It’ll have you scratching your head wondering why we even bother to go to school.Think Magellan was the first man to circumnavigate the globe, baseball was invented in America, Henry VIII had six wives, Mount Everest is the tallest mountain? Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again. You’ll be surprised at how much you don’t know! Check out THE BOOK OF GENERAL IGNORANCE for more fun entries and complete answers to the following:How long can a chicken live without its head?About two years.What do chameleons do?They don’t change color to match the background. Never have; never will. Complete myth. Utter fabrication. Total Lie. They change color as a result of different emotional states.How many legs does a centipede have?Not a hundred.How many toes has a two-toed sloth?It’s either six or eight.Who was the first American president?Peyton Randolph.What were George Washington’s false teeth made from?Mostly hippopotamus.What was James Bond’s favorite drink?Not the vodka martini.

    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.

    Vowell tackles subjects such as identity, politics, religion, art, and history with a biting humor. She searches the streets of Hoboken for traces of the town's favorite son, Frank Sinatra. She goes under cover of heavy makeup in an investigation of goth culture, blasts cannonballs into a hillside on a father-daughter outing, and maps her family's haunted history on a road trip down the Trail of Tears. Vowell has an irresistible voice—caustic and sympathetic, insightful and double-edged—that has attracted a loyal following for her magazine writing and radio monologues on This American Life.

    Frazer was a professor of social anthropology and a classicist.(This edition was originaly listed as "the Arabic illustrated edition for the four parts of the book, published by the General Egyptian Book Organization. However, the ISBN and cover image are for the Wordsworth Reference edition in English and the record has been accordingly updated.)

    The myths and legends of the ancient worlds, from Greece, Rome and Egypt to the Norse and Celtic lands, through Persia and India to China and the Far East, the Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology is a comprehensive A to Z of the classic stories of gods and goddesses, heroes and mythical beasts, wizards and warriors.

    In reality, mythology is more screwed up than a schizophrenic shaman doing hits of unidentified. Wait, it all makes sense now. In Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes, Cory O’Brien, creator of Myths RETOLD!, sets the stories straight. These are rude, crude, totally sacred texts told the way they were meant to be told: loudly, and with lots of four-letter words. Skeptical? Here are just a few gems to consider: � Zeus once stuffed an unborn fetus inside his thigh to save its life after he exploded its mother by being too good in bed. � The entire Egyptian universe was saved because Sekhmet just got too hammered to keep murdering everyone. � The Hindu universe is run by a married couple who only stop murdering in order to throw sweet dance parties…on the corpses of their enemies. � The Norse goddess Freyja once consented to a four-dwarf gangbang in exchange for one shiny necklace. And there’s more dysfunctional goodness where that came from.

    These fascinating entries identify particular deities and giants, as well as the places where they dwell and the varied and wily means by which they forge their existence and battle one another. We meet Thor, one of the most powerful gods, who specializes in killing giants using a hammer made for him by dwarfs, not to mention myriad trolls, ogres, humans and strange animals. We learn of the ongoing struggle between the gods, who create the cosmos, and the jotnar, or giants, who aim to destroy it. In the enchanted world where this mythology takes place, we encounter turbulent rivers, majestic mountains, dense forests, storms, fierce winters, eagles, ravens, salmon and snakes in a landscape closely resembling Scandinavia. Beings travel on ships and on horseback; they eat slaughtered meat and drink mead.Spanning from the inception of the universe and the birth of human beings to the universe's destruction and the mythic future, these sparkling tales of creation and destruction, death and rebirth, gods and heroes will entertain readers and offer insight into the relationship between Scandinavian myth, history, and culture.

    Drawn into a netherworld of rituals and celebrations, Davis penetrated the vodoun mystique deeply enough to place zombification in its proper context within vodoun culture. In the course of his investigation, Davis came to realize that the story of vodoun is the history of Haiti—from the African origins of its people to the successful Haitian independence movement, down to the present day, where vodoun culture is, in effect, the government of Haiti’s countryside. The Serpent and the Rainbow combines anthropological investigation with a remarkable personal adventure to illuminate and finally explain a phenomenon that has long fascinated Americans.

    Included are popular myths and legends from all six Celtic cultures of Western Europe-Irish, Scots, Manx, Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. Here for the modern reader are the rediscovered tales of cattle raids, tribal invasions, druids, duels, and doomed love that have been incorporated into, and sometimes distorted by, European mythology and even Christian figures. For example, there is the story of Lugh of the Long Hand, one of the greatest gods in the Celtic pantheon, who was later transformed into the faerie craftsman Lugh-Chromain, and finally demoted to the lowly Leprechaun. Celtic Myths and Legends also retells the story of the classic tragic love story of Tristan and Iseult (probably of Cornish origin-there was a real King Mark and a real Tristan in Cornwall) and the original tale of King Arthur, a Welsh leader who fought against the invading Anglo-Saxons. In the hands of Peter Berresford Ellis, the myths sung by long-dead Celtic bards come alive to enchant the modern reader. "The casual reader will be best entertained by ... the legends themselves ...colored with plenty of swordplay, ... quests, shape-shiftings, and druidic sorcery."-Publishers Weekly

    A "Who's Who" of fairyland, with entries by fairy name and additional legends, songs, and anecdotes within each entry.

    Definitive and lively articles focus on the great tales and traditions of the age and includes information on daily and nightly customs andactivities; religious beliefs of the pagan, Christian, Muslim, and Jew; key works of oral and written literature; traditional music and art; holidays and feasts; food and drink; and plants and animals, both real and fantastical.While most books on medieval folklore focus primarily on the West, this unique volume brings together an eclectic range of experts to treat the subject from a global perspective. Especially remarkable are the surveys of the major medieval traditions including Arab-Islamic, Baltic, English, Finno-Ugric, French, Hispanic, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Scandinavian, Scottish, Slavic, and Welsh.For anyone who has ever wanted a path through the tangle of Arthurian legends, or the real lowdown on St. Patrick, or the last word on wolf lore--this is the place to look.The contributors:Ulrich Marzolph -- Arab-IslamicThomas A. DuBois -- BalticJohn McNamara & Carl Lindahl -- EnglishThomas A. DuBois -- Finno-UgricFrancesca Canad� Sautman -- FrenchSamuel G. Armistead -- Hispanic�va P�cs -- HungarianJoseph Falaky Nagy -- IrishGiuseppe C. Di Scipio -- ItalianEli Yassif -- JewishStephen A. Mitchell -- ScandinavianJohn McNamara -- ScottishEve Levin -- SlavicElissa R. Henken & Brynley F. Roberts -- Welsh

    Heavy Words Lightly Thrown provides a fascinating history lesson, teases out some alarming Freudian interpretations, and makes astonishing connections to contemporary popular culture. Striking and spooky silhouettes of nursery rhyme characters accompany the rhymes. You’ll never see Mother Goose in the same way again. BACKCOVER:

    He addresses the scope of Modern Art, from its founding days as Abstract Expressionism through its transformations to Pop, Op, Minimal, and Conceptual. This is Tom Wolfe "at his most clever, amusing, and irreverent" (San Francisco Chronicle).

    There is no more proper instrument of analysis of our contemporary myths than this book—one of the most significant works in French theory, and one that has transformed the way readers and philosophers view the world around them.Our age is a triumph of codification. We own devices that bring the world to the command of our fingertips. We have access to boundless information and prodigious quantities of stuff. We decide to like or not, to believe or not, to buy or not. We pick and choose. We think we are free. Yet all around us, in pop culture, politics, mainstream media, and advertising, there are codes and symbols that govern our choices. They are the fabrications of consumer society. They express myths of success, well-being, and happiness. As Barthes sees it, these myths must be carefully deciphered, and debunked.What Barthes discerned in mass media, the fashion of plastic, and the politics of postcolonial France applies with equal force to today's social networks, the iPhone, and the images of 9/11. This new edition of Mythologies, complete and beautifully rendered by the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet, critic, and translator Richard Howard, is a consecration of Barthes's classic—a lesson in clairvoyance that is more relevant now than ever.

    Originally published in Paris, this is a collection of Hollywood's darkest and best kept secrets from the pen of Kenneth Anger, a former child movie actor who grew up to become one of America's leading underground film-makers.