Polymer modifications represent a valuable synthetic approach to unique polymer compositions, structure, and properties not readily available by the direct polymerization of monomers. Modified polymeric products already exist in the commercial world (modified celluloses, for example) so the approach is not new. However, it is an interesting and chaU nging opportunity to develop new materials for a variety of specialty applications using the "chemistry on polymers" approach. This book contains papers presented at the symposium on Polymer Modification held at the National American Chemical...

Prentis, the narrator of this nightmarish novel, catalogs "dead crimes" for a branch of the London Police Department and suspects that he is going crazy. His files keep vanishing. His boss subjects him to cryptic taunts. His family despises him. And as Prentis desperately tries to hold on to the scraps of his sanity, he uncovers a conspiracy of blackmail and betrayal that extends from his department and into the buried past of his father, a war hero code-named "Shuttlecock"--and, lately, a resident of a hospital for the insane.

Set in the bleak Fen Country of East Anglia, and spanning some 240 years in the lives of its haunted narrator and his ancestors, Waterland is a book that takes in eels and incest, ale-making and madness, the heartless sweep of history and a family romance as tormented as any in Greek tragedy.
"Waterland, like the Hardy novels, carries with all else a profound knowledge of a people, a place, and their interweaving.... Swift tells his tale with wonderful contemporary verve and verbal felicity.... A fine and original work."--"Los Angeles Times"