Ancient Greece: Everyday Life in the Birthplace of Western Civilization


Robert Garland - 2013
    Robert Garland presents a wealth of fascinating, sometimes surprising information about our spiritual, cultural, and intellectual ancestors during this influential period. Did Greeks share our notion of romantic love? How stable was the family? How did they relax? What did they eat? Why was it more desirable to be a slave than a day laborer? Were they really more cultivated than we are?  Unique and descriptive, the attractive volume include includes images throughout, as well as maps.

America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln


Mark A. Noll - 2002
    Yet, by the nineteenth century, American theology had shifted dramatically away from the severe European traditions directly descended from the Protestant Reformation, of which Puritanism was in the United States the most influential. In its place arose a singularly American set of beliefs. In America's God, Mark Noll has written a biography of this new American ethos.

Species Unknown: A Novel of The Watch


Dan Carlson - 2019
    Bigger, stronger and more cunning than any other predator in the woods, this murderer has only existed in legends and the nightmares of the few to survive an encounter … until now. Dr. Jake Sanders, world-renowned expert on predators and predatory behavior, is on a quest to find the monster that did far worse than wound him. Deputy Julie Reed, a strong, beautiful and lethal enforcer of justice, fearlessly pursues a violent adversary unaware of the twisted path destiny will lay before her. Simon Standing Elk, a recovering alcoholic well on the road to atoning for past sins until a terrifying encounter that now threatens not only his life, but his soul as well. Three different people. Three very different backgrounds. One secret organization. This is the story of events that brought them together and, if they’re not careful, could destroy them all – or worse.

My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson--His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous


Susan Cheever - 2004
    Drawing from personal letters, diaries, AA archives, interviews—and Cheever's own experiences with alcoholism—My Name Is Bill is the first fully documented, deeply felt account of Bill Wilson and Alcoholics Anonymous.

Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes


John Shelby Spong - 1996
    He offers convincing evidence that the Gospels are a collection of Jewish midrashic stories written to convey the significance of Jesus. This remarkable discovery brings us closer to how Jesus was really understood in his day and should be in ours.

The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America


Ruth Rosen - 2000
    Interweaving the personal with the political, she vividly evokes the events and people who participated in our era's most far-reaching social revolution. Rosen's fresh look at the recent past reveals fascinating but little-known information including how the FBI hired hundreds of women to infiltrate the movement. Using extensive archival research and interviews, Rosen challenges readers to understand the impact of the women's movement and to see why the revolution is far from over.

House of Night Series


Hephaestus Books - 2011
    Cast.It is 50 pages of reprinted Wikipedia and other public domain online articles.Hephaestus Books represents a new publishing paradigm, allowing disparate content sources to be curated into cohesive, relevant, and informative books. To date, this content has been curated from Wikipedia articles and images under Creative Commons licensing, although as Hephaestus Books continues to increase in scope and dimension, more licensed and public domain content is being added. We believe books such as this represent a new and exciting lexicon in the sharing of human knowledge. This particular book is a collaboration focused on House of Night series.

Boundary Waters: The Grace of the Wild


Paul Gruchow - 1997
    Gruchow turns a naturalist's eye on a wilderness of wolves, moose, and loons as he visits national parks and other scenic spots. Drawing on the works of Thoreau and Wendell Berry, he explores the relationship of person to place.

The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail


W. Jeffrey Bolster - 2012
    And just as surely, people have shaped the Atlantic. In his innovative account of this interdependency, W. Jeffrey Bolster, a historian and professional seafarer, takes us through a millennium-long environmental history of our impact on one of the largest ecosystems in the world.While overfishing is often thought of as a contemporary problem, Bolster reveals that humans were transforming the sea long before factory trawlers turned fishing from a handliner s art into an industrial enterprise. The western Atlantic s legendary fishing banks, stretching from Cape Cod to Newfoundland, have attracted fishermen for more than five hundred years. Bolster follows the effects of this siren s song from its medieval European origins to the advent of industrialized fishing in American waters at the beginning of the twentieth century.Blending marine biology, ecological insight, and a remarkable cast of characters, from notable explorers to scientists to an army of unknown fishermen, Bolster tells a story that is both ecological and human: the prelude to an environmental disaster. Over generations, harvesters created a quiet catastrophe as the sea could no longer renew itself. Bolster writes in the hope that the intimate relationship humans have long had with the ocean, and the species that live within it, can be restored for future generations.

The New Small House


Katie Hutchison - 2015
    The book presents fundamental small-house design strategies, complete with whole-house case studies for homeowners eager to simplify. Creating a great small house is illustrated in the opening chapter with 10 approaches, including: borrowed view and daylight multipurpose spaces privacy pockets using quality materials Twenty-five stunning small houses are profiled in the second part of the book, organized by the nature of their locations.

Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity


Paula Fredriksen - 1999
    To reconstruct the Jesus who provoked this punishment, Fredriksen takes us into the religious worlds, Jewish and pagan, of Mediterranean antiquity, through the labyrinth of Galilean and Judean politics, and on into the ancient narratives of Paul's letters, the gospels, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Josephus' histories. The result is a profound contribution both to our understanding of the social and religious contexts within which Jesus of Nazareth moved, and to our appreciation of the mission and message that ended in the proclamation of Jesus as Messiah.

A Field Guide to Trees and Shrubs: Northeastern and north-central United States and southeastern and south-central Canada


George A. Petrides - 1972
    Accounts of 646 species include shape and arrangement of leaves, height, color, bark texture, flowering season, and fruit. Clear, accurate drawings illustrate leaves, flowers, buds, tree silhouettes, and other characteristics.

Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light


Jane Brox - 2010
    She convincingly portrays the hell-bent pursuit of whale oil as the first time the human desire for light thrust us toward an environmental tipping point. Only decades later, gas street lights opened up the evening hours to leisure, which changed the ways we live and sleep and the world’s ecosystems.Edison’s “tiny strip of paper that a breath would blow away” produced a light that seemed to its users all but divorced from human effort or cost. And yet, as Brox’s informative and hair-raising portrait of our current grid system shows, the cost is ever with us.Brilliant is infused with human voices, startling insights, and—only a few years before it becomes illegal to sell most incandescent light bulbs in the United States—timely questions about how our future lives will be shaped by light.

Atlas: From the Streets to the Ring: A Son's Struggle to Become a Man


Teddy Atlas - 2006
    In sharing his stories, Atlas reveals the philosophy by which he lives.Like Teddy Atlas -- inimitable, tough, honest, and wise -- this book inspires. It is about so much more than boxing. It is a story of overcoming hardships, of compassion for those in need, of tremendous personal integrity, and of personal and professional triumph.

Book of Peoples of the World: A Guide to Cultures


Wade Davis - 2001
    National Geographic’s Book of Peoples of the World propels that important quest with concern, authority, and respect. Created by a team of experts, this hands-on resource offers thorough coverage of more than 200 ethnic groups—some as obscure as the Kallawaya of the Peruvian Andes, numbering fewer than 1,000; others as widespread as the Bengalis of India, 172 million strong. We’re swept along on a global tour of beliefs, traditions, and challenges, observing the remarkable diversity of human ways as well as the shared experiences. Spectacular photographs reveal how people define themselves and their worlds. Specially commissioned maps show how human beings have developed culture in response to environment. Thought-provoking text examines not only the societies and the regions that produced them, but also the notion of ethnicity itself—its immense impact on history, the effects of immigration on cultural identity, and the threats facing many groups today. Threading through the story are the extraordinary findings of the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project—a research initiative to catalog DNA from people around the world, decoding the great map of human migration embedded in our own genetic makeup.At once a comprehensive reference, an appreciation of diversity, and a thoughtful look at our instinct to belong, this uplifting book explores what it means to be human and alive.