New Releases by Andrew Davies

"By the twenty-first century, the telephone network will be transformed into a high-speed telecommunications infrastructure carrying information of every description - voice, data, words, colour images, high-definition television, manufacturing designs - in the digital form recognised by computers. This technological revolution is connected to a shift from mass production to a system of flexible production, in which far-flung corporate activities are being integrated into digital networks of information and control." "The outcome of the telecommunications revolution is being decided by a political contest between two powerful interest groups. National coalitions of established telephone interests are trying to defend the traditional monopoly, and a new transnational alliance of electronics companies and corporate users is seeking to open up telecommunications to competition." "From the perspective of comparative political economy, Telecommunications and Politics claims that an understanding of the conditions which led to the rise of national telephone monopolies in the past helps to recognise the variety of political options in the present. It argues for a middle way between monopoly and competition: a decentralised alternative consisting of regional companies interconnected with independent long-distance carriers."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Manchester and Salford have a special place in the history of the British working class. They lay at the heart of the cotton industry, the spark of the industrial revolution, and as a consequence were among the first places to experience the application of steam power and the factory system to production. As a result, the Manchester-Salford conurbation was the first to see a fully-formed industrial working class. Whilst industrialization went through its heroic phase, the two cities seemed to be blazing a trail, not only for the rest of the country, but for the world. During the first half of the 19th century, social observers came from across Europe to see what they supposed to be their future. Manchester was, in Asa Briggs''s influential phrase, the shock city of the age. The city demonstrated the ability of science to control nature: this was why, in 1843, Benjamin Disraeli described Manchester as the modern Athens. However, as Alexis de Tocqueville had noted eight years earlier, there was another side to increasing productivity -

Based extensively on interviews, examines the voluntary or involuntary leisure time of the working-class in adjacent English industrial cities. Emphasizes the different experiences of men and women, and the distinct youth culture. Distributed by Taylor and Francis. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A survey, area by area of London in literary fact and fiction, where the author offers a walk in words, seeking out the places that provided inspiration as well as accommodation for so many writers, novelists and poets as well as diarists, journalists, historians and publishers.

Discussion of the British theatre tends to focus on ''the West End Theatre'' which emerged in the late nineteenth century. In Other Theatres, Andrew Davies provides a lively introduction to the important tradition of alternative and experimental theatre as it has developed over the last 200 years. He considers a broad range of initiatives include Yiddish drama, suffragette theatre, Irish and Scottish drama, the repertory movement, army theatre, Joan Littlewood''s Theatre Workshop, alternative theatre since the 1960s, and television drama, tracing out their relationship both to mainstream theatre and to one another.

Currently fascinated with wars, army, killing, and guns, Conrad becomes convinced that through dreams or time warp he is experiencing action in a past war.