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"Alexandria Alix Watson has learned one lesson from her barren childhood in the foster-care system: unlike people, books will never let you down. Working three dead-end jobs to make ends meet and knowing college is a pipe dream, Alix takes nightly refuge in the high-vaulted reading room at the Boston Public Library, escaping into her favorite fantasy novels and dreaming of far-off lands. Until the day she stumbles through a hidden door and meets the...
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""The book is clearly written for the general reader and includes many descriptions of trance experiences. It may serve as a good introduction to the nature and appeal of the shamanic revival in modern Western cultures.""--Theological Book Review"" ... a case study in experiential anthropology that offers a unique mix of autobiography, mythology, experiential research, and archaeological data to support a challenging thesis-that certain body postures...
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Séances were wildly popular in France between 1850 and 1930, when members of the general public and scholars alike turned to the wondrous as a means of understanding and explaining the world. Sofie Lachapelle explores how five distinct groups attempted to use and legitimize séances: spiritists, who tried to create a new "science" concerned with the spiritual realm and the afterlife; occultists, who hoped to connect ancient revelations with contemporary...
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Astrology in the Middle Ages was considered a branch of the magical arts, one informed by Jewish and Muslim scientific knowledge in Muslim Spain. As such it was deeply troubling to some Church authorities. Using the stars and planets to divine the future ran counter to the orthodox Christian notion that human beings have free will, and some clerical authorities argued that it almost certainly entailed the summoning of spiritual forces considered diabolical....
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Informatica-the updated edition of Alex Wright's previously published Glut-continues the journey through the history of the information age to show how information systems emerge. Today's "information explosion" may seem like a modern phenomenon, but we are not the first generation-or even the first species-to wrestle with the problem of information overload. Long before the advent of computers, human beings were collecting, storing, and organizing...
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"From uttering a prayer before boarding a plane, to exploring past lives through hypnosis, has superstition become pervasive in contemporary culture? Robert Park, the best-selling author of Voodoo Science, argues that it has. In Superstition, Park asks why people persist in superstitious convictions long after science has shown them to be ill-founded. He takes on supernatural beliefs from religion and the afterlife to New Age spiritualism and faith-based...
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"Have you ever wanted to travel to the edge of the universe? What about getting sucked up into a black hole? For fans of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry comes an accessible science narrative that invites readers to eavesdrop on a conversation between two scientists as they dive into a multidisciplinary discussion of our understanding of the universe. Explore the depths of our universe, both known and unknown, with two award-winning physicists,...
