This guide offers a comprehensive introduction to the rich religious tradition of the Celts. Contents include:• Historical and mythological roots of Celtic spirituality• Important Celtic holy days and their rituals• The powers of Celtic Goddesses and Gods• Easy guidelines for setting up a Celtic altar• Instructions for creating and using Celtic divination tools such as Runes and Ogham Sticks

    The first serious academic study of lycanthropy and "blood-lust" written in English, this book draws upon a vast body of observation, myth, and lore.

    Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller is an inventive and original book from Nashville singer/songwriter Chapman, who uses twelve of her most resonant songs as entry points to many of her life's adventures. Not a memoir, but a map of the places Chapman's been and what went through her mind as she was traveling there, this book is funny and tender, warm and exuberant. Raised a debutante in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the daughter of a mill owner and firmly part of proper society, Chapman became a rocker at a time when women weren't yet picking up electric guitars. She is "a living example," as one reviewer wrote, "of the triumph of rock and roll over good breeding."From New Year's Eve in 1978 when Jerry Lee Lewis gave Chapman advice on how to live life ("I mean it's one thing when your mother says 'Honey don't you think you'd better slow down?' But when The Killer voices his concern....") to the time her black maid Cora Jeter took the seven-year-old to see Elvis, Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller goes to the moments when the influences on Chapman's songwriting and psyche were cemented. And it winningly reveals how the creative process comes from life: one of Chapman's favorite songs was written after waking up facedown in her underpants in her front-yard vegetable garden. Revealing intimate rock and roll moments and memories of a South Carolina childhood, Marshall Chapman is a fresh voice firmly in the Southern tradition.

    Narcocorridos are Mexican ballads about the daring deeds of cross-border drug traffickers. Tracing the narcocorrido from its birth during the Mexican Revolution, up through its recent developments on the Mexican West Coast, the cradle of drug traffic. From there, the story moves to Los Angeles, where drug music began to blend with the corridos of Mexican immigrants and the concerns they have with living in the United States. The books narrative then heads across the Southwest to the Texas border region, where drug songs are still competing with more old-fashioned gunfighter ballads, then down through Mexico to the southern states of Michoacan, the latest big drug area. Finally, we are taken to Mexico City, with a traveling balladeer of the Zapatista revolution, and a meeting with Teodoro Bello, an illiterate genius who has not only become the most popular present-day corrido writer but the best-selling composer in Mexican history. Through this journey, we feel what how important the music is to the people who make and listen to it, while understanding the deep historical significance this music has on culture, both in Mexico and the United States.