New Releases by Robert Wilson

Vandals of the Void by Robert Wilson explores themes of space exploration, the nature of humanity, and the existential questions that arise when humans venture into the vast unknown. Set in a future where interstellar travel is a reality, the novel delves into the ethical and philosophical implications of humanity's reach beyond Earth, especially as it encounters alien civilizations. The story examines the consequences of human expansionism, exploring how the pursuit of power, knowledge, and control might lead to conflict, both with other species and within humanity itself. At the heart of the novel are questions of survival and identity, as the characters grapple with their place in an expansive universe. The tension between technological advancement and the preservation of moral values is a central theme, as characters struggle with the choices they must make in the face of potentially catastrophic consequences. Overall, Vandals of the Void raises questions about humanity's future, the ethical responsibilities that come with exploration, and the risks of hubris as mankind seeks to conquer new frontiers.

College in the United States changed dramatically during the twentieth century, ushering in what we know today as the American university in all its diversity. Religion departments made their way into institutions in the 1930s to the 1960s, while significant shifts from college to university occurred. The college ideal was primarily shaping the few to enter the Protestant management class through the inculcation of values associated with a Western civilization that relied upon this training done residentially, primarily for young men. Protestant Christian leaders created religion departments as the college model was shifting to the university ideal, where a more democratized population, including women and non-Protestants, studied under professors trained in specialized disciplines to achieve professional careers in a more internationally connected and post-industrial class. Religion departments at mid-century were addressing the lack of an agreed-upon curricular center in the wake of changes such as the elective system, Carnegie credit-hour formulation, and numerous other shifts in disciplines spelling the end of the college ideal, though certainly continuing many of its traditions and structures. Religion departments were an attempt to provide a cultural and religious center that might hold, enhance existential and moral meaning for students, and strengthen an argument against the German research university ideals of naturalistic science whose so-called objectivity proved, at best, problematic and, at worst, inept given the political crisis in Europe. Colleges found they were losing sight of the college ideal and hoped religion as a taught subject could bring back much of what college had meant, from moral formation and curricular focus to personal piety and national unity. That hope was never realized, and what remained in its wake helped fuel the university model with its specialized religion departments seeking entirely different ends. In the shift from college to university, religion professors attempted to become creators of a legitimate academic subject quite apart from the chapel programs, attempts at moralizing, and centrality in the curriculum of Western Christian thought and history championed in the college model.

“Robert Wilson’s Barnum, the first full-dress biography in twenty years, eschews clichés for a more nuanced story…It is a life for our times, and the biography Barnum deserves.” —The Wall Street Journal P.T. Barnum is the greatest showman the world has ever seen. As a creator of the Barnum & Baily Circus and a champion of wonder, joy, trickery, and “humbug,” he was the founding father of American entertainment—and as Robert Wilson argues, one of the most important figures in American history. Nearly 125 years after his death, the name P.T. Barnum still inspires wonder. Robert Wilson’s vivid new biography captures the full genius, infamy, and allure of the ebullient showman, who, from birth to death, repeatedly reinvented himself. He learned as a young man how to wow crowds, and built a fortune that placed him among the first millionaires in the United States. He also suffered tragedy, bankruptcy, and fires that destroyed his life’s work, yet willed himself to recover and succeed again. As an entertainer, Barnum courted controversy throughout his life—yet he was also a man of strong convictions, guided in his work not by a desire to deceive, but an eagerness to thrill and bring joy to his audiences. He almost certainly never uttered the infamous line, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” instead taking pride in giving crowds their money’s worth and more. Robert Wilson, editor of The American Scholar, tells a gripping story in Barnum, one that’s imbued with the same buoyant spirit as the man himself. In this “engaging, insightful, and richly researched new biography” (New York Journal of Books), Wilson adeptly makes the case for P.T. Barnum’s place among the icons of American history, as a figure who represented, and indeed created, a distinctly American sense of optimism, industriousness, humor, and relentless energy.

A Spanish detective investigates a series of grisly killings in a crime thriller that maintains "an almost unbearable pitch of excitement" ( Booklist). Called to a gruesome crime scene, Inspector Javier Falcón is shocked and sickened by what he finds there. Strewn like flower petals on the victim's shirt are the man's own eyelids, evidence of a heinous crime with no obvious motive. When the investigation leads Falcón to read his late father's journals, he discovers a disturbing and sordid past. Meanwhile, more victims are falling. While he struggles to solve the case, he comes across a missing section of his father's journal—and becomes the murderer's next intended victim. Combining suspenseful storytelling with a thoughtful exploration of the human psyche, The Blind Man of Seville is a terrifying and "consistently stunning" police procedural from the Gold Dagger Award–winning author of A Small Death in Lisbon ( St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

Book 3 in the Charles Boxer Series Charlie Boxer, an expert at solving kidnappings, and his ex-wife Detective Mercy Dunqah are tasked with taking down a bold and heartless crime syndicate responsible for the abduction of six children. Two years after the events of You Will Never Find Me (Europa, 2015), Boxer is contemplating retirement. He has found a measure of contentment even as a mystery from his own past gnaws at his sense of justice. Mercy balances a complicated personal life with an even more precarious professional one in the woefully under-resourced metropolitan police department. Both are suddenly pulled back into service when six children of wealthy families vanish, taken by a ruthlessly efficient organization with a single astonishing demand. Investigators stymied and time expiring, they seem set on a calamitous course. Trapped, off-balance, and with little left to lose they plunge into a cauldron of warring intelligence agencies, morally destitute billionaires, and human traffickers, coming finally to a fateful Moroccan reckoning that will forever change them. The latest entry in Robert Wilson's acclaimed Charlie Boxer series, Stealing People is both topical and thrilling. Wilson unravels a convincing web of international intrigue in a world where heroism may breed vice and virtue is an accidental byproduct of crime.

A portrait of the visual historian illuminates his role in establishing photography as a valued documenting tool, analyzing his portraits of period dignitaries and his self-sacrificing effort to capture images of the Civil War.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1860 Edition.

The "crackerjack" first thriller in the London-set series featuring kidnap consultant Charles Boxer ( The Wall Street Journal). When the twenty-five-year-old daughter of Indian billionaire Frank D'Cruz is kidnapped, former cop turned private security professional Charles Boxer is charged with getting her back alive. Boxer knows all-too-well how the dark forces in London can reach out and ensnare an innocent victim. He also knows that D'Cruz's crooked business empire has made him plenty of enemies. But despite the family's vast fortune, the kidnappers aren't looking for money. Instead, they favor a crueler, more lethal game that will put many lives at stake as the trail crosses paths with a terrorist plot on British soil. Capital Punishment is a "smart, sophisticated, and twisty thriller" from the award-winning author of A Small Death in Lisbon ( Library Journal, starred review).

This stunning, atmospheric thriller set in war-torn Europe won the CWA Gold Dagger and has now been reissued with the Javier Falcon series.

The final psychological thriller featuring Javier Falcon, the tortured detective from 'The Hidden Assassins' and 'The Blind Man of Seville.'.

As Inspector Jefe Javier Falcón investigates a faceless, mutilated corpse, the beautiful city of Seville is rocked by a massive explosion. The discovery of a mosque in the basement of a devastated apartment building confirms everybody's terrorist fears. Panic sweeps the city and the region goes on red alert. As more bodies are dragged from the rubble, the media interest and political pressure inten­sify and Falcón suspects that all is not what it appears to be. Just as he comes close to cracking the conspiracy, he makes the most terrifying discovery of all and the race is on to prevent a catastrophe far beyond Spain's borders. A masterful thriller, The Hidden Assassins is fiction of the highest order.

Wildly praised by readers and critics alike, Robert Charles Wilson's Spin won science fiction's highest honor, the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Now, in Axis, Spin's direct sequel, Wilson takes us to the "world next door"—the planet engineered by the mysterious Hypotheticals to support human life, and connected to Earth by way of the Arch that towers hundreds of miles over the Indian Ocean. Humans are colonizing this new world—and, predictably, fiercely exploiting its resources, chiefly large deposits of oil in the western deserts of the continent of Equatoria. Lise Adams is a young woman attempting to uncover the mystery of her father's disappearance ten years earlier. Turk Findley is an ex-sailor and sometimes-drifter. They come together when an infall of cometary dust seeds the planet with tiny remnant Hypothetical machines. Soon, this seemingly hospitable world will become very alien indeed—as the nature of time is once again twisted, by entities unknown. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A lively presentation of the great world's fairs - their histories, basic building architecture, highlights of decorative arts, medals, high points - tastefully illustrated

In this, one of the year's most compelling biographies, Robert Wilson paints a brilliant portrait of Clarence King -- a scientist-explorer whose mountain-scaling, desert-crossing, river-fording, blizzard-surviving adventures helped create the new West of the nineteenth century. A sort of Howard Hughes of the 1800s, Clarence King in his youth was an icon of the new America: a man of both action and intellect, who combined science and adventure with romanticism and charm. The Explorer King vividly depicts King's amazing feats and also uncovers the reasons for the shocking decline he suffered after his days on the American frontier. The Yale-educated King went west in 1863 at age twenty-one as a geologist-explorer. During the next decade he scaled the highest peaks of the Sierra Nevada, published a popular book now considered a classic of adventure literature, initiated a groundbreaking land survey of the American West, and ultimately uncovered one of the greatest frauds of the century -- the Great Diamond Hoax, a discovery that made him an international celebrity at a time when they were few and far between. Through King's own rollicking tales, some true, some embroidered, of scaling previously unclimbed mountain peaks, of surviving a monster blizzard near Yosemite, of escaping ambush and capture by Indians, of being chased on horseback for two days by angry bandits, Robert Wilson offers a powerful combination of adventure, history, and nature writing. He also provides the bigger picture of the West at this time, showing the ways in which the terrain of the western United States was measured and charted and mastered, and how science, politics, and business began to intersect and influence one another during this era. Ultimately, King himself would come to symbolize the collision of science and business, possibly the source of his downfall. Fascinating and extensive, The Explorer King movingly portrays the America of the nineteenth century and the man who -- for better or worse -- typified the soul of the era.

Implementing the automation of electric distribution networks, from simple remote control to the application of software-based decision tools, requires many considerations, such as assessing costs, selecting the control infrastructure type and automation level, deciding on the ambition level, and justifying the solution through a business case. Control and Automation of Electric Power Distribution Systems addresses all of these issues to aid you in resolving automation problems and improving the management of your distribution network. Bringing together automation concepts as they apply to utility distribution systems, this volume presents the theoretical and practical details of a control and automation solution for the entire distribution system of substations and feeders. The fundamentals of this solution include depth of control, boundaries of control responsibility, stages of automation, automation intensity levels, and automated device preparedness. To meet specific performance goals, the authors discuss distribution planning, performance calculations, and protection to facilitate the selection of the primary device, associated secondary control, and fault indicators. The book also provides two case studies that illustrate the business case for distribution automation (DA) and methods for calculating benefits, including the assessment of crew time savings. As utilities strive for better economies, DA, along with other tools described in this volume, help to achieve improved management of the distribution network. Using Control and Automation of Electric Power Distribution Systems, you can embark on the automation solution best suited for your needs.

For over 700 years, Westminster has been a cradle of democracy, culminating today in the Houses of Parliament situated within the Palace of Westminster. The building combines the historic site of the old palace with modern craftsmanship, displaying the nation's history while also housing a busy Parliament. This guidebook introduces the many marvellous aspects of the building as well as the history and tradition housed within it. Learn about the origins of the building, in fact the New Palace of Westminster, from the 16th century, designed by Charles Barry in the mid-19th century in a Perpendicular Gothic style. Explore the pageantry of the State Opening, the famous hub of the building, the Central Lobby with its famous ornate gold octagonal roof and many more fascinating details.

Inspector Jefe Javier Falcón investigates a series of suspicious suicides in the "intricate [and] chilling" follow up to The Blind Man of Seville ( Publishers Weekly). In an exclusive suburb of Seville, Spain, a wealthy couple is found dead in their home, the tragic conclusion to an apparent suicide pact. Lucia Vega has been suffocated in her own bed, while her husband, construction magnate Rafael Vega, has succumbed to poison, a bizarre note clutched in his hand. When Inspector Javier Falcón is called to investigate the scene, he senses something is not as it seems—a hunch that proves all too true. Within two days, two more dubious suicides occur, a fire rages through the hills above the city, and Falcón himself receives ominous threats from the Russian mafia. Embroiled in a conspiracy much larger than it originally appeared, Falcón must uncover the secrets that were buried with the dead, before the gruesome body count rises even higher. "Tangly, sprawly, garrulous, astute, here's one more Wilson witchery that intertwines literature and art." — Los Angeles Times "Wilson builds a many-layered portrait of survivors and perpetrators, each consumed by rage, guilt, or depression." — The Boston Globe

The bestselling author of "A Small Death in Lisbon" tells a gripping tale of a grisly murder that leads a police detective to the seamy side of his famous father's life.

Twenty-four Vietnam veterans from the American South tell their most daring and dramatic combat stories. An expression of both a region's pride and an experience universal among those who fought in the jungles of Vietnam, this is a fascinating testament to the thousands who gave so much for so little.

"General Sir Robert Thomas Wilson Kt (17 August 1777? 9 May 1849) was a British general and politician who served in Egypt, Prussia, and was seconded to the Imperial Russian Army in 1812. He sat as the Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for Southwark from 1818 to 1831. He served as the Governor of Gibraltar from 1842 until his death in 1849"--Wikipedia.