The Story of Electricity T. S. M. MacLean   UK price: £6.99    US price: $9.99 Publisher: DIADEM BOOKS Format: Paperback Size : 22.2 x 15.2 x 2 cm Pages: 292 ISBN:978-1908026040 Published:  Jan 2011

he Story of Electricity was written to tell people how our present knowledge of it grew up. Prospective readers may fall into three categories. First those with an Arts background and no knowledge of Science. Secondly those with a background of Science outside Physics. And thirdly those with a background of Physics, but have no knowledge of the history of electricity. To accommodate all three of these categories the book has been written with no mathematics. The order of presentation is chronological. Thus in B.C. times the effects of magnetism were of commercial importance for sea voyaging. But today the ubiquity of radio has emphasised the greater importance of electricity. Since historically advances have been made largely by individuals, their family and religious backgrounds have been recorded as important factors in their contributions. Following World War II this situation has been reversed, because of the funding requirements of global markets. But future progress may again revert to individuals.

The moral purpose of Charles Kingsley's novels is pronounced because he was a preacher, and more specifically, a teacher. He was above all a preacher of stirring didactic sermons. It is the didactic content of his writings-in his sermons, his novels, and his essays on natural theology-which is the study of this work. One too often forgets that Kingsley was not, in the first instance, a social and political reformer. As a preacher, and as a writer, he was pre-eminently a teacher-a theologian, yes, but more importantly, a Christian didactician. He was not an evangelical preacher, yet the Christian gospel was at the heart of his teachings and his moral exhortations. This work attempts to look at the Christian message that was the inspiration behind his socio-religious gospel. Writing at the time of Charles Darwin, Kingsley saw no reason to lose his sound Christian faith with the emergence of Darwin's theory of evolution. Instead, he could accept it as a means to a divine end, another example of how Providence might bring about the Kingdom of God on earth.

How to Learn English Quickly: Choose to:

1. Have fun learning, but with serious intentions.

2. Persevere purposefully and with persistence.

3. Adopt an optimistic attitude: give and receive.

4. Have a desire to listen and to communicate.

Schools for Slander: A True Story  
by Ruth Barrett.
Writers Club Press, 2000.
US price: $11.95      UK price : £8.09

Teaching is a vocation, not a job. And yet teachers can suffer unbelievable torture. In this book the author gives a vivid account of her years of teaching in England -- years of unmitigating persecution and slander!

FICTION STUDIES             
Victorian and Modern
by C H Muller       US price: $16.95    UK price £11.49
Format: Paperback
Size: 6 x 9
Pages: 184
ISBN: 0-07-450587-4
Published by McGraw-Hill Book Company

The fiction studies included in this volume have been gleaned from past issues of Unisa English Studies (the journal of the English Department of the University of South Africa), Crux (published by the Foundation for Education, Science and Technology in Pretoria, South Africa), and Communiqué (the journal of the language Bureau of the University of the North in South Africa). The author was himself the editor of Unisa English Studies and Communiqué, and for ten years was Professor and Head of the Department of English at the University of the North.