Two absolute strangers, Andoni a young Spaniard and Howard an aging American join forces to cross the Atlantic on a 34-foot sloop. All they have in common is love of the sea. Language, customs, habits, traditions and ethics all influence the final understanding of what may be a request, an instruction or an order. Determining the difference between them depends on the context, the circumstances and who is on either end of the communications link. When is it correct for a crewmember to disobey an order from his Skipper? How far does the Captain's authority reach and who is ultimately responsible if blind obedience to an order that is poorly phrased, incomplete or just plain wrong were to place the ship in danger? The mutiny aboard the USS Caine is fiction but what happened aboard HMS Bounty is sadly true. How this ocean passage began, what occurred during the 46 days at sea and how it ends makes for an interesting tale.

Following the formation of a regular army in 1784, a popular distruct of military power and the generally unsettled nature of national administration kept the army in a continual state of fluctuation, both in terms of organisation and size. Few officers were making a long-term commitment to military service. But by 1860, a professional army career was becoming a way of life. In that year, 41.5 percent of officers had served 30 years, compared to only 2.6 percent in 1797.

For most people, film adaptation of literature can be summed up in one sentence: "The movie wasn't as good as the book." This volume undertakes to show the reader that not only is this evaluation not always true but sometimes it is intrinsically unfair. Movies based on literary works, while often billed as adaptations, are more correctly termed translations. A director and his actors translate the story from the written page into a visual presentation. Depending on the form of the original text and the chosen method of translation, certain inherent difficulties and pitfalls are associated with this change of medium. So often our reception of a book-based movie has more to do with our expectations and reading of the literature than with the job that the movie production did or did not do. Avoiding these biases and fairly evaluating any particular literary-based film takes an awareness of certain factors. Written with a formalistic rather than historical approach, this work presents a comprehensive guide to literature-based films, establishing a contextual and theoretical basis to help the reader understand the relationships between such movies and the original texts as well as the reader's own individual responses to these productions. To this end, it focuses on recognizing and appreciating the inherent difficulties encountered when basing a film on a literary work, be it a novel, novella, play or short story. Individual chapters deal with the specific issues and difficulties raised by each of these genres, providing an overview backed up by case studies of specific film translations. Films and literary works receiving this treatment include The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Lady Windemere's Fan by Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare's Henry V. Interspersed throughout the text are suggestions for activities the film student or buff can use to enhance his or her appreciation and understanding of the films. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Graeme Stockbridge is America’s best TV journalist and nightly news anchor, unequalled in talent and charisma. He’s at the height of his career. But now, Graeme would like to drastically slow down whenever he’s off the air. Rather than doing the news from the constant tumult of his network’s studios, Graeme decides he wants to broadcast year-round from a small working ranch in semi-rural Idaho. Instead of being caught in the noisy rush of big city life, he wants to continue his work but also to enjoy farming, ranching and nature while living near Hiram, a small Idaho town where neighborliness is key. In his free time, Graeme wants to take long, traffic-free walks in the quiet countryside, try his hand at agriculture, rediscover photography, study birds, plants and insects, wander the canyons of the Snake River, enrich his marriage and further explore the meaning of his life. Graeme’s network resists his grand idea; his wife Lara, a noted architect, also resists; and his TV-pioneer father resists. On top of that, not everyone in the little town of Hiram is as welcoming as one might expect. Far from it. Hiram and the surrounding areas have many charming residents and more than a few slightly-oddball types, mostly harmless and often fun. But there are also those people who like to flaunt their rights under Idaho’s open-carry law, those who like to challenge all levels of government and those who keep parts of their lives well-hidden—for good reason. In seeking to move away from the ultra-fast pace of network news in Los Angeles and New York, Graeme sets in motion a serious of events which lead to tragedy, and which take him and Lara into a world of secrets and danger. The novel goes behind the scenes into control rooms and studios during major television broadcasts, into the adrenalin-infused complexities of covering of a national news crisis, into the machinations of corporate boardrooms and out into the remarkable Idaho countryside—a world of dramatic scenery, incredible raptors and an amazing insect, the dragonfly. HOVER POINT is told with Eric Wallace’s usual flair, quiet humor and gorgeous prose. It is an intriguing mixture of drama, philosophical observations, lyricism, wit and suspense, with a great lineup of characters, including an operatic pathologist, an enigmatic sheriff, a sociopathic university professor and a border collie named, not without good reason, Trepidation.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1838.