Snakes with Wings and Gold-digging Ants

Snakes with Wings and Gold-digging Ants
Author: Herodotus
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 95
Release: 2007-02-01
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 0141964839

So much of what we know of the Ancient World comes from Herodotus (c.490 BC - c.420 BC) that he will always remain the greatest of historians. But in addition such a large part of the entertainment value of the Ancient World comes from his enormous, omnivorous, sometimes credulous appetite for stories of distant lands and strange creatures. Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries – but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.

Monsters in Greek Literature

Monsters in Greek Literature
Author: Fiona Mitchell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2021-05-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000392597

Monsters in Greek literature are often thought of as creatures which exist in mythological narratives, however, as this book shows, they appear in a much broader range of ancient sources and are used in creation narratives, ethnographic texts, and biology to explore the limits of the human body and of the human world. This book provides an in-depth examination of the role of monstrosity in ancient Greek literature. In the past, monsters in this context have largely been treated as unimportant or analysed on an individual basis. By focusing on genres rather than single creatures, the book provides a greater understanding of how monstrosity and abnormal bodies are used in ancient sources. Very often ideas about monstrosity are used as a contrast against which to examine the nature of what it is to be human, both physically and behaviourally. This book focuses on creation narratives, ethnographic writing, and biological texts. These three genres address the origins of the human world, its spatial limits, and the nature of the human body; by examining monstrosity in these genres we can see the ways in which Greek texts construct the space and time in which people exist and the nature of our bodies. This book is aimed primarily at scholars and students undertaking research, not only those with an interest in monstrosity, but also scholars exploring cultural representations of time (especially the primordial and mythological past), ancient geography and ethnography, and ancient philosophy and science. As the representation of monsters in antiquity was strongly influential on medieval, renaissance, and early modern images and texts, this book will also be relevant to people researching these areas.

What Every American Should Know About the Middle East

What Every American Should Know About the Middle East
Author: Melissa Rossi
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2008-12-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1440655340

The What Every American Should Know series returns with a timely guide to the region Americans need to understand the most (and know the least) The latest edition of Melissa Rossi's popular What Every American Should Know series gives a crash course on one of the most complex and important regions of the world. In this comprehensive and engaging reference book, Rossi offers a clear analysis of the issues playing out in the Middle East, delving into each country's history, politics, economy, and religions. Having traveled through the area over the past year, she exposes firsthand the U.S.'s geopolitical moves and how our presence has affected the region's economic and political development. Topics include: · Why Iran is viewed as a threat by most Middle East countries · What resource is more important than petroleum in regional power plays · What's really behind the fighting between Sunni and Shia · How Saudi Arabia inadvertently feeds the violence in Iraq and beyond · How monarchies like those in Jordan and Qatar are more open and progressive than the so-called republics With answers that will surprise many Americans, and covering a vast history and cultural complexity that will fascinate any student of the world, What Every American Should Know About the Middle East is a must-read introduction to the most critical region of the twenty-first century.

Children, Morality and Society

Children, Morality and Society
Author: S. Frankel
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2012-04-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137007796

This book explores the extent to which children engage with questions of morality, arguing that they are active members of society who have both the capacity and understanding to engage with discourses of morality.

V. Y. Mudimbe

V. Y. Mudimbe
Author: Pierre-Philippe Fraiture
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2013-08-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1781385750

VY Mudimbe: Undisciplined Africanism is the first English-language monograph dedicated to the work of Valentin Yves Mudimbe. This book charts the intellectual history of the seminal Congolese philosopher, epistemologist, and philologist from the late 1960s to the present day, exploring his major essays and novels. Pierre-Philippe Fraiture highlights Mudimbe’s trajectory through major debates on African nationalism, Panafricanism, neo-colonialism, negritude, pedagogy, Christianisation, decolonisation, anthropology, postcolonial representations, and a variety of other subjects, using these as contexts for close readings of many of Mudimbe’s texts, both influential and lesser-known. The book demonstrates that Mudimbe’s intellectual career has been informed by a series of decisive dialogues with some of the key exponents of Africanism (Herodotus, EW Blyden, Placide Tempels), continental and postcolonial thought (Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, and Claude Lévi-Strauss), and African thought and philosophy from Africa and the diaspora (L.S. Senghor, Patrice Nganang, and Achille Mbembe).

Centaurs and Snake-Kings

Centaurs and Snake-Kings
Author: Jeremy McInerney
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 477
Release: 2024-07-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009459058

Griffins, centaurs and gorgons: the Greek imagination teems with wondrous, yet often monstrous, hybrids. Jeremy McInerney discusses how these composite creatures arise from the entanglement of humans and animals. Overlaying such enmeshment is the rich cultural exchange experienced by Greeks across the Mediterranean. Hybrids, the author reveals, capture the anxiety of cross-cultural encounter, where similarity and incongruity were conjoined. Hybridity likewise expresses instability of identity. The ancient sea, that most changeable ancient domain, was viewed as home to monsters like Skylla; while on land the centaur might be hypersexual yet also hypercivilized, like Cheiron. Medusa may be destructive, yet also alluring. Wherever conventional values or behaviours are challenged, there the hybrid gives that threat a face. This absorbing work unveils a mercurial world of shifting categories that offer an alternative to conventional certainties. Transforming disorder into images of wonder, Greek hybrids – McInerney suggests – finally suggest other ways of being human.

The Way of Herodotus

The Way of Herodotus
Author: Justin Marozzi
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2010-02-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786727276

Intrepid travel historian Justin Marozzi retraces the footsteps of Herodotus through the Mediterranean and Middle East, examining Herodotus's 2,500-year-old observations about the cultures and places he visited and finding echoes of his legacy reverberating to this day. The Way of Herodotus is a lively yet thought-provoking excursion into the world of Herodotus, with the man who invented history ever present, guiding the narrative with his discursive spirit.

The Congo and the Cameroons

The Congo and the Cameroons
Author: Mary Kingsley
Publisher: ePenguin
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2007-02
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN:

Mary Kingsley's journeys through tropical west Africa are a remarkable record, both of a world that has vanished and of a writer of immense bravery, wit and humanity. Paddling through mangrove swamps, fending off crocodiles, climbing Mount Cameroon, Kingsley is both admirable and funny.

Sold as a Slave

Sold as a Slave
Author: Olaudah Equiano
Publisher: Penguin Group
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2007
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780141032054

In an adventurous and extraordinary life, Equiano crisscrossed the Atlantic world, from West Africa to the Caribbean to the U.S. to Britain, either as a slave or fighting with the Royal Navy. This account is not only one of the great documents of the abolition movement, but also a startling, moving story of danger and betrayal.