Book picks similar to
In Defense Of Things by Bjørnar Julius Olsen


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The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family and the Birth of Christianity


James D. Tabor - 2006
    The story is surprising, controversial, and exciting as only a long-lost history can be when it is at last recovered. In "The Jesus Dynasty," biblical scholar James Tabor brings us closer than ever to the historical Jesus. Jesus, as we know, was the son of Mary, a young woman who became pregnant before her marriage to a man named Joseph. The gospels tell us that Jesus had four brothers and two sisters, all of whom probably had a different father than his. He joined a messianic movement begun by his relative John the Baptizer, whom he regarded as his teacher and a great prophet. John and Jesus together filled the roles of the Two Messiahs who were expected at the time: John, as a priestly descendant of Aaron, and Jesus, as a royal descendant of David. Together they preached the coming of the Kingdom of God. Theirs was an apocalyptic movement that expected God to establish his kingdom on earth, as described by the Prophets. The Two Messiahs lived in a time of turmoil as the historical land of Israel was dominated by the powerful Roman Empire. Fierce Jewish rebellions against Rome occurred during Jesus' lifetime.John and Jesus preached adherence to the Torah, or the Jewish Law. But their mission was changed dramatically when John was arrested and then killed. After a period of uncertainty, Jesus began preaching anew in Galilee and challenged the Roman authorities and their Jewish collaborators in Jerusalem. He appointed a Council of Twelve to rule over the twelvetribes of Israel, and among the Twelve he included his four brothers. After Jesus was crucified by the Romans, his brother James -- the "Beloved Disciple" -- took over leadership of the Jesus dynasty.James, like John and Jesus before him, saw himself as a faithful Jew. None of them believed that their movement was a new religion. It was Paul who transformed Jesus and his message through his ministry to the Gentiles. Breaking with James and the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem, Paul preached a message based on his own revelations, which would become Christianity. Jesus became a figure whose humanity was obscured; John became merely a forerunner of Jesus; and James and the others were all but forgotten.James Tabor has studied the earliest surviving documents of Christianity for more than thirty years and has participated in important archaeological excavations in Israel. Drawing on this background, Tabor reconstructs for us the movement that sought the spiritual, social, and political redemption of the Jews, a movement led by one family. "The Jesus Dynasty" offers an alternative version of Christian origins, one that takes us closer than ever to Jesus and his family and followers.This is a book that will change our understanding of one of the most crucial moments in history.

The Old Straight Track


Alfred Watkins - 1925
    His investigation convinced him that Britain was covered with a vast network of straight tracks, aligned with either the sun or the path of a star.Although traces of this network can be found all over the country, the principles behind the ley system remain a mystery. Are they the legacy of a prehistoric scientific knowledge which is now all but lost? And was their purpose secular or religious?

The Parthenon Enigma


Joan Breton Connelly - 2014
    Since the Enlightenment, it has also come to represent our political ideals, the lavish temple to the goddess Athena serving as the model for our most hallowed civic architecture. But how much do the values of those who built the Parthenon truly correspond with our own? And apart from the significance with which we have invested it, what exactly did this marvel of human hands mean to those who made it?In this revolutionary book, Joan Breton Connelly challenges our most basic assumptions about the Parthenon and the ancient Athenians. Beginning with the natural environment and its rich mythic associations, she re-creates the development of the Acropolis—the Sacred Rock at the heart of the city-state—from its prehistoric origins to its Periklean glory days as a constellation of temples among which the Parthenon stood supreme. In particular, she probes the Parthenon’s legendary frieze: the 525-foot-long relief sculpture that originally encircled the upper reaches before it was partially destroyed by Venetian cannon fire (in the seventeenth century) and most of what remained was shipped off to Britain (in the nineteenth century) among the Elgin marbles. The frieze’s vast enigmatic procession—a dazzling pageant of cavalrymen and elders, musicians and maidens—has for more than two hundred years been thought to represent a scene of annual civic celebration in the birthplace of democracy. But thanks to a once-lost play by Euripides (the discovery of which, in the wrappings of a Hellenistic Egyptian mummy, is only one of this book’s intriguing adventures), Connelly has uncovered a long-buried meaning, a story of human sacrifice set during the city’s mythic founding. In a society startlingly preoccupied with cult ritual, this story was at the core of what it meant to be Athenian. Connelly reveals a world that beggars our popular notions of Athens as a city of staid philosophers, rationalists, and rhetoricians, a world in which our modern secular conception of democracy would have been simply incomprehensible.The Parthenon’s full significance has been obscured until now owing in no small part, Connelly argues, to the frieze’s dismemberment. And so her investigation concludes with a call to reunite the pieces, in order that what is perhaps the greatest single work of art surviving from antiquity may be viewed more nearly as its makers intended. Marshalling a breathtaking range of textual and visual evidence, full of fresh insights woven into a thrilling narrative that brings the distant past to life, The Parthenon Enigma is sure to become a landmark in our understanding of the civilization from which we claim cultural descent.

The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor


Colin Tudge - 2009
    Now, with an astonishing new discovery, everything we thought we knew about primate origins could change. Lying inside a high-security vault, deep within the heart of one of the world's leading natural history museums, is the scientific find of a lifetime - a perfectly fossilized early primate, older than the previously most famous primate fossil, Lucy, by forty-four million years.  A secret until now, the fossil - "Ida" to the researchers who have painstakingly verified her provenance - is the most complete primate fossil ever found. Forty-seven million years old, Ida rewrites what we've assumed about the earliest primate origins. Her completeness is unparalleled - so much of what we understand about evolution comes from partial fossils and even single bones, but Ida's fossilization offers much more than that, from a haunting "skin shadow" to her stomach contents. And, remarkably, knowledge of her discovery and existence almost never saw the light of day. With exclusive access to the first scientists to study her, the award-winning science writer Colin Tudge tells the history of Ida and her place in the world. A magnificent, cutting-edge scientific detective story followed her discovery, and The Link offers a wide-ranging investigation into Ida and our earliest origins. At the same time, it opens a stunningly evocative window into our past and changes what we know about primate evolution and, ultimately, our own.

Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War


Hito Steyerl - 2017
    They extend from a region where the audience is pumped for tweets to a future of "neurocurating," in which paintings surveil their audience via facial recognition and eye tracking to assess their popularity and to scan for suspicious activity.In Duty Free Art, filmmaker and writer Hito Steyerl wonders how we can appreciate, or even make art, in the present age.What can we do when arms manufacturers sponsor museums, and some of the world's most valuable artworks are used as currency in a global futures market detached from productive work? Can we distinguish between information, fake news, and the digital white noise that bombards our everyday lives? Exploring subjects as diverse as video games, WikiLeaks files, the proliferation of freeports, and political actions, she exposes the paradoxes within globalization, political economies, visual culture, and the status of art production.

Neville Goddard: Master Your Inner Game to Achieve Your Every Desire: Book 1 Inner Talking (Neville Goddard & Rita Faith - Master Your Inner Game)


Neville Goddard - 2016
    This small book will help you to do just that, it begins with a few quotes on Neville’s core teaching and then beyond that to extracts from Neville’s lecture - Order your Conversations Alright, describing the creative power of Inner Talking and concludes with techniques for practical application of Neville’s teaching. I have also added at the end of the book as a bonus, Neville Goddard’s 1955 Lecture, Mental Diets in its entirety. If you learn these techniques of Neville’s then your life will change as you will be changing your inner state. In order for them to work you must apply them, knowing them will do nothing; the power is in the persistent application and practice of these principles. If you apply them you will master your inner game and achieve your every desire. Throughout the book you will find my insights and further explanations on Neville’s teachings and suggestions on actively putting it to use, in the hope that it gives you a deeper understanding of the methods and principles. “A man’s mental conversations attracts his life. As long as there is no change in his inner talking, the personal history of the man remains the same” To attempt to change the World before we change our inner talking, is to struggle against the very nature of things. Man can go round and round in the same circle of disappointments and misfortunes, not seeing them as caused by his own negative inner talking but as caused by others. This may seem far-fetched but it is a matter which lends itself to research and development.” – Neville Goddard

The Toaster Project: Or a Heroic Attempt to Build a Simple Electric Appliance from Scratch


Thomas Thwaites - 2007
    In The Toaster Project, Thwaites asks what lies behind the smooth buttons on a mobile phone or the cushioned soles of running sneakers. What is involved in extracting and processing materials? To answer these questions, Thwaites set out to construct, from scratch, one of the most commonplace appliances in our kitchens today: a toaster. The Toaster Project takes the reader on Thwaites s journey from dismantling the cheapest toaster he can find in London to researching how to smelt metal in a fifteenth-century treatise. His incisive restrictions all parts of the toaster must be made from scratch and Thwaites had to make the toaster himself made his task difficult, but not impossible. It took nine months and cost 250 times more than the toaster he bought at the store. In the end, Thwaites reveals the true ingredients in the products we use every day. Most interesting is not the final creation but the lesson learned. The Toaster Project helps us reflect on the costs and perils of our cheap consumer culture and the ridiculousness of churning out millions of toasters and other products at the expense of the environment. If products were designed more efficiently, with fewer parts that are easier to recycle, we would end up with objects that last longer and we would generate less waste altogether. Foreword by David Crowley, head of critical writing at the Royal College of Art and curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Por el Placer de Vivir = The Joy of Living


César Lozano - 2012
    Cesar Lozano makes a series of insightful reflections, on our role in life, the importance of reaching our goals, and how to share love, hope, and liveliness with our loved ones. With his characteristic brand of language, where humor and profoundness coexist in perfect harmony, Dr. Cesar Lozano invites us to become a better version of ourselves one day at a time by recognizing our mistakes, modifying our conduct, and injecting optimism and good vibes with those around us. Author, panelist, and radio and television guest, Dr. Cesar Lozano's advice has changed the lives of thousands.

Everything, All the Time, Everywhere: How We Became Postmodern


Stuart Jeffries - 2021
    But beneath its glitzy surface, postmodernism had a dirty secret: it was the fig leaf for a rapacious new kind of capitalism. It was the forcing ground of “post truth,” by means of which western values were turned upside down. But where do these ideas come from and how have they impacted on the world?In this brilliant history of a dangerous idea, Stuart Jeffries tells a narrative that starts in the early 1970s and still dominates our lives today. He tells this history through a riotous gallery that includes, among others: David Bowie, the iPod, Madonna, Jeff Koons’s the Nixon Shock, Judith Butler, Las Vegas, Margaret Thatcher, Grand Master Flash, I Love Dick, the RAND Corporation, the Sex Pistols, Princess Diana, Grand Theft Auto, Jean Baudrillard, Netflix, and 9/11.We are today scarcely capable of conceiving politics as a communal activity because we have become habituated to being consumers rather than citizens. Politicians treat us as consumers to whom they must deliver. Can we do anything other than suffer from buyer’s remorse?

Abolition. Feminism. Now.


Angela Y. Davis - 2022
    Davis, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners, and Beth E. Richie.As a politic and a practice, abolition increasingly shapes our political moment—halting the construction of new jails and propelling movements to divest from policing. Yet erased from this landscape are the central histories of feminist organizing—usually queer, anti-capitalist, grassroots, and women of color—that continue to cultivate abolition. Also erased is a recognition of the stark reality: abolition is our best response to endemic forms of state and interpersonal gender and sexual violence.Amplifying the analysis and the theories of change generated from vibrant community based organizing, Abolition. Feminism. Now. surfaces necessary historical genealogies, key internationalist learnings, and everyday practices to grow our collective and flourishing present and futures.

Kierkegaard: A Single Life


Stephen Backhouse - 2016
    That lack of familiarity with the real Kierkegaard is about to changeThis lucid new biography by scholar Stephen Backhouse presents the genius as well as the acutely sensitive man behind the brilliant books. Scholarly and accessible, Kierkegaard: A Single Life introduces his many guises—the thinker, the lover, the recluse, the writer, the controversialist—in prose so compelling it reads like a novel.One chapter examines Kierkegaard’s influence on our greatest cultural icons—Kafka, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Camus, and Martin Luther King Jr., to name only a few. A useful appendix presents an overview of each of Kierkegaard’s works, for the scholar and lay reader alike.

Living a Feminist Life


Sara Ahmed - 2017
    Building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship in particular, Ahmed offers a poetic and personal meditation on how feminists become estranged from worlds they critique—often by naming and calling attention to problems—and how feminists learn about worlds from their efforts to transform them. Ahmed also provides her most sustained commentary on the figure of the feminist killjoy introduced in her earlier work while showing how feminists create inventive solutions—such as forming support systems—to survive the shattering experiences of facing the walls of racism and sexism. The killjoy survival kit and killjoy manifesto, with which the book concludes, supply practical tools for how to live a feminist life, thereby strengthening the ties between the inventive creation of feminist theory and living a life that sustains it.

The Spectacle of the Void


David Peak - 2014
    A new reality—a "horror reality”—has taken hold. David Peak’s The Spectacle of the Void examines the boundaries of the irreal and the beyond, exploring horror’s singular ability to communicate the unknown through language and image. It is also a speculative work that gazes unflinchingly at the inevitable extinction of mankind, questioning whether or not the burden of our knowing we will someday cease to exist is a burden after all, or rather the very notion that will set us free.

In Search Of Stones


M. Scott Peck - 1995
    Peck recounts his 21-day excursion through Britain--a journey to the country's mysterious stone monoliths that prompted him to explore the spiritual, psychological, and philosophical truths that have shaped his life. Illustrated with exquisite b&w line art by the author's son. "...an engrossing mixture of travelogue and sermon."--Susan Cheever, New York Times.

The Magic of Believing


Claudie Bristol - 2018
    For more than four decades success‐oriented readers have turned to the no‐nonsense, time‐tested motivational techniques described in 'The Magic of Believing' to achieve their long and short term goals. Millions have benefited from these visualization techniques, which show how to turn your thoughts and dreams into effective actions that can lead to enhanced income, happier relationships, increased effectiveness, heightened influence and improved peace of mind.