Plexus Publishing Ltd.
Plexus are publishers of high quality, illustrated non-fiction books, specialising in biography, popular culture, movies, music and gift books. Contact: sandra@plexusbooks.com
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Promoted Content
Humanities & Social SciencesMarch 2017Air power and colonial control
by David Omissi
Air policing was used in many colonial possessions, but its most effective incidence occurred in the crescent of territory from north-eastern Africa, through South-West Arabia, to North West Frontier of India. This book talks about air policing and its role in offering a cheaper means of 'pacification' in the inter-war years. It illuminates the potentialities and limitations of the new aerial technology, and makes important contributions to the history of colonial resistance and its suppression. Air policing was employed in the campaign against Mohammed bin Abdulla Hassan and his Dervish following in Somaliland in early 1920. The book discusses the relationships between air control and the survival of Royal Air Force in Iraq and between air power and indirect imperialism in the Hashemite kingdoms. It discusses Hugh Trenchard's plans to substitute air for naval or coastal forces, and assesses the extent to which barriers of climate and geography continued to limit the exercise of air power. Indigenous responses include being terrified at the mere sight of aircraft to the successful adaptation to air power, which was hardly foreseen by either the opponents or the supporters of air policing. The book examines the ethical debates which were a continuous undercurrent to the stream of argument about repressive air power methods from a political and operational perspective. It compares air policing as practised by other European powers by highlighting the Rif war in Morocco, the Druze revolt in Syria, and Italy's war of reconquest in Libya.
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Humanities & Social SciencesMarch 2017Air empire
British imperial civil aviation, 1919–39
by Gordon Pirie, Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie
Air empire is a fresh study of civil aviation as a tool of late British imperialism. The first pioneering flights across the British empire in 1919-20 were flag-waving adventures that recreated an era of plucky British maritime exploration and conquest. Britain's development of international air routes and services was approved, organised and celebrated largely in London; there was some resistance in and beyond the subordinate colonies and dominions. Negotiating the financing and geopolitics of regular commercial air service delayed its inception until the 1930s. Technological, managerial and logistical problems also meant that Britain was slow into the air and slow in the air. Propaganda concealed underperformance and criticism. The study uses archival sources, biographies, industry magazines and newspapers to chronicle the disputed progress toward air empire. The rhetoric behind imperial air service offers a glimpse of late imperial hopes, fears, attitudes and style. Empire air service had emotional appeal and symbolic value, but disappointed in practice.
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Trusted Partner
The ArtsDecember 2013The life of mise-en-scène
Visual style and British film criticism, 1946–78
by John Gibbs
The life of mise-en-scène offers a critical history of key debates about visual style in British film journals in the post-war period. It reclaims an often-ignored or misrepresented history, including: the concept of film poetry in the journal Sequence, changing attitudes in Sight and Sound during the 1950s, and the battle over the significance of film style which raged between a number of small journals and the national press in the early 1960s. It examines the British school, first associated with Movie in the 1960s, which, in Adrian Martin's words, is enjoying a 'widespread, international revival' - but also other critical movements, more hazily remembered. It explores the role of mise-en-scène in melodrama criticism, and considers what happened to detailed criticism as major theoretical movements emerged in the 1970s. In doing so, it provides a vital context for the contemporary practice of style-based criticism and challenges received notions of critical history, developing our understanding of a range of other key debates and concerns in the study of film. ;
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Humanities & Social SciencesFebruary 2017Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation
Passengers, pilots, publicity
by Gordon Pirie, Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie
The new activity of trans-continental civil flying in the 1930s is a useful vantage point for viewing the extension of British imperial attitudes and practices. Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation examines the experiences of those (mostly men) who flew solo or with a companion (racing or for leisure), who were airline passengers (doing colonial administration, business or research), or who flew as civilian air and ground crews. For airborne elites, flying was a modern and often enviable way of managing, using and experiencing empire. On the ground, aviation was a device for asserting old empire: adventure and modernity were accompanied by supremacism. At the time, however, British civil imperial flying was presented romantically in books, magazines and exhibitions. Eighty years on, imperial flying is still remembered, reproduced and re-enacted in caricature.
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Central government policiesDecember 2009Candide en Dannemarc, ou l’optimisme des honnêtes gens
Voltaire
by Mike Thompson, Edouard Langille
Published in Rouen in 1767 and reprinted two years later, Voltaire's Candide en Dannemarc, ou l'optimisme des honnêtes gens wraps up the adventures of Candide. Turning his back on both Voltairean satire and scepticism, the novelist proposes a moralistic fable - the focal point of which is a rehabilitation of Leibniz's Theory of Optimism. The main body of the novel tells the story of Candide and his new wife, the noble Zénoïde, in their sumptuous Copenhagen townhouse. Before achieving this happy state, however, the couple endures various trials and tribulations reminiscent of the newly minted gothic genre. Candide en Dannemarc also features a satirical portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. ;
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Trusted Partner
Literature & Literary StudiesJune 2017Candide en Dannemarc, ou l’optimisme des honnêtes gens
Voltaire
by Edouard Langille
Published in Rouen in 1767 and reprinted two years later, Voltaire's Candide en Dannemarc, ou l'optimisme des honnêtes gens wraps up the adventures of Candide. Turning his back on both Voltairean satire and scepticism, the novelist proposes a moralistic fable - the focal point of which is a rehabilitation of Leibniz's Theory of Optimism. The main body of the novel tells the story of Candide and his new wife, the noble Zénoïde, in their sumptuous Copenhagen townhouse. Before achieving this happy state, however, the couple endures various trials and tribulations reminiscent of the newly minted gothic genre. Candide en Dannemarc also features a satirical portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
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Trusted Partner
Humanities & Social SciencesNovember 2009Air empire
British imperial civil aviation, 1919–39
by Gordon Pirie, Andrew Thompson, John Mackenzie
Air empire is a fresh study of civil aviation as a tool of late British imperialism. The first pioneering flights across the British empire in 1919-20 were flag-waving adventures that recreated an era of plucky British maritime exploration and conquest. Britain's development of international air routes and services was approved, organised and celebrated largely in London; there was some resistance in and beyond the subordinate colonies and dominions. Negotiating the financing and geopolitics of regular commercial air service delayed its inception until the 1930s. Technological, managerial and logistical problems also meant that Britain was slow into the air and slow in the air. Propaganda concealed underperformance and criticism. The study uses archival sources, biographies, industry magazines and newspapers to chronicle the disputed progress toward air empire. The rhetoric behind imperial air service offers a glimpse of late imperial hopes, fears, attitudes and style. Empire air service had emotional appeal and symbolic value, but disappointed in practice. ;
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Biography & True StoriesSeptember 2024Bedsit land
The strange worlds of Soft Cell
by Patrick Clarke
A rich and revealing examination of the legendary pop duo Soft Cell. Soft Cell are not your average pop band. Marc Almond and Dave Ball may be best known for the string of hits they released in 1981, but the powerful first phase of their collaboration embraced a staggering array of sounds, influences and innovations that would change the face of music to come. In Bedsit land, Patrick Clarke plunges into the archives and interviews more than sixty contributors, including the band members themselves, to follow Soft Cell through the many strange and sprawling worlds that shaped their extraordinary career. They lead him from the faded camp glamour of the British seaside to the dizzying thrills of the New York club scene. From transgressive student performance art to the sleaze and squalor of pre-gentrified Soho. From the glitz of British showbiz to the drug-addled chaos of post-Franco Spain. He emerges on the other side with the most in-depth, innovative and entertaining account of the duo ever written.
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Biography & True StoriesNovember 2024Walking in the dark
James Baldwin, my father and I
by Douglas Field
A moving exploration of the life and work of the celebrated American writer, blending biography and memoir with literary criticism. Since James Baldwin's death in 1987, his writing - including The Fire Next Time, one of the manifestoes of the Civil Rights Movement, and Giovanni's Room, a pioneering work of gay fiction - has only grown in relevance. Douglas Field was introduced to Baldwin's essays and novels by his father, who witnessed the writer's debate with William F. Buckley at Cambridge University in 1965. In Walking in the dark, he embarks on a journey to unravel his life-long fascination and to understand why Baldwin continues to enthral us decades after his death. Tracing Baldwin's footsteps in France, the US and Switzerland, and digging into archives, Field paints an intimate portrait of the writer's life and influence. At the same time, he offers a poignant account of coming to terms with his father's Alzheimer's disease. Interweaving Baldwin's writings on family, illness, memory and place, Walking in the dark is an eloquent testament to the enduring power of great literature to illuminate our paths.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJune 2021Feeling the strain
A cultural history of stress in twentieth-century Britain
by Jill Kirby
Examining the popular discourse of nerves and stress, this book provides a historical account of how ordinary Britons understood, explained and coped with the pressures and strains of daily life during the twentieth century. It traces the popular, vernacular discourse of stress, illuminating not just how stress was known, but the ways in which that knowledge was produced. Taking a cultural approach, the book focuses on contemporary popular understandings, revealing continuity of ideas about work, mental health, status, gender and individual weakness, as well as the changing socio-economic contexts that enabled stress to become a ubiquitous condition of everyday life by the end of the century. With accounts from sufferers, families and colleagues it also offers insight into self-help literature, the meanings of work and changing dynamics of domestic life, delivering a complementary perspective to medical histories of stress.
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Trusted Partner
Political ideologiesMay 2017Neoliberal power and public management reforms
by Professor Peter Triantafillou. Series edited by Mark Haugaard
This book examines the links between major contemporary public sector reforms and neoliberal thinking. The key contribution of the book is to enhance our understanding of contemporary neoliberalism as it plays out in the public administration and to provide a critical analysis of generally overlooked aspects of administrative power. The book examines the quest for accountability, credibility and evidence in the public sector. It asks whether this quest may be understood in terms of neoliberal thinking and, if so, how? The book makes the argument that while current administrative reforms are informed by several distinct political rationalities, they evolve above all around a particular form of neoliberalism: constructivist neoliberalism. The book analyses the dangers of the kinds of administrative power seeking to invoke the self-steering capacities of society and administration itself.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJune 2012Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation
Passengers, pilots, publicity
by Gordon Pirie, Andrew Thompson, John Mackenzie
The new activity of trans-continental civil flying in the 1930s is a useful vantage point for viewing the extension of British imperial attitudes and practices. Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation examines the experiences of those (mostly men) who flew solo or with a companion (racing or for leisure), who were airline passengers (doing colonial administration, business or research), or who flew as civilian air and ground crews. For airborne elites, flying was a modern and often enviable way of managing, using and experiencing empire. On the ground, aviation was a device for asserting old empire: adventure and modernity were accompanied by supremacism. At the time, however, British civil imperial flying was presented romantically in books, magazines and exhibitions. Eighty years on, imperial flying is still remembered, reproduced and re-enacted in caricature. ;
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Trusted Partner
Humanities & Social SciencesBrazil in the world
The international relations of a South American giant
by Dr. Sean W. Burgess
Brazil has suddenly become a country of interest to the West, playing a critical role in global economic talks at the G20 and WTO, brokering North-South relations through its new international economic geography, and stepping into regional and global security questions through its activities in Haiti, Paraguay and the nuclear question in Iran. This book explains why Brazil is taking an increasingly prominent international role, how it conducts and plans its regional and global interactions, and what the South American giant intends to do with its rising international influence. The book is written for the non-specialist, providing students and other interested readers with a well-organized, concise introduction to the fundamentals of the foreign policy of an emerging Twenty-First Century power.
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Humanities & Social SciencesJune 2023
Border images, border narratives
The political aesthetics of boundaries and crossings
by Johan Schimanski, Jopi Nyman
This interdisciplinary volume explores the role of images and narratives in different borderscapes. Written by experienced scholars in the field, Border images, border narratives provides fresh insight into how borders, borderscapes, and migration are imagined and narrated in public and private spheres. Offering new ways to approach the political aesthetics of the border and its ambiguities, this volume makes a valuable contribution to the methodological renewal of border studies and presents ways of discussing cultural representations of borders and related processes. Influenced by the thinking of philosopher Jacques Rancière, this timely volume argues that narrated and mediated images of borders and borderscapes are central to the political process, as they contribute to the public negotiation of borders and address issues such as the in/visiblity of migrants and the formation of alternative borderscapes. The contributions analyse narratives and images in literary texts, political and popular imagery, surveillance data, border art, and documentaries, as well as problems related to borderland identities, migration, and trauma. The case studies provide a highly comparative range of geographical contexts ranging from Northern Europe and Britain, via Mediterranean and Mexican-USA borderlands, to Chinese borderlands from the perspectives of critical theory, literary studies, social anthropology, media studies, and political geography.
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Humanities & Social SciencesApril 2025Beyond the Pale and Highland Line
The Irish and Scottish Gaelic world
by Simon Egan
This book offers important new insights into the history and culture of the Gaelic-speaking world from the mid-fifteenth century through to the reign of James VI and I. Throughout this period, the reach of the English and Scottish crowns within these western regions was limited. The initiative lay with local communities and royal power was contingent upon negotiating with well-established and largely autonomous aristocratic lineages. Moreover, events within this western world could exert a powerful, often unpredictable, influence upon the affairs of the wider archipelago. Using a series of case studies, this collection examines the evolving relationship between Ireland and Scotland in rich detail. It demonstrates how this world interacted with the encroaching English and Scottish states and underlines the importance of paying closer attention to this neglected area of Irish and British history.
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The ArtsJanuary 2019Jean-Jacques Beineix
by Philip Powrie
This volume is the first to examine, in either French or English, the films of Jean-Jacques Beineix, often seen as the best example of the 1980s cinéma du look, with cult films, such as Diva and Betty Blue (37º 2 le matin) .. After an introduction which places Beineix in the context of the 1980s and the arguments centering on a postmodern cinema, the volume devotes a chapter to each of Beineix's feature films, including the film which marked his return to feature film making after a break of a decade, Mortel Transfert (2001). Prefaced by an excellent foreword by the director himself, which includes a broad condemnation of French critics. Includes many illustrations direct from the director's own collection, complementing the interviews Powrie made with him and his collaborators.
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The ArtsSeptember 2020Science in performance
Theatre and the politics of engagement
by Simon Parry
This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book is about science in theatre and performance. It explores how theatre and performance engage with emerging scientific themes from artificial intelligence to genetics and climate change. The book covers a wide range of performance forms from Broadway musicals to educational theatre, from Somali drama to grime videos. It features work by pioneering companies including Gob Squad, Headlong Theatre and Theatre of Debate as well as offering fresh analysis of global blockbusters such as Wicked and Urinetown. The book offers detailed description and analysis of theatre and performance practices as well as broader commentary on the politics of theatre as public engagement with science. Science in performance is essential reading for researchers, students and practitioners working between science and the arts within fields such as theatre and performance studies, science communication, interdisciplinary arts and health humanities.
