This exciting tour of our Universe explores our current knowledge of exoplanets and the search for another Earth-like planet. Beginning with the basic concepts of planet formation and the composition of the Universe, Stuart Ross Taylor summarises our knowledge of exoplanets, how they compare with our planets and why some stars have better habitable zones. Further sections provide a detailed study of our Solar System, as a basis for understanding exoplanetary systems, and a detailed study of the Earth as our only current example of a habitable planet. The book concludes with a philosophical and historical discussion of topics surrounding planets and the development of life, including why our chances of finding aliens on exoplanets is very low. This is an engaging and informative read for anyone interested in planetary formation and the exploration of our Universe.

"The St. Botolphs of Cheever's early stories and the upscale, Westchester-like towns - Shady Hill, Proxmire Manor, and Bullet Park - of his later work find their complex companions in William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County and John Updike's Rabbit's world. Cheever laid out the parameters of this creative world in his very first published story, "Expelled," which appeared in the New Republic in 1930 when Cheever was only 18. The young protagonist of this autobiographical story would be the first of many Cheever heroes to fall from what Meanor describes as "a condition of Edenic happiness and childlike innocence into the chaos and pain of adult knowledge." Moses Wapshot of Cheever's first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle (1958), Neddy Merrill of the critically acclaimed short story "The Swimmer" (1964), and even Zeke Farragut of Cheever's novel of redemption, Falconer (1977), struggle to reclaim some remnant of an earlier, lost happiness." "Loneliness, fear of aging, family disintegration, alcoholic obsessiveness, sexual desperation, the threat of financial ruin, and a reliance on illusion form the dark core of Cheever's work, creative transformations of some of the themes that dominated his life. Throughout this volume Meanor distinguishes the autobiographical strains in the fiction by drawing from Cheever's documents of his struggles - especially with alcoholism and bisexuality - in The Letters of John Cheever (1988) and The Journals of John Cheever (1991)." "Meanor fleshes out both biblical and mythological motifs in the stories and the novels; his study is perhaps the first to treat the possible symbolic interpretations of names of characters and places so thoroughly. Burdened by a biblical sense of shame and guilt, Cheever's characters find fleeting, life-giving moments of psychological release "in the celebratory paganism of Greek and Roman myth," Meanor writes, in love, passion, the pleasures of the body."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Series Editors: Bernth Lindfors, University of Texas at Austin; Robert Lecker, McGill University; David OConnell, Georgia State University; David William Foster, Arizona State University; Janet Pérez, Texas Tech University.TWAYNES UNITED STATES AUTHORS, ENGLISH AUTHORS, and WORLD AUTHORS Series present concise critical introductions to great writers and their works. Devoted to critical interpretation and discussion of an authors work, each study takes account of major literary trends and important scholarly contributions and provides new critical insights with an original point of view. An Authors Series volume addresses readers ranging from advanced high school students to university professors. The book suggests to the informed reader new ways of considering a writers work. A reader new to the work under examination will, after reading the Authors Series, be compelled to turn to the originals, bringing to the reading a basic knowledge and fresh critical perspectives.

On the 25th anniversary of the publication of the book that first introduced it, this book is an up-to-date look at how the pastoral circle--in which social analysis plays a key role--has been implemented around the world. A helpful appendix presents the various steps of the pastoral circle and of social analysis.

Presents an in-depth comparison of Darwin's theory of evolution versus the theory of creation and the theory of abrupt appearance.

Sections on "Art and Artists" and "Writers and Dreamers, now and then" present new details about JBY's importance in the development of American critical thought and his friendship with Ashcan School artist John Sloan." "Prodigal Father Revisited concludes with Jeanne Foster's memorial poem and art patron John Quinn's previously unpublished letter to W. B. Yeats, written in May 1922 - three months after the death of John Butler Yeats."--BOOK JACKET.