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This is a true story of a float trip down the Missouri. It compares, in some ways, to the most famous float trip in American literature, the one that Huck Finn took down the Mississippi.At the end of his trip, young Huck says, ""…I reckon I got to Light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and civilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.""That young escapee, to extend the comparison, is epitomized in James Willard Schultz. Just expelled from military school, the seventeen-year-old Schultz goes West, stays, grows up and lives among the Indians, marries into the Blackfoot tribe, and lived the kind of life he loved.In the fall of 1901, Apikuni and his Piegan wife, Nataki, took a long float trip down the Missouri. They camped out and lived off the land for the entire trip, from Fort Benton to the juncture off the Missouri and Milk rivers. The account of that trip is presented here in book form for the first time.Like Huck's adventure, this was something more than a simple float trip. It was a trip through space and time through memories of early experiences along the river, of friends and enemies (Assiniboines, Crees, Sioux, and others), of early white trappers and traders, of carefree days of the buffalo hunt, of a naturalist's dream world populated with the deer, eagle, antelope, fish, bear, wolf, and animals known only in Indian mythology.This idyll was nostalgic trip that could not be repeated, for the river and world were changing, Apikuni and Nataki knew first-hand the many changes of the past and sensed the momentous changes coming.With the advance of the white man's world, with the dams and reservoirs, it would be impossible for today's adventurer to duplicate the trip described here. But, for the armchair adventurer, it is still possible, though the account that has been left for us, to take this remarkable trip.

A fascinating natural history of an incredibly curious substance."Preternaturally hardened whale dung" is not the first image that comes to mind when we think of perfume, otherwise a symbol of glamour and allure. But the key ingredient that makes the sophisticated scent linger on the skin is precisely this bizarre digestive by-product-ambergris. Despite being one of the world's most expensive substances (its value is nearly that of gold and has at times in history been triple it), ambergris is also one of the world's least known. But with this unusual and highly alluring book, Christopher Kemp promises to change that by uncovering the unique history of ambergris.A rare secretion produced only by sperm whales, which have a fondness for squid but an inability to digest their beaks, ambergris is expelled at sea and floats on ocean currents for years, slowly transforming, before it sometimes washes ashore looking like a nondescript waxy pebble. It can appear almost anywhere but is found so rarely, it might as well appear nowhere. Kemp's journey begins with an encounter on a New Zealand beach with a giant lump of faux ambergris-determined after much excitement to nothing more exotic than lard-that inspires a comprehensive quest to seek out ambergris and its story. He takes us from the wild, rocky New Zealand coastline to Stewart Island, a remote, windswept island in the southern seas, to Boston and Cape Cod, and back again. Along the way, he tracks down the secretive collectors and traders who populate the clandestine modern-day ambergris trade.Floating Gold is an entertaining and lively history that covers not only these precious gray lumps and those who covet them, but presents a highly informative account of the natural history of whales, squid, ocean ecology, and even a history of the perfume industry. Kemp's obsessive curiosity is infectious, and eager readers will feel as though they have stumbled upon a precious bounty of this intriguing substance.

The Floating University sheds light on a story of optimism and imperialist ambition in the 1920s.In 1926, New York University professor James E. Lough—an educational reformer with big dreams—embarked on a bold experiment he called the Floating University. Lough believed that taking five hundred American college students around the globe by ship would not only make them better citizens of the world but would demonstrate a model for responsible and productive education amid the unprecedented dangers, new technologies, and social upheavals of the post–World War I world. But the Floating University’s maiden voyage was also its last: when the ship and its passengers returned home, the project was branded a failure—the antics of students in hotel bars and port city back alleys that received worldwide press coverage were judged incompatible with educational attainment, and Lough was fired and even put under investigation by the State Department.  In her new book, Tamson Pietsch excavates a rich and meaningful picture of Lough’s grand ambition, its origins, and how it reveals an early-twentieth-century America increasingly defined both by its imperialism and the professionalization of its higher education system. As Pietsch argues, this voyage—powered by an internationalist worldview—traced the expanding tentacles of US power, even as it tried to model a new kind of experiential education. She shows that this apparent educational failure actually exposes a much larger contest over what kind of knowledge should underpin university authority, one in which direct personal experience came into conflict with academic expertise. After a journey that included stops at nearly fifty international ports and visits with figures ranging from Mussolini to Gandhi, what the students aboard the Floating University brought home was not so much knowledge of the greater world as a demonstration of their nation’s rapidly growing imperial power.

Similar in form to the well-known, more serious haiku, the satirical-and often humorous-poems known as senryu have received little scholarly attention because most were written by anonymous amateur poets and were therefore considered popular literature unworthy of serious study. Senryu are interesting, however, precisely because they reflect the thoughts and feelings of ordinary townspeople in a way that other more orthodox types of Japanese literature do not. In his introduction on the nature and historical background of the form, Makoto Ueda explores the elements of humor and satire contained in senryu, highlighting the mores that lie behind the laughter the poems evince.Collecting 400 eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poems-with the romanized Japanese verse presented at the bottom of each page-Light Verse from the Floating World is divided into thematic sections, each preceded by a short introduction: * satirical senryu, aimed at people of the ruling warrior class and civilians of various professions; * senryu on human relationships-between young lovers, husband and wife, parent and child, or family members of different generations; * poems on townspeople enjoying themselves in the "amusement" district; * ridicule of well-known historical figures; * and poems on the poets' general outlook on life. Replete with keen observations on the human world rather than the natural one, this first comprehensive anthology in English translation of this major genre of Japanese literature will appeal to scholars and students of Japanese culture, as well as general readers of poetry.

Similar in form to the well-known, more serious haiku, the satirical-and often humorous-poems known as senryu have received little scholarly attention because most were written by anonymous amateur poets and were therefore considered popular literature unworthy of serious study. Senryu are interesting, however, precisely because they reflect the thoughts and feelings of ordinary townspeople in a way that other more orthodox types of Japanese literature do not. In his introduction on the nature and historical background of the form, Makoto Ueda explores the elements of humor and satire contained in senryu, highlighting the mores that lie behind the laughter the poems evince.Collecting 400 eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poems-with the romanized Japanese verse presented at the bottom of each page-Light Verse from the Floating World is divided into thematic sections, each preceded by a short introduction: * satirical senryu, aimed at people of the ruling warrior class and civilians of various professions; * senryu on human relationships-between young lovers, husband and wife, parent and child, or family members of different generations; * poems on townspeople enjoying themselves in the "amusement" district; * ridicule of well-known historical figures; * and poems on the poets' general outlook on life. Replete with keen observations on the human world rather than the natural one, this first comprehensive anthology in English translation of this major genre of Japanese literature will appeal to scholars and students of Japanese culture, as well as general readers of poetry.

Through much of the nineteenth century, steam-powered ships provided one of the most reliable and comfortable transportation options in the United States, becoming a critical partner in railroad expansion and the heart of a thriving recreation industry. The aesthetic, structural, and commercial peak of the steamboat era occurred on the Great Lakes, where palatial ships created memories and livelihoods for millions while carrying passengers between the region’s major industrial ports of Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Toronto. By the mid-twentieth century, the industry was in steep decline, and today North America’s rich and entertaining steamboat heritage has been largely forgotten. In Floating Palaces of the Great Lakes, Joel Stone revisits this important era of maritime history, packed with elegance and adventure, politics and wealth, triumph and tragedy. This story of Great Lakes travelers and the beautiful floating palaces they engendered will engage historians and history buffs alike, as well as genealogists, regionalists, and researchers.

Britain's abandonment of the Gold Standard in 1931 raised new economic policy problems both for Britain and for the countries of the Empire, who had to decide whether to follow sterling off gold and, if so, whether to peg their currencies to sterling. By exploiting archival material, the author casts fresh light on the debates and financial diplomacy of the period, and provides a fuller understanding of several key issues: the formation of the sterling area, the World Economic Conference of 1933, and American concerns about the price and course of sterling.

This work analyzes the fiction of four contemporary multicultural writers who render a "floating world" in which cultures converge or collide in unexpected, exciting, and dangerous ways. The novels and short stories of Kazuo Ishiguro, Bessie Head, Bharati Mukherjee, and Salman Rushdie explore a literal and metaphorical floating world (adapted from the Japanese concept of "ukiyo"-a still-point between briefly-held earthly pleasures and spiritual immutability) where the characters, like their authors, are poised between conflicting worlds, cultures, and traditions. The manner in which these four authors articulate such a "floating" experience, Burton argues, enriches our understanding and appreciation of the increasingly interconnected world around us.

In Edo Japan, woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e (“pictures of the Floating World”) captured the entertainment culture of the urban elite and eventually many other subjects as well. These beautiful prints were the result of a meticulous craft process, in which an artist’s initial drawing was translated by expert carvers into multiple printing blocks for different colours. In this attractive volume, Sarah E. Thompson, curator of Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, provides a highly readable overview of the cultural and artistic history of ukiyo-e, showcasing 120 exceptional prints from the museum’s world-class collection, by masters including Utamaro, Hokusai, and Hiroshige. She explores each of the principal genres in turn: beauty and fashion, the kabuki theatre, landscape, nature, history and literature, and fantasy. Pictures of the Floating World features a traditional Japanese stab binding and is housed in a durable slipcase together with three remarkable prints, suitable for framing. It will be a must-have for all art lovers.

The Floating Bridge, David Shumate’s second collection of prose poems, transports its readers over the chasm between the mundane and the enchanted. We traverse one bridge and find ourselves eavesdropping on Gertrude Stein and her gardener. We take the night bus to Gomorrah to have a look around. Halfway across, each bridge vanishes beneath our feet. Our world shifts. The commonplace begins to glow. We turn the page. Another bridge awaits.

Today we think of ukiyo-e-"the pictures of the floating world"-as masterpieces of Japanese art, highly prized throughout the world. Yet it is often said that ukiyo-e were little appreciated in their own time and were even used as packing material for ceramics. In Picturing the Floating World Julie Nelson Davis debunks this myth and demonstrates that ukiyo-e was thoroughly appreciated as a field of artistic production, worthy of connoisseurship and canonization by its contemporaries. Putting these images back into their dynamic context, she shows how consumers, critics, and makers produced and sold, appraised and collected, described and recorded ukiyo-e. She recovers this multilayered world of pictures in which some were made for a commercial market, backed by savvy entrepreneurs looking for new ways to make a profit, while others were produced for private coteries and high-ranking connoisseurs seeking to enrich their cultural capital. The book opens with an analysis of period documents to establish the terms of appraisal brought to ukiyo-e in late eighteenth-century Japan, mapping the evolution of the genre from a century earlier and the development of its typologies and the creation of a canon of makers-both of which have defined the field ever since. Organized around divisions of major technological and aesthetic developments, the book reveals how artistic practice and commercial enterprise were intertwined throughout ukiyo-e's history, from its earliest imagery through the twentieth century. The depiction of particular subjects in and for the floating world of urban Edo and the process of negotiating this within the larger field of publishing are examined to further ground ukiyo-e as material culture, as commodities in a mercantile economy.Picturing the Floating World offers a new approach: a critical yet accessible analysis of the genre as it was developed in its social, cultural, and political milieu. The book introduces students, collectors, and enthusiasts to ukiyo-e as a genre under construction in its own time while contributing to our understanding of early modern visual production.