David M. Ball

Martha B. Kuhlman

An assessment of the achievement and aesthetic of one of America's brightest comics innovators

Drawing is a Way of Thinking

The Comics of Chris Ware

From Herman Melville’s claim that “failure is the true test of greatness” to Henry Adams’s self-identification with the “mortifying failure in [his] long education” and William Faulkner’s eagerness to be judged by his “splendid failure to do the impossible,” the rhetoric of failure has served as a master trope of modernist American literary expression. David Ball’s magisterial study addresses the fundamental questions of language, meaning, and authority that run counter to well-rehearsed claims of American innocence and positivity, beginning with the American Renaissance and extending into modernist and contemporary literature. The rhetoric of failure was used at various times to engage artistic ambition, the arrival of advanced capitalism, and a rapidly changing culture, not to mention sheer exhaustion. False Starts locates a lively narrative running through American literature that consequently queries assumptions about the development of modernism in the United States.

The Rhetoric of Failure and the Making of American Modernism

False Starts

Keith Humphreys

E. Jane Marshall

The Treatment of Drinking Problems has become the definitive text in the field of alcohol problems. It addresses the frontline realities of clinical practice in an informed and empathetic way, whilst grounding this approach in critical scientific review. Now in its fifth edition, the text has been thoroughly revised and updated with new sections covering interventions for hazardous and harmful drinking, dependent drinking, and the different settings in which alcohol problems are encountered. Clinical vignettes are used throughout the text to bring the discussion to life and to address the frontline realities of clinical practice. This is a highly readable and practical guide for anyone, generalist or specialist, treating or caring for someone with an alcohol problem.

A Guide to the Helping Professions

The Treatment of Drinking Problems

Here is a set of literary studies, in which various criteria from narrative criticism are employed to determine the literary function of 'ego eimi' in the Gospel of John. How does the phrase contribute? What role does it play in the portrayal of Jesus as the dominant character of the Gospel in Johannine irony? There is a greater interaction between different forms of saying than has generally been acknowledged, and Ball draws out a number of implications of his findings for other areas of Johannine study.

Literary Function, Background and Theological Implications

I Am in John's Gospel

The Comics of Chris Ware: Drawing Is a Way of Thinking brings together contributions from established and emerging scholars about the comics of Chicago-based cartoonist Chris Ware (b. 1967). Both inside and outside academic circles, Ware's work is rapidly being distinguished as essential to the developing canon of the graphic novel. Winner of the 2001 Guardian First Book Prize for the genre-defining Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, Ware has received numerous accolades from both the literary and comics establishment. This collection addresses the range of Ware's work from his earliest drawings in the 1990s in The ACME Novelty Library and his acclaimed Jimmy Corrigan, to his most recent works-in-progress, "Building Stories" and "Rusty Brown."

David M. Ball

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