Radical Sacrifice

Radical Sacrifice

Author: Terry Eagleton

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2018-01-01

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 0300233353

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A trenchant analysis of sacrifice as the foundation of the modern, as well as the ancient, social order The modern conception of sacrifice is at once cast as a victory of self-discipline over desire and condescended to as destructive and archaic abnegation. But even in the Old Testament, the dual natures of sacrifice, embodying both ritual slaughter and moral rectitude, were at odds. In this analysis, Terry Eagleton makes a compelling argument that the idea of sacrifice has long been misunderstood. Pursuing the complex lineage of sacrifice in a lyrical discourse, Eagleton focuses on the Old and New Testaments, offering a virtuosic analysis of the crucifixion, while drawing together a host of philosophers, theologians, and texts--from Hegel, Nietzsche, and Derrida to the Aeneid and The Wings of the Dove. Brilliant meditations on death and eros, Shakespeare and St. Paul, irony and hybridity explore the meaning of sacrifice in modernity, casting off misperceptions of barbarity to reconnect the radical idea to politics and revolution.


Song of Princes

Song of Princes

Author: Janell Rhiannon

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2016-06-13

Total Pages: 490

ISBN-13: 9781534686311

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The TROJAN WAR SONG OF PRINCES, Book One of the Homeric Chronicles Sing Muse. Sing of the shining citadel of Troy rising from the hot sands of Asia. Sing of the Greek palaces ascending from their rocky hilltops. Sing of one woman's dream heralding the madness of men and the murder of innocents. From bull dancing rings and wild meadows, the Forgotten Prince must choose between love and a golden crown. From seclusion and safety, the Golden Warrior must choose between his honor and his life. From behind the Great Wall, the Golden Prince must choose between his family and his city. And from a rugged realm on the far side of Greece, the Warrior King must choose between his son's life and certain exile. Here shepherds and princes, warriors and kings, and seers and lovers seek to conquer their passions, outwit destiny or surrender to it. PARIS, the FORGOTTEN PRINCE. ACHILLES, the GOLDEN WARRIOR. HEKTOR, the GOLDEN PRINCE. ODYSSEUS, the WARRIOR KING. Where did their legends begin before their lives converged at Troy in one of the most famous battles of all time? The HOMERIC CHRONICLES tell the stories of Paris, Achilles, Hektor, and Odysseus in one chronological tale, beginning before the ILIAD and ending long after the ODYSSEY. Blending both history and myth, the Homeric Chronicles will satisfy your love of Greek mythology, while paying homage to the original storyteller, Homer. SONGS OF PRINCES begins with the birth of Paris and Achilles, and introduces us to a young Hektor and Odysseus. The journey of the princes begins... Fall in love with Greek mythology for the first time or all over again. ...READ THEM ALL... #songofprinces #riseofprinces #returnofkings #homericchronicles THE BIRTH OF PARIS The labor began with the pull of the full moon. Hecuba's eyes opened. She recognized the familiar dull ache. The squeeze tightened down her lower back and wrapped itself around her lower hips and belly like a merciless snake. It begins, she thought. The child whose destiny she'd agonized over these many weeks pressed his entrance into a hostile world. She rolled onto her side to ease the progressing pains. She knew precious little time remained before she would be forced to call Tessa to fetch the midwife. Hecuba planned to endure as much pain as she could bear buying time with her unwelcomed son...unwelcomed by all, except for her. She loved the child despite the prophecy. Tears filled her eyes for the child pushing his way to the light. Hecuba wept into her pillow. His innocence would be her life's burden. She would never know the burn of the first milk passing to her breasts as his little mouth suckled for the first time. She would not know the smell of his baby skin. She would not feel the weight of him in her arms as she cradled him to sleep, or the weight of his little body as it grew to fill the circle of her arms, making them ache with his increasing size. She would not know him at all. He would be stolen away from her and lost forever. With each new tug on her body, she clenched her teeth and tried to breathe as quietly as possible. In between the pains, she shifted to the opposite side to keep the mounting pressure from making her cry out. As the moonlight shifted past the high window, the birthing process accelerated. A piercing pain below Hecuba's pelvis forced a shrill scream into the stillness shattering the silver calm. The warm sticky wetness washed down her thighs. Eleithyia wasted no time bringing the child along. Why goddess? Let him stay with me a while longer, I beg you. Her plea hung unheeded in that space between earth and sky.


The Seed Keeper

The Seed Keeper

Author: Diane Wilson

Publisher: Milkweed Editions

Published: 2021-03-09

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1571317325

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A haunting novel spanning several generations, The Seed Keeper follows a Dakhóta family’s struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most. Rosalie Iron Wing has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, a former science teacher who tells her stories of plants, of the stars, of the origins of the Dakhóta people. Until, one morning, Ray doesn’t return from checking his traps. Told she has no family, Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato—where the reserved, bookish teenager meets rebellious Gaby Makespeace, in a friendship that transcends the damaged legacies they’ve inherited. On a winter’s day many years later, Rosalie returns to her childhood home. A widow and mother, she has spent the previous two decades on her white husband’s farm, finding solace in her garden even as the farm is threatened first by drought and then by a predatory chemical company. Now, grieving, Rosalie begins to confront the past, on a search for family, identity, and a community where she can finally belong. In the process, she learns what it means to be descended from women with souls of iron—women who have protected their families, their traditions, and a precious cache of seeds through generations of hardship and loss, through war and the insidious trauma of boarding schools. Weaving together the voices of four indelible women, The Seed Keeper is a beautifully told story of reawakening, of remembering our original relationship to the seeds and, through them, to our ancestors.


Project Hail Mary

Project Hail Mary

Author: Andy Weir

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2021-05-04

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 0593135210

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Martian, a lone astronaut must save the earth from disaster in this “propulsive” (Entertainment Weekly), cinematic thriller full of suspense, humor, and fascinating science—in development as a major motion picture starring Ryan Gosling. HUGO AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST BOOKS: Bill Gates, GatesNotes, New York Public Library, Parade, Newsweek, Polygon, Shelf Awareness, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal • “An epic story of redemption, discovery and cool speculative sci-fi.”—USA Today “If you loved The Martian, you’ll go crazy for Weir’s latest.”—The Washington Post Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone. Or does he? An irresistible interstellar adventure as only Andy Weir could deliver, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian—while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.


Parables of the Cross

Parables of the Cross

Author: I. Lilias Trotter

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-03-25

Total Pages: 33

ISBN-13: 1625589050

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Isabella Lilias Trotter (1853-1928) was an artist and a missionary for over 38 years to the Muslims of Algeria. John Ruskin, the famous art critic, didn't believe that ladies could paint before he met Lilias. He changed his mind after he met her and believed that if she would give her life to painting she could become the greatest painter of the nineteenth century. Ruskin believed that if she would devote herself to art "she would be the greatest living painter and do things that would be immortal. " He was unhappy that she was spending so much time on the streets of London, helping with the YWCA, when he thought she ought to be painting. Lilias, however, decided to give up her career in art in order to serve God. She always remained a good friend of Ruskin's though, and they wrote many letters when she was in Algeria. She also wrote several books - beautifully illustrated by herself, including: Parables of the Cross (1894), Parables of the Christ-Life (1899), and a book for Sufi Muslims, The Way of the Sevenfold Secret.


Ardor

Ardor

Author: Roberto Calasso

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2014-11-18

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 0141971819

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In this revelatory volume, Roberto Calasso, whom the Paris Review has called 'a literary institution', explores the ancient texts known as the Vedas. Little is known about the Vedic people who lived more than three thousand years ago in northern India: they left behind almost no objects, images, ruins. They created no empires. Even the hallucinogenic plant, the soma, which appears at the centre of some of their rituals, has not been identified with any certainty. Only a 'Parthenon of words' remains: verses and formulations suggesting a daring understanding of life. 'If the Vedic people had been asked why they did not build cities,' writes Calasso, 'they could have replied: we did not seek power, but rapture.' This is the ardor of the Vedic world, a burning intensity that is always present, both in the mind and in the cosmos. With his signature erudition and profound sense of the past, Calasso explores the enigmatic web of ritual and myth that define the Vedas. Often at odds with modern thought, he shows how these texts illuminate the nature of consciousness more than neuroscientists have been able to offer us up to now. Following the 'hundred paths' of the Satapatha Brahmana, an impressive exegesis of Vedic ritual, Ardor indicates that it may be possible to reach what is closest by passing through that which is most remote, as 'the whole of Vedic India was an attempt to think further'.


Uses of Comparative Mythology

Uses of Comparative Mythology

Author: Kenneth L. Golden

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-04-14

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1317943198

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This collection, first published in 1992, offers critical-interpretive essays on various aspects of the work of Joseph Campbell (1904-1987), one of a very few international experts on myth. Joseph Campbell examines myths and mythologies from a comparative point of view, and he stresses those similarities among myths the world over as they suggest an existing, transcendent unity of all humankind. His interpretations foster an openness, even a generous appreciation of, all myths; and he attempts to generate a broad, sympathetic understanding of the role of these 'stories' in human history, in our present-day lives, and in the possibilities of our future.


Win the Day

Win the Day

Author: Mark Batterson

Publisher: Multnomah

Published: 2023-02-21

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0593192788

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The New York Times bestselling author of Chase the Lion reveals seven powerful habits that can help you tackle God-sized goals by turning yesterday’s regrets and tomorrow’s anxieties into fuel for a better today. “This book will change the trajectory of your life.”—John Maxwell, #1 New York Times bestselling author, entrepreneur, and leadership expert Too many people delay, downsize, or shrug off their dreams just because they don’t know where to start, but playing it safe doesn’t account for the massive cost of a life not fully lived. Win the Day is the jump-start you need to go after your goals, one day at a time. You’ll discover how to: 1. Flip the Script: If you want to change your life, start by changing your story. 2. Kiss the Wave: The obstacle is not the enemy; the obstacle is the way. 3. Eat the Frog: If you want God to do the super, you’ve got to do the natural. 4. Fly the Kite: How you do anything is how you’ll do everything. 5. Cut the Rope: Playing it safe is risky. 6. Wind the Clock: Time is measured in minutes; life is measured in moments. 7. Seed the Clouds: Sow today what you want to see tomorrow. As Batterson unpacks each of these daily habits, you’ll see how simple it is to pursue them with focus and dedication—not someday down the road, but now. Transform your perspective of a single day and you’ll discover the potential waiting to be grasped at the beginning of each new sunrise.