At first glance, the works of Fedor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) do not appear to have much in common with those of the controversial American writer Henry Miller (1891-1980). However, the influencer of Dostoevsky on Miller was, in fact, enormous and shaped the latter's view of the world, of literature, and of his own writing. The Making of a Counter-Culture Icon examines the obsession that Miller and his contemporaries, the so-called Villa Seurat circle, had with Dostoevsky, and the impact that this obsession had on their own work. Renowned for his psychological treatment of characters, Dostoevsky became a model for Miller, Lawrence Durrell, and Anais Nin, interested as they were in developing a new kind of writing that would move beyond staid literary conventions. Maria Bloshteyn argues that, as Dostoevsky was concerned with representing the individual's perception of the self and the world, he became an archetype for Miller and the other members of the Villa Seurat circle, writers who were interested in precise psychological characterizations as well as intriguing narratives. Tracing the cross-cultural appropriation and (mis)interpretation of Dostoevsky's methods and philosophies by Miller, Durrell, and Nin, The Making of a Counter-Culture Icon gives invaluable insight into the early careers of the Villa Seurat writers and testifies to Dostoevsky's influence on twentieth-century literature.

Code Nation explores the rise of software development as a social, cultural, and technical phenomenon in American history. The movement germinated in government and university labs during the 1950s, gained momentum through corporate and counterculture experiments in the 1960s and 1970s, and became a broad-based computer literacy movement in the 1980s. As personal computing came to the fore, learning to program was transformed by a groundswell of popular enthusiasm, exciting new platforms, and an array of commercial practices that have been further amplified by distributed computing and the Internet. The resulting society can be depicted as a “Code Nation”—a globally-connected world that is saturated with computer technology and enchanted by software and its creation. Code Nation is a new history of personal computing that emphasizes the technical and business challenges that software developers faced when building applications for CP/M, MS-DOS, UNIX, Microsoft Windows, the Apple Macintosh, and other emerging platforms. It is a popular history of computing that explores the experiences of novice computer users, tinkerers, hackers, and power users, as well as the ideals and aspirations of leading computer scientists, engineers, educators, and entrepreneurs. Computer book and magazine publishers also played important, if overlooked, roles in the diffusion of new technical skills, and this book highlights their creative work and influence. Code Nation offers a “behind-the-scenes” look at application and operating-system programming practices, the diversity of historic computer languages, the rise of user communities, early attempts to market PC software, and the origins of “enterprise” computing systems. Code samples and over 80 historic photographs support the text. The book concludes with an assessment of contemporary efforts to teach computational thinking to young people.

Scholarly responses to Henry Miller's works have never been numerous and for many years Miller was not a fashionable writer for literary studies. In fact, there exist only three collections of essays concerning Henry Miller's oeuvre. Since these books appeared, a new generation of international Miller scholars has emerged, one that is re-energizing critical readings of this important American Modernist. Henry Miller: New Perspectives presents new essays on carefully chosen themes within Miller and his intellectual heritage to form the most authoritative collection ever published on this author.

Described by Thomas Mann as "e;brothers in spirit, but tragically grotesque companions in misfortune,"e; Nietzsche and Dostoevsky remain towering figures in the intellectual development of European modernity. Maia Johnson-Stepenberg's accessible new introduction to these philosophers compares their writings on key topics such as criminality, Christianity, and the figure of the "e;outsider"e; to reveal the urgency and contemporary resonance of their shared struggle against nihilism. Against Nihilism also considers nihilism in the context of current political and social struggles, placing Nietzsche and Dostoevsky's contributions at the heart of important contemporary debates regarding community, identity, and meaning. Inspired by class discussions with her students and aimed at first-team readers of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, Against Nihilism provides an accessible, unique comparative study of these two key thinkers.

Identifying six significant writers--Whitman, Dostoevsky, Rimbaud, Lewis Carroll, Proust and D. H. Lawrence--Katy Masuga examines their influence on Miller's work as well as Miller's retroactive impact on their writing. She explores four forms of intertextuality in relation to each 'ancestral' author: direct allusions, unconscious style, reverse influence and participation of the ancestral author as part of the story within the text. The study is informed by the theories of polyvocity from Bakhtin, Barthes and Kristeva and of language games and the indefatigability of writing in the work of Blanchot, Wittgenstein and Deleuze.By presenting Miller in intertextual context, he emerges as a noteworthy modernist writer whose contributions to literature include the struggle to find a distinctive voice alongside a distinguished lineage of literary figures.

A bold reconsideration of the meaning of 1960s San Francisco counterculture

Against skeptics, Männiste argues that Miller does indeed have a philosophy of his own, which underpins most of his texts. It is demonstrated that this philosophy, as a metaphysical sense of life, forms a system the understanding of which is necessary to adequately explain even some of the most basic of Miller's ideas. Building upon his notion of the inhuman artist, Miller's philosophical foundation is revealed through his literary attacks against the metaphysical design of the modern age. It is argued that, by repudiating some of the most potent elements of late modernity such as history, modern technology and an aesthetisized view of art, Miller paves the way for overcoming Western metaphysics. Finally it is showed that, philosophically, this aim is governed by Miller's idiosyncratic concept of art, in which one is led towards self-liberation through transcending the modern society and its dehumanizing pursuits.

“Iconic brands” (ie: Coca-Cola, Volkswagon, Corona) have social lives and cultural significance that go well beyond product benefits and features This book distills the strategies used to create the world’s most enduring brands into a new approach called “cultural branding". Brand identity is more critical than ever today, as more and more products compete for attention across an ever-increasing array of channels. This book offers marketers and managers an alternative to conventional branding strategies, which often backfire when companies attempt to create identity brands.

Henry Miller and Modernism: The Years in Paris, 1930–1939 represents a major reevaluation of Henry Miller, focusing on the Paris texts from 1930 to 1939. Finn Jensen analyzes Miller in the light of European modernism, in particular considering the many impulses Miller received in Paris. Jensen draws on theories of urban modernity to connect Miller’s narratives of a male protagonist alone in a modern metropolis with his time in Paris where he experienced a self-discovery as a writer. The book highlights several sources of inspiration for Miller including Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Hamsun, Strindberg and the American Transcendentalists. Jensen considers the key movements of modernity and analyzes their importance for Miller, studying Eschatology, the Avant-Garde, Dada, Surrealism, Expressionism, and Anarchism.

Gifford's invigorating work of metacriticism and literary history recovers the significance of the "lost generation" of writers of the 1930s and 1940s. He examines how the Personalism of anarcho-anti-authoritarian contemporaries such as Alex Comfort, Robert Duncan, Lawrence Durrell, J.F. Hendry, Henry Miller, Elizabeth Smart, Dylan Thomas, and Henry Treece forges a missing link between Late Modernist and postmodernist literature. He concludes by applying his recontextualization to four familiar texts by Miller, Durrell, Smart, and Duncan, and encourages readers to re-engage the lost generation using this new critical lens. Scholars and students of literary modernism, twentieth-century Canadian literature, and anarchism will find a productive vision of this neglected period within Personal Modernisms.