Castle: Medieval Days and Knights (A Sabuda & Reinhart Pop-up Book)

Book Description

Over fifteen intricate pop-ups accompany Sabuda and Reinhart's fascinating text, which guides readers through the different aspects of life in a medieval castle. Readers will learn about knighting ceremonies, battles, and feasts. The true majesty of castles is fully realized when this book is opened to reveal a stunning 3-dimensional medieval world.

Customer Reviews:

What a wonderful book it is!!!!!!.......2007-10-04

My boy is 6 and he's so interested of castles and knights.
and this pop up book is so amazing book for kids.
My kid had a shouting whenever i read the next page
i recommand this book for boy agess 6 to 12.

Another intricate and exciting adventure.......2007-10-03

My son received this book for his 4th birthday and has been enjoying it at different levels over the past year. At first, he loved looking for the knights, admiring the intricate pop-ups, and listening to parts of the text about knights and their castles.

Now that he is 5, he is enjoying the book at a different level, spending longer moments discovering the surprises each page has to offer, and listening to the text with a greater attention to detail.

Of course, many of our grown-up guests enjoy looking at all of our Sabuda and Reinhart books as well. They are great fun and a true wonder!

Castle: Medieval Days and Knights.......2007-08-16

I am simply amazed that you can buy a high quality Sabuda pop-up book for such a reasonable price. These books are too nice for children who simply cannot appreciate the work that must have gone into creating them. Each one is a piece of art -- I just love them. I am convinced that eventually they will be too expensive to produce.

Buy 2, Use 1.......2007-07-14

Fascinating Pop-up book will spark the imagination of children and adults alike. Fun facts provide a glimpse into Medieval lives and are never dry. Kyle Olman came to our school and gave our 5th graders a demonstration on creating their own pop up knight, and happens to be an extremely kind and patient teacher as well as an incredible new author/artist!

Wonderful pop-up book!.......2007-07-11

Although this is clearly a book for older children and my son is only 16 months old, he already LOVES this book! (although secretly, I think my husband possibly enjoys it even more!) We've had it for 2 months now, and he still oohs and aahs as each page is turned (the boy, not the man!). His favorite is the interactive page in the middle where pulling on the arrowed tabs bring "life" to all of the medieval workers doing their jobs. We keep the book on a high shelf out of his reach, to keep him from damaging it accidentally. He eagerly requests to see it several times a week. It's interesting to me how he's never treated the Sabuda & Reinhart pop-up books (we have 3 - "Sharks" and "Dinosaurs" are just as amazing, although very different, from this one) in the same rough manner as he does with his other "toddler" books. Somehow, he knew these books are not the same. Even at his young age, he knows he has to let Mommy or Daddy help him with the delicate pages, and he gets SO excited with all of the amazing "action"! Excellent! Wonderful gift for any child.

History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)

Average customer rating:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers
Pants on fire?
Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed.
Very Interesting
History as Science Fiction

History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Anatoly Fomenko
Manufacturer: Mithec
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Chinese | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Irish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Japanese | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Women | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Doctors & Medicine | Humor | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

Lawyers & Criminals | Humor | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

Love, Sex & Marriage | Humor | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

Assyria, Babylonia & Sumer | Ancient | History | Subjects | Books

Early Civilization | Ancient | History | Subjects | Books

General | Ancient | History | Subjects | Books

Historiography | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

French | Erotica | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Victorian | Erotica | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Epic | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

German | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Russian | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Spanish | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Chinese | Classics | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Conspiracy Theories | Current Events | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

War on Drugs | Crime & Criminals | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

English (All) | Dictionaries & Thesauruses | Reference | Subjects | Books

Science | Dictionaries & Thesauruses | Reference | Subjects | Books

Online Research | Genealogy | Reference | Subjects | Books

Native American | Earth-Based Religions | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books

General | History & Philosophy | Science | Subjects | Books

History of Science | History & Philosophy | Science | Subjects | Books

Magic & Wizards | Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

Sailor Moon | Popular Characters | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Pilates | Exercise & Fitness | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

History | Fashion | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 2913621058

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

Average customer rating:

Brief and Engaging
morality
The Optimistic Jew
Outstanding and prophetic
Ostensibly about education -- in reality, about life

The Abolition of Man
C. S. Lewis
Manufacturer: HarperOne
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Education | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Ethics & Morality | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0060652942
Release Date: 2001-03-20

Amazon.com

C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man purports to be a book specifically about public education, but its central concerns are broadly political, religious, and philosophical. In the best of the book's three essays, "Men Without Chests," Lewis trains his laser-sharp wit on a mid- century English high school text, considering the ramifications of teaching British students to believe in idle relativism, and to reject "the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kinds of things we are." Lewis calls this doctrine the "Tao," and he spends much of the book explaining why society needs a sense of objective values. The Abolition of Man speaks with astonishing freshness to contemporary debates about morality; and even if Lewis seems a bit too cranky and privileged for his arguments to be swallowed whole, at least his articulation of values seems less ego-driven, and therefore is more useful, than that of current writers such as Bill Bennett and James Dobson. --Michael Joseph Gross

Book Description

C. S. Lewis sets out to persuade his audience of the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honor in contemporary society.

Customer Reviews:

Brief and Engaging.......2007-09-19

In this brief book, C.S. Lewis discusses the failing of relativism and affirms the existence of objective moral values. This system of objective values, which Lewis calls the Tao, must be granted if there are to be any values whatsoever. In a long appendix at the end of the book, Lewis shows that all (or almost all) cultures, both past and present, have affirmed some basic moral principles that are part of the Tao. Against the relativist claim that all socieities have their own moral codes, Lewis demonstrates that all humans are guided by an underlying system of objective values which they may or may not recognize.

In the third and final chapter, Lewis foresees a day when men have complete control over the destinies of the next generation. Should men achieve an take advantage of such power, it would not mean that man had finally dominated nature. Rather, it would mean the abolition of man. Unguided by the Tao, man's decisions about what future generations should be like would by guided only by natural impulses. Thus, by destroying the Tao and attempting to dominate nature, man can only succeed in destroying himself.

Like always, Lewis writes with great clarity and intelligence. "The Abolition of Man" is an enjoyable read and certainly worth checking out.

morality.......2007-09-15

I did not particularly like this book because it was a very hard reading. The moral lessons it teaches though are lessons that we cannot avoid. Yes, there is morality, but it would be almost impossible for a teacher to teach these lessons these days. Too many lawyers around.

The Optimistic Jew.......2007-08-31

"The Abolition of Man" rejects moral relativism and affirms "the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kinds of things we are." This very tiny book makes cogent, witty and eloquent arguments against a nihilistic view of the world that has become the foundation of postmodernist deconstructionism. To proponents of this intellectual pose he says: "...you cannot go on `explaining away' forever...You cannot go on `seeing through' things forever...To `see through' all things is the same as not to see." This book reinforced my basic instinct that the pessimistic nihilism of postmodernism (as well as Jewish post-Zionism) are wrong at some very fundamental level. It's theme was one of the forces driving me to write my own book "The Optimistic Jew: a Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century".

Outstanding and prophetic.......2007-08-16

Lewis does an outstanding job exposing the current school of thought and its destined direction. Unfortunately, we have not heeded his warning and are already headed at full speed in the exact path he exposed. In my opinion, this is Lewis's best non fictional work.

Ostensibly about education -- in reality, about life.......2007-06-13

While a short book (my copy has only 121 pages) this book is about teaching and learning and how we pas our culture from generation to generation. But the reality of the book is that education is used as a foil for talking about how and why we transmit culture from one generation to the next. Because ultimately, that's what education is about, and why it's so important: because in educating children, we are telling them and ourselves about what is important, and why. A fine book, deceptively easy to read, but taking a long time to digest and reason through.

A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present

Average customer rating:

The irony
A question?
A landmark...
This book demands & rewards patience & receptivity to others
music from under the floorboards

A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Modern | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Emigration & Immigration | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Literature & Fiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0674177649

Book Description

Are the "culture wars" over? When did they begin? What is their relationship to gender struggle and the dynamics of class? In her first full treatment of postcolonial studies, a field that she helped define, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, one of the world's foremost literary theorists, poses these questions from within the postcolonial enclave.

"We cannot merely continue to act out the part of Caliban," Spivak writes; and her book is an attempt to understand and describe a more responsible role for the postcolonial critic. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason tracks the figure of the "native informant" through various cultural practices--philosophy, history, literature--to suggest that it emerges as the metropolitan hybrid. The book addresses feminists, philosophers, critics, and interventionist intellectuals, as they unite and divide. It ranges from Kant's analytic of the sublime to child labor in Bangladesh. Throughout, the notion of a Third World interloper as the pure victim of a colonialist oppressor emerges as sharply suspect: the mud we sling at certain seemingly overbearing ancestors such as Marx and Kant may be the very ground we stand on.

A major critical work, Spivak's book redefines and repositions the postcolonial critic, leading her through transnational cultural studies into considerations of globality.

Customer Reviews:

The irony.......2007-06-26

I must admit, I did not read the entire book. But it is not because I didn't try.

Spivak is a close associate of Judith Butler, and this text demonstrates the connect -- no person lacking a very specific culural and feminist education can read it.

This is the irony of such texts. Spivak cleary seeks to empower women and individuals of color oppressed by Western hegemony -- ttself a jargon phrase-- yet no one she seeks to liberate could remotely understand her text. Nor could many scholars like myself, who seek to learn from her infinite wisdom.

At some point, I would hope that scholars like Spivak would take a page from the Lawrence Grossbergs of the world and begin to write in more accessible language

To do so is not anti-intelectual -- it is indeed an attempt to ADVANCE scholarship.

A question?.......2006-08-26

how now? a book written about the marginal, the "strung-out", decentered, in a stile one needs a very very expensive education to comprehend? on what side of the pasture are you on?

isnt the appropriation of time one of the nastiest things the elect have done to us? how much time does one have, can have, if one isn't "allowed" to sit in her classes, to have her hand on one's papers, when one has to work, to commute to work, to spend eight hours or more there six days a week?

how does a radical expect the inert to energize when the centrifuge of "modern academia" has separated all the key components of "interaction"?

i want answers.

A landmark..........2006-04-10

As you can already tell by the comments, there is a "clash of cultures" in the academy. It's between:

* People who think philosophy's job is to expand ideas and challenge, versus those who think it should make the present seem more comfortable and make you nod your head in recognition.

* Those who think that gender is relatively unimportant and that work stands for itself; versus those who believe that "to introduce the question of woman changes everything".

* Those who believe that the canon of Western philosophy is adequate to describe the world, and those who believe it has never described the world because it never took the time to understand those that never lived in "the west"

* Those who believe the work of the intellectual should be to outline a philosophy of life to be taken up by others, versus those who believe that it is sometimes "more productive to sabotage what is inexorably to hand than to outline a novel concept that will never seriously be tested".

You get the idea. If you are in the first category of these tensions then there's no point you reading this book. It will confirm all your prejudices.

If the second half of the statements above sounds more like you, then you probably already know this book. But in case you "haven't quite got to it yet", as I hadn't for a while, I can say that this is a book that will reward many detailed readings. It's breadth and depth is breathtaking in an era where the very real problems of generalisation raised by gender/race/colonial analysis have caused many to back away from theorising world systems. As Spivak carefully shows, these systems ("the financialsiation of the globe" - who among the critics could elaborate with such detail on the distinctive impact of informational capital on the rural?) are very much in operation and urgently need to be thought - but never at the expense of forgetting those whose labour is appropriated by those systems. For all the dense theoretical language in the text, Spivak is obviously in a discussion with, for example, the indigenous activist, unlike many of her critics, who complain about her language yet never demonstrate their engagement with e.g. the rural poor.

Let's talk about the language. Yes, it's intimidating. It's philosophy! She's a professional philosopher, that's her job! If you're going to understand the insights of a physicist you'd have to prepare yourself by doing a lot of reading (and experimenting). If you were going to understand a physicist who was pushing the boundaries of the discipline you are probably going to have to be a physicist yourself or be very, very, very interested in the field. As it should be - if I understood what physicists were really doing I'd be worried, given that they study for so long and get all that research money for labs when maybe I could do this in my garage. Despite 15 years of reading social theory (not all the time - I'm not an academic at the moment) I struggled heavily through the first chapter of this book on Kant and Hegel (I know some Hegel, only a little Kant). I'd read two pages and think "I'm not sure I get that, but I'll read it again tomorrow and move on to the next bit anyway." If you're a feminist philosopher I'm sure you'd be going much easier. But the point is, I didn't take it as a reason not to read it - it was a challenge for me to expand my understanding about stuff I thought I knew (e.g., Marx), that she has obviously thought a lot more about than me.

When it got to some things I do know something about (e.g. colonial rhetoric, technology and development), her insights were both revelatory and in accord with my experience at the same time. Anyone with a philosophical bent who has experience in the development field will be troubled by the very convincing case Spivak makes in chapter 4 for development as an instantiation of imperialism. As someone who reads the relevant journals from time to time I have yet to hear anyone with expertise in philosophy and cultural studies outline why Spivak doesn't know what she is talking about, as the Terry Eagleton fan suggets. She does all too well, in a way that intimidates those who made a living pretending they had the answers.

Spivak obviously knows that she's good and the suffer-no-fools tone - some have described it as elitist - might be irritiating for some. I prefer to see it as a persistent frustration with the limitations of language, and an attempt to convey that to the reader. This is not "bad writing". It is very carefully crafted (there are some fantastic, pithy sentences at times) to destabilise the assumptions she knows readers are going to make about the work. If you want to read someone who'll make it all easy, try Andrew Ross (one of my favourite authors, but completely different methodology as befits an American Studies prof).

If you've never read Spivak and aren't completely at home in philosophy and theory, this might not be the place to start. Maybe begin with Landry & Maclean's Spivak Reader and any of her interviews (there's a great one from the journal Signs which is available online). Outside in the Teaching Machinemight be easier after that. But if you are looking for big, challenging ideas that will shift your world-view, this will do it.

As you can tell, I love this book. I think it's a landmark work from someone who is trying to think the world with knowledge and experience of places that previously well-known "world thinkers" never had. It attempts to bring an incredible range of examples and texts into productive conversation. It kind of depresses me because I know I could never write it, yet even by reading it I am no longer as comfortable in subconscious generalisations that Euro-US culture relies on, and that this distances me from some ideas and people. But it has also sharpened my sense of what is important, of where I can make a difference, of what writing can do inside and outside of the academy. It's a great gift if you're prepared to receive it.

This book demands & rewards patience & receptivity to others.......2005-06-08

The indignant and arrogant demands for ease of understanding expressed by so many reviewers here exemplify the passive, anti-intellectual customer service-based epistemology that Spivak educates us against and that drives todays globalizing and enslaving culture. Her book is profound and urgent.

music from under the floorboards.......2002-01-27

Spivak works in the interstices to tease out what has been left out in ideas, in cultures, in histories, in language.
Many people apparently are maddened by her methods because there is no easy "method" to be extracted from her work. Her style is an antithesis to traditional "methods". The only real tool a theorist or critic has is intelligence and that quality is not easily described and perhaps not directly transmittable, especially when the kind of intelligence in question has no precedent and must thus inscribe itself into the language for the first time.

Average customer rating:

Appalled
Recommended to all!
Good Reference Material
The Excellence of Leeming
Very Readable

The World of Myth: An Anthology

Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Fairy Tales | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Folklore & Mythology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

History | Religious Studies | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Literature & Fiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Religion & Spirituality | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0195074750

Book Description

Hercules, Zeus, Thor, Gilgamesh--these are the figures that leap to mind when we think of myth. But to David Leeming, myths are more than stories of deities and fantastic beings from non-Christian cultures. Myth is at once the most particular and the most universal feature of civilization, representing common concerns that each society voices in its own idiom. Whether an Egyptian story of creation or the big-bang theory of modern physics, myth is metaphor, mirroring our deepest sense of ourselves in relation to existence itself. Now, in The World of Myth, Leeming provides a sweeping anthology of myths, ranging from ancient Egypt and Greece to the Polynesian islands and modern science. We read stories of great floods from the ancient Babylonians, Hebrews, Chinese, and Mayans; tales of apocalypse from India, the Norse, Christianity, and modern science; myths of the mother goddess from Native American Hopi culture and James Lovelock's Gaia. Leeming has culled myths from Aztec, Greek, African, Australian Aboriginal, Japanese, Moslem, Hittite, Celtic, Chinese, and Persian cultures, offering one of the most wide-ranging collections of what he calls the collective dreams of humanity. More important, he has organized these myths according to a number of themes, comparing and contrasting how various societies have addressed similar concerns, or have told similar stories. In the section on dying gods, for example, both Odin and Jesus sacrifice themselves to renew the world, each dying on a tree. Such traditions, he proposes, may have their roots in societies of the distant past, which would ritually sacrifice their kings to renew the tribe. In The World of Myth, David Leeming takes us on a journey "not through a maze of falsehood but through a marvellous world of metaphor," metaphor for "the story of the relationship between the known and the unknown, both around us and within us." Fantastic, tragic, bizarre, sometimes funny, the myths he presents speak of the most fundamental human experience, a part of what Joseph Campbell called "the wonderful song of the soul's high adventure."

Customer Reviews:

Appalled.......2007-07-02

Having reviewed this apparently popular textbook for a course on comparative mythology I am teaching, I can hardly believe that any university would permit its use, let alone that Oxford University Press would consent to publish it.

Leeming, based on his collected works, is a single-minded polemicist for universalism, goddess theology, and Jungian interpretation. All of his introductions present this interpretation as fact, and all the books in his recommended bibliography support it or can be distorted in order to do so. No dissenting voices are given so much as a footnote.

Worse, however, is Leeming's undiscriminating use of sources for the versions of myths he anthologizes. His main sources for Greek myth are the literary but highly unreliable Robert Graves (who retold myths in order to advance the thesis of his own _The White Goddess_) and Ovid, who despite his excellence as a poet can hardly be presented as an accurate mirror of Greek attitudes. Leeming also quotes an entirely erroneous passage on Mithras from _The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets_, a neopagan polemic written by Barbara Walker, whose only qualifactions are memberships in several mineralogical societies, and _Lost Goddesses of Ancient Greece_, from which he draws a version of the Pandora story reinvented, entirely out of the author's imagination, as a goddess myth.

It is difficult enough teaching modern students to appreciate the difference between primary and secondary sources without this muddying of the waters. Avoid at all costs.

Recommended to all!.......2007-05-13

Thanks for the great service. I receieved my text book super quick and the communication was top notch. So I recommend this seller to everyone who needs text books for college.

Good Reference Material.......2007-03-10

I purchased this book for a college class - not only was it more economical to purchase from Amazon, but delivery was much quicker. This book is great as reference material, very easy to follow with a good layout. Index is actually useful to find specific mythological references through out the book. For the person who is just looking for some brief overview's of creation, flood, and god myths it is a good addition to the bookshelf.

The Excellence of Leeming.......2006-08-30

Leeming is perhaps the premiere authority on comparative mythology today. He is the author and/or editor of numerous titles on the subject. The quality and depth of coverage of "The World of Myth: An Anthology" is no exception to his legacy of excellence. The book is loaded with bibliographies of the finest works ever written on the subject of mythology and religion. It is ideal as a foundation to mythology for anyone who wishes to take a personal journey through history, literature and religion.

Very Readable.......2002-06-16

Like other reviewers, I would have not given this book a second thought were it not one of my textbooks for English 102. I was pleasantly surprised! It is a very enjoyable introduction to viewing myths from the Jungian perspective. There are stories from all over the world, including the Bible, the Torah, and the Koran. While I am suspicious of a couple of the sources that Leeming uses, most are wonderful, from scholars like Joseph Campbell and Samuel Noah Kramer. I appreciate the most that there are actual translations of important myths like those of Inanna and Pan instead of paraphrasing or summaries: hearing them in their original lyrical form makes a BIG difference! There are few books that I will not sell back at the end of the semester: this is one that I hung on to!

The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art

Average customer rating:

Outstanding anthropological essays

The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art
James Clifford
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0674698436

Book Description

The Predicament of Culture is a critical ethnography of the West in its changing relations with other societies. Analyzing cultural practices such as anthropology, travel writing, collecting, and museum displays of tribal art, Clifford shows authoritative accounts of other ways of life to be contingent fictions, now actively contested in postcolonial contexts. His critique raises questions of global significance: Who has the authority to speak for any group's identity and authenticity? What are the essential elements and boundaries of a culture? How do self and "the other" clash in the encounters of ethnography, travel, and modern interethnic relations? In discussions of ethnography, surrealism, museums, and emergent tribal arts, Clifford probes the late-twentieth century predicament of living simultaneously within, between, and after culture.

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding anthropological essays.......2000-06-20

James Clifford's book considers how anthropology can exist in these postmodern times. Considering such phenomena as a museum exhibit which displays "primitive artefacts" next to contemporaneous "modern art pieces," Clifford discusses the way "Western" culture privileges its own culture at the expense of other cultures, clearly showing the ways assumptions of the definition of culture defines this privilege. Clifford's essay on the Mashpees on Cape Cod offers a striking example of directions in which anthropology can move to redesign its own project without privileging itself. A well-written, erudite text. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the workings of contemporary society.

Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925

Average customer rating:

Tendentious, but readable and informative
Classic History

Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925
John Higham
Manufacturer: Rutgers University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0813531233

Customer Reviews:

Tendentious, but readable and informative.......2004-07-08

Higham's basic story is of the ups and downs of nativism as a whole, and of the various elements comprising it: anti-radicalism, anti-Catholicism, anti-coolieism, and Anglo-Saxonism. Though he does all he can to show nativists in a bad light and foreigners in a good light, the very facts he presents tell a different story. He identifies three main pro-immigrant forces: cosmopolitan ideologues and sentimentalists, business interests greedy for cheap labor, and foreign ethnic lobbies. Most telling is the fact that, by 1925, immigrants themselves were the only remaining opponents of immigration restriction, which only goes to show that they believed their real compatriots to be the ones back in the Old Country, not here in the new.

Classic History.......2000-12-19

Higham's work stands as the seminal work in the history of American nativism. The work is a careful, well-documented study of nationalism and ethnic prejudice, and chronicles the power and violence of these two ideas in American society from 1860 to 1925. He significantly moves beyond previous treatments of nativism, both in chronology and in interpretive sophistication. Higham defines nativism as a defensive type of nationalism or an intense opposition to an internal minority on the grounds of the group's foreign connections. By defining nativism as a set of attitudes or a state of mind, he sets the course for his book as tracing "trace an emotionally charged impulse" rather than "an actual social process or condition." As he argues that the ideological content of nativism remained consistent, he uses emotional intensity as a measure to trace in detail public opinion from the relative calm following the Civil War to the Johnson-Reed act of 1924 that severely limited European immigration.

Strangers in the Land is, then, a history of public opinion, whose purpose is to show how nativism evolved in society and in action. Higham seeks to explain what could inflame xenophobia and who resisted it. He saw his work as part of a renewed interest in the study of nationalism following the national upheavals in the wake of the McCarthy hearings. Surely Higham's mentor at the University of Wisconsin, intellectual historian Merle Curti, influenced Higham's approach in seeking to examine the power of nationalism as an idea. Also influential was the intellectual climate of the 1950s with its of distrust of ideology and distain of prejudice. Higham admits being repelled by the nationalist delusions of the Cold War, again helping to explain why his study concentrates on seeking some explanation for the irrational and violent outbreaks. The book thus focuses on points of conflict, "antagonisms that belong within ideologies of passionate national consciousness." For example, Higham's explains the 100 percent American movement in terms of progressive ideals and the desire of Americans to shape immigrants into a particular ideal of "Americanness" through education and assimilation. This intellectual construct eventually gave way to the racial thinking to which Higham assigns much influence in the efforts to restrict immigration. Ideology is also central to his chapter on the history of the idea of racism in which he argues that Anglo-Saxon nationalism, literary naturalism and a nascent understanding of genetics combined to bring forth arguments for immigration restriction to preserve the racial purity of the American people. Thus, key for Higham's argument is the power of ideas in shaping individual behavior and thereby shaping history.

Amazon.com

This classic of modern feminism is an ambitious attempt to trace certain present-day values back to cultural shifts of the 19th century. Historian Ann Douglas entwines the fate of American women, most notably those of the white middle class, with that of clergy marginalized by the rise in religious denominations and consequent dilution of their power base. No longer invited to wield influence in vital (some might say traditionally masculine) political and economic arenas, clergy were pushed toward more feminine spheres and rules of expression. Likewise, as growing numbers of middle-class white women lost their place as the indispensable center of household production, and many lower-class women became easily replaced industrial cogs, a none-too-subtle shift in perceptions about women's strengths and abilities occurred. Women lost voting rights and other legal privileges; barred from healing and midwifery, they were also less likely to appear in other increasingly male professions. Academies for wealthier girls imparted skills deemed to entice and soothe men without taxing supposedly tiny feminine brains; when Emma Willard offered geometry lessons to girls in the 1820s, one opponent harrumphed: "They'll be educating cows next." Douglas chronicles the rise of an overwhelmingly sentimental "feminization" of mass culture--in which writers of both sexes underscored popular convictions about women's weaknesses, desires, and proper place in the world--with erudite and well-argued scholarship. --Francesca Coltrera

Book Description

This modern classic by one of our leading scholars seeks to explain the values prevalent in today's mass culture by tracing them back to their roots in the Victorian era. As religion lost its hold on the public mind, clergymen and educated women, powerless and insignificant in the society of the time, together exerted a profound effect on the only areas open to their influence: the arts and literature. Women wrote books that idealized the very qualities that kept them powerless: timidity, piety, and a disdain for competition. Sentimental values that permeated popular literature continue to influence modern culture, preoccupied as it is with glamour, banal melodrama, and mindless consumption.

This new paperback edition, with a new Preface, will reach yet more readers with its persuasive and provocative theory. Richard Bernstein of The New York Times said: "Her remarkable scholarship is going to set the standard for a long time to come."

Customer Reviews:

Feminization made consumers of us all.......2005-12-28

This is a splendid book-Douglas shows how the loss of Christian faith, combined with the rise of industrialism, gave ministers and women (with too much time on their hands) common cause in seeking to "influence" culture. Thus was born the age of advertising and modern consumerism.

American consumerism couldn't have happened without the feminization of America that she describes. "Get it now", "You deserve it!", "Picture yourself in our _____________, enjoying your ____________..." This art was developed by women and preachers who had no power other than persuasion. If you doubt it, read this book and you'll come away convinced, in my opinion.

The first half of the book describes clerical disestablishment and feminine disestablishment (e.g., loss of power) as the main developments in her thesis. Both ministers and mothers had great power in America until the early 1800's; the loss of theology caused clerics to become ornaments--the rise of "jobs" for the men meant that their women didn't really contribute as full partners, as they had on the homestead. So both women and preachers started writing, using the pen to influence the culture. Douglas is at her best here--the last 1/3 of the book gets somewhat esoteric and didn't really contribute that much to my understanding of her thesis.

Somewhat "intellectual", but yet a very strong work. Definitely worth reading.

Tiresome, Uninformative.......2005-09-05

Bought this book as a spinoff to a seminar hoping for some insight into a complex subject. The common cause made between ineffectual clergy of the late 18th century and American women was interesting, but then the author lost herself (and her theme) in her exhausting review of obscure, forgettable literature. The phrase "deadly dull" comes to mind.

The book is more notable for what it does not address than for what it does.

masterly.......2003-04-30

One can only imagine the work that has gone into this staggering piece of intellectual history - whose axis is the unforeseeable and fateful rise of the female public in American intellectual life, and contemporaneously the collapse of the old, muscular style of Protestant religiosity and intellect - from the kind and number of sources the author uses. She has apparently trawled through reams and piles of obscure newspapers and magazines, familiarized herself with writing most of us would be glad to avoid, learned to distinguish the various strands of an intellectual and publishing life which is, to modern America, as alien as imperial China or early Sumer. The result is tremendous: not only a resurrection of a past age that does it honour and justice (if anything, one seems to perceive, in this female scholar, a certain sympathy - even nostalgia - for the utra-male, activist, iron-faced world of the old Puritan thinkers, post-Jonathan Edwards and his likes), but a flood of light on the origins of our (not exclusively American) world and society. This simply cannot be praised too much; future historians will not be able to prescind from it.

Not a feminist polemic, nor "cultural criticism".......2000-12-20

This is foremost a history, and has a focus rather more restricted than its title would suggest, surveying the careers and lives of thirty women and thirty (male) ministers involved in the "feminization" of northeastern Victorian America. The author convinced me in arguing for the significance of said feminization, but I felt burdened by all the biographical minutiae. One has to ignore reams of trivia to grasp the larger themes hinted at in the titles of the chapters (e.g., "The Escape From History," "The Domestication of Death). Where the author breaks the tedium with an impassioned commentary, she seems to be writing a different book altogether. But Douglas's treatment of the theme is original and even-handed, and her short biography of Margaret Fuller compensates for the tiresome church histories.

Average customer rating:

Very interesting and joyful
Get your kids involved!
Gorgeous full-color large photos
I love this book!
What's missing?

Children Just Like Me: Celebrations!
Anabel Kindersley , and Barnabas Kindersley
Manufacturer: DK CHILDREN
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Customs & Traditions | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0789420279

Amazon.com

Dorling Kindersley Publishers never fail to create beautiful, engaging children's books, packed with fascinating information. In Celebrations, photographer Barnabas Kindersley teams up with writer Anabel Kindersley and UNICEF to create a fascinating journey exploring the cultural traditions of children all over the world. Harry Belefonte notes in his introduction, "Here is your opportunity to travel by book to nearly every corner of the globe ... [and] join children everywhere in celebrating important events in their lives." In addition to photographs of traditional costumes and customs, each child from the wide range of countries represented gives a first-person account of how holidays are celebrated. Children will enjoy learning about how kids like just like them have fun, and in the process will broaden their cultural horizons. (Ages 8 to 12)

Customer Reviews:

Very interesting and joyful.......2005-04-27

This is a very interesting book, with wonderful pictures and lots of joy. It's a book that makes you happy. Many of the celebrations were unknown to me, and it was fun to see that the Swedish celebration of St. Lucia is described correctly in the book (I'm Swedish).
The only doubtful thing about this book is that the mix of different religions isn't very good. Most celebrations are Christian or Hindu - only one is Muslim and none is purely Buddhist. That's a bit of a pity. Anyway, great book.

Get your kids involved!.......2004-11-06

A visually-rich companion peice to this wonderful kid-friendly introduction to world politics and cultures is "For a Better World: Posters from the United Nations" by Edward Marks. More than half the posters feature the worlds' children and the plights they face, each in an artistic creation that inspires hope. What better way to educate children that "no human is an island"?

Gorgeous full-color large photos.......2004-01-15

I love this book and I use it all the time to teach children about other faiths and cultures. The beautiful, realistic photos make it great for sharing. When I am not using it, it makes a nice coffee table book. My only criticism is that it always makes me want to research more (not a lot of text, but the photos and illustrations make it worth having).

I love this book!.......2003-09-03

The photos are vivid and the stories are interesting. This is a great book to introduce children to some festivals and celebrations around the world.

What's missing?.......2002-07-25

I returned my copy. A book that aims to celebrate diversity should not be a vehicle for a political agenda. The two Jewish holidays covered in the book (Channukah and Purim) are described as holidays celebrated in the US and England, respectively. Israel, the Jewish state, is not mentioned anywhere is the book. Denial of its existence is a political statement that has no place in a book such as this.

Average customer rating:

Outdated But Has Merit
The Definitive Edition of the Greek Myths
Procrustes and Rorschach's Myths
This is no guide to Greek Myth!
Very Important Resource in English on Greek Myths

The Greek Myths: Complete Edition
Robert Graves
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Fairy Tales | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Folklore & Mythology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0140171991

Book Description

Endymion, Pelops, Daedalus, Pygmalion -- we recognize the names, but what are the stories behind these and other familiar gods from the Greek pantheon -- names that recur throughout the history of European culture?

Drawing on an enormous range of sources, Robert Graves has brought together elements of these myths in simple narrative form. He retells the adventures of the most important gods and heroes of the ancient Greeks. His work has become the reference for the serious scholar as well as the casual inquirer.

Customer Reviews:

Outdated But Has Merit.......2007-03-04

This book was a revolutionary work in it's time. It examined the Goddess religion and pre-Greek beliefs in an objective and interesting way. The fundamental problem with it is that Graves was not an anthropologist. He links practically every Greek myth with Pelasgian/Minoan king sacrifice rituals. This is really irksome in that while the Pelasgian/Minoan model was neglected by chauvinist academics for years and years (and still is), he makes some statements about pre-Greek Aegean culture which is pure conjecture and presents them as fact. Also, he states that Orphism came about because of Egyptian refugees fleeing from the Amonist backlash against Ahkenaton. Never mind that the dating does not work and he presents absolutely no material proof for this. He does this type of thing through the whole work. The bottom line is that sometimes he is dead on the money and other times he could be talking about "Star Wars!" The basic problem is that Graves approached the subject inductively, rather than deductively. So, one MUST read this book with a critical mind.

The Definitive Edition of the Greek Myths.......2007-02-17

Robert Graves is known for his eccentricities and eclectic readings of the classic Greek myths. But this is the definitive edition because it gives the literary sources, from Homer to Pausanias and many others. I also own the Folio Society's slipcased, handsomely illustrated edition of the same work. For reasons that I cannot even guess at, its editors decided to omit the sources, an omission that I believe destroys its value. The only problem with the paperback edition is that it wears out sooner rather than later, but the price is such that replacing it is affordable.

Procrustes and Rorschach's Myths.......2005-10-18

Procrustes was a gentleman who made travel upon the byways of ancient Greece interestingly hazardous. He had an iron bed onto which he placed any traveler who fell into his hands. If the traveler was too long for the bed, jolly old Procrustes lopped off the excess. It the traveler was too short, Procrustes stretched him to fit. One day Theseus appeared before Procrustes' door and allowed the old bandit the opportunity to measure himself on his bed.

Robert Graves wrote with the intention of expounding and explaining Greek myths. Unstated but implicit in this intention were two ideas: that there is a more or less self-consistent thing called the Greek myths and that they have a more or less consistent meaning. Neither of these things is necessarily true.

The influence of Thomas Bullfinch is so all-pervasive that we are almost blind to it. He provided the English-speaking world with a convenient handbook of myths that made it appear that the Greek (and derivative Roman) world had a central core of beliefs as definable as the Bible, the Qur'an or, for that matter, the Book of Mormon. Admittedly, Graves offers some variant versions, but then, so does Genesis. Years later, Edith Hamilton, with more scholarship and a lot less charm, re-emphasized the lesson.

Was it Bullfinch's intention to assemble a handbook of Greek myths? Not really. In his preface, he makes his intention clear. He was a teacher whose students were unable to understand allusions made by great poets of the English language, Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth and their ilk. His handbook is not of Greek myths but of English poetical allusions to Greek myths.

In Bullfinch's time and for many generations before, classical learning consisted of a great deal of Latin and a few snatches of Greek, as demonstrated by the fact that Pope's great translation of Homer has Jupiter, Minerva and Neptune rather than Zeus, Athena and Poseidon. It followed, then, that the two primary sources of mythology for those boasting classical education were Ovid's Metamorphoses and Virgil's Aeneid, both of which were entirely artificial constructs assembled during the time of Augustus Caesar. By and large, that's where the poets found their allusions and, by and large, that's what Bullfinch gave us.

Even in Bullfinch's time, the amount of mythological material from ancient Greece was greater in scope, even though it was only a tiny fraction of what once had existed. That material had a characteristic that Bullfinch suppressed: it was wildly inconsistent and self-contradictory to the point of anarchy. What two sources could be more authoritative than the poets of the earliest dawn of classical culture, Hesiod and Homer? Hesiod unequivocally states that when the children of the Titan Cronus were born, he swallowed up all but the youngest of them, Zeus. Homer, with equal authority, says that the eldest of the children of Cronus was Zeus, and that it is because he is the eldest that he is king of the gods. Then there is Pausanias. He was a born tourist who traveled up and down the Greek speaking lands, putting in at every tourist trap that he could find while writing a popular guidebook. He was perfectly happy to accept that this hero or that as buried here, there, in another place or in as many places as you want. Sightings of the gods and the rituals associated with them were even more varied. Sometimes he heard a local story that is familiar to us from Homer, but almost invariably the local story is grimmer and bloodier than Homer's version. Clearly, Homer edited out the less respectable bits in exactly the same way that Disney edited the Brothers Grimm.

If there is not necessarily a consistent corpus of myths, what about their meanings? About 2000 BC, tribes of tallish, fair-haired people (see the physical descriptions in Homer of almost every Greek hero except Odysseus) who some generations earlier had bid farewell to their cousins who spoke a variant of their shared language that would evolve into Latin, moved southwest toward the Greek peninsula. They carried with them a god whose name was Zeus who undoubtedly had a consort or two or three (dozen) and a set of stories attached to him and his family. Around 1200 BC, their descendants who lived at a place called Pylos were overwhelmed by sea-borne raiders. In the burning of their palace, clay tablets bearing their routine administrative records were miraculously preserved. Their gods included Zeus, Potnia ("Our Lady") and Enyalios. Eight hundred years later, Socrates talked about "the god," presumably Zeus, as a moral figure, using words very like those Christians might choose for their God. In Roman times, the indefatigable Pausanias jotted down that Enyalios was a title of Ares and made references to Athena Potnia ("Our Lady Athena.") Is the truth of a tale of the Zeus of a proto-Greek speaker who has never even set foot in Greece the truth of Socrates' Zeus? Are the blood-soaked superstitions recorded by Pausanias more true than the rationalized heroic lays of Homer? Would Our Lady of Pylos even recognize Our Lady of Athens?

Procrustes had a number of Twentieth Century descendants. One was Robert Graves, who lopped and stretched the Greek myths onto the bed of his own imaginings. Scan down through these reviews until you come to "Green Melusine," who very cleverly applies Graves' technique to Cinderella with predictable result. (While you're at it, look up the tale of Melusine and wonder with me why anyone would adopt that particular moniker.)

The Greek myths are an intellectual and scholarly Rorschach test. In the Nineteenth Century whole universities of bearded German professors elaborately proved to their own complete satisfaction that the tale of Troy was nothing but an allegorical weather myth. They were much put out when Schliemann started digging up gold, not allegories. In the Twentieth Century Sir James Fraser, Edith Hamilton, Robert Graves and Joseph Campbell have all seen wonderful things in the Rorschach myths and have fitted them perfectly onto their Procrustean beds.

But Theseus always comes knocking at the door.

This is no guide to Greek Myth!.......2005-08-09

Graves confirms that the only way to learn of the Greek myths is to read what the Greeks themselves wrote. If the desire is to understand what the Greek myths actually mean then Graves should be avoided. Robin Hard, in his translation to Apollodorus' Library of Greek Mythology, published by OUP, writes "the interpretive notes [to Graves' Greek Myths] are of value only as a guide to the author's personal mythology." (p.xxxiii). I cannot agree more.

Graves' immediate failure is that he remains oblivious to the ouranographic nature of Greek myth: their myths were related to the heavens. Further, Graves fails to understand the relationship of Greek myth to the development of Greek philosophy; that the key to understanding Greek philosophy, science (& hence mathematics & engineering), is the mythology. If you read Graves you will understand neither Greek myth or philosophy.

In Timaeus Plato wrote that when the creator "had compounded the whole he divided it up into as many souls as there were stars, and allotted each soul to a star." (Timaeus, 42).

In Apollonius' Argonautica we read of the argonaughts who paused as "the goddess Persephone sent up to them the mourning ghost of Aktor's son, who craved to see some men of his own kind ...[and having done so, he] Then sank down again into the great abyss." Book 2, lines 920.

In Homer's Odyssey we read that "Rose-fingered Dawn fell in love with Orion... outraged at her conduct... chaste Artemis rose from her golden throne, attacked him in Ortygia with her gentle darts and left him dead." Book 5, lines 121-124. When given directions for sailing, Odysseus kept his eyes "on the Pleiads...or the Great Bear [who] looks across at Orion the Hunter with a wary eye." Book 5, 272-274; and once in the Halls of Hades, which lie beyond the horizon, Odysseus' "eyes fell on the giant hunter Orion, ... armed with a club of solid bronze..." Book 11, 571-575

Aristotle explains to us what all this means: "From old - and indeed extremely ancient times there has been handed down to our later age intimations of a mythical character to the effect that the stars are gods... further details were added in the manner of myth." Metaphysics, Book Lambda, 1074b.

If you read Graves you will not encounter any understanding of the heavens, the basis of Greek myth, in which the planets and constellations were the detritus of times past, rendered immortal and writ large in the heavens. This absence is explained by Graves, when he extols his belief that even "the 13th century Excidium Troiae is, in parts mythically sounder than the Iliad." p. 13. What Graves claims is that an author who commented on the myths over 2000 years after Homer actually wrote down the myths, understood them better than the person who expounded them.

Instead of looking to the sky to understand these myths, Graves claims that the only way to properly understand them is when "archaeologists can provide a more exact tabulation of tribal movements in Greece and the dates." p.20; and that consequently "A large part of Greek myth is politico-religious history."(p.17). This is seriously misguided!

Graves as becomes evident has an agenda which he lays bare when he claims Greek & Jewish myth is a product of:
"The Jews as inheritors of the 'Pelasgian', or Canaanitish, creation myth.." p. 35; that is that the people of Greece, before the arrival of Greeks were the same people as those who peopled Canaan (Palestine, which is utterly unsupported by any archaeology). What Graves attempts with this ridiculous tome, is to provide a syncretist misinterpretation of Greek myth to reconcile it with the irreconcilable Biblical beliefs and he imagines he achieves this when he weaves into this his "matrilineal v patrilineal" theory as some sort of corroboration. This explains why Graves claimed that a later, Greek Christian from Byzantium, wrote a sounder mythology than Homer: the Byzantine, being Christian, had the same disposition to reinterpret Greek myths to make them more acceptable to a Christian viewpoint, as does Graves.

Greek myths are beautiful if they can be understood. Graves omits the ouranographic dimension of Greek belief because, as he makes clear, he is actually attempting to reconcile it with Jewish (hence Christian) belief. No such reconciliation can work if the author is honest. The Greeks studied the heavens; the Jews were forbidden to do so on pain of death, eg. Deuteronomy 17.2-5 & Jeremiah 10.2. Graves' book is embarrassingly silly.

(...)

Very Important Resource in English on Greek Myths.......2005-04-22

`The Greek Myths' by Robert Graves is a perfect example of what poets do to pay the rent when they are not writing poetry. This is, of course, a gross simplification, as Graves was also a professor of poetry at Oxford University and the author of several relatively successful novels about the ancient world, the most successful of which was `I, Claudius', the semi-fictional story of the fourth emperor of Rome.

Robert Graves was also a great student of mythology and in addition to this great survey of myths, he has written volumes on the nature of myths, in much the same genre as the great work `The Golden Bough'. While these other works, such as `The Golden Ass' are pretty opaque to the non-specialist, his work on Greek myths is a great presentation of the material for the layman and a great antidote to famously popular works such as `Bullfinch's Mythology' and `Mythology' by Edith Hamilton. I read both of these works when I was in Junior High School and was initially enamored with the Greek myths. What these popular works failed to do was to give any connection to the sources of the myths. One gets the highly illusory sense of the myths' existing in some kind of Jungian collective consciousness, with no thought given to the documents where these were first written down and to variations in the myths' narrative from different sources.

One may ask why it is important to study myths, and therefore be careful about understanding the myth's documentary sources. Probably the most important reason for studying myths is that understanding them is simply necessary to understand a great body of world literature, including much of English literature beginning in the Middle Ages and continuing to the present day. I don't even need to cite Shakespeare, as there are two recent episodes of CSI which make reference to the Chimera, Icarus, and the Furies, three lesser figures from the Greek Myths. Just to include at least three more modern sources, there is a reference in a Woody Allen' film to both Narcissus and to Zeus, a major recent science fiction trilogy by John Varley is based on the names and characteristics of the twelve Titans, and a retelling of the Trojan War in `Troy' with Brad Pitt as the great Achilles himself.

Reference to myths is great cultural shorthand. Ezra Pound, a wealth of obscure literary references if there ever was one, stated that the value of writing could be measured by how much meaning can be packed into the fewest words. This, a reference to Achilles can evoke images of invulnerability, great prowess in combat, revenge, eventual graciousness to enemies, and being wronged by allies. All that from a reference to the legendary Achilles. Talk about a name to be conjured with. Don't get me started on Odysseus, especially since James Joyce already pretty well covered that subject in `Ulysses'.

One could write volumes on the definition of myths. In simple terms, they are stories of larger than life figures who may or may not be based on actual historical people. Some, but not all, myths arise out of religion and prescientific cosmology, as in the Greek creation myths. One sure sign of mythic quality is an intermixing of the human and the divine, as in the case of Achilles of the Iliad, who is a son of a mortal man and an immortal nymph, daughter of Zeus, Thetis. Some famous characters from Greek myths such as Theseus, Jason, Oedipus, and Odysseus may not have had divine parents, but they certainly had larger than live adventures with both assistance and interference from the Olympian gods or their surrogates.

The book is divided into 171 stories, although many of these individual sections may be part of a larger story such as the tale of the Trojan War that takes up fourteen (14) of these sections. This division is partly due to the fact that the full story of the figures in the Trojan war may include references to sources outside the Iliad, which was not a novel written by Homer like Hemingway's `For Whom the Bell Tolls'. It is much more like the New Testament gospels, written several hundred years after the historical events and based on oral tradition and documents since lost to history.

In addition to the Trojan war, which concludes the book, and the creation myths which open the book, there are stories covering the genealogy and carryings on of the Olympian gods, a flood legend, the story of Prometheus (see the stature in Rockafeller Center), Sisyphus, Perseus, Bellerophon, Midas, Narcissus, Minos, Daedalus, Theseus, Medea, Oedipus, Orestes, Heracles (Hercules) and his 12 Labors, and Jason and the Argonauts. A perfect example of an important function of some myths is the story of Orestes and Agamemnon, where a cycle of revenge comes to an end only after the intervention of divine authority.

If you are interested in this book and you happen to be looking at the two volume edition, it is essential that you buy both volumes at the same time, as the index to both volumes is at the end of volume 2. It is also important that all the scholarly trappings of footnotes, references, and alternate versions do not put you off. The stories are entirely readable without them, and you can go through them secure in the knowledge that this is how the Greeks, Chaucer, Spencer, and Shakespeare saw these stories. And, if by chance a reading takes you beyond the simple stories, there is more than enough to connect you to the original sources in Greek and Roman literature. And, as another reviewer notes, if there are questions about Graves' version, you have everything you need to check it out. You cannot say that about most other texts on these myths.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books