Brothers Jason and Joe grow up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, within a magical backyard of safety, comfort, and love. But when Joe is killed in a car accident just before Jason graduates from college, his idyllic world suddenly crumbles around him. As Jason and his family rely on their Catholic faith to help them through the unfathomable loss, no one has any idea that for years, Jason has been harboring a secret: he is gay. With his youthful sense of immortality deeply shaken with Joe’s death, Jason embarks on a journey of self-discovery after college graduation that leads him across Europe with the hope he can discover a new perspective on life, death, and living with loss. Even as he battles a seemingly endless internal struggle between the strict teachings from his Catholic faith and his overwhelming desire to live his life as a gay man, Jason continues to press on, realizing that his happiness depends on his determination to find the answers. Amsterdam Angel is the compelling tale of one man’s life-changing adventure across three continents in search of peace, love, and most importantly, his true self.
This fascinating work explores John Dee's Enochian magic and the history of its reception. Dee (1527–1608/9), an accomplished natural philosopher and member of Queen Elizabeth I's court, was also an esoteric researcher whose diaries detail years of conversations with angels achieved with the aid of crystal-gazer Edward Kelley. His Enochian magic offers a method for contacting angels and demons based on secrets found in the apocryphal Book of Enoch. Examining this magical system from its Renaissance origins to present day occultism, Egil Asprem shows how the reception of Dee's magic is replete with struggles to construct and negotiate authoritative interpretational frameworks for doing magic. Arguing with Angels offers a novel, nuanced approach to questions about how ritual magic has survived the advent of modernity and demonstrates the ways in which modern culture has recreated magical discourse.
"The art of the Dutch republic in the seventeenth century includes some of the most familiar and best-loved examples of European painting: exquisite still-life studies, tranquil interiors, robust portraits and rowdy tavern scenes. In this account, Mariet Westermann describes this art as it was experienced by the people of the period and as it appears to us today. She examines the major themes of Dutch art, including the growth and expression of national identity, the celebration and examination of the individual through portraiture, and the changing status of artists themselves."--BOOK JACKET.
The award-winning authors of The Road to Hell: How the Biker Gangs Are Conquering Canada bring us a definitive, up-to-the-minute account of the Hells Angels and the international biker network. Marsden and Sher explain how the expansion of America’ s foremost motorcycle gang has allowed this once ragtag group of rebels, outcasts and felons to become one of the world’s most sophisticated criminal organizations. While the media has continued to toast the Hells Angels California leader, Sonny Barger, as an American legend, the facts tell another story—they are America’s major crime export. With an estimated 2,500 full-patch members in 25 countries, the Hells Angels have inspired a global subculture of biker gangs that are among the most feared and violent underworld players. Angels of Death takes readers to Arizona, inside the biggest American police undercover operation to infiltrate the bikers; to British Columbia where wealthy bikers dominate the organized crime pyramid; to Australia where the “bikies” shoot it out with police; to Curaçao where terrorist organizations funnel drugs to Dutch bikers; and to the streets of Oslo, Copenhagen and Helsinki where a murderous biker war saw rocket attacks and bombs turn Scandinavia into a war zone. For the first time, police officers who have infiltrated biker gangs tell their secrets—revealing the challenges, fears and horrors they’ve discovered going undercover. Sher and Marsden take the reader behind the latest headlines to tell the story of how the Hells Angels became so powerful, and how the police—with only a few successes—have tried to stop them. Excerpt from Angels of Death: Three murderous evenings, three different continents, three faces of the Angels of death: the killing of innocents, the killing of fellow bikers, and the killing of cops. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of lives ruined, brains fried, bodies withered by the methamphetamines, cocaine and other drugs pushed by the bikers. And yet while the body count kept mounting, Sonny Barger, the Californian patriarch and international leader of the Hells Angels, was being feted by the international media as he promoted his latest bestselling book. Even the usually thoughtful British press fell for the rebel Yankee. The Times called him, “affable, big-hearted, warm.” The Independent labelled him an “American legend.” And in many ways he is.
In 1981 a sermon was given in Leiden in which the minister called angels, 'a forgotten group'. This book is an attempt to recall a forgotten group into the memory of everyone. We read so much these days about matters concerning the underworld, that we are inclined to forget that an enormous 'upper world' stretches out above us. A world which is also extremely active, and one which is increasingly beginning to intrude. In A Handbook of Angels the author recounts his survey of four hundred people and the spectacular results, which include reportings of real-life sightings of angels. It becomes apparent that, though we may have forgotten about angels, they have not forgotten about us. They are returning to human consciousness on a gigantic scale.
The definitive collection of first-hand accounts of the world's outlaw motorcycle gangs, with contributions by Sonny Barger, Hunter S. Thompson, Ed Winterhalder, William Queen and many more Outlaw bikers consider themselves 'the last free people in society', unconstrained by the regulations that hem in ordinary citizens. And they guard their privacy jealously. Drawing on seventeen years of studying and participating in biker culture, the author has compiled this one-of-a-kind collection of original biker writing. Here are insider accounts of landmark incidents in biker folklore, including reprints of classic writing from biker-originated magazines, handouts, websites and books. Gangs featured include the Bandidos, the Hells Angels, Henchmen MC, the Outlaws, the Mongols, the Annihilators, the Diablos, the Gypsy Jokers, the Rebels, the Straight Satans and the Vagos. And with contributors such as Freewheelin' Frank (one-time secretary of the Hells Angels), Edward Winterhalder (among the most powerful members of the Bandidos) and Sonny Barger (founder of the Hells Angels). Also included are those rare accounts by outsiders who have succeeded in 'looking in' on the gangs: Hunter S. Thompson's Hells Angels: A Strange and Terrible Modern Saga; writing by William Queen, the undercover agent who infiltrated America's violent outlaw motorcycle gang the Mongols; and Daniel R. Wolf's account of riding with the Rebels.
Why did the international drug regulatory regime of the twentieth century fail to stop an explosive increase in trade and consumption of illegal drugs? This study investigates the histories of smugglers and criminal entrepreneurs in the Netherlands who succeeded in turning the country into the so-called ‘Colombia of Europe’ or, ‘the international drug supermarket’. Increasing state regulations and interventions led to the proliferation of a ‘hydra’ of small, anarchic groups and networks ideally suited to circumvent the enforcement of regulation. Networks of smugglers and suppliers of heroin, cocaine, cannabis, XTC, and other drugs were organized without a strict formal hierarchy and based on personal relations and cultural affinities rather than on institutional arrangements. These networks created a thriving underground industry of illegal synthetic drug laboratories and indoor cannabis cultivation in the Netherlands itself. Their operations were made possible and developed because of the deep historical social and cultural ‘embeddedness’ of criminal anarchy in Dutch society. Using examples from the rich history of drug smuggling, Drug smuggler nation investigates the deeper and hidden grounds of the illegal drug trade, and its effects on our drug policies.
