Lawgiver and liberator. Seer and prophet. The only human permitted to converse with God "face-to-face." Moses is the most commanding presence in the Old Testament. Yet as Jonathan Kirsch shows in this brilliant, stunningly original volume, Moses was also an enigmatic and mysterious figure--at once a good shepherd and a ruthless warrior, a spiritual leader and a magician, a lawgiver who broke his own laws, God's chosen friend and hounded victim. Now, in Moses: A Life, Kirsch accomplishes the wondrous feat of revealing the real Moses, a strikingly modern figure who steps out from behind the facade of Sunday school lessons and movie matinees. Drawing on the biblical text and a treasury of both scholarship and storytelling, Kirsch examines all that is known and all that has been imagined of Moses. In these vivid pages, we see the marvels and mysteries of Moses's life in a new light--his rescue in infancy and adoption by an Egyptian princess; his reluctant assumption of the role of liberator; his struggles to wrest his people from the pharaoh's dominion; his desperate vigil on Mount Sinai. Here too is the darker, more ominous Moses--the sorcerer, the husband of a pagan woman, the military commander who cold-bloodedly ordered the slaying of innocent people; the beloved of God whom God sought twice to murder. Jonathan Kirsch brings both prodigious knowledge and a keen imagination to one of the most compelling stories of the Bible, and the results are fascinating. A figure of mystery, passion, and contradiction, Moses emerges from this book very much a hero for our time.
"I hadn't, till I really started digging, gauged the fierce intensity of the need for myth in the human psyche, of any age, or sensed the variety of motives dictating that need," writes Peter Green in the introduction to this wide-ranging collection of essays on classical mythology and the mythic experience. Using the need for myth as the starting point for exploring a number of topics in Greek mythology and history, Green advances new ideas about why the human urge to make myths persists across the millennia and why the borderland between mythology and history can sometimes be hard to map. Green looks at both specific problems in classical mythology and larger theoretical issues. His explorations underscore how mythic expression opens a door into non-rational and quasi-rational modes of thought in which it becomes possible to rewrite painful truths and unacceptable history--which is, Green argues, a dangerous enterprise. His study of the intersections between classical mythology and Greek history ultimately drives home a larger point, "the degree of mythification and deception (of oneself no less than of others) of which the human mind is capable."
DK Eyewitness Top 10 Athens will lead you straight to the best attractions this region has to offer. Whether you're looking for unmissable museums and ancient sites, alluring nearby islands, night-time hot-spots, shopping streets, liveliest festivals or want to find the best restaurants and tavernas in Athens; this guide is the perfect pocket-sized companion. Rely on dozens of Top 10 lists for all budgets - from the Top 10 Greek dishes and archaeological sites to the Top 10 city strolls and itineraries, shops, hotels and, to save you time and money, there's even a list of the Top 10 things to avoid. DK Eyewitness Top 10 Athens is packed with beautiful illustrations of this historical city, providing the insider knowledge every visitor needs to know. Your guide to the Top 10 best of everything in Athens.
Among the more sensational espionage cases of the Cold War were those of Moscow’s three British spies—Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, and Guy Burgess. In this riveting book, S. J. Hamrick draws on documentary evidence concealed for almost half a century in reconstructing the complex series of 1947–1951 events that led British intelligence to identify all three as Soviet agents. Basing his argument primarily on the Venona archive of broken Soviet codes released in 1995–1996 as well as on complementary Moscow and London sources, Hamrick refutes the myth of MI5’s identification of Maclean as a Soviet agent in the spring of 1951. British intelligence knew far earlier that Maclean was Moscow’s agent and concealed that knowledge in a 1949–1951 counterespionage operation that deceived Philby and Burgess. Hamrick also introduces compelling evidence of a 1949–1950 British disinformation initiative using Philby to mislead Moscow on Anglo-American retaliatory military capability in the event of Soviet aggression in Western Europe. Engagingly written and impressively documented, Deceiving the Deceivers breaks new ground in reinterpreting the final espionage years of three infamous spies and in clarifying fifty years of conjecture, confusion, and error in Anglo-American intelligence history.
Using information from classical and Atlantean scholars, scientists and psychics, this book traces the history of the continent of Atlantis from its beginnings to its destruction. The author traces the origins of occult science to the Atlanteans and charts the migration of Atlantis' survivors.
"This unique scholarly work, the work of more than 100 contributors worldwide, would have been more accurately titled 'encyclopedia' since most entries are extensive, many covering several pages ....A well designed format throughout makes for a very useable tool..." Choice
The lives and works of forty writers are examined, from the art historian Winckelmann in the 1700s, through Romantic poets such as Byron and Platen, to Wilde, Isherwood and Forster. Attention is given to the works of such painters as Girodet and von Marees and the photographs of von Gloeden and List. Robert Aldrich sets the phenomenon of homosexual interest in the Mediterranean in its social and historical context. He suggests that different myths replaced that of the homoerotic Mediterranean by the 1960s, as gay liberation diminished the need for the legitimation of homosexuality which the classics provided, and law reform lessened the need for exile.
