Ross Macdonald

When he died in 1983, Ross Macdonald was the best-known and most highly regarded crime-fiction writer in America. Long considered the rightful successor to the mantles of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and his Lew Archer-novels were hailed by The New York Times as "the finest series of detective novels ever written by an American." Now, in the first full-length biography of this extraordinary and influential writer, a much fuller picture emerges of a man to whom hiding things came as second nature. While it was no secret that Ross Macdonald was the pseudonym of Kenneth Millar -- a Santa Barbara man married to another good mystery writer, Margaret Millar -- his official biography was spare. Drawing on unrestricted access to the Kenneth and Margaret Millar Archives, on more than forty years of correspondence, and on hundreds of interviews with those who knew Millar well, author Tom Nolan has done a masterful job of filling in the blanks between the psychologically complex novels and the author's life -- both secret and overt. Ross Macdonald came to crime-writing honestly. Born in northern California to Canadian parents, Kenneth Millar grew up in Ontario virtually fatherless, poor, and with a mother whose mental stability was very much in question. From the age of twelve, young Millar was fighting, stealing, and breaking social and moral laws; by his own admission, he barely escaped being a criminal. Years later, Millar would come to see himself in his tales' wrongdoers. "I don't have to be violent," he said, "My books are." How this troubled young man came to be one of the most brilliant graduate students in the history of the University of Michigan and how this writer, who excelled in a genre all too often looked down upon by literary critics, came to have a lifelong friendship with Eudora Welty are all examined in the pages of Tom Nolan's meticulous biography. We come to a sympathetic understanding of the Millars' long, and sometimes rancorous, marriage and of their life in Santa Barbara, California, with their only daughter, Linda, whose legal and emotional traumas lie at the very heart of the story. But we also follow the trajectory of a literary career that began in the pages of Manhunt and ended with the great respect of such fellow writers as Marshall McLuhan, Hugh Kenner, Nelson Algren, and Reynolds Price, and the longtime distinguished publisher Alfred A. Knopf. As Ross Macdonald: A Biography makes abundantly clear, Ross Macdonald's greatest character -- above and beyond his famous Lew Archer -- was none other than his creator, Kenneth Millar.

Prior studies of post-war American Gothic literature (and even American horror films) have primarily interpreted Gothic cultural production of the post-war period through a Cold War lens. Despite legitimate reasons for such an approach, this emphasis has limited inquiries into post-war fiction as well as our understanding of the nation’s complicated identity. While the federal government and its investigative agencies may have been preoccupied with the so-called ‘red menace’ that threatened to spread across the planet, each region of the country already possessed major strains of Gothic fiction that focused on regional anxieties – namely of those connected to women and minorities that threatened the region’s constructed identity and balance of power. The Haunted States of America shifts the focus to these Gothic strains by examining how the anxieties, fears and concerns illustrated in the works of several post-World War II writers can be best understood through regional history and identity.

What happened to Paul Nelson? In the '60s, he pioneered rock & roll criticism with a first-person style of writing that would later be popularized by the likes of Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer as “New Journalism.” As co-founding editor of The Little Sandy Review and managing editor of Sing Out!, he’d already established himself, to use his friend Bob Dylan’s words, as “a folk-music scholar”; but when Dylan went electric in 1965, Nelson went with him. During a five-year detour at Mercury Records in the early 1970s, Nelson signed the New York Dolls to their first recording contract, then settled back down to writing criticism at Rolling Stone as the last in a great tradition of record-review editors that included Jon Landau, Dave Marsh, and Greil Marcus. Famously championing the early careers of artists like Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Rod Stewart, Neil Young, and Warren Zevon, Nelson not only wrote about them but often befriended them. Never one to be pigeonholed, he was also one of punk rock’s first stateside mainstream proponents, embracing the Sex Pistols and the Ramones. But in 1982, he walked away from it all — Rolling Stone, his friends, and rock & roll. By the time he died in his New York City apartment in 2006 at the age of seventy — a week passing before anybody discovered his body — almost everything he’d written had been relegated to back issues of old music magazines. How could a man whose writing had been so highly regarded have fallen so quickly from our collective memory? With Paul Nelson’s posthumous blessing, Kevin Avery spent four years researching and writing Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writing of Paul Nelson. This unique anthology-biography compiles Nelson’s best works (some of it previously unpublished) while also providing a vivid account of his private and public lives. Avery interviewed almost 100 of Paul Nelson’s friends, family, and colleagues, including several of the artists about whom he’d written.

Describes authors, works, and literary terms from all eras and all parts of the world.

A Historical Introduction to Mathematical Modeling of Infectious Diseases: Seminal Papers in Epidemiology offers step-by-step help on how to navigate the important historical papers on the subject, beginning in the 18th century. The book carefully, and critically, guides the reader through seminal writings that helped revolutionize the field. With pointed questions, prompts, and analysis, this book helps the non-mathematician develop their own perspective, relying purely on a basic knowledge of algebra, calculus, and statistics. By learning from the important moments in the field, from its conception to the 21st century, it enables readers to mature into competent practitioners of epidemiologic modeling. Presents a refreshing and in-depth look at key historical works of mathematical epidemiology Provides all the basic knowledge of mathematics readers need in order to understand the fundamentals of mathematical modeling of infectious diseases Includes questions, prompts, and answers to help apply historical solutions to modern day problems

Since their inception, detective novels have been a wildly successful genre of American fiction, featuring a uniquely American belief in rugged individualism. This book focuses on Raymond Chandler’s creation of Philip Marlowe, a detective whose feeling for community and willingness to compromise radically changed the genre’s vigilantism and violence. It compares Chandler’s work to early and mid–20th century American detective novels, particularly those by John Carroll Daly, Mickey Spillane, Dashiell Hammett and Ross Macdonald, as well as contemporary British detective fiction, highlighting Chandler’s contribution to the American genre.

Leading experts address such problems as identification of deafblindness, planning and intervention, development, family support, and education for parents and professionals who work with people who have been deafblind from birth or a very early age.

Nobody likes a bully, whether it is a school boy bully, political bully or a corporate bully. Having discovered a bonanza, Rocco Manetti’s exploration company has become the target of a corporate bully – a multinational powerhouse which intends to acquire the bonanza by hook or by crook, by fair means or foul. All’s fair in love and war, and although business doesn’t waste much time on love, it certainly has a ravenous appetite for war. Manetti, fully occupied with fending off a hostile takeover bid, is forced to simultaneously confront another threat in the form of a blackmailer who has knowledge of Manetti’s involvement in a long-ago homicide. The blackmailer soon proves to be a psychopath, which leaves Manetti in a life-or-death struggle for personal survival, as well as the life-or-death struggle for corporate survival.

The fifth Millennium Development target of reducing infant mortality by two thirds by the year 2015 can only be achieved if mortality due to malaria is significantly reduced.This book addresses this issue by developing an innovative methodology and modeling used to assess local scale malaria risk using environmental factors. The detailed description of this pioneering methodology enables scientists to replicate the study elsewhere in different settings.

Complex diseases involve most aspects of population biology, including genetics, demographics, epidemiology, and ecology. Mathematical methods, including differential, difference, and integral equations, numerical analysis, and random processes, have been used effectively in all of these areas. The aim of this book is to provide sufficient background in such mathematical and computational methods to enable the reader to better understand complex systems in biology, medicine, and the life sciences. It introduces concepts in mathematics to study population phenomena with the goal of describing complicated aspects of a disease, such as malaria, involving several species. The book is based on a graduate course in computational biology and applied mathematics taught at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in fall 2010. The mathematical level is kept to essentially advanced undergraduate mathematics, and the results in the book are intended to provide readers with tools for performing more in-depth analysis of population phenomena.

“I believe that it is in our interest as individuals to become crafty readers, and in the interest of the nation to educate citizens in the craft of reading. The craft, not the art. . . . This book is about that craft.”—from the Introduction This latest book from the well-known literary critic Robert Scholes presents his thoughtful exploration of the craft of reading. He deals with reading not as an art or performance given by a virtuoso reader, but as a craft that can be studied, taught, and learned. Those who master the craft of reading, Scholes contends, will justifiably take responsibility for the readings they produce and the texts they choose to read. Scholes begins with a critique of the New Critical way of reading (“bad for poets and poetry and really terrible for students and teachers of poetry”), using examples of poems by various writers, in particular Edna St. Vincent Millay. He concludes with a consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of the fundamentalist way of reading texts regarded as sacred. To explain and clarify the approach of the crafty reader, the author analyzes a wide-ranging selection of texts by figures at the margins of the literary and cultural canon, including Norman Rockwell, Anaïs Nin, Dashiell Hammett, and J. K. Rowling. Throughout his discussion Scholes emphasizes how concepts of genre affect the reading process and how they may work to exclude certain texts from the cultural canon and curriculum.

Featuring 37 essays by distinguished literary scholars, A Companion to the American Novel provides a comprehensive single-volume treatment of the development of the novel in the United States from the late 18th century to the present day. Represents the most comprehensive single-volume introduction to this popular literary form currently available Features 37 contributions from a wide range of distinguished literary scholars Includes essays on topics and genres, historical overviews, and key individual works, including The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, Beloved, and many more.

This book examines the recent expansion of Ireland's literary tradition to include home-grown crime fiction. It surveys the wave of books that use genre structures to explore specifically Irish issues such as the Troubles and the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger, as well as Irish experiences of human trafficking, the supernatural, abortion, and civic corruption. These novels are as likely to address the national regulation of sexuality through institutions like the Magdalen Laundries as they are to follow serial killers through the American South or to trace international corporate conspiracies. This study includes chapters on Northern Irish crime fiction, novels set in the Republic, women protagonists, and transnational themes, and discusses Irish authors’ adaptations of a well-loved genre and their effect on assumptions about the nature of Irish literature. It is a book for readers of crime fiction and Irish literature alike, illuminating the fertile intersections of the two.