Best Selling Books by Malcolm JONES

One of the world''s foremost experts on Dostoevsky presents a new study, focusing on the religious concerns of the enigmatic author.

Who exactly — them or me — first came up with the idea, I''m not certain. No matter. The Institute for Southern Studies staff asked if I would take out six months to travel the South as a reporter for the Institute''s then-new syndicated weekly column, Facing South. Captive to Southern fondness for poking about the region and to that larger American myth about freedom deriving from travel, I claimed the job before any list of applicants could be gotten up. A new van was purchased and fitted out with a bed, typing stand, CB and regular AM-FM radio, specially cut mosquito netting, and a fan. The Institute''s charge dictated that I''d see the rural South, not too much of the Interstate/urbanized South. Places like Ville Platte, Louisiana; Ink, Arkansas; Ripley, Mississippi; Pickens, South Carolina; and Fincastle, Virginia. The blessings of this constraint came vividly to mind when my path intersected an Interstate cloverleaf in Georgia — typically crammed with service stations, motels and fast food franchises. Over the door of one eatery hung a banner proclaiming "Join the Fun — Eat and Run." All told, I logged nearly 28,000 miles between May and October, 7977. I kept an eye out for the little things. Graffiti, for example. In the rest room of a Charlottesville, Virginia, vegetarian restaurant I found: "Mother made me a homosexual." Below, in another''s writing, "Fantastic! If I bought her the yarn, would she make me one?" Or signs, like one on a New Orleans building: Straight Business College. And listened for larger themes, not at all certain I could hear them — but knowing that these, too, were a Southern tradition going back at least to the days of Fannie Kemble''s Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation in 1838-1839, the powerful attack on slavery, and William Byrd ''s History of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina, the travel log some assert first described "the good ol'' boy."

This issue, which marks the beginning of our fifth year, combines a number of articles about the good times and growing pains of a South reaching national maturity. It seems appropriate for us to answer, at this time, some of our readers'' questions about who we re and what Southern Exposure represents. Early observers thought we''d never make it this far with a regional journal so critical of the powers that be and so preoccupied with the lesser known people, with the struggles and heritage of a culture considered bankrupt by sophisticated America. But, like the South, we have attained a new stability, partly from the spin-off of the media search for Jimmy Carter''s South (they have yet to find it) and partly from our appeal to the same hunger for connections to a past, a place, a people, that made Roots a meaningful event for so many.

For Malcolm Jones, his parents’ disintegrating marriage was at the center of life in North Carolina in the 1950s and 60s. His father, charming but careless, was often drunk and away from home; his mother, a schoolteacher and faded Southern belle, clung to the past and hungered for respectability. In Little Boy Lost, Jones—one of our most admired cultural observers—recalls a childhood in which this relationship played out against the larger cracks of society: the convulsions of desegregation and a popular culture that threatens the church-centered life of his family. He richly evokes a time and place with rare depth and candor, giving us the fundamental stories of a life—where he comes from, who he was, who he has become.

Manufacturing managers are still focused on the short-term tactical issues related to their business. Strategic issues tend to receive less attention. However, manufacturing can play an important strategic role. This book helps managers consider the strategic roles their operations can play and to provide guidance as to what actions can be taken.

An accessible overview of the most popular and cutting-edge methods for studying the properties of molecules and their interactions.

"This book offers a major reassessment of the high medieval period and as such is not only important to specialists, but has much to appeal to the general reader. It is essential reading for medievalists and those interested in the history of language and customs."--BOOK JACKET.

This book aims to demonstrate how multiple development activities in space exploitation can be reduced by a rationalized approach, which can result in technical standards and methodologies. It concentrates on systems engineering techniques, with a blend of relevant engineering management techniques. A communications system embracing a geostationary communications satellite is taken as the book''s prime example.

This book provides an iconographic survey of the single-sheet prints produced in Britain during the early modern era and brings to light some very recent discoveries. This large body of material is treated thematically, and within each theme, chronologically. Chapters are devoted to portents and prodigies, the formal moralities and doctrines of Christianity, the sects of Christianity, and the often vicious satire of the Catholic confession (but also of Protestant non-conformists) visual satire of foreigners and others, domestic political issues principally, the English Civil War social criticism and gender roles, marriage and sex, as well as numerical series and miscellaneous visual tricks, puzzles and jokes. The concluding chapter considers the significance of this wealth of visual material for the cultural history of England in the early modern era.

Graphic novel fans won''t be able to resist as Dracula comes to make Gotham City his dark dominion, first preying on the homeless and then amassing an army to take on the good citizens of Gotham. Batman must forge an alliance with the undead to defeat this unholy foe in a duel that stretches beyond the boundaries of death.