Stories from an Ancient Land

Stories from an Ancient Land
Author: Magnus Fiskesjö
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 565
Release: 2021-08-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1805399209

The Wa people have a rich civilization of their own, and a deep history in the mountains of Southeast Asia. Their mythology suggests their land is the first place inhabited by humans, which they care for on behalf of the world. This book introduces aspects of Wa culture, including their approach to the world’s troubles and the lessons others might learn from it. It also presents a new interpretation of Wa headhunting, questioning explanations that see it as a primitive custom, and instead placing it within the fraught history of the last few centuries.

From an Antique Land

From an Antique Land
Author: Carl S. Ehrlich
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 523
Release: 2009
Genre: Middle Eastern literature
ISBN: 074254334X

Sumerian literature / Gonzalo Rubio -- Egyptian literature / Susan Tower Hollis -- Akkadian literature / Benjamin R. Foster -- Hittite literature / Gary Beckman -- Canaanite literature / Wayne T. Pitard -- Hebrew/Israelite literature / Carl S. Ehrlich -- Aramaic literature / Ingo Kottsieper.

Cloud Cuckoo Land

Cloud Cuckoo Land
Author: Anthony Doerr
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 608
Release: 2021-09-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1982168455

On the New York Times bestseller list for over 20 weeks * A New York Times Notable Book * A National Book Award Finalist * Named a Best Book of the Year by Fresh Air, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Associated Press, and many more “If you’re looking for a superb novel, look no further.” —The Washington Post From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, comes the instant New York Times bestseller that is a “wildly inventive, a humane and uplifting book for adults that’s infused with the magic of childhood reading experiences” (The New York Times Book Review). Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of recent times, Cloud Cuckoo Land is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope, and a book. In the 15th century, an orphan named Anna lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople. She learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds what might be the last copy of a centuries-old book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the army that will lay siege to the city. His path and Anna’s will cross. In the present day, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno rehearses children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege. And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father. Anna, Omeir, Seymour, Zeno, and Konstance are dreamers and outsiders whose lives are gloriously intertwined. Doerr’s dazzling imagination transports us to worlds so dramatic and immersive that we forget, for a time, our own.

The Book of Legendary Lands

The Book of Legendary Lands
Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-09-03
Genre: Art and literature
ISBN: 9780857052964

In the tradition of his books On Beauty and On Ugliness and The Infinity of Lists, Umberto Eco presents an enthralling illustrated tour of the fabled places that have awed and eluded us through the ages. "Eco is one of the most influential thinkers of our time" Los Angeles Times From the epic poems of Homer to contemporary science fiction, from the Holy Scriptures to modern mythology and fairy tale, literature and art are full of illusory places we have at some time believed are real, and onto which we have projected our dreams, ideals and fears. Umberto Eco leads us on an illuminating journey through these legendary lands - Atlantis, Thule and Hyperborea, the Earth's interior and the Land of Cockaigne - and explores utopias and dystopias where our imagination can confront concepts that are too incredible, or too challenging, for our limited real world. In The Book of Legendary Lands the author's text is accompanied by several hundred carefully assembled works of art and literature; the result is a beautifully illustrated volume with broad and enduring appeal. Translated from Italian by Alastair McEwen

We Are the Land

We Are the Land
Author: Damon B. Akins
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2021-04-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520976886

“A Native American rejoinder to Richard White and Jesse Amble White’s California Exposures.”—Kirkus Reviews Rewriting the history of California as Indigenous. Before there was such a thing as “California,” there were the People and the Land. Manifest Destiny, the Gold Rush, and settler colonial society drew maps, displaced Indigenous People, and reshaped the land, but they did not make California. Rather, the lives and legacies of the people native to the land shaped the creation of California. We Are the Land is the first and most comprehensive text of its kind, centering the long history of California around the lives and legacies of the Indigenous people who shaped it. Beginning with the ethnogenesis of California Indians, We Are the Land recounts the centrality of the Native presence from before European colonization through statehood—paying particularly close attention to the persistence and activism of California Indians in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The book deftly contextualizes the first encounters with Europeans, Spanish missions, Mexican secularization, the devastation of the Gold Rush and statehood, genocide, efforts to reclaim land, and the organization and activism for sovereignty that built today’s casino economy. A text designed to fill the glaring need for an accessible overview of California Indian history, We Are the Land will be a core resource in a variety of classroom settings, as well as for casual readers and policymakers interested in a history that centers the native experience.

A Land Remembered

A Land Remembered
Author: Patrick D Smith
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2012-10-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1561645826

A Land Remembered has become Florida's favorite novel. Now this Student Edition in two volumes makes this rich, rugged story of the American pioneer spirit more accessible to young readers. Patrick Smith tells of three generations of the MacIveys, a Florida family battling the hardships of the frontier. The story opens in 1858, when Tobias and Emma MacIvey arrive in the Florida wilderness with their son, Zech, to start a new life, and ends in 1968 with Solomon MacIvey, who realizes that his wealth has not been worth the cost to the land. Between is a sweeping story rich in Florida history with a cast of memorable characters who battle wild animals, rustlers, Confederate deserters, mosquitoes, starvation, hurricanes, and freezes to carve a kingdom out of the Florida swamp. In this volume, meet young Zech MacIvey, who learns to ride like the wind through the Florida scrub on Ishmael, his marshtackie horse, his dogs, Nip and Tuck, at this side. His parents, Tobias and Emma, scratch a living from the land, gathering wild cows from the swamp and herding them across the state to market. Zech learns the ways of the land from the Seminoles, with whom his life becomes entwined as he grows into manhood. Next in series > > See all of the books in this series

If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?

If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?
Author: J. Edward Chamberlin
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2010-05-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0307368696

“We need to understand our stories because our lives depend upon it.” —Ted Chamberlin The stories we tell each other reflect and shape our deepest feelings. Stories help us live our lives—and are at the heart of our current conflicts. We love and hate because of them; we make homes for ourselves and drive others out on the basis of ancient tales. As Ted Chamberlin vividly reveals, we are both connected by them and separated by their different truths. Whether Jew or Arab, black or white, Muslim or Christian, Catholic or Protestant, man or woman, our stories hold us in thrall and hold others at bay. Like the work of Joseph Campbell and Bruce Chatwin, this vital, engrossing book offers a new way to understand the hold that stories and songs have on us, and a new sense of the urgency of doing so. Drawing on his own experience in many fields—as scholar and storyteller, witness among native peoples and across cultures—Ted Chamberlin takes us on a journey through the tales of different peoples, from North America to Africa and Jamaica. Beautifully written, with insight and deep understanding, If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? examines why it is now more important than ever to attend to what others are saying in their stories and myths—and what we are saying about ourselves. Only then will we understand why they have such power over us.

The Book of Lost Tales

The Book of Lost Tales
Author: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Publisher: Collins Educational
Total Pages: 398
Release: 1983
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780048232656

My Promised Land

My Promised Land
Author: Ari Shavit
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2013-11-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812984641

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND ECONOMIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “A deeply reported, deeply personal history of Zionism and Israel that does something few books even attempt: It balances the strength and weakness, the idealism and the brutality, the hope and the horror, that has always been at Zionism’s heart.”—Ezra Klein, The New York Times Winner of the Natan Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Ari Shavit’s riveting work, now updated with new material, draws on historical documents, interviews, and private diaries and letters, as well as his own family’s story, to create a narrative larger than the sum of its parts: both personal and of profound historical dimension. As he examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, Shavit asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be? How did it come to be? Can it survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is facing, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. Shavit’s analysis of Israeli history provides a landmark portrait of a small, vibrant country living on the edge, whose identity and presence play a crucial role in today’s global political landscape.

The Shadow Land

The Shadow Land
Author: Elizabeth Kostova
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2017-04-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0345527887

From the #1 bestselling author of The Historian comes a mesmerizing novel that spans the past and the present—and unearths the troubled history of a gorgeous but haunted country. A young American woman, Alexandra Boyd, has traveled to Sofia, Bulgaria, hoping that life abroad will salve the wounds left by the loss of her beloved brother. Soon after arriving in this elegant East European city, however, she helps an elderly couple into a taxi—and realizes too late that she has accidentally kept one of their bags. Inside she finds an ornately carved wooden box engraved with a name: Stoyan Lazarov. Raising the hinged lid, she discovers that she is holding an urn filled with human ashes. As Alexandra sets out to locate the family and return this precious item, she will first have to uncover the secrets of a talented musician who was shattered by political oppression—and she will find out all too quickly that this knowledge is fraught with its own danger. Elizabeth Kostova’s new novel is a tale of immense scope that delves into the horrors of a century and traverses the culture and landscape of this mysterious country. Suspenseful and beautifully written, it explores the power of stories, the pull of the past, and the hope and meaning that can sometimes be found in the aftermath of loss. Praise for The Shadow Land “A compelling and complex mystery, strong storytelling, and lyrical writing combine for an engrossing read.”—Publishers Weekly “In The Shadow Land, Elizabeth Kostova, a master storyteller, brings vividly to life an unfamiliar country—Bulgaria—and a painful history that feels particularly relevant now. You won’t want to put down this remarkable book.”—Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs “In this brilliant work, what appears at first a minor mystery quickly becomes emblematic of a whole country’s hidden history. Lyrical and compelling, The Shadow Land proves a profound meditation on how evil is inflicted, endured, and, through courage and compassion, defeated. Elizabeth Kostova’s third novel clearly establishes her as one of America’s finest writers.”—Ron Rash, author of The Risen