New Releases by John Wood

Exploring themes critical to understanding the current world order, this book lays bare the reality of the new Russia that emerged under Vladimir Putin. Russia holds the world''s largest natural gas reserves, the second largest coal and uranium reserves, and the eighth largest oil reserves. Europe is dependent on Russia for 25 percent of its oil and gas. Russia is also positioning itself to play a similar role with respect to China. The key to this strategy is a network of new oil and natural gas pipelines that Russia is in the process of constructing, which will by-pass the problematic Ukraine, Georgia, Poland and the Baltic States in the West, and lock-in the enormous potential of China in the East. Further, as the Western economies including the USA begin themselves to recover, their growing energy dependence will come back into the forefront, and therefore the need to ensure that Russia does not fail in its opening up of new energy resources in the Arctic and Eastern Siberia. Russia is no longer a superpower, in the Cold War sense of the word, because its military is significantly weaker, and as such is incapable of conducting a regional let alone global war against either the United States or NATO. It is precisely because of its military weakness that Putin has been forced to adopt an asymmetric approach. Thus, the pipeline spigot and the proliferation of missiles and aircraft have become Russia''s weapons of choice, along with an ever growing reliance on its strategic nuclear forces to provide it with the necessary deterrent to foreign aggression. In addition, Putin and Medvedev have no interest in an arms race with the United States, it is too costly and detracts from their priority, which is economic reform. From Putin''s perspective, America is in the process of imposing "absolute security" or as Joint Vision 2020 put it: "full spectrum dominance" over the world. As the sole remaining superpower, the United States enjoys a massive strategic imbalance in its favor, which it has used first to contain, but now with the intent to control the world. How? NATO expansion lays the groundwork for a U.S. global missile defense system to contain perceived adversaries, such as Russia, which in turn secures the dominance of America through its Prompt Global Strike (PGS) capability – the ability to strike anywhere on the planet with impunity within 90 minutes of the order being given by The President. Thus, PGS will be to the 21st Century, what British Gun Boat Diplomacy was to the 19th Century. In such a context, Russia is forced to respond asymmetrically.

"Sweet offers scholars a capacious history of race in the North and a primer for thinking about the relationship between ''cultures'' and identities. . . . Bodies Politic is deeply researched and richly detailed."—William and Mary Quarterly

Selected Poems, 1968-1998, represents thirty years of John Wood''s work, offering his readers a most comprehensive view of an unusual mind and spirit that is at once eloquent and humorous. In poems that range from narratives, lyrics, and elegies, to odes, satires, and even a mini-epic, his work whips language into intense emotion. Recalled memories tumble with sense and grace. The homely and the visionary intertwine as the often stark realities of human experience are infused with love and light. The prospering genius of these poems is that they seek not so much to redeem or reclaim what is lost, but to redirect perspectives with a generous sweep of possibilities. Wood''s craft as a wordsmith gives us a voice that powerfully interprets what it means to be human and alive. John Wood holds professorships in both photographic history and English literature at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where he is also director of the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing. He is the author of three previous books of poetry and seven books of art and photographic criticism. His books have won the Iowa Poetry Prize twice, the American Library Association''s Choice Outstanding Academic Books of 1992, and the New York Times Book Review Best Photo Books of 1995.

The four parts of this highly accomplished collection showcase the different facets and wide breadth of John Wood''s poetic talent. Displayed here are his ability to sustain a sequence, his adeptness with lyricism and the short form, and his sensuous feeling for this life and the life of the past. In regard to the latter, Wood begins the book with his poetic account of the amazing life and adventures of the vigorous American utopianist Wilhelm Johannes Hoade. Wood''s account reads like a novel as he weaves a fictional narrative out of lyric poetry, a narrative that is finally convincing and true in spite of its obvious impossibility. The second section, "Homage to Dafydd ap Gwilym, " is a free but artistically faithful translation after some of the medieval Welsh poet''s major poems, arranged in a way to suggest in a natural/supernatural mode his remarkable character and biography. The third part is a group of finely tuned, mostly lyric poems dealing with family, friends, and intellectual concerns; the fourth is a group of contemporary and historical "revelations, " quite striking in scope and variety. All combine to form a dazzling whole.

Too often, photographic historians have given credit to the calotype for establishing our sense and standard of the photographic, when in reality it was the daguerreotype that first taught us how to see photographically, taking us beyond portraiture to a standard for scenic images that is still with us today. Here is the first study of scenic daguerreotypes from around the world and the largest assemblage of them ever to be presented in book form. Contending that L. J. M. Daguerre was at the forefront of the romantic revolution, Wood discusses Daguerre''s work in the context of John Constable, J. M. W. Turner, and Caspar David Friedrich. He also draws parallels between early landscape photography, the poetry of William Wordsworth, and William Gilpin''s notions of the picturesque, which influenced both travel and the way nineteenth-century men and women began to view the landscape around them. Wood''s selection of more than a hundred images presents the best surviving examples of the scenic daguerreotype. They include views of the Acropolis, Egypt, and China, of mountains and Alpine scenery, of Pompeii, Venice, and the temples of Rome, of the California Gold Rush and other American scenes, plus daguerreotypes from Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Martinique, and Brazil.

Arcot, Wade and Morey, challenged by the most ruthless aliens in the universes, went on an intergalactic search for defenses against the invaders of Earth. Many worlds were visited and many secrets were unleashed, and turned into mighty weapons of intense force--and still the enemy seemed to grow in power and ferocity.

Arcot, Wade, and Morey fight for the freedom of their planent and for the safety of the entire solar system.

Johnny Nelson reached up for the new, blue flannel shirt he had hung above his bunk, and then placed his hands on hips and soliloquized: "Me an'' Red buy a new shirt apiece Saturday night an'' one of ''em ''s gone Sunday mornin''; purty fast work even for this outfit." He strode to the gallery to ask the cook, erstwhile subject of the Most Heavenly One, but the words froze on his lips. Lee Hop''s stoop-shouldered back was encased in a brand new, blue flannel shirt, the price mark chalked over one shoulder blade, and he sing-songed a Chinese classic while debating the advisability of adopting a pair of trousers and thus crossing another of the boundaries between the Orient and the Occident. He had no eyes in the back of his head but was rarely gifted in the "ways that are strange," and he felt danger before the boot left Johnny''s hand. Before the missile landed in the dish pan Lee Hop was digging madly across the open, half way to the ranch house, and temporary safety. Johnny fished out the boot and paused to watch the agile cook. "He ''s got eyes all over hisself—an'' no coyote ever lived as could beat him," was his regretful comment. He knew better than to follow—Hopalong''s wife had a sympathetic heart, and a tongue to be feared. She had not yet forgotten Lee Hop''s auspicious initiation as an ex-officiomember of the outfit, and Johnny''s part therein. And no one had been able to convince her that sympathy was wasted on a "Chink." The shirtless puncher looked around helplessly, and then a grin slipped over his face. Glancing at the boot he dropped it back into the dish water, moved swiftly to Red''s bunk, and in a moment a twin to his own shirt adorned his back. To make matters more certain he deposited on Red''s blankets an old shirt of Lee Hop''s, and then sauntered over to Skinny''s bunk. "Hoppy said he ''d lick me if I hurt th'' Chink any more; but he did n''t say nothin'' to Red. May th'' best man win," he muttered as he lifted Skinny''s blankets and fondled a box of cigars. "One from forty-three leaves forty-two," he figured, and then, dropping to the floor and crawling under the bunk, he added a mark to Skinny''s "secret" tally. Skinny always liked to know just how many of his own cigars he smoked. "Now for a little nip, an'' then th'' open, where this cigar won''t talk so loud," he laughed, heading towards Lanky''s bunk. The most diligent search failed to produce, and a rapid repetition also failed. Lanky''s clothes and boots yielded nothing and Johnny was getting sarcastic when his eyes fell upon an old boot lying under a pile of riding gear in a corner of the room. Keeping his thumb on the original level he drank, and then added enough water to bring the depleted liquor up to his thumb. "Gee—I ''ve saved sixty-five dollars this month, an'' two days are gone already," he chuckled. He received sixty-five dollars, and what luxuries were not nailed down, every month. Mounting his horse he rode away to enjoy the cigar, happy that the winter was nearly over. There was a feeling in the air that told of Spring, no matter what the calendar showed, and Johnny felt unrest stirring in his veins. When Johnny felt thus exuberant things promised to move swiftly about the bunk-house.