The Allure of Immortality
The Allure of Immortality

Author: Lyn Millner

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2023-02-07

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 0813072964

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Wall Street Journal’s Five Best Books About Cults  The true story of cult leader Cyrus Teed and his hollow earth theory  For five days in December 1908 the body of Cyrus Teed lay in a bathtub at a beach house just south of Fort Myers, Florida. His followers, the Koreshans, waited for signs that he was coming back to life. They watched hieroglyphics emerge on his skin and observed what looked like the formation of a third arm. They saw his belly fall and rise with breath, even though his swollen tongue sealed his mouth. As his corpse turned black, they declared that their leader was transforming into the Egyptian god Horus. Teed was a charismatic and controversial guru who at the age of 30 had been "illuminated" by an angel in his electro-alchemical laboratory. At the turn of the twentieth century, surrounded by the marvels of the Second Industrial Revolution, he proclaimed himself a prophet and led 200 people out of Chicago and into a new age. Or so he promised.  The Koreshans settled in a mosquito-infested scrubland and set to building a communal utopia inside what they believed was a hollow earth--with humans living on the inside crust and the entire universe contained within. According to Teed’s socialist and millennialist teachings, if his people practiced celibacy and focused their love on him, he would return after death and they would all become immortal.  Was Teed a visionary or villain, savior or two-bit charlatan? Why did his promises and his theory of "cellular cosmogony" persuade so many? Now comes the bombshell news that David Koresh, apocalyptic leader of the Waco Branch Davidians, plagiarized Teed, and did so unwittingly. Released on the 30th anniversary of the deadly events in Waco, this edition of The Allure of Immortality includes a preface about this astonishing discovery. In this book, Lyn Millner weaves the many bizarre strands of Teed's life and those of his followers into a riveting story of angels, conmen, angry husbands, yellow journalism, and ultimately, hope.

The Allure of Immortality
The Allure of Immortality

Author: Lyn Millner

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2015-10-28

Total Pages: 508

ISBN-13: 0813059437

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Wall Street Journal’s Five Best Books About Cults For five days in December 1908 the body of Cyrus Teed lay in a bathtub at a beach house just south of Fort Myers, Florida. His followers, the Koreshans, waited for signs that he was coming back to life. They watched hieroglyphics emerge on his skin and observed what looked like the formation of a third arm. They saw his belly fall and rise with breath, even though his swollen tongue sealed his mouth. As his corpse turned black, they declared that their leader was transforming into the Egyptian god Horus. Teed was a charismatic and controversial guru who at the age of 30 had been "illuminated" by an angel in his electro-alchemical laboratory. At the turn of the twentieth century, surrounded by the marvels of the Second Industrial Revolution, he proclaimed himself a prophet and led 200 people out of Chicago and into a new age. Or so he promised. The Koreshans settled in a mosquito-infested scrubland and set to building a communal utopia inside what they believed was a hollow earth--with humans living on the inside crust and the entire universe contained within. According to Teed’s socialist and millennialist teachings, if his people practiced celibacy and focused their love on him, he would return after death and they would all become immortal. Was Teed a visionary or villain, savior or two-bit charlatan? Why did his promises and his theory of "cellular cosmogony" persuade so many? In The Allure of Immortality, Lyn Millner weaves the many bizarre strands of Teed's life and those of his followers into a riveting story of angels, conmen, angry husbands, yellow journalism, and ultimately, hope.

Invisible
Invisible

Author: Philip Ball

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2015-04-08

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 022623889X

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Science is said to be on the verge of achieving the ancient dream of making objects invisible. Invisible is a biography of an idea, tied to the history of science over the "longue duree." Taking in Plato to today s science, Ball shows us that the stories we have told about invisibility are not in fact about technical capability but about power, sex, concealment, morality, and corruption. Precisely because they refer to matters that lie beyond our senses, unseen beings and worlds have long been a repository for hopes, fears, and suppressed desires. Ideas of invisibility are, like all ideas rooted in legend, ultimately parables about our own potential and weaknesses. Invisible presents the first comprehensive survey of the roles that the idea of invisibility has played throughout time and culture. This territory takes us from medieval grimoires to cutting-edge nanotechnology, from fairy tales to telecommunications, from camouflage to early cinematography, and from beliefs about ghosts to the dawn of nuclear physics and the discovery of dark energy. Invisible reveals what our age-old fantasies about what lurks unseen, and whether we can enter that realm ourselves, truly say about us. "

Vampire God
Vampire God

Author: Mary Y. Hallab

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2010-03-30

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 1438428588

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Examines the enormous popular appeal of vampires from early Greek and Slavic folklore to present-day popular culture.

The Allure of Toxic Leaders
The Allure of Toxic Leaders

Author: Jean Lipman-Blumen

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0195312007

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Toxic leaders, both political, like Slobodan Milosevic, and corporate, like Enron's Ken Lay, have always been with us, and many books have been written to explain what makes them tick. Here leadership scholar Jean Lipman-Blumen explains what makes the followers tick, exploring why people will tolerate--and remain loyal to--leaders who are destructive to their organizations, their employees, or their nations. Why do we knowingly follow, seldom unseat, frequently prefer, and sometimes even create toxic leaders? Lipman-Blumen argues that these leaders appeal to our deepest needs, playing on our anxieties and fears, on our yearnings for security, high self-esteem, and significance, and on our desire for noble enterprises and immortality. She also explores how followers inadvertently keep themselves in line by a set of insidious control myths that they internalize. For example, the belief that the leader must necessarily be in a position to "know more" than the followers often stills their objections. In addition, outside forces--such as economic depressions, political upheavals, or a crisis in a company--can increase our anxiety and our longing for charismatic leaders. Lipman-Blumen shows how followers can learn critical lessons for the future and survive in the meantime. She discusses how to confront, reform, undermine, blow the whistle on, or oust a toxic leader. And she suggests how we can diminish our need for strong leaders, identify "reluctant leaders" among competent followers, and even nurture the leader within ourselves. Toxic leaders charm, manipulate, mistreat, weaken, and ultimately devastate their followers. The Allure of Toxic Leaders tells us how to recognize these leaders before it's too late.

Immortality, Inc
Immortality, Inc

Author: Chip Walter

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 1426219806

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"Veteran journalist Chip Walter takes us deep inside Silicon Valley's boardrooms and the world's most advanced biomedical labs to reveal the incredible new science of extending human lifespan. Here are the bold business moves funded by Google and made by Apple chairman and Calico CEO Arthur Levinson; the pioneering stem cell techniques developed by scientist Robert Hariri; the transformative enterprises established by genomics genius Craig Venter; and the mind-bending future envisioned by thought leader Ray Kurzweil--all pointing toward a time not too long from now when we will live without disease or diminished faculties far beyond the age of 100. It's an audacious cast of characters, and through their stories you will come to understand how groundbreaking discoveries in gene therapy, molecular biology, and artificial intelligence are cracking the aging process--and could even lead to immortality. As Walter reveals, the quest to cheat death isn't science fiction anymore. It's real, it's serious, and it will change absolutely everything--including our definition of what it means to be alive."--Dust jacket.

Bitten & Smitten
Bitten & Smitten

Author: Michelle Rowen

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2010-07-15

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 0575098546

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Blind dates can be bad, but Sarah Dearly's date is a true contender for worst ever. His neck nibbling didn't just leave a bruise; it turns her into a vampire - and the newest target for a pack of zealot vampire hunters. With her date now their latest victim, Sarah runs for her immortal life - straight into Thierry de Bennicoeur, a master vampire who is just a wee bit suicidal. Thierry can't resist a damsel in distress and agrees to teach Sarah how to live the vampire life if she'll help him end his own. But as it turns out, Sarah may be his best reason for living.

The People in the Trees
The People in the Trees

Author: Hanya Yanagihara

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2013-08-13

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 038553678X

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A thrilling anthropological adventure story with a profound and tragic vision of what happens when cultures collide—from the bestselling author of National Book Award–nominated modern classic, A Little Life “Provokes discussions about science, morality and our obsession with youth.” —Chicago Tribune It is 1950 when Norton Perina, a young doctor, embarks on an expedition to a remote Micronesian island in search of a rumored lost tribe. There he encounters a strange group of forest dwellers who appear to have attained a form of immortality that preserves the body but not the mind. Perina uncovers their secret and returns with it to America, where he soon finds great success. But his discovery has come at a terrible cost, not only for the islanders, but for Perina himself. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.

The Secret Life of Puppets
The Secret Life of Puppets

Author: Victoria Nelson

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2003-11-01

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0674041410

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In one of those rare books that allows us to see the world not as we've never seen it before, but as we see it daily without knowing, Victoria Nelson illuminates the deep but hidden attraction the supernatural still holds for a secular mainstream culture that forced the transcendental underground and firmly displaced wonder and awe with the forces of reason, materialism, and science. In a backward look at an era now drawing to a close, The Secret Life of Puppets describes a curious reversal in the roles of art and religion: where art and literature once took their content from religion, we came increasingly to seek religion, covertly, through art and entertainment. In a tour of Western culture that is at once exhilarating and alarming, Nelson shows us the distorted forms in which the spiritual resurfaced in high art but also, strikingly, in the mass culture of puppets, horror-fantasy literature, and cyborgs: from the works of Kleist, Poe, Musil, and Lovecraft to Philip K. Dick and virtual reality simulations. At the end of the millennium, discarding a convention of the demonized grotesque that endured three hundred years, a Demiurgic consciousness shaped in Late Antiquity is emerging anew to re-divinize the human as artists like Lars von Trier and Will Self reinvent Expressionism in forms familiar to our pre-Reformation ancestors. Here as never before, we see how pervasively but unwittingly, consuming art forms of the fantastic, we allow ourselves to believe.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

Author: V. E. Schwab

Publisher: Tor Books

Published: 2020-10-06

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 0765387581

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER USA TODAY BESTSELLER NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER THE WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER Recommended by Entertainment Weekly, Real Simple, NPR, Slate, and Oprah Magazine #1 Library Reads Pick—October 2020 #1 Indie Next Pick—October 2020 BOOK OF THE YEAR (2020) FINALIST—Book of The Month Club A “Best Of” Book From: Oprah Mag * CNN * Amazon * Amazon Editors * NPR * Goodreads * Bustle * PopSugar * BuzzFeed * Barnes & Noble * Kirkus Reviews * Lambda Literary * Nerdette * The Nerd Daily * Polygon * Library Reads * io9 * Smart Bitches Trashy Books * LiteraryHub * Medium * BookBub * The Mary Sue * Chicago Tribune * NY Daily News * SyFy Wire * Powells.com * Bookish * Book Riot * Library Reads Voter Favorite * In the vein of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Life After Life, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is New York Times bestselling author V. E. Schwab’s genre-defying tour de force. A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget. France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name. Also by V. E. Schwab Shades of Magic A Darker Shade of Magic A Gathering of Shadows A Conjuring of Light Villains Vicious Vengeful At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.