Author: Stephen Cave
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307884937
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
If you could live forever, would you want to? Both a fascinating look at the history of our strive for immortality and an investigation into whether living forever is really all it’s cracked up to be. A fascinating work of popular philosophy and history that both enlightens and entertains, Stephen Cave investigates whether it just might be possible to live forever and whether we should want to. He also makes a powerful argument that it’s our very preoccupation with defying mortality that drives civilization. Central to this book is the metaphor of a mountaintop where one can find the Immortals. Since the dawn of humanity, everyone – whether they know it or not—has been trying to climb that mountain. But there are only four paths up its treacherous slope, and there have only ever been four paths. Throughout history, people have wagered everything on their choice of the correct path, and fought wars against those who’ve chosen differently. In drawing back the curtain on what compels humans to “keep on keeping on,” Cave engages the reader in a number of mind-bending thought experiments. He teases out the implications of each immortality gambit, asking, for example, how long a person would live if they did manage to acquire a perfectly disease-free body. Or what would happen if a super-being tried to round up the atomic constituents of all who’ve died in order to resurrect them. Or what our loved ones would really be doing in heaven if it does exist. We’re confronted with a series of brain-rattling questions: What would happen if tomorrow humanity discovered that there is no life but this one? Would people continue to please their boss, vie for the title of Year’s Best Salesman? Would three-hundred-year projects still get started? If the four paths up the Mount of the Immortals lead nowhere—if there is no getting up to the summit—is there still reason to live? And can civilization survive? Immortality is a deeply satisfying book, as optimistic about the human condition as it is insightful about the true arc of history.
Author: Tong Wen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781891640902
Category : Chinese poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Wen Tong (1019-1079) is considered the supreme master of bamboo painting in the history of Chinese art. According to his friend and admirer, Su Shi (Dongpo), the greatest poet of the Song Dynasty (960-1279), "When Wen Tong painted bamboo, he himself became bamboo!" Wen was a poet as well, and perhaps because of his fame as a painter, his poetry has remained virtually unknown for centuries. This book is the first in any Western language to present translations of selected poems by Wen, over three hundred of them, as well as examples of his prose writings, which are also fascinating. A particular revelation is Wen's unusual degree of interest in what might be called the Folk Religion of China, for example, ceremonies of supplication to various gods, especially Dragon deities, to send rain in time of drought. Wen's poems and prose pieces also bring to light aspects of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism that are of great importance in Chinese civilization, but rarely addressed in the literature of the Chinese poets as they involve devotional practices held in suspicion by many of the literati, but seen by Wen Tong in a positive light.
Author: Benjamin W. Schenk
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1438982046
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 742
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Book Description
The book is about family of immortals that have been around for 66 million years. They are fighting an endless war with their arch-enemies, the cavemen. The cavemen have been around even longer and they feel like they are the rightful rulers of Earth, since they were the first intelligent beings on the planet. They want to enslave mankind, and Bejine's immortal family is the only thing between them and their rule of the Earth! The immortals and the cavemen have been fighting their secret war for millions of years, out of sight of the modern humans. Their battle goes public, as the cavemen try to capture some of the daughters of Bejine, and they are joined by a small group of modern humans, that find out to their surprise that the immortals have not only lived forever but they are extremely hard to kill! Surprises await modern Earth in the 'Endless War'.
Author: Albert Hendrix Stone
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Jianxi (China)
Languages : en
Pages : 460
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Book Description
Author: Caleb Fox
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN: 9780765319937
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
In this sequel to Zadayi Red, Caleb Fox continues his fantasy retelling of the stories and history of the first peoples of America, the tribes we know today as the Cherokee. Shonan and his son Aku are as different as night and day–the father a down-to-earth War Chief, leader of his village; his son a young shape-shifter who has been forbidden by his father to practice his gift from the gods. But such gifts are given to the people for the protection of the tribe, and Aku will not long be able to obey his father. This lovely, intense journey among the earliest inhabitants of North America will thrill readers with deep truths and timeless adventure.
Author: Neville Agnew
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 1606061577
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 476
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Book Description
The Mogao Grottoes, a World Heritage Site in northwestern China, are located along the ancient caravan routes—collectively known as the Silk Road—that once linked China with the West. Founded by a Buddhist monk in the late fourth century, Mogao flourished over the following millennium, as monks, local rulers, and travelers commissioned hundreds of cave temples cut into a mile-long rock cliff and adorned them with vibrant murals. More than 490 decorated grottoes remain, containing thousands of sculptures and some 45,000 square meters of wall paintings, making Mogao one of the world’s most significant sites of Buddhist art. In 1997 the Getty Conservation Institute, which had been working with the Dunhuang Academy since 1989, began a case study using the Late–Tang dynasty Cave 85 to develop a methodology that would stabilize the deteriorating wall paintings. This abundantly illustrated volume is the definitive report on the project, which was completed in 2010.
Author: Kresley Cole
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501120638
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
Grieving over the loss of his love, werewolf Bowen MacRieve enjoys a passionate encounter with his enemy, the witch Mariketa the Awaited, but when sinister forces threaten her life, Bowen must use all his skills to keep her alive.
Author: Anne Spencer Parry
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0987119133
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 149
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Book Description
Author: Benjamin W. Schenk
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1456723170
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 714
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Book Description
THIS IS THE SECOND BOOK OF THE IMMORTALS! THE IMMORTALS AND THEIR ALLIES HAVE TRAVELED TO A WORLD, MILLIONS OF YEARS IN THE PAST. THE IMMORTALS MUST FACE THEIR ANCIENT ENEMIES TO STAY ALIVE. IN THIS STORY, BEJINE AND HIS FAMILY,AS WELL AS THEIR ALLIES, FIGHT TO STAY ALIVE AND TO STAY FREE IN A WORLD FILLED WITH CAVEMEN,ANCIENT HUMANS, OGRES, GIANTS AND VAMPIRES. ITIS FAST-PACED WITH DANGER AROUND EVERY CORNER,AND BEHIND EVERY TREE!
Author: Richard Leviton
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1440139253
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 622
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Book Description
ART CAPITAL, TOURIST DESTINATION, MODERN ADOBE CITY-SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO, NOW MAY ALSO BE ONE OF AMERICA'S MOST IMPORTANT SACRED SITES. Santa Fe, the City Different, has deeply excited visitors for over a hundred years with its crystal blue skies, Blood of Christ mountains, pure dry air, old adobe charm, and beautiful light. But this high-desert State capital and artists' haven may also be a Land of Light-a premier landscape of multiple sacred sites and heightened spiritual charge. People love this place, they say, for its uplifting, spiritually leavening effect, for how it starts a process of transformation, healing, deep change, and self-reinvention. People revere this place as an axis of creativity, a hotbed of innovation, and a paramount center for recreating culture and spirituality capable of inspiring the world. Santa Fe Light explains why. An able travel guide, it takes you to 111 different locations and their Light temples in and around Santa Fe, numinous places usually only encountered in myths or dreams. And it proposes that the observed social qualities of Santa Fe, its livability, might be due to this fabulous visionary geography alluringly just beyond the veil of our ordinary perception. Richard Leviton, an investigator of visionary terrains for over 25 years, provides firsthand accounts of what it's like inside all these Light temples, what it's possible to see and experience, and how they co-create Santa Fe reality. The total impact of these on awareness and the feeling for life here he calls Santa Fe Light. Touch one Light temple and you open a door into the universe, and you suddenly find immediately practical ways to help the campaign with Gaia to restore the Earth.
