The Kingdom of the Hittites


Trevor Bryce - 1998
    How did they achieve their supremacy? How successful were they in maintaining it? What brought about their collapse and disappearance? This comprehensive history of the Hittite kingdom seeksto answer these questions. It takes account of important recent advances in Hittite scholarship, including some major archaeological discoveries made in the last few years. It also features numerous translations from the original texts, so that on many issues the ancient Hittites are given theopportunity to speak to the modern reader for themselves. The revised edition contains a substantial amount of new material, as well as numerous other revisions to the first edition.

Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age


Robert N. Bellah - 2011
    It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution.How did our early ancestors transcend the quotidian demands of everyday existence to embrace an alternative reality that called into question the very meaning of their daily struggle? Robert Bellah, one of the leading sociologists of our time, identifies a range of cultural capacities, such as communal dancing, storytelling, and theorizing, whose emergence made this religious development possible. Deploying the latest findings in biology, cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology, he traces the expansion of these cultural capacities from the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (roughly, the first millennium BCE), when individuals and groups in the Old World challenged the norms and beliefs of class societies ruled by kings and aristocracies. These religious prophets and renouncers never succeeded in founding their alternative utopias, but they left a heritage of criticism that would not be quenched.Bellah's treatment of the four great civilizations of the Axial Age--in ancient Israel, Greece, China, and India--shows all existing religions, both prophetic and mystic, to be rooted in the evolutionary story he tells. Religion in Human Evolution answers the call for a critical history of religion grounded in the full range of human constraints and possibilities.

No Excuse Leadership: Lessons from the U.S. Army's Elite Rangers


Brace E. Barber - 2004
    Through his own personal story and those of nine other Rangers, Barber illuminates fundamental lessons about what it really takes to win. These first-person accounts of trial and triumph highlight the importance and the inherent truth of the Army's most fundamental leadership principles: seeking and taking responsibility for your actions, and knowing yourself and seeking self-improvement. Adhering to those principles--and putting them at the core of your organization--will push you and your company to do more and do it better.

The True History of Tea


Victor H. Mair - 2009
    Mair teams up with journalist Erling Hoh to tell the story of this remarkable beverage and its uses, from ancient times to the present, from East to West.For the first time in a popular history of tea, the Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, and Mongolian annals have been thoroughly consulted and carefully sifted. The resulting narrative takes the reader from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the splendor of the Tang and Song Dynasties, from the tea ceremony politics of medieval Japan to the fabled tea and horse trade of Central Asia and the arrival of the first European vessels in Far Eastern waters.Through the centuries, tea has inspired artists, enhanced religious experience, played a pivotal role in the emergence of world trade, and triggered cataclysmic events that altered the course of humankind. How did green tea become the national beverage of Morocco? And who was the beautiful Emma Hart, immortalized by George Romney in his painting The Tea-maker of Edgware Road? No other drink has touched the daily lives of so many people in so many different ways.The True History of Tea brings these disparate aspects together in an entertaining tale that combines solid scholarship with an eye for the quirky, offbeat paths that tea has strayed upon during its long voyage. It celebrates the common heritage of a beverage we have all come to love, and plays a crucial part in the work of dismantling that obsolete dictum: East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.

Year of the Hyenas


Brad Geagley - 2005
    It is at once a strikingly insightful portrait of a mysterious, complex, and sophisticated society, reminiscent of Norman Mailer's "Ancient Evenings" in its wonderful detail and feel for the past, and a fast-paced detective story that reads like the best of twenty-first-century thrillers.From the oldest known court transcripts in history, Egyptologists have long known about the mysterious death of Ramses III, involving intrigue, ambition, greed, and crimes of passion on a huge, though hidden, scale. In "Year of the Hyenas," Brad Geagley takes this event -- a struggle that nearly brought ancient Egypt to its knees -- as the backdrop for a story that is every bit as captivating as the distant civilization it resurrects.At the heart of the novel is Semerket, the so-called Clerk of Investigations and Secrets, a detective half-paralyzed by problems of his own, with a reputation for heavy drinking and tactless behavior toward the great, the powerful, and the holy, a kind of Sam Spade of the ancient world, deeply (and dangerously) addicted to the truth. Hard-bitten, deeply flawed, he is retained by the authorities to investigate what is considered an insignificant murder of an elderly, insignificant Theban priestess. They fail to inform him, however, that they don't expect him to solve the case. In fact, they don't want him to.But Semerket is not so easily fooled, and this is hardly an "insignificant" murder. As he delves deeper for the elusive truth, he uncovers a web of corruption so vast that it threatens the life of the last greatPharaoh, Ramses III, and the stability of the kingdom. Even worse, uncovering the conspiracy means more than just putting his own life on the line -- for, unbeknownst to Semerket, his adored ex-wife Naia has fallen afoul of those who would bring down the reign of Ramses, and he soon finds himself having to choose between saving her and saving Egypt....Merging historical fact and speculation with a nail-biting crime story that could be taking place in the present, "Year of the Hyenas" is a riveting and remarkable achievement.

Early Christian Doctrines


J.N.D. Kelly - 1958
    Dr. Kelly organizes an ocean of material by outlining the development of each doctrine in its historical context. He lucidly summarizes the genesis of Chrisitian thought from the close of the apostolic age to the Council of Chalcedon in the fifth century--a time teeming with fresh and competing ideas. The doctrines of the Trinity, the authority of the Bible and tradition, the nature of Christ, salvation, original sin and grace, and the sacraments are all extensively treated in these pages.This revised edition of Early Christian Doctrines includes:Sweepingly updated early chaptersRevised and updated bibliographiesA completely new chapter on Mary and the saints

The Supreme Commander: The War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower


Stephen E. Ambrose - 1970
    Faced with conciliating or disagreeing with such stormy figures as Churchill, Roosevelt, and DeGaulle, and generals like Montgomery and Patton, General Eisenhower showed himself to be as skillful a diplomat as he was a strategist.Stephen E. Ambrose, associate editor of the General's official papers, analyzes his subject's decisions in The Supreme Commander, which Doubleday first published in 1970. Throughout the book Ambrose traces the steady development of Eisenhower's generalcy--from its dramatic beginnings through his time at the top post of Allied command.The New York Times Book Review said of The Supreme Commander, "It is Mr. Ambrose's special triumph that he has been able to fight through the memoranda, the directives, plans, reports, and official self-serving pieties of the World War II establishment to uncover the idiosyncratic people at its center. ... General Dwight Eisenhower comes remarkably alive. ...[Ambrose's] angle of sight is so fresh and lively that one reads as if one did not know what was coming next. It is better than that: One does know what's coming next--not only the winning of a war but the making of a general--but the interest is in seeing how."This study of Eisenhower's role in the world's biggest war is absorbing as reading and invaluable as a reference.Stephen E. Ambrose was Director Emeritus of the Eisenhower Center, Boyd Professor of History at the University of New Orleans, and president of the National D- Day Museum. He was the author of many books, most recently The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisana Purchase to Today. His compilation of 1,400 oral histories from American veterans and authorship of over 20 books established him as one of the foremost historians of the Second World War in Europe. He died October 13, 2002, in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

All the Dark Corners


Emerald O'Brien - 2019
    Not at the one thing she loved most. Not even after the murder of her father. When her mother calls, one cold October night, begging for help, Samantha breaks her rule and returns to the town where her self-destructive coping habits were created in the hopes that she can save her. But when she arrives at her childhood home, she is confronted with the past and people she desperately tried to forget, and the realization that a part of her never really left the town behind. As Founders Day approaches, disturbing events occur, and Samantha is reminded of the insidious nature of the people who reside within. Truth has consequences, and as she wrestles to find a way out of the madness, trying to escape again could cost her life. A standalone installment of the thrilling Crimson Falls novella series Do you dare to read all eight? -Original Sin by Greta Cribbs -The Last Dupont by Rachel Renee -All the Dark Corners by Emerald O'Brien -Flawed Plan by Amabel Daniels -Returned Home by Julie Strier -Sight in the Dark by AM Ialacci -The Stranger in the Woods by Kiersten Modglin -Little Girl Lost by Laurèn Lee

The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time


Preston B. Nichols - 1992
    This book chronicles the most amazing and secretive research project in recorded history. We all know something is out there, we're just not sure exactly what. This book begins to provide some solid clues.

A History of Western Architecture


David Watkin - 1986
    Beginning with the classical origins of Western architecture and coming right up to the new millennium, the book discusses every major milestone in the development of Western architecture in probing detail. Features of the revised edition include expanded chapters on Mesopotamian and Egyptian architecture, made possible by important recent archeological findings; and urban planning sections added throughout the book. The latter will be of special value to the growing numbers of readers who take an active interest in the relationship between a city’s buildings and the community residents who live and work in them.

Pagan Britain


Ronald Hutton - 2013
    In this ambitious and thoroughly up-to-date book, Ronald Hutton reveals the long development, rapid suppression, and enduring cultural significance of paganism, from the Paleolithic Era to the coming of Christianity. He draws on an array of recently discovered evidence and shows how new findings have radically transformed understandings of belief and ritual in Britain before the arrival of organized religion.   Setting forth a chronological narrative, Hutton along the way makes side visits to explore specific locations of ancient pagan activity. He includes the well-known sacred sites—Stonehenge, Avebury, Seahenge, Maiden Castle, Anglesey—as well as more obscure locations across the mainland and coastal islands. In tireless pursuit of the elusive “why” of pagan behavior, Hutton astonishes with the breadth of his understanding of Britain’s deep past and inspires with the originality of his insights.

Genesis of the Grail Kings


Laurence Gardner - 1999
    Here is the story of the clinical cloning of Adam and Eve, which predates Bible scripture by more than 2,000 years.From cuneiform texts, cylinder seals, and suppressed archives, best-selling historian and distinguished genealogist Laurence Gardner tells the ultimate story of the alchemical bloodline of the Holy Grail, including: -Hidden secrets of the Tables of Testimony -Anti-gravitational science of the pyramid pharaohs -A history of God and the lords of eternity -Disclosures of the Phoenix and the Philosophers' Stone -The superconductive powers of monatomic gold -A genetic key to the evolutionary Missing Link -Active longevity and the Star Fire magic of Eden

Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief


John Lamb Lash - 2006
    . . . [His] arguments are often lively and entertaining.--Los Angeles TimesIn Not in His Image John Lamb Lash explains how a little-known messianic sect propelled itself into a dominant world power, systematically wiping out the great Gnostic spiritual teachers, the Druid priests, and the shamanistic healers of Europe and North Africa. Early Christians burned libraries and destroyed temples in an attempt to silence the ancient truth-tellers and keep their own secrets. But as Lash reveals the truth cannot be hidden or destroyed.Not in His Image delves deeply into the shadows of ancient Gnostic writings to reconstruct the story early Christians tried to scrub from the pages of history, exploring the richness of the ancient European Pagan spirituality-the Pagan Mysteries, the Great Goddess, Gnosis, the myths of Sophia and Gaia.Long before the birth of Christianity, monotheism was an anomaly; Europe and the Near East flourished under the divine guidance of Sophia, the ancient goddess of wisdom. The Earth was the embodiment of Sophia and thus sacred to the people who sought fulfillment in her presence. This ancient philosophy was threatening to the emerging salvation-based creed of Christianity that was based on patriarchal dominion over the Earth and lauded personal suffering as a path to the afterlife. As Derrick Jensen points out in the afterword, in Lash's hands Jesus Christ emerges as the agent provocateur of the ruling classes.Sometimes a book changes the world. Not in His Image is such a book. It is clear, stimulating, well-researched, and sure to outrage the experts. . . . Get it. Improve not just your own life, but civilization's chances for survival.--Roger Payne, author of Among Whales

Edgar Cayce on Atlantis


Edgar Evans Cayce - 1968
    Drawing on his readings, and placed within the context of reincarnation, Edgar Cayce offers evidence of the civilisation of Atlantis - showing how its achievements and failures directly relate to the conflict and confusion of today.

Easy Paleo Slow Cooker Meals: Over 25 quick prep, nutrient-rich, grain-free recipes


Arsy Vartanian - 2014
    More than half of the recipes in this book, require 10 minutes or less of prep work. All of the recipes are gluten-free, grain-free and dairy-free. When following a diet that is free of grains, legumes and dairy and full of nutritious whole foods, we can often find ourselves spending all of our spare time cooking. The delectable recipes in this book will nourish you, while saving you time in the kitchen. Recipes Included: Chicken with Sun-Dried Tomato and Artichoke Honey Mustard Chicken Easy Slow Cooker Chicken Verde Slow Cooker Poached Chicken Slow Cooker Curry – Beef Slow Cooker Curry - Chicken Pork Roast with Kraut Easy Slow Cooker BBQ Ribs Easy Slow Cooker Taco Meat Paleo Teriyaki Chicken Easy Slow Cooker Chicken Morengo Lemon Garlic Roast Chicken Maple Glazed Turkey Breast with Cranberries Maple Orange Pork Shoulder Citrus Braised Carnitas Balsamic Braised Short Ribs Chocolate Rubbed Pot Roast Paleo Sloppy Joes Smoky BBQ Beef Brisket Beef and Butternut Squash Stew Slow Cooker Chorizo Mashed Yams Classic Italian Meatballs Barbacoa Indian Chicken Curry Mexican Inspired Chunky Chicken Soup Turkey Chili Slow Cooker Chicken Broth Slow Cooker Beef Broth