Their narratives, themes, and characters address and provide answers to eternal questions: where do we come from, how do we live, what do we believe in? This fascinating book explores the major myths and legends across the world, from Classical mythology to Eastern beliefs, and from American legends to African folk tales. The stories are retold in compelling detail, while key aspects of each myth are considered: their meaning, purpose, and power; the main characters; and their importance to modern culture.Special illustrations and photographs combine with informative text, family trees, and a focus on themes such as creation, death, and the afterlife. From Gilgamesh to Quetzalcoatl, Heracles to Pan Gu, Myths and Legends provides a full and captivating reference guide to the worlds of mythical beings, mortal heroes, and immortal gods.

    Using original source material, extant writings, and scholarship the author builds an image of the goddess as she may have appeared to her followers in pre-Christian Northern Europe. Patricia Lafayllve then uses the knowledge she has compiled to speculate on aspects of modern worship of this complex deity.

    Inside, you’ve got heaven and earth, and all of creation. You’re a world – everything is hidden in you.” –Hildegard of Bingen She was a Benedictine abbess, artist, composer, dietician, naturalist, poet, travelling preacher, mystic, and political consultant. She was a self-doubter with acute certainty in a merciful and mysterious God; a gifted healer who suffered from illness her whole life. Meet the incomparable Hildegard of Bingen. Nourishing, challenging, and idea-bursting, her writings will stir and awaken your soul. This essential reader captures the vibrant spirit and intelligence of Hildegard with selections from her songs, theological texts, liturgical music, and letters. Combined with an introduction to Hildegard’s life and era, a map of Hildegard’s Germany, chronology, and a thorough bibliography/discography, Hildegard of Bingen provides the ideal introduction to the thought of this fascinating medieval mystic.

    He was a performer who held true to his religious and cultural heritage, yet he is still awarded the status of world rock star. Renowned poet and scholar Kwame Dawes analyses in detail what his actual verses and lyrics meant when matched against the social and political climate of the time and what it meant to be a black man in the modern world.

    Similarly, stories and storytelling can serve as an introduction to other places and foster a powerful emotional connection to nature. Campfire Stories brings together tales about our national parks; some are by well-known writers such as John Muir, Bill Bryson, and Terry Tempest Williams, while others are from pioneer diaries or have been passed down through generations of indigenous peoples.Co-editors Dave and Ilyssa Kyu spent five months traveling and researching the stories in the book. They gathered each of these stories from public libraries, historical societies, arts and cultural organizations, museums, research centers, and national park archives. They interviewed park rangers, historians, artists, curators, educators, and local residents, who all offered insights and guidance into the essence of each place, which was than used to select entertaining, diverse, and engaging writings that reflected each park and best told around a campfire. Campfire Stories focuses on these six iconic national parks:Acadia National ParkGreat Smoky Mountains National ParkRocky Mountain National ParkKYellowstone National ParkYosemite National ParkZion National ParkEach story includes an "About this Story" reflection, offering insight into how Dave and Ilyssa discovered the tale, why they selected it, and some background about its writer. Dave and Ilyssa also share their own thoughts on each of the parks they visited, as well as tips on how to be a compelling storyteller.

    Crammed into old houses and hotels, abandoned prisons and empty hospitals, the spirits that linger continue to capture our collective imagination, but why? His own fascination piqued by a house hunt in Los Angeles that revealed derelict foreclosures and "zombie homes," Dickey embarks on a journey across the continental United States to decode and unpack the American history repressed in our most famous haunted places. Some have established reputations as "the most haunted mansion in America," or "the most haunted prison"; others, like the haunted Indian burial grounds in West Virginia, evoke memories from the past our collective nation tries to forget.            With boundless curiosity, Dickey conjures the dead by focusing on questions of the living—how do we, the living, deal with stories about ghosts, and how do we inhabit and move through spaces that have been deemed, for whatever reason, haunted? Paying attention not only to the true facts behind a ghost story, but also to the ways in which changes to those facts are made—and why those changes are made—Dickey paints a version of American history left out of the textbooks, one of things left undone, crimes left unsolved. Spellbinding, scary, and wickedly insightful, Ghostland discovers the past we're most afraid to speak of aloud in the bright light of day is the same past that tends to linger in the ghost stories we whisper in the dark.From the Hardcover edition.

    . . should have strong, immediate interest for the ecologists engaged in efforts to restore the Everglades."--William B. Robertson, research biologist for Everglades National ParkFrom the book--Pa built our house out of rough lumber that they got from Frazier’s sawmill . . . a one-room house about 16 to 18 feet long and 12 feet wide. We all slept on cots and sat on boxes or a trunk. The kitchen was in the corner, and Ma cooked on a four-hole stove, which cost six dollars. Me and my middle brother, Alvin, sat on a trunk to eat at the table. That trunk had some long cracks in it. My brother knew just how to move so the crack would pinch . . . .Years before the Park was established, when all the land and marsh seemed to belong to me, we would help ourselves to whatever we could see or trade for survival. Mostly we would sell gator and otter hides. . . . On this particular trip, after grunting awhile at the gator hole, I gave up and made tracks to the camp since I wanted to return by dark. . . . I was lying under my skeeter bar with a small tarp stretched between two cabbage palms. About midnight, I heard the dried cabbage fronds breaking in the path toward my camp. The night was pitch black . . .Few people today can claim a living memory of Florida's frontier Everglades. Glen Simmons, who has hunted alligators, camped on hammock-covered islands, and poled his skiff through the mangrove swamps of the glades since the 1920s, is one who can. Together with Laura Ogden, he tells the story of backcountry life in the southern Everglades from his youth until the establishment of the Everglades National Park in 1947. During the economic bust of the late ‘20s, when many natives turned to the land to survive, Simmons began accompanying older local men into Everglades backcountry, the inhospitable prairie of soft muck and mosquitoes, of outlaws and moonshiners, that rings the southern part of the state. As Simmons recalls life in this community with humor and nostalgia, he also documents the forgotten lifestyles of south Florida gladesmen. By necessity, they understood the natural features of the Everglades ecosystem. They observed the seasonal fluctuations of wildlife, fire, and water levels. Their knowledge of the mostly unmapped labyrinth of grassy water enabled them to serve as guides for visiting naturalists and scientists. Simmons reconstructs this world, providing not only fascinating stories of individual personalities, places, and events, but an account that is accurate, both scientifically and historically, of one of the least known and longest surviving portions of the American frontier.Glen Simmons has lived in the south Florida Everglades since his birth in 1916 in Homestead. In 1995 he was awarded a State of Florida Heritage Award for his unique contribution to Florida's history and folk culture. He has demonstrated and taught glades skiff building for the Florida Department of State, Bureau of Folklife, and the South Florida Historical Society; his boats are on permanent display at the Florida Folklife Museum in White Springs, Florida, and at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, Miami.Laura Ogden, also born in Homestead and a life-long friend of Glen Simmons, is assistant professor of anthropology at Florida International University.

    The pair's innovative and authentic adaptation of Dante's epic, coupled with Birk's striking play on Gustave Dor's classic illustrations, make this a "Divine Comedy" for the 21st century. Acclaimed by both the literary and art worlds; rife with contemporary turns of phrase and slang (just as the original poem was written in the vernacular of its day) and pointed visions of the afterlife as contemporary cities; and rich with bold allusion, cultural critique, and witthis is the must-have collection of modern classics.

    For most ordinary Englishmen, venturing off into the depths of unexplored America would have been a once in a lifetime adventure: but not for Stephen. By the time he turned forty, he had already survived a hurricane, been shipwrecked in the Bermuda Triangle, been written into a Shakespearean play, witnessed the famine and abandonment of Jamestown Colony, and participated in the marriage of Pocahontas. He was once even sentenced to death! He got himself and his family onto the Pilgrims' Mayflower, and helped found Plymouth Colony. He signed the Mayflower Compact, lodged the famous Squanto in his house, participated in the legendary Thanksgiving, and helped guide and govern the early colonists. Yet Stephen was just an ordinary man, with a wife, three sons, seven daughters, a small house, some farmland for his corn, and cows named Motley, Sympkins, Curled, and Red. These are the extraordinary adventures of an ordinary man.

    On an unsettled and unwelcoming prairie landscape, the Borlands build a house, plant crops, and eke out a meager existence. While life is difficult—and self-reliance is necessary with no neighbors for miles—the experience brings the family close and binds them closer to the terrible and beautiful natural patterns that govern their lives. Borland would grow up to study journalism and become an acclaimed nature writer, and it was these childhood years on the prairie that shaped the author’s heart and mind.

    A keepsake enjoyed by tea lovers for over a hundred years, The Book of Tea Classic Edition will enhance your enjoyment and understanding of the seemingly simple act of making and drinking tea.In 1906 in turn-of-the-century Boston, a small, esoteric book about tea was written with the intention of being read aloud in the famous salon of Isabella Gardner, Boston's most notorious socialite. It was authored by Okakura Kakuzo, a Japanese philosopher, art expert, and curator. Little known at the time, Kakuzo would emerge as one of the great thinkers of the early 20th century, a genius who was insightful, witty—and greatly responsible for bridging Western and Eastern cultures. Okakura had been taught at a young age to speak English and was more than capable of expressing to Westerners the nuances of tea and the Japanese Tea Ceremony.In The Book of Tea Classic Edition, he discusses such topics as Zen and Taoism, but also the secular aspects of tea and Japanese life. The book emphasizes how Teaism taught the Japanese many things; most importantly, simplicity. Kakuzo argues that tea-induced simplicity affected the culture, art and architecture of Japan.Nearly a century later, Kakuzo's The Book of Tea Classic Edition is still beloved the world over, making it an essential part of any tea enthusiast's collection. Interwoven with a rich history of Japanese tea and its place in Japanese society is a poignant commentary on Asian culture and our ongoing fascination with it, as well as illuminating essays on art, spirituality, poetry, and more. The Book of Tea Classic Edition is a delightful cup of enlightenment from a man far ahead of his time.

    They seek her favors or fear her lingering influence. Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau is the first study of the Laveaus, mother and daughter of the same name. Both were legendary leaders of religious and spiritual traditions many still label as evil.The Laveaus were free women of color and prominent French-speaking Catholic Creoles. From the 1820s until the 1880s when one died and the other disappeared, gossip, fear, and fierce affection swirled about them. From the heart of the French Quarter, in dance, drumming, song, and spirit possession, they ruled the imagination of New Orleans.How did the two Maries apply their "magical" powers and uncommon business sense to shift the course of love, luck, and the law? The women understood the real crime--they had pitted their spiritual forces against the slave system of the United States. Moses-like, they led their people out of bondage and offered protection and freedom to the community of color, rich white women, enslaved families, and men condemned to hang.The curse of the Laveau family, however, followed them. Both loved men they could never marry. Both faced down the press and police who stalked them. Both countered the relentless gossip of curses, evil spirits, murders, and infant sacrifice with acts of benevolence.The book is also a detective story--who is really buried in the famous tomb in the oldest "city of the dead" in New Orleans? What scandals did the Laveau family intend to keep buried there forever? By what sleight of hand did free people of color lose their cultural identity when Americans purchased Louisiana and imposed racial apartheid upon Creole creativity? Voodoo Queen brings the improbable testimonies of saints, spirits, and never-before-printed eyewitness accounts of ceremonies and magical crafts together to illuminate the lives of the two Marie Laveaus, leaders of a major, indigenous American religion.

    Through rereadings of Freud and Saussure, Agamben proposes a radical reconfiguration of the epistemological foundation of Western culture.

    The Sumerians had reached a very high level of culture by 3500 B.C.E., and may be said with some justice to be the forerunners of all the Old World civilizations of Egypt, Assyria, Asia Minor, Crete, and Greece. This book will appeal to everyone interested in the early history of humankind.

    . ."Now available in paperback--a selection of revealing interviews from the award-winning National Public Radio showOriginating from WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and heard on more than 450 NPR stations, Fresh Air with Terry Gross has become a daily habit with millions of listeners nationwide--a must for anyone hoping to keep up with what's happening in the arts. Over the last twenty years, Terry's guests have included our most significant writers, actors, musicians, comics, and visual artists.For her first collection, Terry has chosen more than three dozen timeless interviews that prove to be as lively on the page as they were on the radio. Her questions--probing yet sensitive--encourage revelations from figures as diverse as John Updike, Isabella Rossellini, Conan OBrien, Samuel L. Jackson, Johnny Cash, and Nicolas Cage. And in her introduction, the generally self-effacing host of Fresh Air does something she wouldnt dream of doing on the air--she reveals a thing or two about herself.