Ford Madox Ford

When Arthur, a writer-turned-journalist, meets a mysterious and alluring woman, he is drawn into the world of the Fourth Dimensionists, a societal faction that uses political power to break down traditional values in the name of expedience. As Arthur's obsession with the woman grows, he yearns to capture her attention and her affections, only to learn that he has been brutally used and, as a result, has betrayed those who are closest to him.

Unlike Twain's Hank Morgan and some successors, Ford's Mr. Sorrel makes only a very half-hearted attempt to build modern weaponry and machinery in the Middle Ages. His initial dream of constructing "guns and gas bombs" and making himself "mightier than kings" soon comes to naught. Though he had been a mining engineer in the twentieth century, he has no idea how to go about constructing such devices under fourteenth-century conditions, or even where...