Subterranean Fire

A passionate intensity moves through the subjective, intimate voice of the poems of Natalka Bilotserkivets. Through translation, Subterranean Fire continues their mysterious pilgrimage to their second lives. From one of the true inheritors – touchstones like Anna Akhmatova, Gabriela Mistral, and Louise Bogan – the poems of Bilotserkivets inhabit us as they include us in their transcendent borderland. – American poet James Brasfield With great depths of feeling, Natalka Bilotserkivets’s poetry guides us into that uncharted territory where word meets heart. The poems, spare and often questioning, redeem that land between what is most difficult to grasp and most difficult to forget. – Dzvinia Orlowsky, American poet and translator Natalka Bilotserkivets’s poetry ...is characterized by tight form and elegiac feelings ... this reader was impressed by the liquid cascade of alliterations in her ... poems. – Professor Andrew Wachtel ...contemporary Ukrainian literature has been enriched by the unique pearl of [Natalka Bilotserkivets’s] intellectual and lyrical poetry. – Ukrainian prose writer, poet, and essayist Kost Moskalets I am certain that this first-rate modern Ukrainian poet could become a star of world lyric poetry... – Ukrainian poet and prose writer Ludmyla Taran

“A concise, well-written history of U.S. working-class struggle and radicalism” from the author of Women and Socialism: Class, Race, and Capital (Solidarity). Smith explores how the connection between the U.S. labor movement and the Democratic Party, with its extensive corporate ties, has repeatedly held back working-class struggles. And she closely examines the role of the labor movement in the 2004 presidential election, tracing the shrinking electoral influence of organized labor and the failure of labor-management cooperation, “business unionism,” and reliance on the Democrats to deliver any real gains. “Sharon Smith brings that history to life once again, blasting through the myths of the working class that Trump-era narratives cling to in order to connect us once again to the possibility of building broad solidarity.” —Sarah Jaffe, author of Work Won’t Love You Back “A veteran worker-intellectual brilliantly addresses the crisis of the labor movement, skewering those who believe that renewal can come from the top down, and encouraging those who are fighting to rebuild it from the bottom up.” —Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums

In a remote future age when the human enterprise has all but ground to a halt. a wandering troupe of players is dedicated to presenting the works of Shakespeare to every accessible corner of the settled universe. When aliens take an interest, the players find themselves giving command performances of King Lear, Hamlet and the Scottish play for a series of increasingly important alien species, with evidence that the fate of all humanity may rest on the quality of their work.

This work studies the historical transition from the agrarian solar energy regime to the use of fossil energy, which has fuelled the industrial transformation of the last 200 years. The author argues that the analysis of historical energy systems provides an explanation for the basic patterns of different social formations. It is the availability of free energy that defines the framework within which socio-metabolic processes can take place. This thesis explains why the industrial revolution started in Britain, where coal was readily available and firewood already depleted or difficult to transport, whereas Germany, with its huge forests next to rivers, was much longer dependent on a traditional solar energy regime."

In Subterranean Twin Cities, geologist, historian, and urban speleologist Greg Brick takes us on an adventurous, educational, and-thankfully-sanitary journey beneath the streets and into the myriad tunnels, caves, and industrial spaces that make up the Twin Cities' fascinating and surprisingly vast underground landscape. In this groundbreaking tour, the first of its kind of the Twin Cities, Brick mines the stories that lie below the city surface.

Now in paperback, Fire and Steam tells the dramatic story of the people and events that shaped the world's first railway network, one of the most impressive engineering achievements in history. The opening of the pioneering Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830 marked the beginning of the railways' vital role in changing the face of Britain. Fire and Steam celebrates the vision and determination of the ambitious Victorian pioneers who developed this revolutionary transport system and the navvies who cut through the land to enable a country-wide network to emerge. The rise of the steam train allowed goods and people to circulate around Britain as never before, stimulating the growth of towns and industry, as well many of the facets of modern life, from fish and chips to professional football. From the early days of steam to electrification, via the railways' magnificent contribution in two world wars, the checkered history of British Rail, and the buoyant future of the train, Fire and Steam examines the social and economical importance of the railway and how it helped to form the Britain of today.