“No book could be more timely then The Decline of Nature. LaFreniere offers an in-depth analysis of the fundamental issues that must be faced if solutions for environmental crisis are to be found. His arguments are a refreshing alternative to the superficial policy proposals of politicians and the glib reporting of the mass media. — The Decline of Nature is a masterful critique of the stories that own us. LaFreniere’s analytical effort is a veritable tour de force.”
From the Foreword by Professor Max Oelschlaeger, Northern Arizona University

This research monograph discusses the understudied and often misunderstood aspects of West African culture and religion especially that of the Yoruba people and their Book of Enlightenment (Ife-Ifa) together with its metaphysical importance to the Yoruba as a source of philosophy, religion and literature.

Walter Dean Burnham is widely regarded as the greatest living student of American voting behavior. He pioneered the collection and publication of historical American election statistics and his many essays and books on them are read around the world. His compilation of voting statistics for the famous 1975 Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 was a landmark in the field.

Drawing on the work of Levi-Strauss, Malinowski, Dumezil, Van Gennep, Eliade and many others, Dr. Marsland proposes a dual/triune structure to early religion--a structure which appears to be worldwide.

This work is, in the words of Dr Norman Freed, a “rich picture of an empty landscape, the depression that is to be engaged to maximally avoid it and its ramifications.” This work explores the philosophical aspects of the plague of depression found throughout the modern world.

As the force that gave birth to Anglo-Catholicism, the Oxford Movement is generally treated as an Anglican phenomenon. Yet the influence of members who converted to Roman Catholicism proved decisive for the years leading up to the First Vatican Council and the definition of papal infallibility in Pastor Aeternus (1870).

This monograph is a study of poetry as an alternative way of seeing the world and of obtaining insights into realities that enable the reader to see the vast otherness that usually eludes. The process of creativity is discussed. The influences of other disciplines on the heightening of consciousness are described as well as methodologies of observation that have been employed in the last 100 years are elucidated. Attention is paid to the specific contribution of modern Irish poetry especially in the role of the poet in society.

Anarchism stands as one of the the most vital social movements of the twentieth century. Yet the lack, and growing, contemporary movement remain obscured. Lost in recent accounts are the creative and constructive practices undertaken daily by anarchist organizers seeking a world free from violence, oppression and exploitation.

This research monograph is an analysis of the English girls’ school-story, not mainly as an aspect of children’s literature, but as a genre which, despite the conservatism of the surface text, deeply challenges and subverts traditional societal constructs and provides images of liberation and self creation for girls and women. The work examines the alternative life-views, role–models and “possibilities of becoming” offered by the texts.

Lanoe Falconer ( nom de plume of Mary Elizabeth Hawker) was one of England’s most accomplished young writers in the 1890s; her novel Mademoiselle Ixe a bestseller and an international hit. Her short stories and novels were compared favorably to Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell among others. Her promising career was cut short by chronic illness. Peter Rowland began his research by discovering a large mass of Falconer’s unpublished material including personal documents.