Title search results
Showing 1 - 20 of 7410 items
Journal of Near Eastern Studies, volume 83 number 1 (April 2024)
By Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 2024
This is volume 83 issue 1 of Journal of Near Eastern Studies. The Journal of Near Eastern Studies (JNES) is…
devoted to the study of the civilizations of the Near East from prehistory to the early modern period in 1922. JNES embraces a uniquely broad scope of time, place, and topic, including contributions from scholars of international reputation on topics in Assyriology, Egyptology, Hittitology, Hebrew Bible, and adjacent ancient studies, as well as a second area of emphasis in early, medieval, and early-modern Islamic studies. The disciplinary range of the journal runs from history and language to religion and literature to archaeology and art history. Every issue includes new scholarly work as well as a book review section, which provides a critical overview of new publications by emerging and established scholars.The Death Class: A True Story About Life
By Erika Hayasaki. 2014
The poignant, “powerful” (The Boston Globe) look at how to appreciate life from an extraordinary professor who teaches about death:…
“Poetic passages and assorted revelations you’ll likely not forget” (Chicago Tribune).Why does a college course on death have a three-year waiting list? When nurse Norma Bowe decided to teach a course on death at a college in New Jersey, she never expected it to be popular. But year after year students crowd into her classroom, and the reason is clear: Norma’s “death class” is really about how to make the most of what poet Mary Oliver famously called our “one wild and precious life.”Under the guise of discussions about last wills and last breaths and visits to cemeteries and crematoriums, Norma teaches her students to find grace in one another. In The Death Class, award-winning journalist Erika Hayasaki followed Norma for more than four years, showing how she steers four extraordinary students from their tormented families and neighborhoods toward happiness: she rescues one young woman from her suicidal mother, helps a young man manage his schizophrenic brother, and inspires another to leave his gang life behind. Through this unorthodox class on death, Norma helps kids who are barely hanging on to understand not only the value of their own lives, but also the secret of fulfillment: to throw yourself into helping others. Hayasaki’s expert reporting and literary prose bring Norma’s wisdom out of the classroom, transforming it into an inspiring lesson for all. In the end, Norma’s very own life—and how she lives it—is the lecture that sticks. “Readers will come away struck by Bowe’s compassion—and by the unexpectedly life-affirming messages of courage that spring from her students’ harrowing experiences” (Entertainment Weekly).The final chapter in the definitive, three-volume history of the world's first known stateArchaeologist John Romer has spent a lifetime…
chronicling the history of Ancient Egypt, and here he tells the epic story of an era dominated by titans of the popular imagination: the radical iconoclast Akhenaten, the boy-king Tutankhamun and the all-conquering Ramesses II. But 'heroes' do not forge history by themselves. This was also a time of international trade, cultural exchange and sophisticated art, even in the face of violent change.Alongside his visionary new history of this, the most famous period in the long history of Ancient Egypt, Romer turns a critical eye on Egyptology itself. Paying close attention to the evidence, he corrects prevailing narratives which cast the New Kingdom as an imperial state power in the European mould. Instead, he reveals - through broken artefacts in ruined workshops, or preserved letters between a tomb-builder and his son - a culture more beautiful and beguiling than we could have imagined.Romer carefully reconstructs the real story of the New Kingdom as evidenced in the archaeological record, and the result - the final volume of a lifelong project - secures his status as Ancient Egypt's finest chronicler.Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End
By Alua Arthur. 2024
A deeply transformative memoir that reframes how we think about death and how it can help us lead better, more…
fulfilling and authentic lives, from America’s most visible death doula."A truly unique, inspiring perspective on the time we have, what we do with it, and how we let go of this world.... There is no one I'd trust more to guide me through an understanding of death, and how it informs life." — Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of Mad Honey and The Book of Two Ways"Briefly Perfectly Human is a beautiful, raw, light-bringing experience. Alua's voice is shimmering, singular, and pulses with humor, vulnerability, insight, and refreshing candor.... Be prepared for it to grab you, hold you tight, and raise the roof on the power of human connection." — Tembi Locke, author of From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding HomeFor her clients and everyone who has been inspired by her humanity, Alua Arthur is a friend at the end of the world. As our country’s leading death doula, she’s spreading a transformative message: thinking about your death—whether imminent or not—will breathe wild, new potential into your life.Warm, generous, and funny AF, Alua supports and helps manage end-of-life care on many levels. The business matters, medical directives, memorial planning; but also honoring the quiet moments, when monitors are beeping and loved ones have stepped out to get some air—or maybe not shown up at all—and her clients become deeply contemplative and want to talk. Aching, unfinished business often emerges. Alua has been present for thousands of these sacred moments—when regrets, fears, secret joys, hidden affairs, and dim realities are finally said aloud. When this happens, Alua focuses her attention at the pulsing center of her clients’ anguish and creates space for them, and sometimes their loved ones, to find peace.This has had a profound effect on Alua, who was already no stranger to death’s periphery. Her family fled a murderous coup d’état in Ghana in the 1980s. She has suffered major, debilitating depressions. And her dear friend and brother-in-law died of lymphoma. Advocating for him in his final months is what led Alua to her life’s calling. She knows firsthand the power of bearing witness and telling the truth about life’s painful complexities, because they do not disappear when you look the other way. They wait for you.Briefly Perfectly Human is a life-changing, soul-gathering debut, by a writer whose empathy, tenderness, and wisdom shimmers on the page. Alua Arthur combines intimate storytelling with a passionate appeal for loving, courageous end-of-life care—what she calls “death embrace.” Hers is a powerful testament to getting in touch with something deeper in our lives, by embracing the fact of our own mortality. “Hold that truth in your mind,” Alua says, “and wondrous things will begin to grow around it.”The Sacred Band: Three Hundred Theban Lovers and the Last Days of Greek Freedom
By James Romm. 2021
From classicist James Romm comes a &“striking…fascinating&” (Booklist) deep dive into the last decades of ancient Greek freedom leading up…
to Alexander the Great&’s destruction of Thebes—and the saga of the greatest military corps of the time, the Theban Sacred Band, a unit composed of 150 pairs of male lovers.The story of the Sacred Band, an elite 300-man corps recruited from pairs of lovers, highlights a chaotic era of ancient Greek history, four decades marked by battles, ideological disputes, and the rise of vicious strongmen. At stake was freedom, democracy, and the fate of Thebes, at this time the leading power of the Greek world.The tale begins in 379 BC, with a group of Theban patriots sneaking into occupied Thebes. Disguised in women&’s clothing, they cut down the agents of Sparta, the state that had cowed much of Greece with its military might. To counter the Spartans, this group of patriots would form the Sacred Band, a corps whose history plays out against a backdrop of Theban democracy, of desperate power struggles between leading city-states, and the new prominence of eros, sexual love, in Greek public life.After four decades without a defeat, the Sacred Band was annihilated by the forces of Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander in the Battle of Chaeronea—extinguishing Greek liberty for two thousand years. Buried on the battlefield where they fell, they were rediscovered in 1880—some skeletons still in pairs, with arms linked together.From violent combat in city streets to massive clashes on open ground, from ruthless tyrants to bold women who held their era in thrall, The Sacred Band recounts &“in fluent, accessible prose&” (The Wall Street Journal) the twists and turns of a crucial historical moment: the end of the treasured freedom of ancient Greece.The Mercy Papers: A Memoir of Three Weeks
By Robin Romm. 2009
When Robin Romm's The Mother Garden was published, The New York Times Book Review called her "a close-up magician," saying,…
"hers is the oldest kind [of magic] we know: the ordinary incantation of words and stories to help us navigate the darkness and finally to hold the end at bay." In her searing memoir The Mercy Papers, Romm uses this magic to expand the weeks before her mother's death into a story about a daughter in the moments before and after loss. With a striking mix of humor and honesty, Romm ushers us into a world where an obstinate hospice nurse tries to heal through pamphlets and a yelping grandfather squirrels away money in a shoe-shine kit. Untrained dogs scamper about as strangers and friends rally around death, offering sympathy as they clamor for attention. The pillbox turns quickly into a metaphor for order; questions about medication turn to musings about God. The mundane and spiritual melt together as Romm reveals the sharp truths that lurk around every corner and captures, with great passion, the awe, fear, and fury of a daughter losing her mother. The Mercy Papers was started in the midst of heartbreak, and not originally intended for an audience. The result is a raw, unsentimental book that reverberates with humanity. Robin Romm has created a tribute to family and an indelible portrait that will speak to anyone who has ever loved and lost.The Removers: A Memoir
By Andrew Meredith. 2014
“A darkly funny memoir about family reckonings” (O, The Oprah Magazine)—the story of a young man who, by handling the…
dead, makes peace with the living.Andrew Meredith’s father, a literature professor at La Salle University, was fired after unspecified allegations of sexual misconduct. It’s a transgression that resulted in such long-lasting familial despair that Andrew cannot forgive him. In the wake of the scandal, he frantically treads water, stuck in a kind of suspended adolescence—falling in and out of school, moving blindly from one half-hearted relationship to the next. When Andrew is forced to move back home to his childhood neighborhood in Northeast Philadelphia and take a job alongside his father as a “remover,” the name for those unseen, unsung men whose charge it is to take away the dead from their last rooms, he begins to see his father not through the lens of a wronged and resentful child, but through that of a sympathetic, imperfect man.Called “artful” and “compelling” by Thomas Lynch in The Wall Street Journal, Meredith’s poetic voice is as unforgettable as his story, and “he tucks his bittersweet childhood memories between tales of removals as carefully as the death certificates he slips between the bodies he picks up and the stretcher-like contraption that transports each body to the waiting vehicle” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). “Potent” (Publishers Weekly), and “ultimately rewarding” (The Boston Globe), The Removers is a searing, coming-of-age memoir with “lyrical language and strong sense of place” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).Discover the prodigious global influence of il bel paese in this star-studded retelling of Italy’s past—from a foremost author of historic Italy. The…
Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read. “Each page brims with Bill Bryson-like trivia that is sure to delight.”—Booklist, starred review The calendar. The Senate. The university. The piano, the heliocentric model, and the pizzeria. It’s hard to imagine a world without Italian influence—and easy to assume that inventions like these could only come from a strong, stable peninsula, sure of its place in the world. In this breakneck history, bestselling author Ross King dismantles this assumption, uncovering the story of a land rife with inner uncertainty even as its influence spread. As the Italian tale unfolds, prosperity and power fluctuate like the elevation in the Dolomites. If Rome’s seven hills could talk, they might speak of the glorious time of Trajan—or bemoan the era of conquest and the Bubonic Plague that decimated Rome’s population. Episodes of wealth like the First Triumvirate and the time of the Medicis are given fresh life alongside descriptions of the Middle Ages, the early days of Venice, the invasion of Napoleon, and the long struggle for unification. Highlighting key events and personalities, King paints a vibrant portrait of a country whose political and cultural legacies enrich our lives today.After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations (Turning Points In Ancient History Ser. #12)
By Eric H. Cline. 2024
In this gripping sequel to his bestselling 1177 B.C., Eric Cline tells the story of what happened after the Bronze…
Age collapsed—why some civilizations endured, why some gave way to new ones, and why some disappeared forever&“A landmark book: lucid, deep, and insightful. . . . You cannot understand human civilization and self-organization without studying what happened on, before, and after 1177 B.C.&”—Nassim Nicholas Taleb, bestselling author of The Black SwanAt the end of the acclaimed history 1177 B.C., many of the Late Bronze Age civilizations of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean lay in ruins, undone by invasion, revolt, natural disasters, famine, and the demise of international trade. An interconnected world that had boasted major empires and societies, relative peace, robust commerce, and monumental architecture was lost and the so-called First Dark Age had begun. Now, in After 1177 B.C., Eric Cline tells the compelling story of what happened next, over four centuries, across the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean world. It is a story of resilience, transformation, and success, as well as failures, in an age of chaos and reconfiguration.After 1177 B.C. tells how the collapse of powerful Late Bronze Age civilizations created new circumstances to which people and societies had to adapt. Those that failed to adjust disappeared from the world stage, while others transformed themselves, resulting in a new world order that included Phoenicians, Philistines, Israelites, Neo-Hittites, Neo-Assyrians, and Neo-Babylonians. Taking the story up to the resurgence of Greece marked by the first Olympic Games in 776 B.C., the book also describes how world-changing innovations such as the use of iron and the alphabet emerged amid the chaos.Filled with lessons for today's world about why some societies survive massive shocks while others do not, After 1177 B.C. reveals why this period, far from being the First Dark Age, was a new age with new inventions and new opportunities.Did I Ever Tell You?: A Memoir
By Genevieve Kingston. 2024
THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY, LIFE-AFFIRMING MEMOIR YOU WILL EVER READ ABOUT THE POWER OF LOVE.Did I Ever Tell You? reads like…
a novel but is an unforgettable true story. Genevieve (Gwen) Kingston was just eleven years old when her mother passed away, leaving behind a chest filled with gifts and letters to celebrate the milestones of Gwen&’s life and each of her birthdays until age thirty. When Did I Ever Tell You? opens, just three packages remain: engagement, marriage, and first baby. Tracing Gwen&’s coming-of-age, the book reveals a treasure hunt, with each gift and letter unveiling more about her mother, her family, and—ultimately—herself. Like Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner and The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, Did I Ever Tell You? is a riveting book filled with unexpected twists and powerful life lessons. Through her mother&’s fierce and courageous love, Gwen was granted the tools not only to move through grief but to cherish life. For as her mother says in one of her letters: &“love is stronger than death.&”Good Grief
By Brianna Pastor. 2024
“Brianna Pastor is by far one of my favorite new writers. Good Grief is a powerful testament that shows how…
hard the past can be and that overcoming it is possible. If you want to feel seen and deeply moved, read Good Grief. Brianna Pastor has unparalleled talent, let the power of her writing guide you to a better life.”—yung pueblo, #1 New York Times bestselling authorAn expanded edition with over forty brand-new poems of the bestselling poetry collection Good Grief by Brianna PastorWhen Brianna Pastor released her self-published poetry collection, Good Grief, she was blown away by the outpouring of support from people who reached out and said, “Yes. Me too.” For anyone who has struggled with questions of identity or coped with serious emotional issues, including grief, trauma, anxiety, and depression, this collection will help you find hope on the other side.we don’t know how long our pain will last. we assume that because it hurts now, it is probably going to hurt tomorrow. it may even hurt the next day. perhaps it will get worse. but we sleep, and you see, and we do this marvelous thing in our sleep—we mend. And tomorrow is not always what we thought it would be.—from Good GriefAs Long as You Need: Permission to Grieve
By J. S. Park. 2024
"A heartfelt invitation for grieving readers...An excellent resource for those working their way through loss." —Publishers Weekly, Starred ReviewVeteran hospital…
chaplain to the sick, dying, and bereaved, J.S. Park offers you both the permission and the process for how to grieve and heal at your own pace.In As Long As You Need, J.S. offers an honest and unrushed engagement with grief, decoding four types of grieving—spiritual, mental, physical, and relational—and offering compassionate self-care and soul-care along the way.If you are struggling to process loss, pain, or grief from the last few years or the last few minutes, J.S. is an experienced and deeply empathetic listener and grief catcher who has held the pain and questions of thousands of patients. While social and cultural narratives about grief are dominated by "letting go, moving on, or turning the page" in his nearly decade of service as a chaplain at a major hospital with a designated level one trauma center J.S. understands firsthand how rushing or suppressing grief only adds a suffocating layer of pain on top of the original wound.From his unique window into the stories of the ill, injured, dying, and their families, J.S. offers you:Permission to dismantle all too common myths about grief and replace them with a guilt-free and unrushed approach to navigating your losses.Encouragement for how entering grief, rather than avoiding it, leads to a hard but meaningful holding of your loss.Empathy and hope if you are struggling with a crisis of faith in the midst of grief.Recognition that grief spans a wide narrative of loss: loss of future, faith, mental health, worth, autonomy, connection, and loved ones.Affirmation that your grief is your own. While the DNA of grief might be universal to the human condition, how you experience and process grief is unique to you. From the ER to deliveries to deathbeds across every sort of illness and injury imaginable, J.S. Park has provided meaningful counseling for people in all walks of life and death. Now, through his book he wants to assure you that, while everybody else might rush past your pain, grief is the voice that says, take as long as you need.One Tiny Bubble: The Story of Our Last Universal Common Ancestor
By Karen Krossing. 2022
Writing the Self in Bereavement: A Story of Love, Spousal Loss, and Resilience (ISSN)
By Reinekke Lengelle. 2021
Winner, ICQI 2022 Outstanding Qualitative Book AwardIn Writing the Self in Bereavement: A Story of Love, Spousal Loss, and Resilience,…
Reinekke Lengelle uses her abilities as a researcher, poet, and professor of therapeutic writing to tell a heartfelt and fearless story about her grief after the death of her spouse and the year and a half following his diagnosis, illness, and passing. This book powerfully demonstrates that writing can be a companion in bereavement. It uses and explains the latest research on coming to terms with spousal loss without being prescriptive. Integrated with this contemporary research are stories, poetry, and reflections on writing as a therapeutic process. The author unflinchingly explores a number of themes that are underrepresented in existing resources: how one deals with anger associated with loss, what a healthy response might be to unfinished business with the deceased, continuing conversations with the beloved (even for agnostics and atheists), ongoing sexual desire, and secondary losses. As a rare book where an author successfully combines a personal story, heart-rending poetry, up-to-date research on grief, and an evocative exploration of taboo topics in the context of widowhood, Writing the Self in Bereavement is uniquely valuable for those grieving a spouse or other loved one, those supporting others in bereavement, and those interested in the healing power of poetry and life writing. Researchers on death and dying, grief counsellors, and autoethnographers will also benefit from reading this resonant resource on love and loss.Gendered Violence in Biblical Narrative: The Devouring Metaphor (The Ancient Word)
By Esther Brownsmith. 2024
This book uses three examples of violent biblical stories about women, explored through the lens of conceptual metaphor theory in…
relation to culinary language used within these texts, to examine wider issues of gender and sexual violence in the Hebrew Bible.Utilising the tools of conceptual metaphor theory, feminist criticism, and classic textual analysis, Brownsmith interrogates some of the most troubling biblical passages for women—neither by redeeming them nor by condemning them, but by showing how they are intrinsically shaped by the enduring metaphor of woman as food in the Hebrew Bible, ancient Near East, and beyond. The volume explores three main case studies: the Levite’s “concubine” (Judges 19); Tamar and Amnon (2 Sam 13); and the life and death of Jezebel (primarily 1 Kings 21 and 2 Kings 9). All depict violence toward a woman as perpetrated by a man, interwoven with culinary language that cues their metaphorical implications. In these sensitive but critical readings of violent tales, Brownsmith also draws on a broad range of interdisciplinary connections from Ricoeur to ancient Ugaritic epics to modern comic books. Through this approach, readers gain new insights into how the Bible shapes its narratives through conceptual metaphors, and specifically how it makes meaning out of women’s brutalized bodies.Gendered Violence in Biblical Narrative: The Devouring Metaphor is suitable for students and scholars working on gender and sexual violence in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East more broadly, as well as those working on conceptual metaphor theory and feminist criticism.Look for Me There: Grieving My Father, Finding Myself
By Luke Russert. 2023
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERIn Look for Me There, Luke Russert traverses terrain both physical and deeply personal. On his journey…
to some of the world&’s most stunning destinations, he visits the internal places of grief, family, faith, ambition, and purpose—with intense self-reflection, honesty, and courage."—Savannah Guthrie, coanchor of Today&“Look for me there,&” news legend Tim Russert would tell his son, Luke, when confirming a pickup spot at an airport, sporting event, or rock concert. After Tim died unexpectedly, Luke kept looking for his father, following in Tim&’s footsteps and carving out a highly successful career at NBC News. After eight years covering politics on television, Luke realized he had no good answer as to why he was chasing his father&’s legacy. As the son of two accomplished parents—his mother is journalist Maureen Orth of Vanity Fair—Luke felt the pressure of high expectations but suddenly decided to leave the familiar path behind.Instead, Luke set out on his own to find answers. What began as several open-ended months of travel to decompress and reassess morphed into a three-plus-year odyssey across six continents to discover the world and, ultimately, to find himself.Chronicling the important lessons and historical understandings Luke discovered from his travels, Look for Me There is both the vivid narrative of that journey and the emotional story of a young man taking charge of his life, reexamining his relationship with his parents, and finally grieving his larger-than-life father, who died too young. For anyone uncertain about the direction of their life or unsure of how to move forward after a loss, Look for Me There is a poignant reflection that offers encouragement to examine our choices, take risks, and discover our truest selves.Pyramid
By David Macaulay. 1975
&“The mystery of the pyramids is solved before our eyes&” in this illustrated YA guide to their construction by the…
Caldecott Medal-winning author (Kirkus). In Pyramid, acclaimed author and illustrator David Macaulay explores the construction of ancient Egyptian pyramids from the initial planning stages to the methods used to lift stones up to the structure&’s highest level. Through concise text and richly detailed black and white illustrations your readers are introduced not only to ancient Egyptian engineering, tools, and labor practices, but also the philosophy of life, death, and afterlife that made these awe-inspiring monuments necessary as a pharaoh&’s final resting place. "Macaulay's brilliant Pyramid shows, detail by detail, how the great pharaohs' burial places were conceived and constructed… His draftsmanship is unexcelled, and his book is pharaonic in opulence and design."—TimeThe Laws (Cambridge Library Collection - Classics Ser.)
By Plato. 1970
In the Laws, Plato describes in fascinating detail a comprehensive system of legislation in a small agricultural utopia he named…
Magnesia. His laws not only govern crime and punishment, but also form a code of conduct for all aspects of life in his ideal state - from education, sport and religion to sexual behaviour, marriage and drinking parties. Plato sets out a plan for the day-to-day rule of Magnesia, administered by citizens and elected officials, with supreme power held by a Council. Although Plato's views that citizens should act in complete obedience to the law have been read as totalitarian, the Laws nonetheless constitutes a highly impressive programme for the reform of society and provides a crucial insight into the mind of one of Classical Greece's foremost thinkers.The Later Roman Empire: (a.D. 354-378)
By Ammianus Marcellinus. 1986
Ammianus Marcellinus was the last great Roman historian, and his writings rank alongside those of Livy and Tacitus. The Later…
Roman Empire chronicles a period of twenty-five years during Marcellinus' own lifetime, covering the reigns of Constantius, Julian, Jovian, Valentinian I, and Valens, and providing eyewitness accounts of significant military events including the Battle of Strasbourg and the Goth's Revolt. Portraying a time of rapid and dramatic change, Marcellinus describes an Empire exhausted by excessive taxation, corruption, the financial ruin of the middle classes and the progressive decline in the morale of the army. In this magisterial depiction of the closing decades of the Roman Empire, we can see the seeds of events that were to lead to the fall of the city, just twenty years after Marcellinus' death.Madeleine: Our daughter's disappearance and the continuing search for her
By Kate McCann. 2011
Kate McCann's personal account of the disappearance and continuing search for her daughter, revised and updated.'The decision to publish this…
book has been very difficult, and taken with heavy hearts ... My reason for writing it is simple: to give an account of the truth ... Writing this memoir has entailed recording some very personal, intimate and emotional aspects of our lives. Sharing these with strangers does not come easily to me, but if I hadn't done so I would not have felt the book gave as full a picture as it is possible for me to give. As with every action we have taken over the last five years, it ultimately boils down to whether what we are doing could help us to find Madeleine. When the answer to that question is yes, or even possibly, our family can cope with anything ... Nothing is more important to us than finding our little girl.' -- Kate McCann'A must-read' Sunday Express'Kate's book blazes with the sheer visceral force of her love for her daughter' Daily Mail'Deeply moving' Guardian