But no one has labeled Thomas Jonathan Jackson a "marble man," as impenetrable as the statues which commemorate his valor, because his pious Christian character, his service to the church and teaching vocation, his unwavering commitment to duty, his affectionate role as husband and father, as well as his magnificent service to Virginia and the Southern Confederacy were carefully recorded by his close friend and confidant Robert Lewis Dabney. Dr. Dabney understood, far better than most subsequent biographers, the animating principles of Stonewall Jackson's life - his personal faith in Jesus Christ and his absolute trust in the Providence of God. Labeled by some a religious fanatic, General Jackson was simply a consistent biblical Christian who lived out his faith every day, seriously and without compromise.

    The high moral principles of Buddhism, when adopted and adapted by the Japanese warriors who became the Samurai, created an austere philosophy of singular beauty and depth. Its characteristic requirements of strict control over body and mind was exemplified by ancient warrior monks whose serene countenance, even in the face of certain death, made them much admired even by their foes. Zen may be the most misunderstood of the world's moral philosophies. While it is often classified as a Religion, it is frequently considered by its adherents to be a utilitarian philosophy, a collection of rational moral precepts or, even more simply, as a state of being. The aim of the practice of Zen is to become Enlightened and achieve the beatitude of Nirvana. To reach Nirvana means to achieve the state of extinction of pain and the annihilation of sin. Zen never looks for the realization of its beatitude in a place like heaven, nor believes in the realm of Reality transcendental of the phenomenal universe, nor gives countenance to the superstition of Immortality, nor does it hold the world is the best of all possible worlds, nor conceives life simply as blessing. It is in this life, full of shortcomings, misery, and sufferings, that Zen hopes to realize its beatitude. It is in this world, imperfect, changing, and moving, that Zen finds the Divine Light it worships. It is in this phenomenal universe of limitation and relativity that Zen aims to attain to highest Nirvana.

    In January 1680 a dozen Pueblo Indians are charged with conspiring to incite a revolution against the colonial government. When the prisoners are brought before the Governor, one of them is revealed as a young woman. Educated by the friars in her pueblo's mission church, Serafina speaks beautiful Spanish and surprises the Governor with her fearlessness and intelligence.The two strike a bargain. She will entertain the Governor by telling him a story. If he likes her story, he will free one of the prisoners. Like Scheherezade, who prevented her royal husband from killing her by telling him stories, Serafina keeps the Governor so entertained with her versions of Nuevo Mexicano cuentos that he spares the lives of all her fellow prisoners.Some of the stories Serafina tells will have a familiar ring to them, for they came from Europe and were New Mexicanized by the Spanish colonists. Some have Pueblo Indian plots and characters--and it is this blending of the two cultures that is Anaya's true subject.

    The move was for the girl’s own good, in her mother’s mind, but for the daughter, the reality of being the new girl, the foreigner-among-your-own-people, was even worse than the idea. During her time at school, she would learn that Ghana was much more complicated than her fellow ex-pats had ever told her, including how much a London-raised child takes something like water for granted. In Ghana, water “became a symbol of who had and who didn’t, who believed in God and who didn’t. If you didn’t have water to bathe, you were poor because no one had sent you some.”After six years in Ghana, her mother summons her home to London to meet the new man in her mother’s life—and his daughter. The reunion is bittersweet and short-lived as her parents decide it’s time that she get to know her father. So once again, she’s sent off, this time to live with her father, his new wife, and their young children in New York—but not before a family trip to Disney World.

    Sitting atop it all was the Royal Poinciana Hotel, built on the shores of Palm Beach by real estate tycoon Henry Flagler. Nearby was the Styx, an African American community that housed many of the Royal Poinciana's 1,200 workers. Shortly after the hotel's completion, the Styx would be mysteriously burned to the ground in a tragedy clouded for generations by rumor and myth-until now.Riveting and suspenseful, The Styx is a historical novel that brings to life the frenzy of Reconstruction-era Florida, the racial tensions simmering beneath the surface, and the events that changed one community forever."King's writing is gritty, vivid, and suspenseful." -Harlan CobenJonathon King is an Edgar Award-winning mystery novelist and the creator of the bestselling Max Freeman crime series. Born in Lansing, Michigan, in the 1950s, King worked as a crime reporter in Philadelphia and Fort Lauderdale for twenty-four years before becoming a full-time novelist. Along with the six books of the Max Freeman series, King has also authored the thriller Eye of Vengeance (2007) and the historical novel The Styx (2009). He lives in south Florida.

    With April 12, 2011, set to mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War at Fort Sumter, the time is ripe for a new assessment of the conflict

    During the mid-nineteenth century, the drug was a legal remedy for lockjaw and Ludlow had a friend at school from whom he received a ready supply. He consumed such large quantities at each sitting that his hallucinations have been likened to those experienced by opium addicts. Throughout the book, Ludlow colorfully describes his psychedelic journey that led to extended reflections on religion, philosophy, medicine, and culture. First published in 1857, The Hasheesh Eater was the first full-length American example of drug literature. Yet despite the scandal that surrounded it, the book quickly became a huge success. Since then, it has become a cult classic, first among Beat writers in the 1950s and 1960s, and later with San Francisco Bay area hippies in the 1970s.In this first scholarly edition, editor Stephen Rachman positions Ludlow's enduring work as not just a chronicle of drug use but also as a window into the budding American bohemian literary scene. A lucid introduction explores the breadth of Ludlow's classical learning as well as his involvement with the nineteenth-century subculture that included fellow revelers such as Walt Whitman and the pianist Louis Gottshalk. With helpful annotations guiding readers through the text's richly allusive qualities and abundance of references, this edition is ideal for classroom use as well as for general readers.

    McPherson's preface thoughtfully discusses the import of Melville's book as a Civil War document. The introduction sketches Melville's pre-war concern with slavery in Moby Dick (1851) and Benito Cereno (1856). The seventy-two deeply moving, austerely beautiful lyrical poems about the Civil War include works on the hanging of John Brown, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and the battles at Donelson, Shiloh, and Gettysburg.Harvard University critic Helen Vendler's essay argues that Melville's innovative manner of transforming this epic matter of history into a new kind of lyric poem makes for arresting and wholly original poetry. For Boston University poet Rosanna Warren, the irregularity of Melville's verse forces readers to participate in the process of arriving at a dark knowledge of war. According to Richard Cox, the organization of Melville's poems conveys that the passions of the war will not cease and yet they seem to continue Abraham Lincoln's task of binding the nation's wounds. Paul Dowling reveals how the poet reshaped the war, distorting history to moderate wartime passions and to imitate Shakespeare's philosophical (but unpopular) dramas.Students and scholars of American literature and history, as well as Civil War enthusiasts, will welcome this outstanding new publication of a long-neglected volume of political poetry by one of America's classic novelists.

    [echoing him] Mary! Mary! Who would have thought that woman to have had so much blood in her! Is it my fault that my counsellors put deeds of blood on me? Fie! If you were women you would have more wit than to stain the floor so foully. Hold not up her head so: the hair is false. I tell you yet again, Mary's buried: she cannot come out of her grave.

    But the charged personal encounter between master and disciple is precisely what interests George Steiner in this book, a sustained reflection on the infinitely complex and subtle interplay of power, trust, and passions in the most profound sorts of pedagogy. Based on Steiner's Norton Lectures on the art and lore of teaching, "Lessons of the Masters" evokes a host of exemplary figures, including Socrates and Plato, Jesus and his disciples, Virgil and Dante, Heloise and Abelard, Tycho Brahe and Johann Kepler, the Baal Shem Tov, Confucian and Buddhist sages, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Nadia Boulanger, and Knute Rockne.Pivotal in the unfolding of Western culture are Socrates and Jesus, charismatic masters who left no written teachings, founded no schools. In the efforts of their disciples, in the passion narratives inspired by their deaths, Steiner sees the beginnings of the inward vocabulary, the encoded recognitions of much of our moral, philosophical, and theological idiom. He goes on to consider a diverse array of traditions and disciplines, recurring throughout to three underlying themes: the master's power to exploit his student's dependence and vulnerability; the complementary threat of subversion and betrayal of the mentor by his pupil; and the reciprocal exchange of trust and love, of learning and instruction between master and disciple.Forcefully written, passionately argued, "Lessons of the Masters" is itself a masterly testament to the high vocation and perilous risks undertaken by true teacher and learner alike.

    The author gives the complete insight into the fascinating empire which was characterized by Roman state traditions, Greek culture and language; and Orthodox Christianity. Among the greatest accomplishments of the Empire, the author emphasizes its contribution to the formation of the medieval Europe, its major role in shaping Orthodoxy and transmission of classical knowledge. Contents: Byzantium The Foundation of Constantinople The Fight With the Goths The Departure of the Germans The Reorganization of the Eastern Empire Justinian Justinian's Foreign Conquests The End of Justinian's Reign The Coming of the Slavs The Darkest Hour Social and Religious Life The Coming of the Saracens The First Anarchy The Saracens Turned Back The Iconoclasts The End of the Iconoclasts The Literary Emperors and Their Time Military Glory The End of the Macedonian Dynasty Manzikert The Comneni and the Crusades The Latin Conquest of Constantinople The Latin Empire and the Empire of Nicaea Decline and Decay The Turks in Europe. The End of a Long Tale Table of Emperors

    In this book he tells remarkable stories of dramatic conversions, and he gives instruction on how to prevail in prayer and overcome sin. Discover how you can have more power from God.

    Remarkably few who study it contemplate what came after the armies marched away. Who would care for the tens of thousands of wounded? What happened to the thousands of dead men, horses, and tons of detritus scattered in every direction? How did the civilians cope with their radically changed lives? Gregory Coco's A Strange and Blighted Land. Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle offers a comprehensive account of these and other issues.The late Coco was a park ranger at Gettysburg deeply interested in the battle and what was left in its wake. The Vietnam veteran who wrote well and often about the battle waxes eloquently about the carnage of war, its terrors and pain, its irreplaceable cost in human life and treasure, and the toll it took on the families who lost sons and husbands there.Arranged in a series of topical chapters, A Strange and Blighted Land begins with a tour of the battlefield, mostly through eyewitness accounts, of the death and destruction littering the sprawling landscape. Once the size and scope is exposed to readers, Coco moves on to discuss the dead of Gettysburg, North and South, how their remains were handled, and how and why the Gettysburg National Cemetery was established. The treatment of the wounded, Union and Confederate, was organized chaos. Every house and barn became of hospital or medical station, and the medical and surgical practices of the day were little short of compassionate torture. The author also discusses at length how prisoners were handled and the fate of the thousands of stragglers and deserters left behind once the armies left before concluding with the preservation efforts that culminated in the establishment of the Gettysburg National Military Park in 1895.Coco's prose is gripping, personal, and brutally honest. There is no mistaking where he comes down on the issue: There was nothing pretty or glorious or romantic about a battle--especially once the fighting ended.

    Howard's fantasy work, from the legendary pulp magazine Weird Tales and its rival Strange Tales, features more classic fiction and poetry from Howard's prime writing years. Gathered here are stories with such enduring and popular characters as Solomon Kane, Turlogh Dubh and Comac of Connacht. Other highlights include "The Black Stone," considered by many to be Howard's finest excursion into Lovecraftian horror; "The Horror from the Mound," a vampire story set in Texas; and "People of the Dark," a precursor to the Conan stories which ultimately made Howard famous!

    This book provides an analysis of his impact on the Civil war from the Union viewpoint.