Zach Nikolas isn't a typical high school boy--no acne, no awkwardness for this high school god among boys. Gorgeous, charming, and athletic, every girl in school throws herself at him. Zach's parents, friends, and teachers worship the ground he walks on. He has never known want or sacrifice in his charmed life. He is on top of the world. Things in Zach's perfect life begin to go horribly wrong. A murder attempt and a miraculous escape from certain death leads Zach to unheard-of powers, as an angry god seeks vengeance. The one girl Zach can't have--the beautiful, intelligent Allie Connor, who hates his guts--is the key to everything. When myths become reality, Zach must decide to sacrifice the girl he loves or let the world come to a fiery end.
In tracing the emergence of the Macedonian kingdom from its origins as a Balkan backwater to a major European and Asian power, Eugene Borza offers to specialists and lay readers alike a revealing account of a relatively unexplored segment of ancient history. He draws from recent archaeological discoveries and an enhanced understanding of historical geography to form a narrative that provides a material-culture setting for political events. Examining the dynamics of Macedonian relations with the Greek city-states, he suggests that the Macedonians, although they gradually incorporated aspects of Greek culture into their own society, maintained a distinct ethnicity as a Balkan people. "Borza has taken the trouble to know Macedonia: the land, its prehistory, its position in the Balkans, and its turbulent modern history. All contribute...to our understanding of the emergence of Macedon.... Borza has employed two of the historian's most valuable tools, autopsy and common sense, to produce a well-balanced introduction to the state that altered the course of Greek and Near Eastern history."--Waldemar Heckel, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
"The art of life is the most distinguished and rarest of all the arts." -C.G. Jung, CW 8, par. 789. The Cycle of Life explores the patterns that unfold over the course of our lives, as we set out to find our place in the world, in our efforts to live authentically, and in our search for home-that place within ourselves that can so easily be neglected or disregarded in this fast-paced modern world. In the first half of life, the task of the young traveler is to depart from home, to adventure out into the world to find his or her own individual path. However, in the second half, we find ourselves on what often amounts to a very long journey in search of home. In many a tale, the hero, for instance Gilgamesh, sets off on his road to find life's elixir, while other stories, such as the Odyssey, revolve around the hero's long and arduous journey home. Many are also familiar with the journey of Dante, who at the very beginning of his Divine Comedy finds himself "Midway along the journey of our life.” The archetypal journey of life is constantly reenacted in the never-ending process of individuation. We find ourselves returning to this venture repeatedly, every night, as we set out on our voyage into the landscape of our unconscious. Many dreams begin by being on the way, for instance: I am on my way to ... I am driving on a road that leads into the desert ... I am walking through one room after the other in a long corridor-like building ... I am walking towards my office, but it looks different than in reality ... I walk on the pavement and on the opposite side of the street someone seems to be following me ... I go down into an underground parking ... I am in my car, but someone I don't know is driving ... I have to go to the place from where I came ...
