The Gospel of the Eels

The Gospel of the Eels PDF Author: Patrik Svensson
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 9781529030709
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Gospel of the Eels is both a meditation on the world's most elusive fish--the eel--and a reflection on the human condition.

The Gospel of the Eels

The Gospel of the Eels PDF Author: Patrik Svensson
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 9781529030709
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Gospel of the Eels is both a meditation on the world's most elusive fish--the eel--and a reflection on the human condition.

The Book of Eels

The Book of Eels PDF Author: Patrik Svensson
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062968831
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
A Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize National Bestseller Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction A New York Times Notable Book One of TIME’s 100 Must Read Books of the Year One of The Washington Post’s 50 Notable Nonfiction Books of the Year One of Smithsonian Magazine’s 10 Best Science Books of the Year One of Publishers Weekly’s Best Nonfiction Books of the Year A New York Times Editor’s Choice Part H Is for Hawk, part The Soul of an Octopus, The Book of Eels is both a meditation on the world’s most elusive fish—the eel—and a reflection on the human condition Remarkably little is known about the European eel, Anguilla anguilla. So little, in fact, that scientists and philosophers have, for centuries, been obsessed with what has become known as the “eel question”: Where do eels come from? What are they? Are they fish or some other kind of creature altogether? Even today, in an age of advanced science, no one has ever seen eels mating or giving birth, and we still don’t understand what drives them, after living for decades in freshwater, to swim great distances back to the ocean at the end of their lives. They remain a mystery. Drawing on a breadth of research about eels in literature, history, and modern marine biology, as well as his own experience fishing for eels with his father, Patrik Svensson crafts a mesmerizing portrait of an unusual, utterly misunderstood, and completely captivating animal. In The Book of Eels, we meet renowned historical thinkers, from Aristotle to Sigmund Freud to Rachel Carson, for whom the eel was a singular obsession. And we meet the scientists who spearheaded the search for the eel’s point of origin, including Danish marine biologist Johannes Schmidt, who led research efforts in the early twentieth century, catching thousands upon thousands of eels, in the hopes of proving their birthing grounds in the Sargasso Sea. Blending memoir and nature writing at its best, Svensson’s journey to understand the eel becomes an exploration of the human condition that delves into overarching issues about our roots and destiny, both as humans and as animals, and, ultimately, how to handle the biggest question of all: death. The result is a gripping and slippery narrative that will surprise and enchant.

The Book of Eels

The Book of Eels PDF Author: Tom Fort
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780007115938
Category : Eels
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Get Book Here

Book Description
What has been the dish of kings, the subject of myths and the traveller of epic and mysterious journeys? The eel. Beginning life in the Sargasso Sea, the eel travels across the ocean, lives for twenty or so years, and then is driven by some instinct back across the ocean to spawn and die. And the next generation starts the story again. No one knows why the eels return, or how the orphaned elvers learn their way back. One man discovered, after many adventures, the breeding ground of all eels - and he is the hero of this book. Eels were being caught and consumed 5000 years before the birth of Christ - Aristotle and Pliny wrote about them; Romans regarded them as a peerless delicacy; Egyptians accorded them semi-sacred status; English kings died of overeating them. There are many strange practices among eel fishers all over the world, and many great fortunes based upon the eel harvest. The Book of Eels, a combination of social comment, biography and natural history, is also a fascinating and witty account of Tom Fort's obsession with the eel, his journeying to discover the eel in all its habitats, and the people he meets in his pursuit.

Trains, Jesus, and Murder

Trains, Jesus, and Murder PDF Author: Richard Beck
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 150645559X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Saints and sinners, all jumbled up together." That's the genius of Johnny Cash, and that's what the gospel is ultimately all about. Johnny Cash sang about and for people on the margins. He famously played concerts in prisons, where he sang both murder ballads and gospel tunes in the same set. It's this juxtaposition between light and dark, writes Richard Beck, that makes Cash one of the most authentic theologians in memory. In Trains, Jesus, and Murder, Beck explores the theology of Johnny Cash by investigating a dozen of Cash's songs. In reflecting on Cash's lyrics, and the passion with which he sang them, we gain a deeper understanding of the enduring faith of the Man in Black.

Hunting Magic Eels

Hunting Magic Eels PDF Author: Richard Beck
Publisher: Broadleaf Books
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Get Book Here

Book Description
We live in a secular age, a world dominated by science and technology. Increasing numbers of us don't believe in God anymore. We don't expect miracles. We've grown up and left those fairy tales behind, culturally and personally. Yet five hundred years ago the world was very much enchanted. It was a world where God existed and the devil was real. It was a world full of angels and demons. It was a world of holy wells and magical eels. But since the Protestant Reformation and the beginning of the Enlightenment, the world--in the West, at least--has become increasingly disenchanted. While this might be taken as evidence of a crisis of belief, Richard Beck argues that it's actually a crisis of attention. God hasn't gone anywhere, but we've lost our capacity to see God. The rising tide of disenchantment has profoundly changed our religious imaginations and led to a loss of the holy expectation that we can be interrupted by the sacred and divine. But it doesn't have to be this way. Hunting Magic Eels shows us that with attention and an intentional, cultivated capacity to experience God as a living, vital presence in our lives, we can cultivate an enchanted faith in a skeptical age. This new paperback edition includes a foreword from Sean Palmer as well as four new, additional chapters, including "Why Good People Need God," "Live Your Beautiful Life," and "The Primacy of the Invisible."

The Grass Widow

The Grass Widow PDF Author: Teri Holbrook
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0307420620
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book Here

Book Description
After a self-imposed exile in England, historian Gale Grayson has returned to her Southern roots, only to find eccentric relatives—and murderous scandal—alive and well in Statlers Cross, Georgia. They’d been talking about Linnie Glynn Cane since 1925, about the pecan tree where she was found hanging, and how her ghost never came to rest. No sooner do Gale and her four-year-old, Katie Pru, arrive in town than tragedy strikes again. Martin Cane, a straitlaced, religious man and host of the annual Southern Gospel Singing and Barbecue, turns up dead—killed by a rifle blast—in the midst of the festivities. Now it is up to Gale to untangle the twisted facts behind Martin’s death. Was the motive suicide, greed, revenge—or a long-delayed justice? To find out, Gale will have to dig deep into the town’s darkest secrets and her own painful past.

Word and Image in the Book of Kells

Word and Image in the Book of Kells PDF Author: Heather Pulliam
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
"[The Book of Kells' contains almost 2000 decorated initials, the majority of which are formed by human figures, beasts, birds and fish. This title offers an in-depth examination of the smaller decorated initials, script layout, and marginalia of this book]"--Jacket cover.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer PDF Author: Renate Wind
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 9780802806321
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Get Book Here

Book Description
Vividly and concisely written, critical as well as appreciative, and containing material never before published in English, this new biography paints a memorable portrait of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German theologian hanged by the Nazis in 1945. Portraying the complexity of Bonhoeffer's personality and the difficult, lonely course his life took, Wind especially brings out Bonhoeffer's early realization of the horror of Nazi treatment of the Jews, and despite misunderstanding by fellow church members, his brave involvement in the resistance against Hitler, his resolve to become "a spoke in the wheel."

City of Fortune

City of Fortune PDF Author: Roger Crowley
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679644261
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536

Get Book Here

Book Description
“The rise and fall of Venice’s empire is an irresistible story and [Roger] Crowley, with his rousing descriptive gifts and scholarly attention to detail, is its perfect chronicler.”—The Financial Times The New York Times bestselling author of Empires of the Sea charts Venice’s astounding five-hundred-year voyage to the pinnacle of power in an epic story that stands unrivaled for drama, intrigue, and sheer opulent majesty. City of Fortune traces the full arc of the Venetian imperial saga, from the ill-fated Fourth Crusade, which culminates in the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, to the Ottoman-Venetian War of 1499–1503, which sees the Ottoman Turks supplant the Venetians as the preeminent naval power in the Mediterranean. In between are three centuries of Venetian maritime dominance, during which a tiny city of “lagoon dwellers” grow into the richest place on earth. Drawing on firsthand accounts of pitched sea battles, skillful negotiations, and diplomatic maneuvers, Crowley paints a vivid picture of this avaricious, enterprising people and the bountiful lands that came under their dominion. From the opening of the spice routes to the clash between Christianity and Islam, Venice played a leading role in the defining conflicts of its time—the reverberations of which are still being felt today. “[Crowley] writes with a racy briskness that lifts sea battles and sieges off the page.”—The New York Times “Crowley chronicles the peak of Venice’s past glory with Wordsworthian sympathy, supplemented by impressive learning and infectious enthusiasm.”—The Wall Street Journal

City of Sparrows

City of Sparrows PDF Author: Eva Nour
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612198538
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
Based on a true story — the thoughtful, raw, and ultimately heartening tale of a young man fighting for survival in a city under siege Growing up in Syria in the 1990s, Sami’s childhood was unremarkable. His day-to-day life largely sheltered him from the horrors of the authoritarian government, until he founded a successful internet company—which landed him on the regime’s radar. Suddenly Sami finds himself in jail, then forcibly enlisted into the Syrian army during the early days of a fast-growing civil uprising. Assigned to the mapmaking division, Sami yearns to simply serve his time and go home, even as he finds himself literally charting the course of the army’s response to the growing revolt. The situation that hits him full-force when he receives a text from his girlfriend: “They’re shooting at us.” With that, Sami realizes that it is not enough to endure Assad's regime -- he has to resist. He has to return home, to the city that will become known as the "capital of the revolution." Based on true events as told to journalist Eva Nour, City of Sparrows is the story of coming of age under siege and the power of hope in the face of unfathomable loss.