It started off like an ordinary day for Dr. Jeffrey Brewster, assistant professor of psycho-sociology at Columbia University. Hed been six weeks old when the first crude satellites were flung into space back in 1957. During his childhood there had been Moon rockets and the space stations then the joint American-Russian manned expedition to the Moon in 1965, right after the collapse of the Soviet dictatorship. Mars and Venus had been reached as he grew up and a permanent base was established on the Moon in 1973. Now the days papers reported that an expedition was ready to leave for Callisto, moon of Jupiter. But Dr. Brewster had a class to make and he was late. That was when the telephone rang and Mari, his wife, said, Long distance from Washington. The caller was Colonel Chasin of Unsecfor United Nations Security Force, the global and international army that policed the world in these days of relative peace and harmony. Chasin explained that a serious matter had come up, something concerning global security, which he could not reveal at the moment. He ended with, We feel that you can help us, Professor. Wed appreciate it if youd come down to Washington today and join in a little conference. President Macintyre will be leading the discussion. Brewster couldnt decline and soon found out that all arrangements had been made at the University for his indefinite absence. What could be going on that required the assistance of a professor of psychosociology? Brewster suspected that the book which had earned him his Ph. D. last year, A Theory of Communication: Notes toward a Mathematical Formulation of Information, had something to do with it. But never would he have suspected what Colonel Chasin told him after his arrival in Washington. On Sunday evening, a spaceship had landed in a Kansas cornfield. An alien being appeared, handed a metal plate to the owner of the farm and said in English that he wanted to see somebody in authority. The United Nations Security Council met in a secret emergency session early Monday morning and worked out a program of dealing with the three aliens. Dr. Brewster was one of the nine men selected to negotiate with the visitors from space! The beings seemed friendly, seemed to be here with peaceful intentions, but Dr. Brewster had to find out if they were telling the truth or the whole truth! Here is a suspenseful novel of a tomorrow which may arrive before we suspect its possibility (by the author ofInvisible Barriers ).

A schoolteacher whose poetry catapulted her to early fame in her native Chile and an international diplomat whose boundary-defying sexuality still challenges scholars, Gabriela Mistral (1889 1957) is one of the most important and enigmatic figures in Latin American literature of the last century. The Locas mujeres poems collected here are among Mistrals most complex and compelling, exploring facets of the self in extremis-poems marked by the wound of blazing catastrophe and its aftermath of mourning. From disquieting humor to balladlike lyricism to folkloric wisdom, these pieces enact a tragic sense of life, depicting madwomen who are anything but mad. Strong and intensely human, Mistrals poetic women confront impossible situations to which no sane response exists. This groundbreaking collection presents poems from Mistrals final published volume as well as new editions of posthumous work, featuring the first English-language appearance of many essential poems. Madwomen promises to reveal a profound poet to a new generation of Anglophone readers while reacquainting Spanish readers with a stranger, more complicated madwoman than most have ever known.

Gocking provides a historical overview of Ghana from the emergence of precolonial states through increasing contact with Europeans that led to the establishment of formal colonial rule by Great Britian at the end of the 19th century. Colonial rule transformed what was known as the Gold Coast economically, socially, and politically, but it contained the seeds of its own demise. After World War II an increasingly more effective nationalist movement challenged British rule, and in 1957 Ghana became independent. Independence brought its own challenges the most important of which was the inability to maintain political stability. Within the space of 24 years there were four military coups and the collapse of three republics. Ghanas Fourth Republic, established in 1993, has dealt with the legacy of instability inherited from the past as it moves towards a more stable future.

A timeline, photographs, maps, and an appendix of biographies of notable figures in the history of Ghana are included. Students and adults alike will find this book to be highly effective in describing the often turbulent and tumultuous history of this country.

This book presents papers from a conference held at Sebha University - on the eastern margins of the Murzug Basin - in September 1998.
The book continues an ongoing series of presentations of the geology of Libya, but the 25 contributions herein mostly centre on the Murzuq Basin itself and on nearby areas. There are still many unresolved questions in terms of geological and hydrocarbon exploration in these difficult desert areas, but the papers herein will hopefully present a first comprehensive overview of an exciting frontier exploration region. About half of the papers are directly related to hydrocarbon exploration, and to source rock and reservoir development, but a wide variety of other features are also described, ranging from palaeontology and biostratigraphy to ore geology and water resources, covering the entire geological column from the Precambrian to the Holocene. The book concludes with a bibliography covering all geological aspects of this challenging but very promising frontier area.