BiblioVault - Books by Wood, James

The Devil's Triangle

Ben Bickerstaff, Northeast Texans, and the War of Reconstruction in Texas

James M. Smallwood

University of North Texas Press, 2007

History of International Broadcasting, Volume 1

James Wood

The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 1994

The history of radio broadcasting is traced from its earliest origins, through its role as a subversive tool in World War II to the cold war era, and finally to its present day use as an instrument of foreign policy used by over 160 countries.

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History of International Broadcasting, Volume 2

James Wood

The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2000

The first volume of History of International Broadcasting (1992) traced the history of radio broadcasting, chiefly on the short waves, from its earliest origins to its role as an instrument of foreign policy in World War II and into the cold war. This volume documents the role of the West's international broadcasters - such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the BBC World Service - in using propaganda and other information to assist in bringing about the collapse of Soviet communism and the end of the cold war. It also analyses the new uses to which broadcasting infrastructures are being put, as well as new developments reflecting changes in world politics and culture. Much attention is therefore devoted to broadcasting to and within Asia and the Arabic-Islamic Middle East region, where some of the greatest new investments are being made.

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The Nearest Thing to Life

James Wood

Brandeis University Press, 2015

In this remarkable blend of memoir and criticism, James Wood, the noted contributor to the New Yorker, has written a master class on the connections between fiction and life. He argues that of all the arts, fiction has a unique ability to describe the shape of our lives and to rescue the texture of those lives from death and historical oblivion. The act of reading is understood here as the most sacred and personal of activities, and there are brilliant discussions of individual works—among others, Chekhov’s story “The Kiss,” The Emigrants, by W. G. Sebald, and The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald. Wood reveals his own intimate relationship with the written word: we see the development of a boy from the provinces growing up in a charged Christian environment, the secret joy of his childhood reading, the links he draws between reading and blasphemy, or between literature and music. The final section discusses fiction in the context of exile and homelessness. More than a tightly argued little book by a man commonly regarded as our finest living critic, The Nearest Thing to Life is an exhilarating personal account that reflects on, and embodies, the fruitful conspiracy between reader and writer (and critic), and asks us to reconsider everything that is at stake when we read and write fiction.

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No Hope for Heaven, No Fear of Hell

The Stafford-Townsend Feud of Colorado County, Texas 1871-1911

James Kearney

University of North Texas Press, 2016

Shakespeare and the Denial of Death

James Calderwood

University of Massachusetts Press, 1987

James L. Calderwood offers a lively exploration of the ways in which Shakespeare dramatizes the strategies people employ to deal with and transcend the inevitability of death. In keeping with the views of Ernest Becker, Norman O. Brown, and others, Calderwood argues that the denial of death is fundamental to both individuals and their cultures. By drawing on a fascinating range of examples, he suggests how often and how variously Shakespeare dramatizes this desire for symbolic immortality.

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Shakespearean Metadrama

The Argument of the Play in Titus Andronicus, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Richard II

James L. Calderwood

University of Minnesota Press, 1971

Shakespearean Metadrama was first published in 1971. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

In a new approach to Shakespeare criticism, the author interprets five of Shakespeare's early plays as metadramas, dramas that are not only about the various moral, social, political, and other thematic issues with which critics have so long been concerned but also about the plays themselves. Professor Calderwood demonstrates that in these five plays Shakespeare writes about his dramatic art -- its nature, its media of language and theater, its generic forms and conventions, its relationship to truth and the social order.

In an introductory chapter the author explains his theory of metadrama, placing it in a general critical context as well as in the specific framework of Shakespeare's plays. He distinguishes between the meaning of metadrama and the similar terms "metaplay" and "metatheare." He points out that the dominant metadramatic aspect of the five plays under study is the interplay of language and action in drama. A separate chapter is devoted to the interpretation of each of the plays.

Professor Calderwood is aware that in presenting his critical theory and interpretations he may be met with skepticism by other scholars and critics. He anticipates such a situation in the introduction: "To the critic trying on introductory styles for a book on Shakespearean metadrama," he writes, "the plight of Falstaff at the Boar's Head Tavern comes all to readily to mind. 'What trick," he must ask himself, 'what device, what starting-hole, canst thou now find out to hide thee from this open and apparent shame?'"

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