It has many thousands of devotees who are a ready market for this timely and entertaining book which, with over twenty individual stories from former Lightning pilots, relates the highs and lows, the dramas and the demands of those who operated this iconic aircraft from the sharp end.

    Nor is it a collection of bizarre facts, though the Angel of the Bizarre might well find himself at home in it. It is not a scientific contribution, a vehicle for an exotic teaching, a testament, a document, a fable. It is simply an account - at times figurative, at times factual - of a first excursion into some as yet scarcely explored realms of consciousness. The Morning of the Magicians is a classic of radical literature, a book that has challenged assumptions and conventional knowledge for decades. It has shaken the foundations of beliefs all over the world and may be the most influential book published in the twentieth century. Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier spent years searching "through all the regions of consciousness, to the frontiers of science and tradition" and opened their minds to any fact or theory that went beyond the frontier of current theories. The result is this remarkable work, and the stream of possibilities that it contains: Do mutants exist, are they a future form of man? Does extrasensory perception reveal that human consciousness has advanced beyond its currently accepted limits? What connects the ancient art of alchemy and modern atomic physics?

    In this grounded, practical book, author Derek Olsen uses The Book of Common Prayer for a template to a deeper spiritual life. Olsen explains the purpose and intention of the prayer book with fresh insight, offering practical applications for daily living.

    Every building contains clues embedded in its design that identify not only its architectural style but also who designed it, what kind of congregation it was built for, and why. This practical yet charming handbook is the key to decoding the style, history, evolution, and social significance of religious buildings. Not strictly limited to churches, it also covers abbeys, chapels, and monasteries, among other structures. Organized according to architectural element (windows, domes, arches, etc.), each element is presented in chronological order. Additional chapters explore the architectural influence of geography, history, and various creeds, along with an illustrated timeline showing how, where, and in many cases why certain church features evolved through the centuries. There is also a useful introduction to naming each component of a church, from vaults to buttresses and transepts to apses. All entries are illustrated with period engravings and line drawings. This book will be invaluable for architecture buffs and anyone who has ever wondered why classic New England churches are white with little ornament, why Quaker meetinghouses have no altars, or why Episcopalians traditionally favored the Gothic style.

    An inspiring exploration of the beliefs and commitment of a unique religious group, it was an instant sell-out when it first appeared in 2011. Geoffrey Durham has now revised and updated the book for its second edition, incorporating new developments and fresh thinking. With its well-judged balance of personal experience, spiritual guidance and practical advice, this book explains how Quaker meetings can change people, and then goes on to show the nature of the change. Quakers insist on working for peace, equality, simplicity and truth in their everyday lives and find themselves nourished and enriched by the experience. Being a Quaker: A Guide for Newcomers includes extracts from the testimony of Quakers of all backgrounds and beliefs, talking about the ways in which they put their religion into practice. It is a warm and incisive first book for all readers interested in Quakers, and an exhilarating read for anyone absorbed by the life of the Spirit.‘This book contains everything you always wanted to know about Quakerism but were afraid to ask. It is an ideal gift to give to newcomers who want to understand what ‘the Quaker way’ is all about.’ The Friend About the Author Geoffrey Durham became a Quaker in 1999. He was a contributor to the successful Twelve Quakers and … series of books, has compiled an anthology, The Spirit of the Quakers, and is a regular speaker at Quaker events. He has worked professionally in the performing arts for over forty years.

    Throughout history, these lounge-chair revolutionaries have helped correct civilization’s ills and excesses with a mellow, lighthearted, live-and-let live attitude. From Lao Tzu to Lebowski, Epicurus to Einstein, The Buddha to Bob Dylan, all have reminded humanity what is most important in life: personal liberty, peace of mind, leisure time and good friends.Bringing together some of the greatest ideas, quotes and insights Dudeosophy has had to offer, THE TAO OF THE DUDE is not only a virtual Ph.D in Dudeism, but also a soothing sectional sofa for the soul.Each chapter contains an essay and illustration by the founder of Dudeism, followed by an assortment of quotes and passages that show how Dudeism has existed throughout history, down through the generations, across the sands of time...

    For centuries, religious establishments constructed decorated ossuaries and charnel houses that stand as masterpieces of art created from human bone. These unique structures have been pushed into the footnotes of history; they were part of a dialogue with death that is now silent.The sites in this specially photographed and brilliantly original study range from the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Palermo, where the living would visit mummified or skeletal remains and lovingly dress them; to the Paris catacombs; to fantastic bone-encrusted creations in Austria, Cambodia, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Italy, Peru, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, and elsewhere.Paul Koudounaris photographed more than seventy sites for this book. He analyzes the role of these remarkable memorials within the cultures that created them, as well as the mythology and folklore that developed around them, and skillfully traces a remarkable human endeavor.

    LUCIFER HIMSELF IS THE STAR OF THIS BOOK, WHICH CONTAINS IMAGES OF HIM THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF ART. ETCHINGS, WOODCUTS, PAINTINGS, ILLUSTRATIONS, DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND ADVERTISEMENTS FEATURING OF THE DEVIL, BY THE LIKES OF DA VINCI, BOSCH, PIERRE ET GILLES, GIGER, AND MANY MORE, POPULATE THE PAGES OF THIS SUPREMELY "EVIL" BOOK.

    This, the most detailed and lavishly illustrated book on the cathedral available in English, beautifully evokes the awe-inspiring monument that attracts countless visitors from around the world.

    Following in the footsteps of Christopher Hitchens, Roger Penrose, and even Stephen Hawking, Jim Holt now enters this fractious debate with his lively and deeply informed narrative that traces the latest efforts to grasp the origins of the universe. The slyly humorous Holt takes on the role of cosmological detective, suggesting that we might have been too narrow in limiting our suspects to Yahweh vs. the Big Bang. Tracking down an eccentric Oxford philosopher, a Physics Nobel Laureate, a French Buddhist monk who lived with the Dalai Lama, and John Updike just before he died, Holt pursues unexplored angles to this cosmic puzzle. As he pieces together a solution--one that sheds new light on the question of God and the meaning of existence--he offers brisk philosophical asides on time and eternity, consciousness, and the arithmetic of nothingness.“The pleasure of this book is watching the match: the staggeringly inventive human mind slamming its fantastic conjectures over the net, the universe coolly returning every serve.... Holt traffics in wonder, a word whose dual meanings—the absence of answers; the experience of awe—strike me as profoundly related. His book is not utilitarian. You can’t profit from it, at least not in the narrow sense.... And yet it does what real science writing should: It helps us feel the fullness of the problem.” (Kathryn Schulz, New York Magazine)" Jim Holt leaves us with the question Stephen Hawking once asked but couldn't answer, ‘Why does the universe go through all the bother of existing?’” (Ron Rosenbaum, Slate )

    But with so many books on the apostle, where do you start?Paul the Apostle is the ideal choice if you want a solid understanding of Paul’s life, ministry, and writings without getting weighed down with minutia. Author Robert E. Picirilli, who taught college courses on Paul for over twenty-five years, found that most books on the apostle were either too technical or too basic, so he wrote a book that strikes a happy medium. It offers:A profile of Paul in his historical and cultural contextOutlines and explanations of his missionary journeysIntroductions and brief analyses of each of his epistlesUseful for individual study or as a textbook (as it is in many universities today), Paul the Apostle is a great one-stop study of the man who wrote half the New Testament, spread the gospel to the heart of the known world, and gave his life for the Kingdom.

    Here, Evelyn Welch presents a fresh picture of the Italian Renaissance by challenging traditional scholarship and placing emphasis on recreating the experience of contemporary Italians: the patrons who commissioned the works, the members of the public who viewed them, and the artists who produced them. Art in Renaissance Italy 1350-1500 dramatically revises the traditional story of the Renaissance and takes into account new issues that have greatly enriched our understanding of the period. From paintings and coins to sculptures and tapestries, Welch examines the issues of materials, workshop practices, and artist-patron relationships, and explores the ways in which visual imagery related to contemporary sexual, social, and political behavior.

    A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities.But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra’s parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, Florence is changing, increasingly subject to the growing suppression imposed by the fundamentalist monk Savonarola, who is seizing religious and political control. Alessandra and her native city are caught between the Medici state, with its love of luxury, learning, and dazzling art, and the hellfire preaching and increasing violence of Savonarola’s reactionary followers. Played out against this turbulent backdrop, Alessandra’s married life is a misery, except for the surprising freedom it allows her to pursue her powerful attraction to the young painter and his art. The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain’s most innovative writers of literary suspense. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion, and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a heroine with the same vibrancy of spirit as her beloved city.

    Destroy its claims to admiration there, and it can assert them nowhere else." This was Ruskin's war cry as he entered the now almost forgotten Battle of the Styles on the side against "the school which has conducted men's inventive and constructional faculties from the Grand Canal to Gower Street."But first the reader must know the difference between right and wrong; he must find out for himself the best way of doing everything. "I shall give him stones, and bricks and straw, chisels and trowels and the ground, and then ask him to build, only helping him if I find him puzzled."Unhappily, both these exciting objectives were attained only after the expenditure of nearly half-a-million words; glorious words, but too many. For fifty years, The Stones of Venice was read by all who went there and thousands who could not; the sightseers whom the city captivates today seldom have its greatest guidebook with them.It is the aim of this new edition to put a fascinating book within reach of travelers--active or armchair--with limited resources of time. Much that was superfluous has been omitted; what remains is the essence of a now very readable and portable book. It is a book for the lover of architecture, the lover of Venice, the lover of lost causes, and, perhaps above all, for the lover of fine writing.

    When a cleaning sweep of a New York City apartment building brings this lost treasure to light, both the diary and its owner are given a second life.Recovered by Lily Koppel, a young writer working at the New York Times, the journal paints a vivid picture of 1930s New York—horseback riding in Central Park, summer excursions to the Catskills, and an obsession with a famous avant-garde actress. From 1929 to 1934, not a single day's entry is skipped.Opening the tarnished brass lock, Koppel embarks on a journey into the past, traveling to a New York in which women of privilege meet for tea at Schrafft's, dance at the Hotel Pennsylvania, and toast the night at El Morocco. As she turns the diary's brittle pages, Koppel is captivated by the headstrong young woman whose intimate thoughts and emotions fill the pale blue lines. Who was this lovely ingénue who adored the works of Baudelaire and Jane Austen, who was sexually curious beyond her years, who traveled to Rome, Paris, and London?Compelled by the hopes and heartaches captured in the pages, Koppel sets out to find the diary's owner, her only clue the inscription on the frontispiece—"This book belongs to . . . Florence Wolfson." A chance phone call from a private investigator leads Koppel to Florence, a ninety-year-old woman living with her husband of sixty-seven years. Reunited with her diary, Florence ventures back to the girl she once was, rediscovering a lost self that burned with artistic fervor.Joining intimate interviews with original diary entries, Koppel reveals the world of a New York teenager obsessed with the state of her soul and her appearance, and muses on the serendipitous chain of events that returned the lost journal to its owner. Evocative and entrancing, The Red Leather Diary re-creates the romance and glitter, sophistication and promise, of 1930s New York, bringing to life the true story of a precocious young woman who dared to follow her dreams.