Download or read book The Celestial Hunter written by Roberto Calasso and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 2021-04-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'When hunting began, it was not a man who chased an animal. It was a being that chased another being. No one could say with certainty who each of them were.' Connecting Greek and Egyptian myth, the stories of poets, shamans and gods, Roberto Calasso takes us on a spellbinding voyage that traces the beginnings of our detachment from the animal world; from the landmark evolutionary moment in which humans became the hunter rather than the prey. Roaming through time and across cultures - from the Palaeolithic era to Turing's Machine - The Celestial Hunter delves into the crucible of all our stories- the source of human grief, guilt, resilience and redemption with which we have wrestled throughout history.
Download or read book The Celestial Hunter written by Roberto Calasso and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice "[Calasso's] flow of associations leaves you feeling not out of your depth, but smarter and better read." --The New York Times Book Review The eighth part of Roberto Calasso’s monumental series on the primal forces of civilization The eighth part of Roberto Calasso’s singular work in progress that began in 1983 with The Ruin of Kasch, The Celestial Hunter is an inspired and provocative exploration of mankind’s relationship with myth, the divine, and the idea of transformation. There was a time, even before prehistory, when man was simply a defenseless animal. The gods he worshiped took the form of other beasts or were the patterns of the stars he saw above him each night in the sky, which he transformed into figures and around which he created stories. Soon, however, man learned to imitate the animals that attacked him and he became a hunter. This transformation, Calasso posits, from defenseless victim to hunter was a key moment, the first step on man’s ascendance to power. Suddenly the notion of the hunter became fundamental. It would be developed over thousands of years through the figures that became central to Greek mythology, including the constellations. Among them was Orion, the celestial hunter, and his dog, Sirius. Vivid and strikingly original, and expertly translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon, The Celestial Hunter traces how man created the divine myths that would become the cornerstones of Western civilization. As Calasso demonstrates, the repercussions of these ideas would echo through history, from Paleolithic to modern times. And they would be the product of one thing: the human mind.
Download or read book Literature and the Gods written by Roberto Calasso and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-06-16 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brilliant, inspired, and gloriously erudite, Literature and the Gods is the culmination of Roberto Calasso’s lifelong study of the gods in the human imagination. By uncovering the divine whisper that lies behind the best poetry and prose from across the centuries, Calasso gives us a renewed sense of the mystery and enchantment of great literature. From the banishment of the classical divinities during the Age of Reason to their emancipation by the Romantics and their place in the literature of our own time, the history of the gods can also be read as a ciphered and splendid history of literary inspiration. Rewriting that story, Calasso carves out a sacred space for literature where the presence of the gods is discernible. His inquiry into the nature of “absolute literature” transports us to the realms of Dionysus and Orpheus, Baudelaire and Mallarmé, and prompts a lucid and impassioned defense of poetic form, even when apparently severed from any social function. Lyrical and assured, Literature and the Gods is an intensely engaging work of literary affirmation that deserves to be read alongside the masterpieces it celebrates.
Download or read book Hot Springs written by Stephen Hunter and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The undisputed master of the tough thriller, New York Times bestselling author Stephen Hunter delivers an “exciting and intelligent” (The Wall Street Journal) masterpiece set in 1940s Arkansas, where law and corruption ricochet like slugs from a .45 automatic. Earl Swagger is tough as hell. But even tough guys have their secrets. Plagued by the memory of his abusive father, apprehensive about his own impending parenthood, Earl is a decorated ex-Marine of absolute integrity—and overwhelming melancholy. Now he’s about to face his biggest, bloodiest challenge yet. It is the summer of 1946, organized crime’s garish golden age, when American justice seems to have gone to seed for good. Nowhere is this truer than in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the reigning capital of corruption. When the district attorney vows to bring down the mob, Earl is recruited to run the show. As casino raids erupt into nerve-shattering combat amid screaming prostitutes and fleeing johns, the body count mounts—along with the suspense in this “riveting” (Los Angeles Times), “richly told tale” (The San Francisco Examiner).
Download or read book Ardor written by Roberto Calasso and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2014-11-18 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this revelatory volume, Roberto Calasso, whom the Paris Review has called 'a literary institution', explores the ancient texts known as the Vedas. Little is known about the Vedic people who lived more than three thousand years ago in northern India: they left behind almost no objects, images, ruins. They created no empires. Even the hallucinogenic plant, the soma, which appears at the centre of some of their rituals, has not been identified with any certainty. Only a 'Parthenon of words' remains: verses and formulations suggesting a daring understanding of life. 'If the Vedic people had been asked why they did not build cities,' writes Calasso, 'they could have replied: we did not seek power, but rapture.' This is the ardor of the Vedic world, a burning intensity that is always present, both in the mind and in the cosmos. With his signature erudition and profound sense of the past, Calasso explores the enigmatic web of ritual and myth that define the Vedas. Often at odds with modern thought, he shows how these texts illuminate the nature of consciousness more than neuroscientists have been able to offer us up to now. Following the 'hundred paths' of the Satapatha Brahmana, an impressive exegesis of Vedic ritual, Ardor indicates that it may be possible to reach what is closest by passing through that which is most remote, as 'the whole of Vedic India was an attempt to think further'.
Download or read book I Never Understood Religion Until I Learned Your Name written by Hunter Hazelton and published by . This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Ruin of Kasch written by Roberto Calasso and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2018-01-25 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sparkling new translation of the classic work on violence and revolution as seen through mythology and art The Ruin of Kasch takes up two subjects: "the first is Talleyrand, and the second is everything else," wrote Italo Calvino when the book first appeared in 1983. Hailed as one of those rare books that persuade us to see our entire civilization in a new light, its guide is the French statesman Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, who knew the secrets of the ancien régime and all that came after, and was able to adapt the notion of "legitimacy" to the modern age. Roberto Calasso follows him through a vast gallery of scenes set immediately before and after the French Revolution, making occasional forays backward and forward in time, from Vedic India to the porticoes of the Palais-Royal and to the killing fields of Pol Pot, with appearances by Goethe and Marie Antoinette, Napoleon and Marx, Walter Benjamin and Chateaubriand. At the centre stands the story of the ruin of Kasch, a legendary kingdom based on the ritual killing of the king and emblematic of the ruin of ancient and modern regimes. 'Startling, puzzling, profound . . . a work charged with intelligence and literary seduction' The New York Times 'Unique, idiosyncratic and vaultingly ambitious... essential reading' Independent 'A great fat jewel-box of a book, gleaming with obscure treasures' John Banville
Download or read book The Scribe written by Elizabeth Hunter and published by Recurve Press, LLC. This book was released on 2023-07-03 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hidden at the crossroads of the world, an ancient race battles to protect humanity, even as it dies from within. To the outside world, Ava Matheson is a successful travel photographer from a privileged background. But Ava's spent a lifetime battling voices in her mind she can't understand, and her fractured family has convinced her she'll never belong. Malachi is an Irin scribe, descended from an angelic race and sworn by blood and magic to defend humanity from the Grigori, the sons of fallen angels who could ravage the world. A chance meeting in Istanbul will change both Ava and Malachi's destinies forever. Their attraction should be impossible, but it could also be the only thing that will keep them alive. The Scribe is the first book in the Irin Chronicles, a contemporary fantasy series by Elizabeth Hunter, seven-time USA Today bestselling author of the Elemental Legacy. Loved this book! It had great intrigue and romance. It was sexy, well-written and suspenseful. …I was gripped from the very beginning, enticed by adventures in faraway places. —Vilma Iris Book Blog
Download or read book Heaven s Hunter written by Marie C. Keiser and published by . This book was released on 2020-12-13 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the top detectives for the Galactic Fleet, Randall Yung, gets the assignment to hunt down the perpetrator of a daring attack on a Fleet ship that killed his best friend. The closer Randall gets to the killer, the more he comes to doubt things he always believed and to make decisions he would never have expected. This is a story of love and hatred, revenge and forgiveness, faith and friendship as Randall enters into the world of Catholic dissidents who are trying to prevent genocide in a planetary war.
Download or read book Asteroid Hunters written by Carrie Nugent and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the top scientists in the field of asteroid hunting explains how, for the first time, humanity could have the knowledge to prevent a devastating asteroid impact. --
Download or read book The Tablet of Destinies written by Roberto Calasso and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2022-07-26 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roberto Calasso, "a literary institution of one" (The Paris Review), tells the story of the eternal life of Utnapishtim, the savior of man, in the eleventh part of his great literary project. A long time ago, the gods grew tired of humans, who were making too much noise and disturbing their sleep, and they decided to send a Flood to destroy them. But Ea, the god of fresh underground water, didn’t agree and advised one of his favorite mortals, Utnapishtim, to build a quadrangular boat to house humans and animals. So Utnapishtim saved living creatures from the Flood. Rather than punish Utnapishtim, Enlil, king of the gods, granted him eternal life and banished him to the island of Dilmun. Thousands of years later, Sindbad the Sailor is shipwrecked on that very same island, and the two begin a conversation about courage, loss, salvation, and sacrifice. What Utnapishtim tells Sindbad is the subject of this book, the eleventh part of Roberto Calasso’s great opus that began in 1983 with The Ruin of Kasch. The Tablet of Destinies, a continuous narrative from beginning to end, delves into our earliest mythologies and records the origin stories of human civilization.
Download or read book Ham Helsing 1 Vampire Hunter written by Rich Moyer and published by Crown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The monster hunt is on! A rip-roaring graphic novel adventure about the latest in a famous family of vampire-hunting pigs, inspired by legendary monster slayer Van Helsing! Ham Helsing is the descendant of a long line of adventurers and monster hunters--who don't often live to rest on their laurels. Ham has always been the odd pig out, preferring to paint or write poetry instead of inventing dangerous (dumb) new ways to catch dangerous creatures. His brother Chad was the daredevil carrying on the family legacy of leaping before looking, but after his death, it's down to Ham. Reluctantly, he sets out on his first assignment, to hunt a vampire. But Ham soon learns that people aren't always what they seem and that you need a good team around you to help save your bacon!
Download or read book The Hunter and the Hunted written by Kelley Armstrong and published by Random House Canada. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Off-Duty Angel, dark witch and half-demon Eve Levine is desperate for a little entertainment while her lover, Kristof Nash, is detained in afterlife court--enough to volunteer an extra week's worth of angel corps duty just to pass the time. Luckily something even better comes up: a real celestial bounty-hunter mission to trail a shaman, someone who might prove to be a useful lead in Kristof's court case. Following the target goes smoothly, until he leads Eve to the British Museum, where she inadvertently steps into a secret dimensional passage and stumbles upon a far more enticing puzzle . . . and a much greater danger. Packed with suspense and surprising twists, Off-Duty Angel reveals fascinating new insights into a beloved series character. It's not a good sign when Elena Michaels and Clayton Danvers resort to everyday activities on their long-awaited honeymoon in St. Louis. But their encroaching boredom is about to take a backseat to an unexpected threat that catches Clay's attention. A non-pack werewolf is clearly stalking them--out to claim Elena for himself--and Clay has no intention of letting the upstart mutt spoil their romantic getaway, even if that means deceiving Elena as he pursues the rival werewolf on his own. Originally part of an anthology of supernatural romance stories, Stalked is the perfect introduction to Kelley Armstrong's Otherworld series and an action-packed interlude for fans to revisit some of their favorite characters. Includes an exclusive early look at 13, the epic finale to the Otherworld series, coming July 24, 2012.
Download or read book The Last Day written by Andrew Hunter Murray and published by Hutchinson. This book was released on 2020-02-06 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: _________________________________ 'A beautifully realised and thought-provoking thriller.' THE TIMES 'A taut, thrilling runaround' GUARDIAN 'Reminiscent of Robert Harris's high-concept conspiracy thrillers' FINANCIAL TIMES _________________________________ A WORLD HALF IN DARKNESS. A SECRET SHE MUST BRING TO LIGHT. 2059. The world has stopped turning. One half suffers an endless frozen night; the other, nothing but burning sun. Only in a slim twilit region between them can life survive. In an isolationist Britain, scientist Ellen Hopper receives a letter from a dying man. It contains a powerful and dangerous secret. One that those in power will kill to conceal... _________________________________ THE LAST DAY: an utterly original debut thriller, perfect for readers who loved Robert Harris' Fatherland, Emily St. John Mandel's Station 11, and The Wall by John Lanchester. _________________________________ 'Wonderful: boldly imagined and beautifully written - the best future-shock thriller for years.' LEE CHILD 'A tantalizing, suspenseful odyssey of frustration, deceit, treachery, torture, hope, despair and ingenious sleuthing... Murray has so thoroughly thought through the ramifications of his conceit and conjured up such a dramatic plot and stellar cast of characters that he might have set a new standard for such tales.' WASHINGTON POST 'A stunningly original thriller set in the world of tomorrow that will make you think about what's happening today.' HARLAN COBEN 'I read this hungrily ... Its intelligence and bravura characterisation will have you turning page after page. A fabulous achievement.' STEPHEN FRY 'A brilliant debut ... Fans of Robert Harris will love it' DAILY EXPRESS 'To say it's gripping is an understatement - I cancelled all my weekend plans to finish it' SARA PASCOE 'In his fascinating debut, Murray has crafted something original ... an interesting new twist on a post-apocalyptic tale.' KIRKUS 'Downright impossible to stop reading. The science is believable, the near-future world feels as real as our own, the characters are lively, and the plot is suspenseful. A near-perfect alternate-future thriller.' BOOKLIST 'Dark, believable and brilliantly written' JENNY COLGAN 'A thrilling page-turner, and a reminder to treasure our sunsets and sunrises while we still have them. I couldn't put this book down!' CHRISTINA DALCHER, author of VOX 'I loved the premise of this high-concept thriller ... a compelling read with some well-placed observations on the darkness of human nature and survival. The Last Day will keep you gripped to the very last page' C.J. TUDOR
Download or read book Tiepolo Pink written by Roberto Calasso and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-06-30 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The eighteenth-century Venetian painter Giambattista Tiepolo spent his life executing commissions in churches, palaces, and villas, often covering vast ceilings like those at the Würzburg Residenz in Germany and the Royal Palace in Madrid with frescoes that are among the glories of Western art. The life of an epoch swirled around him - but though his contemporaries appreciated and admired him, they failed to understand him. Few have even attempted to tackle Tiepolo's series of thirty-three bizarre and haunting etchings, the Capricci and the Scherzi, but Roberto Calasso rises to the challenge, interpreting these etchings as chapters in a dark narrative that contains the secret of Tiepolo's art. Blooming ephebes, female satyrs, Oriental sages, owls, snakes: we will find them all, including Punchinello and Death, within the pages of this book, along with Venus, Time, Moses, numerous angels, Cleopatra and Beatrice of Burgundy - a motley, gypsyish company always on the go. Calasso makes clear that Tiepolo was more than a dazzling intermezzo in the history of painting. Rather, he represented a particular way of meeting the challenge of form: endowed with a fluid, seemingly effortless style, Tiepolo was the last incarnation of that peculiar Italian virtue sprezzatura, the art of not seeming artful.
Download or read book Quilt Talk written by Sam Hunter and published by C&T Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2014-09-01 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You’ve got something unique to tell the world. What better way to get your message across than sewing your words into a quilt? Fiber artist and quilt designer Sam Hunter teaches you to say it all with 12 new projects featuring modern, paper-pieced text blocks. The book includes patterns of an easy-to-read font that includes lower- and uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Sam covers everything you need to know about paper piecing, choosing fabrics, and designing your own quilted words. Use Sam’s designs to get started, and then stitch up your own words to give any occasion the ultimate personal touch.
Download or read book The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony written by Roberto Calasso and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-07-25 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'It will be read and re-read not as a treatise but as a story: one of the most extraordinary that has ever been written of the origins of Western self-consciousness' Simon Schama The marriage of Cadmus and Harmony was the last time the gods of Olympus feasted alongside mortals. What happened in the distant ages preceding it, and in the generations that followed, form the timeless tales of ancient Greek mythology. In this masterful retelling of the myths we think we know, Roberto Calasso illuminates the deepest questions of our existence. 'The kind of book one comes across only once or twice in one's lifetime' Joseph Brodsky 'A perfect work like no other' Gore Vidal
