Other books that might interest you

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  Holy Men of the Electromagnetic...

  Raphael Cormack

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  An international history of the uncanny in the 1920s and 1930s. 
   
   
   
  The interwar period was a golden age for the occult. Spiritualists, clairvoyants, fakirs, Theosophists, mind readers, and Jinn summoners all set out to assure the masses that just as newly discovered invisible forces of electricity and magnetism determined the world of science, unseen powers commanded an unknown realm of human potential. 
   
   
   
  Drawing on untapped sources in Arabic in addition to European ones, Raphael Cormack follows two of the most unusual and charismatic figures of this age: Tahra Bey, who took 1920s Paris by storm in the role of a missionary from the mystical East; and Dr. Dahesh, who transformed Western science to create a panreligious faith of his own in Lebanon. Traveling between Paris, New York, and Beirut while guiding esoteric apprenticeships among miracle-working mystics in Egypt and Istanbul, these men reflected the desires and anxieties of a troubled age. As Cormack demonstrates, these forgotten holy men, who embodied the allure of the unexplained in a world of dramatic change, intuitively speak to our unsettling world today.

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  The Gods of Nibiru in the...

  RYAN MOORHEN

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  No direct explanation is given for the origin and nature of the luminous bodies, the sun, the planets, and the stars. Because, as far back as our written sources go, the Sumerians regarded the moon-god, who went by the names Sin and Nanna, as the son of the air-god Enlil, it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that they saw the moon as a bright, air-like body fashioned from the atmosphere. As the sun-god Utu and the Venus goddess Inanna are always referred to in the texts as children of the moon-god, these luminous bodies were probably imagined as having come from the moon after the latter had been formed from the atmosphere. "The big ones walk around (the moon) like wild oxen," and "the little ones that are scattered around (the moon) like grain" are considered the rest of the planets and stars.

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  The Collapse of Constitutional...

  Aziz Z. Huq

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  For years, the Supreme Court has turned a deaf ear to arguments that police officers should not be shielded by the legal doctrine of “qualified immunity” when they shoot or brutalize innocent civilians. “Qualified immunity” is just one of  
  several rules invented by judges that stop the vindication of basic rights. But aren’t courts supposed to be protectors of individual rights? In The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies, Aziz Z. Huq recounts a far more fraught history in which  
  the link between the Constitution’s system of independent courts and the protection of constitutional rights has always been tenuous.  
   
  Federal courts have created many legal concepts such as “qualified immunity” that may seem abstract, but inflict real-world harms: A bureaucrat fires her employee for testifying in a legal proceeding involving the boss’s family. Police  
  officers set a dog on a homeless man, leaving him severely wounded. A Mexican teenager is shot in the back at the US border—and dies. In all these cases, defendants walk away with minor or no penalties. Their victims had rights—but  
  no remedies thanks to rules created by federal judges.  
   
  A powerful historical account of how courts have carved a gap between rights and remedies, this book will reshape our understanding of why it’s so difficult to hold the American state to the rule of law.

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  Detroit in World War II

  Gregory D. Sumner

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  When President Roosevelt called for the country to be the great "Arsenal of Democracy," Detroit helped turn the tide against fascism with its industrial might. Locals were committed to the cause, putting careers and personal ambitions on hold. Factories were retooled from the ground up. Industrialist Henry Ford, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, aviator Charles Lindbergh, legendary boxer Joe Louis, future baseball Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg and the real-life Rosie the Riveters all helped drive the city that was "forging thunderbolts" for the front lines. With a panoramic narrative, author Gregory D. Sumner chronicles the wartime sacrifices, contributions, and everyday life of the Motor City.

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  What Is Metaphysics What Is...

  Martin Heidegger

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  This recording contains four important and related works by Heidegger: 'What Is Philosophy', 'What Is Metaphysics', 'On the Essence of Truth' and 'The Question of Being'. 
   
  It starts with 'What Is Philosophy', which originated as a lecture given in Normandy in 1955, and was first published a year later. The translators acknowledge that 'What Is Metaphysics' is often regarded as a particularly key work, they feel that 'a better preliminary understanding' of Heidegger can be obtained from 'What is Philosophy'. They write: Heidegger 'is concerned with the fact that philosophy has lost its receptivity to the Being of being/entity. In other words, philosophy no longer seeks the groundless ground of Being which allows us to ask meaningful questions about being/entity, or its appearances. Heidegger uses Being as the ‘inner light’, that illumination through which we become conscious of our meaning or of our existence and of existence itself. The light allows us to know that we are 'beings'. 
   
  The second work on this recording, then, is the more famous essay 'What Is Metaphysics', published in 1929, to which some 14 years later he added a 'Postscript'. Both texts are presented here. Heidegger states that rather than enter into a discussion about metaphysics, he sets out to ‘discuss a definite metaphysical question.... Our project begins with the presentation of a metaphysical question, then goes on to its development and ends with its answer'. 
   
  In 'On the Essence of Truth', (1930) Heidegger explains: 'The question as to the nature of truth is not concerned with whether truth is the truth of practical experience or of economic calculation...or the truth of scientific research or art...or religious belief...but what is ‘the mark of truth of every kind.' 
   
  The final essay on this recording is 'The Question of Being' (1955). Its original title, (in a literal translation from German), was 'Concerning the Line', and was included in a publication honouring the 60th birthday of the philosopher Ernst Jünger. Heidegger wrote it in the form of a letter in response to an earlier treatise Jünger dedicated to Heidegger called 'Across the Line'. Heidegger questions Jünger’s notion of ‘zero line’, of nihilism: the essence of nihilism stems from a discussion of Being as being/entity. 
   
  Translations by Jean T. Wilde and William Kluback ('What Is Philosophy' and 'The Question of Being') and R. F. C. Hull ('What Is Metaphysics' and 'On the Essence of Truth').

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  Gepids The: The History and...

  Editors Charles River

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  The Gepids were a Germanic tribe often overshadowed by the Huns because they shared roughly the same space in Cntral Europe, yet they did not menace nearly as extensive an area. They are also overlooked because they were all but wiped out by the late 6th century, but while they were around, they influenced the course of events in central and Eastern Europe. The Gepids were no less bellicose than the other Germanic tribes or the Huns, for that matter, causing immense destruction throughout Europe and constantly threatening the stability of the Eastern Roman Empire, which later became the Byzantine Empire. It is this destruction for which the Gepids are best remembered, as well as the threat they were able to parlay into creating a sizable kingdom in what is today Hungary, but the Gepids were not merely brutal warriors. Some of their rulers demonstrated incredible political acumen. The Gepids knew how to use the powerful Byzantine Empire to their advantage and to make alliances with other Germanic tribes that helped them keep their hold on the power.  
  	By the early 6th century CE, Gepids were major players in the geopolitics of the region, and their kings knew how to use diplomacy - as much as warfare - to their advantage. However, despite their abiliites, the Gepids were eventually defeated and driven out like the Huns before them and the Avars after them. Europe was a tough place at the time, so the fact the Gepids were able to dominate there as long as they did is a testament to their marital prowess and diplomatic skills.

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