John Dryden's celebrated conversion to Roman Catholicism is revealed in this provocative study as the culmination of a lifelong search that began with his youth in an actively Puritan family. Atkin's familiarity with the religious thought of the times allows him to range widely among Dryden's contemporaries and predecessors and to bring a fresh perspective to those key poems in Dryden's religious development: Religio Laici and The Hind and the Panther. Through a sensitive reappraisal of all Dryden's texts -- including those less widely known -- Atkins shows that Dryden had a lifelong antipathy for all "priests" of whatever sect, whether pagan or Christian; by concentrating on the theme of Dryden's opposition to the clergy and his efforts toward articulating a faith for the layman, Atkins provides an important new way of tracing and evaluating the changes in Dryden's religious position and, with this perspective, offers a new interpretation of Dryden's conversion.

Long recognized as a classic account of the early Spanish efforts to convert the Indians of Peru, Father De Arriaga's book, originally published in 1621, has become comparatively rare even in its Spanish editions. This translation now makes available for the first time in English a unique record of the customs and religious practices that prevailed after the Spanish conquest.In his book, which was designed as a manual for the rooting out of paganism, De Arriaga sets down plainly and methodically what he found among the Indians -- their objects of worship, their priests and sorcerers, their festivals and sacrifices, and their superstitions -- and how these things are to be recognized and combated. Moreover, he evinces a steady awareness of the hold of custom and of the plight of the Indians who are torn between the demands of their old life and their new masters. The Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru is an invaluable source for historians and anthropologists.

Flannery O'Connor was a writer of extraordinary power and virtuosity. Her strong supple prose blends humor, pathos, satire, and grotesquerie which leads the reader to the evil at the center of the self's labyrinth. There, she confronts that evil with originality and power, pulling the reader into consideration of the terrifying dependencies of love in the recesses of the heart. This study focuses on Flannery O'Connor's sense of the coincidence of the eternal and cosmic with worldly time and place -- "the eternal crossroads" -- and how that sense controls and infuses her fiction. From an examination of various influences upon Miss O'Connor's work -- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Mauriac, Nathaniel West, and Hawthorne -- the authors consider her novels and stories, as well as several stories never collected. Their textual analysis shows that her structures, images, motifs, and symbols became vehicles for anagogical meaning as she progressed from early promise to artistic fulfillment.Considering Miss O'Connor's own comments on her writing, the authors illuminate some frequently misunderstood features of her work, such as her "grotesques" and her stress on death and violence. In so doing they make an important contribution to our understanding of how Flannery O'Connor arrived at "the eternal crossroads."

The energy problem confronting the United States has focused attention on Kentucky's coal. Mr. Harvey here presents a comprehensive analysis of the coal industry in Kentucky, which consistently produces more than a fifth of the nation's coal. Because the coal industries in eastern and western Kentucky differ in many respects,

In this study, 224 ninth graders from two similar Kentucky towns were obtained by means of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. They were divided into various groups and analyzed in relation to a number of background factors and their resulting personality patterns. The emergence of various group patterns in this study demonstrates that the complexity of human personality necessitates complex analytic procedures.

Two strands, one indigenous, the other imposed, pro-duce the poetic and cultural tensions that give form to the work of five contemporary Mexican poets -- All Chumacero, Efrain Huerta, Jaime Sabines, Ruben Bonifaz Nuno, and Rosario Castellanos. Although all five are significant figures, only Castellanos has yet been widely studied in the United States, primarily for her novels and her relations with the feminist movement.In spite of a number of rather basic differences in their work, these poets share and write within a complicated culture rooted in both the pre-Hispanic and the European traditions. Their poetry reflects this in its emphasis on death as a constant presence and in the echoes of both Aztec ritual poetry and European poetry.Although apparently very different formally and thematically, the five share a number of concerns. Each of them writes out of a contradictory inner tension; each is preoccupied with the effort to shape language as part of a personal voyage of discovery; each is haunted by death and seeks realization or plenitude through love of some kind. And each of them, ultimately, finds there is no escape.As Frank Dauster concludes, "The poetry of Mexico, like its people and its society, reflects the fusion of two worlds, and these complex poets of the double strand operate freely and imaginatively within it." Although addressed primarily to specialists in Latin American literature, The Double Strand also speaks to those interested in the complex interaction between two widely differing cultural heritages, and in the rich fusion this blending produces in Mexican letters.

Although an important part of local government, particularly in the South, in their early years the county courts have not been thoroughly investigated. This book offers the first comprehensive examination of the county courts during the antebellum era in one southern state Kentucky, placing them in the context of its constitutional and political structure. More administrative than judicial in function, the courts were the means of providing most services of government for the people. This range of activity is fully discussed here, from road building to tax collecting to caring for the poor.Robert M. Ireland also explores the political aspects of the courts as well as their sometimes complex relationship with the state legislature and with the growing towns and cities. The courts, however, often failed in performing their duties, and the justices, being appointed, became a self-perpetuating oligarchy who seldom consulted the wishes of the people. Elected officials and the voters themselves thus grew increasingly alienated by the working of the courts. Their resentment culminated finally in a constitutional reform that in 1850 created an elective system of county government in Kentucky.

Washington Allston (1779-1843), the first major American artist trained in Europe, produced important paintings, explored sculpture and architecture, and published poetry and art criticism. On his return to America he became influential in the cultural and intellectual life of New England. Allston "knew everyone" and corresponded with many of the leading figures of his day, including Wordsworth, Longfellow, Irving, Sully, and Morse. Nathalia Wright's edition is the most comprehensive work to date on Allston, bringing together all known letters by and to him and describing his principal activities in years for which correspondence is lacking. Allston holds an important place in the history of American culture and European art and has long deserved such a volume, which offers a fascinating view of the world of arts and letters during the early American flowering.

Now familiar to all is the cry that present rates of pollution, ecological disruption, and depletion of resources are leading inevitably to worldwide disaster. A multitude of immediate needs, however, compete for the staggering sums required to save the environment, and the reduction of consumption which must accompany such expenditures holds little popular appeal. The decisions, therefore, must ultimately be political ones -- but what choices are governments to make? Here is the essence of what Professors Harold and Margaret Sprout term "the statesmen's dilemma." These noted scholars examine the dilemma in detail, exploring a wide range of points of view and developing a reasoned philosophical stance of their own. While their account of what is happening to the world and what we are doing about it is a gloomy one, it is notable that the authors do not entirely despair of man's future. In an epilogue they propose a number of measures which, with luck, might enable coming generations to inherit a share of the earth's bounty.The Context of Environmental Politics is the first volume of "The Third Century Series," a group of books exploring the major issues and challenges confronting the United States as it enters its third century.

If you are 20 or 30 years of age and just starting out in a career, this book can serve you as an excellent road map for your future retirement. If you are 40 to 50 years of age, this book can become the life-saver that can make your shortly-to-come retirement more full. If you are over 50 years of age, you need to rush out and get this book to keep from suffocating during your impending retirement. In other words, this book is an excellent volume for anyone who is in the American work force.The author begins the book with the basic premise that everyone who works for a living will one day retire, if that individual lives long enough. As a result, each person has a right to have a say in his or her retirement. Accepting that premise, the writer discusses the reason for a healthy attitude of looking forward to retirement. He points out that simply looking forward is not enough. One must consider whether to remain in one's locale or to move to a more favorable climate; Bowman discusses the pros and cons of the issue.

Rapid advances in the physical and biological sciences and in related technologies have brought about equally farreaching changes in mathematical research. Focusing on control theory, invariant imbedding, dynamic programming, and quasilinearization, Mr. Bellman explores with ease and clarity the mathematical research problems arising from scientific questions in engineering, physics, biology, and medicine. Special attention is paid in these essays to the use of the digital computer in obtaining the numerical solution of numerical problems, its influence in the formulation of new and old scientific problems in new terms, and to some of the effects of the computer revolution on educational and social systems. The new opportunities for mathematical research presage, Bellman concludes, a renaissance of mathematics in human affairs by involving it closely in the problems of society.

While the influence of Shakespeare on Sir Walter Scott has long been recognized, the importance of medieval literature in shaping his creative imagination has never before been examined in depth. Jerome Mitchell's new book fills this significant gap through a wide-ranging study of Scott's indebtedness to Chaucer and to medieval romance, especially the Middle English romances, for story-patterns, motifs, character types, style and structure, and detail.Mitchell establishes more completely and accurately than any previous critic the extent of Scott's knowledge of medieval literature. His examination of Scott's poetry, especially the long narrative poems, demonstrates their debt to Chaucer and medieval romance. The heart of the book is a detailed analysis of the Waverley Novels.Scott's debt to medieval literature, Mitchell shows, was vast, profound, and elemental; it is the single most important source area for the Waverley Novels, their warp and woof. Moreover, it is probably the key to Scott's immense appeal -- the very dimension which enabled him to cast an everlasting spell on his contemporaries, even on such great men as Byron and Goethe, and which has charmed generations of readers to the present day.This pioneering book, based on extensive research in Scotland, including Sir Walter Scott's personal library, sheds new light on the narrative substance and texture of Scott's poems and novels. Both the general reader and the serious student will derive from it a more informed appreciation of Scott's impressive achievement.

Born in Tennessee in 1841, George L. Knox survived slavery and service with both Confederate and Union armies during the Civil War and afterward made his way north to find a chilly reception in Indiana. His autobiography covers the first 44 years of his life and tells how he persevered against threats, harassment, and physical intimidation to become a leading citizen of Indianapolis and an important figure of the Republican Party.

This is a study of Kentucky political parties: how they are organized and how they nominate and elect candidates. Because state politics in Kentucky is dominated by the Democratic Party, a major portion of the study is devoted to the Democratic primary candidates, campaign techniques, funding, of elections, and voting patterns.As in other slates, campaign techniques in Kentucky are changing. During the 1950s and 1960s the Democratic Party had two dominant factions, and candidates for statewide office sought factional allies among local party organizations. Now factional alignments have disappeared, and candidates for statewide office build campaign organizations from thousands of active party workers. The characteristics, motivations, and allegiances of these party activists form one major focus of this book.Another focus is television, which has assumed ever greater importance in statewide primary campaigns. Because it is expensive, candidates who are wealthy or can raise large sums for television advertising enter the primaries with a substantial advantage, and those who use that medium most effectively are most likely to win. Two wealthy candidates who proved to be talented campaigners in person and on television were nominated by the Democrats in 1987: Wallace Wilkinson in the gubernatorial race and Brereton Jones in the race for lieutenant governor. The book features case studies of these two campaigns, which in many ways typify modern primary elections in Kentucky.Finally, since the 1950s, the Republican Party has been highly successful in campaigns for national office in Kentucky but has been unable to elect a governor since 1967. This study provides some answers to two questions: What is wrong with the Republican Party in Kentucky? And why are so many Kentuckians voting Republican in national races and Democratic in state races?

The first general survey of relations between Protestants and Catholics in America during the past half century will be welcomed not only by social historians but by clergymen and laymen interested in the development of constructive interfaith relations.Lerond Curry has traced the major trends in this fifty-year period and analyzed the underlying factors that influenced them. Much of his account is based on correspondence and personal interviews with people who took part in the events and movements he describes. The rapid growth of Catholic population just before World War I, along with increasing urbanization and tensions related to the war itself, produced a period of intense religious conflict often expressed in violence. After the campaign of 1928, religious leaders made earnest efforts to ameliorate these conflicts, but with the appointment of a United States representative to the Vatican in 1939, hostilities again arose. Nevertheless, Curry finds that in the middle fifties more mature interfaith relationships began to appear, and after Vatican Council II, Protestant-Catholic dialogue developed a new depth.

This study of the Southern Federalists examines their contribution to the formation of the party system at the end of the eighteenth century and to the liberalization of politics in America.Despite their belief in rule by the elite and their reluctance to develop an organized party system, the Southern Federalists are shown by Lisle A. Rose to have elicited political participation along broad geographic and social lines through local party efforts, newspaper campaigns, and mass meetings. Forced into distinct ideological and organizational identities, the Southern Federalists as much as their Republican opponents had a significant share in shaping American political life in the last years of the eighteenth century.