The Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea gives us a brilliant novel about an actor in the twilight of his life and his career: “a devastating account of a boy’s sexual awakening and the loss of his childhood…. Seamless [and] profound ... An unsettling and beautiful work.” —Wall Street Journal Is there a difference between memory and invention? That is the question that haunts Alexander Cleave as he reflects on his first, and perhaps only, love—an underage affair with his best friend’s mother. When his stunted acting career is suddenly, inexplicably revived with a movie role playing a man who may not be who he claims, his young leading lady—famous and fragile—unwittingly gives him the opportunity to see, with startling clarity, the gap between the things he has done and the way he recalls them. Profoundly moving, Ancient Light is written with the depth of character, clarifying lyricism, and heart-wrenching humor that mark all of Man Booker Prize-winning author John Banville’s extraordinary works.
Ancient Guardians the Legacy of the Key is a 2014 Global ebook Gold award winning book and a 2014 Silver award medalist in the Reader's favorite international awards.Praise for The Legacy of the Key:5- STARS "There are two words to describe this book: ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. It is very difficult to put into words how much I enjoyed it. The concept of the different worlds and dimensions among us was unique and very intriguing; it immediately had me hooked.". -Reader's Favorite Review by,Cheryl Schopen5-Stars "The book is fast paced and will take readers to another dimension altogether. It is a great roller coaster ride with fantasy, science fiction, mystery, romance, action, suspense and a new dimension all woven together" -Reader's Favorite Review by,Mamta Madhavan .Young and capable college student, Reece Bryant, lives a quiet existence. After her father passes away and his estate is settled, she focuses on medical school within the company of a small circle of friends. Unbeknownst to her, Levi Oxley, equally as capable, is tasked with the enormous responsibility of her safeguarding. When he and Reece lock gazes during his surveillance, it's an event that forever changes both of their futures.Life takes a drastic turn when Reece is pulled into Levi's domain, Pemdas, through a hidden vortex. She finds herself in an enchanted land much like earth, but discovers getting back home is a complicated matter. After learning her very existence is paramount to the delicate balance of the universe's order, she must now wait in this dimension with the Guardians who have been sworn to protect her, until it is safe for her to return to her life on Earth.Nothing could be worse0́4Reece is a guest in a seventeenth century-like world and not everyone is happy she's there. Though every need is met while Reece is in the comfort of the emperor's palace, she's constantly being reminded she's an outsider. If that wasn't bad enough, she's fallen in love with Levi and now her life is in immediate danger.After returning to Earth to face a Council of Worlds, Reece discovers there is more at stake than she ever imagined. She and Levi must draw on each other's strengths in order to save themselves and all of Pemdas from an eternity of despair.Ancient Guardians: The Legacy of the Key is the first book of the Ancient Guardian Series for young adults ages 13 and up by author, S.L. Morgan. The second installment, Ancient Guardians: The Uninvited, is available now.Genres:FantasyRomanceSci-FiOther WorldsDimensional travelFantasy historical romance
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Magisterial . . . [A] rich portrait of ancient Egypt’s complex evolution over the course of three millenniums.”—Los Angeles Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Publishers Weekly In this landmark volume, one of the world’s most renowned Egyptologists tells the epic story of this great civilization, from its birth as the first nation-state to its absorption into the Roman Empire. Drawing upon forty years of archaeological research, award-winning scholar Toby Wilkinson takes us inside a tribal society with a pre-monetary economy and decadent, divine kings who ruled with all-too-recognizable human emotions. Here are the legendary leaders: Akhenaten, the “heretic king,” who with his wife Nefertiti brought about a revolution with a bold new religion; Tutankhamun, whose dazzling tomb would remain hidden for three millennia; and eleven pharaohs called Ramesses, the last of whom presided over the militarism, lawlessness, and corruption that caused a political and societal decline. Filled with new information and unique interpretations, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt is a riveting and revelatory work of wild drama, bold spectacle, unforgettable characters, and sweeping history. “With a literary flair and a sense for a story well told, Mr. Wilkinson offers a highly readable, factually up-to-date account.”—The Wall Street Journal “[Wilkinson] writes with considerable verve. . . . [He] is nimble at conveying the sumptuous pageantry and cultural sophistication of pharaonic Egypt.”—The New York Times
Young and capable college student, Reece Bryant, lives a quiet existence. After her father passes away and his estate is settled, she focuses on medical school within the company of a small circle of friends. Unbeknownst to her, Levi Oxley, equally as capable, is tasked with the enormous responsibility of her safeguarding. When he and Reece lock gazes during his surveillance, it's an event that forever changes both of their futures. Life takes a drastic turn when Reece is pulled into Levi's domain, Pemdas, through a hidden vortex. She finds herself in an enchanted land much like earth, but discovers getting back home is a complicated matter. After learning her very existence is paramount to the delicate balance of the universe's order, she must now wait in this dimension with the Guardians who have been sworn to protect her, until it is safe for her to return to her life on Earth. Nothing could be worse, Reece is a guest in a seventeenth century-like world and not everyone is happy she's there. Though every need is met while Reece is in the comfort of the emperor's palace, she's constantly being reminded she's an outsider. If that wasn't bad enough, she's fallen in love with Levi and now her life is in immediate danger. After returning to Earth to face a Council of Worlds, Reece discovers there is more at stake than she ever imagined. She and Levi must draw on each other's strengths in order to save themselves and all of Pemdas from an eternity of despair.
How consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed, and why all vertebrates and perhaps even some invertebrates are conscious. How is consciousness created? When did it first appear on Earth, and how did it evolve? What constitutes consciousness, and which animals can be said to be sentient? In this book, Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt draw on recent scientific findings to answer these questions—and to tackle the most fundamental question about the nature of consciousness: how does the material brain create subjective experience? After assembling a list of the biological and neurobiological features that seem responsible for consciousness, and considering the fossil record of evolution, Feinberg and Mallatt argue that consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed. About 520 to 560 million years ago, they explain, the great “Cambrian explosion” of animal diversity produced the first complex brains, which were accompanied by the first appearance of consciousness; simple reflexive behaviors evolved into a unified inner world of subjective experiences. From this they deduce that all vertebrates are and have always been conscious—not just humans and other mammals, but also every fish, reptile, amphibian, and bird. Considering invertebrates, they find that arthropods (including insects and probably crustaceans) and cephalopods (including the octopus) meet many of the criteria for consciousness. The obvious and conventional wisdom–shattering implication is that consciousness evolved simultaneously but independently in the first vertebrates and possibly arthropods more than half a billion years ago. Combining evolutionary, neurobiological, and philosophical approaches allows Feinberg and Mallatt to offer an original solution to the “hard problem” of consciousness.
How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities. Homer’s epic poems of human striving, journeying, and passion were ancient Greece’s only “sacred texts,” but no ancient Greek thought twice about questioning or mocking his stories of the gods. Priests were functionaries rather than sources of moral or cosmological wisdom. The absence of centralized religious authority made for an extraordinary variety of perspectives on sacred matters, from the devotional to the atheos, or “godless.” Whitmarsh explores this kaleidoscopic range of ideas about the gods, focusing on the colorful individuals who challenged their existence. Among these were some of the greatest ancient poets and philosophers and writers, as well as the less well known: Diagoras of Melos, perhaps the first self-professed atheist; Democritus, the first materialist; Socrates, executed for rejecting the gods of the Athenian state; Epicurus and his followers, who thought gods could not intervene in human affairs; the brilliantly mischievous satirist Lucian of Samosata. Before the revolutions of late antiquity, which saw the scriptural religions of Christianity and Islam enforced by imperial might, there were few constraints on belief. Everything changed, however, in the millennium between the appearance of the Homeric poems and Christianity’s establishment as Rome’s state religion in the fourth century AD. As successive Greco-Roman empires grew in size and complexity, and power was increasingly concentrated in central capitals, states sought to impose collective religious adherence, first to cults devoted to individual rulers, and ultimately to monotheism. In this new world, there was no room for outright disbelief: the label “atheist” was used now to demonize anyone who merely disagreed with the orthodoxy—and so it would remain for centuries. As the twenty-first century shapes up into a time of mass information, but also, paradoxically, of collective amnesia concerning the tangled histories of religions, Whitmarsh provides a bracing antidote to our assumptions about the roots of freethinking. By shining a light on atheism’s first thousand years, Battling the Gods offers a timely reminder that nonbelief has a wealth of tradition of its own, and, indeed, its own heroes.
"As panoramic as it is learned, this is ancient history for our globalized world." -- Tom Holland, author of Dynasty and Rubicon Twenty-five-hundred years ago, civilizations around the world entered a revolutionary new era that overturned old order and laid the foundation for our world today. In the face of massive social changes across three continents, radical new forms of government emerged; mighty wars were fought over trade, religion, and ideology; and new faiths were ruthlessly employed to unify vast empires. The histories of Rome and China, Greece and India-the stories of Constantine and Confucius, Qin Shi Huangdi and Hannibal-are here revealed to be interconnected incidents in the midst of a greater drama. In Ancient Worlds, historian Michael Scott presents a gripping narrative of this unique age in human civilization, showing how diverse societies responded to similar pressures and how they influenced one another: through conquest and conversion, through trade in people, goods, and ideas. An ambitious reinvention of our grandest histories, Ancient Worlds reveals new truths about our common human heritage. "A bold and imaginative page-turner that challenges ideas about the world of antiquity." UPeter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads
Graham Robb's The Ancient Paths will change the way you see European civilization. Inspired by a chance discovery, Robb became fascinated with the world of the Celts: their gods, their art, and, most of all, their sophisticated knowledge of science. His investigations gradually revealed something extraordinary: a lost map, of an empire constructed with precision and beauty across vast tracts of Europe. The map had been forgotten for almost two millennia and its implications were astonishing. Minutely researched and rich in revelations, The Ancient Paths brings to life centuries of our distant history and reinterprets pre-Roman Europe. Told with all of Robb's grace and verve, it is a dazzling, unforgettable book.
“A wonderfully whimsical yet instructional view of Greco-Roman history.” —Kirkus Reviews In this thoroughly engaging book, Natalie Haynes brings her scholarship and wit to the most fascinating true stories of the ancient world. The Ancient Guide to Modern Life not only reveals the origins of our culture in areas including philosophy, politics, language, and art, it also draws illuminating connections between antiquity and our present time, to demonstrate that the Greeks and Romans were not so different from ourselves: Is Bart Simpson the successor to Aristophanes? Do the Beckhams have parallel lives with The Satiricon’s Trimalchio? Along the way Haynes debunks myths (gladiators didn’t salute the emperor before their deaths, and the last words of Julius Caesar weren’t “et tu, brute?”). From Athens to Zeno's paradox, this irresistible guide shows how the history and wisdom of the ancient world can inform and enrich our lives today. “A romp through some of the best-known, and some of the more obscure, writers, thought, and stories of Greece and Rome.” —Times Literary Supplement
From the acclaimed author of The Wild Places and Underland, an exploration of walking and thinking In this exquisitely written book, Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge, England, home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove roads, and sea paths that crisscross both the British landscape and its waters and territories beyond. The result is an immersive, enthralling exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt old paths, of the stories our tracks keep and tell, and of pilgrimage and ritual. Told in Macfarlane’s distinctive voice, The Old Ways folds together natural history, cartography, geology, archaeology and literature. His walks take him from the chalk downs of England to the bird islands of the Scottish northwest, from Palestine to the sacred landscapes of Spain and the Himalayas. Along the way he crosses paths with walkers of many kinds—wanderers, pilgrims, guides, and artists. Above all this is a book about walking as a journey inward and the subtle ways we are shaped by the landscapes through which we move. Macfarlane discovers that paths offer not just a means of traversing space, but of feeling, knowing, and thinking.
