appeal, lyrical grace, and narrative efficiency. Moving to the early novels One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight, Lang traces Rash's evolving narrative skills, intricate plotting, and the means by which he creates historical and philosophical resonance. Then Lang examines how vivid characters, striking use of dramatic techniques, and wide range of allusions combine in Rash's best-known book, which is also his most accomplished novel to date, Serena.After a study of Rash's most recent novel, The Cove, Lang returns to Rash's latest work in short fiction: his Frank O'Connor Award-winning Burning Bright and Nothing Gold Can Stay, both of which demonstrate his wide-ranging subject matter and characters as well as his incisive portraits of both contemporary Appalachian life and the region's history. An extensive bibliography of primary and secondary materials by and about Rash concludes the book.

More than anyone else, the English-born Lord Clive of India was responsible for the colonization, ordering, and remaking of the British Empire in India-and for laying the foundation of much of present-day India's internal political organization.Appointed as a lowly writer in service of the English East India Company, his chance involvement in a battle during the 1746 First Carnatic War between France and Britain saw him enlist with the army. His daring exploits and bravery were soon rewarded with promotions and advancement through the ranks at breakneck speed, and his defense at the siege of Arcot-where his small force of just 200 men repelled an attack by thousands of Indians-made him famous and a hero in England.Although elected to the British parliament, Clive could not resist renewed calls back to India, and within a short time he was once again back in that country, suppressing rebellions and witnessing dramatic events such as the Black Hole of Calcutta. Finally, Clive's career culminated in the 1757 Battle of Plassey which was a decisive victory for the British East India Company over the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies. This established British rule in Bengal which expanded over much of India for the next hundred years. This immensely readable book provides a full insight and account of Lord Clive's life, right from his earliest childhood to his untimely death.

The sinking of the Titanic on her maiden voyage in April 1912 was one of the defining moments of the twentieth century. Books and films about the disaster that befell the iconic liner are commonplace, and it seems almost inconceivable that anything fresh can emerge. But there is one angle that has not been covered, and Titanic: A Fresh Look at the Evidence by a Former Chief Inspector of Marine Accidents examines the events of April 1912 from that completely new perspective. John Lang brings the standards of a twenty-first-century accident investigation to bear on the events of April 1912, using his expertise and his investigator's instinct to determine exactly what happened a century ago, and what important lessons still need to be learned.

In the most extensive work to date on major poets from the mountain South, John Lang takes as his point of departure an oft-quoted remark by Jim Wayne Miller: ""Appalachian literature is - and has always been - as decidedly worldly, secular, and profane in its outlook as the [region's] traditional religion appears to be spiritual and otherworldly."" Although this statement may be accurate for Miller's own poetry and fiction, Lang maintains that it does not do justice to the pervasive religious and spiritual concerns of many of the mountain South's finest writers, including the five other leading poets whose work he analyses along with Miller's. Fred Chappell, Robert Morgan, Jeff Daniel Marion, Kathryn Stripling Byer, and Charles Wright, Lang demonstrates, all write poetry that explores, sometimes with widely varying results, what they see as the undeniable presence of the divine within the temporal world. Like Blake and Emerson before them, these poets find the supernatural within nature rather than beyond it. They all exhibit a love of place in their poems, a strong sense of connection to nature and the land, especially the mountains. Yet while their affirmation of the world before them suggests a resistance to the otherworldliness that Miller points to, their poetry is nonetheless permeated with spiritual questing. Dante strongly influences both Chappell and Wright, though the latter eventually resigns himself to being simply ""a God-fearing agnostic,"" whereas Chappell follows Dante in celebrating ""the love that moves the sun and other stars."" Byer, probably the least orthodox of these poets, chooses to lay up treasures on earth, rejecting the transcendent in favour of a Native American spirituality of immanence, while Morgan and Marion find in nature what Marion calls a ""vocabulary of wonders"" akin to Emerson's conviction that nature is the language of the spiritual. Employing close readings of the poets' work and relating it to British and American Romanticism as well as contemporary eco-theology and eco-criticism, Lang's book is the most ambitious and searching foray yet into the worlds of these renowned post-World War II Appalachian poets.