Witness to Marvels


Book Description

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. There is a vast body of imaginal literature in Bengali that introduces fictional Sufi saints into the complex mythological world of Hindu gods and goddesses. Dating to the sixteenth century, the stories—pīr katha—are still widely read and performed today. The events that play out rival the fabulations of the Arabian Nights, which has led them to be dismissed as simplistic folktales, yet the work of these stories is profound: they provide fascinating insight into how Islam habituated itself into the cultural life of the Bangla-speaking world. In Witness to Marvels, Tony K. Stewart unearths the dazzling tales of Sufi saints to signal a bold new perspective on the subtle ways Islam assumed its distinctive form in Bengal.




2028 End


Book Description

God created a game - it's called The Game of Life. Planet Earth is the playing field, the 10 love commandments are the rules, and we humans are the players who can win or lose. The game is played by two teams, like the game of football. One team's head coach is Jesus and the other team's head coach is Satan. All of us on earth are playing for one of these two teams! Gabriel Ansley Erb wrote the book "2028 END" in order to fully elucidate God's game clock scenario for The Game of Life as contained in the game's handbook, the Holy Bible. The handbook says, "God declared the end from the beginning" (Isaiah 46:10) by using 7 days in the creation event. Each 24 hour creation day foretold of a future 1,000 year period for a total 7,000 year plan God had for The Game of Life to be played on planet earth. And amazingly, to confirm this is all true, God hid a secret prophesy in each creation day foretelling the greatest event He had planned to occur in that day's future millennium!Consequently, Creation day 1 foretold Adam & Eve's fall, which was fulfilled during earth's 1st millennium. Creation day 2 foretold Noah's global flood, which was fulfilled during earth's 2nd millennium. Creation day 3 foretold Moses' Red Sea parting, which was fulfilled during earth's 3rd millennium. Creation day 4 foretold of John the Baptist & Jesus Christ, and so they lived and died during earth's 4th millennium. And the prophecies continue with each Creation day!Gabriel proves all of the above, carefully revealing the prophetic Scriptures as well as the fulfillment Scriptures. Then he reveals a dozen Scriptures proving Christ died earth's 4,000 year and will return earth's 6,000 year. Finally, he proves Christ died Feast of Passover AD 28 and will return Feast of Trumpets 2028. For those who read this book, it is an open and shut case: The Game of Life will end 2,000 years from the year of Christ's death on the cross - AD 2028.




Meat Planet


Book Description

In 2013, a Dutch scientist unveiled the world’s first laboratory-created hamburger. Since then, the idea of producing meat, not from live animals but from carefully cultured tissues, has spread like wildfire through the media. Meanwhile, cultured meat researchers race against population growth and climate change in an effort to make sustainable protein. Meat Planet explores the quest to generate meat in the lab—a substance sometimes called “cultured meat”—and asks what it means to imagine that this is the future of food. Neither an advocate nor a critic of cultured meat, Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft spent five years researching the phenomenon. In Meat Planet, he reveals how debates about lab-grown meat reach beyond debates about food, examining the links between appetite, growth, and capitalism. Could satiating the growing appetite for meat actually lead to our undoing? Are we simply using one technology to undo the damage caused by another? Like all problems in our food system, the meat problem is not merely a problem of production. It is intrinsically social and political, and it demands that we examine questions of justice and desirable modes of living in a shared and finite world. Benjamin Wurgaft tells a story that could utterly transform the way we think of animals, the way we relate to farmland, the way we use water, and the way we think about population and our fragile ecosystem’s capacity to sustain life. He argues that even if cultured meat does not “succeed,” it functions—much like science fiction—as a crucial mirror that we can hold up to our contemporary fleshy dysfunctions.




The Darjeeling Distinction


Book Description

Introduction : reinventing the plantation for the 21st century -- Darjeeling -- Plantation -- Property -- Fairness -- Sovereignty -- Conclusion : is something better than nothing?




Ithaca Forever


Book Description

After twenty years, Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca, but instead of receiving the homecoming he had hoped for finds himself caught in an intense battle of wills with his faithful and long-suffering wife Penelope. When Penelope recognizes him under the guise of a beggar, she becomes furious with him for not trusting her enough to include her in his plans for ridding the palace of the Suitors. As a result, she plays her own game of fictions to make him suffer for this lack of faith, inspiring jealousy, self-doubt, and misgivings in her husband, the legendary Homeric hero. In this captivating retelling of the Odyssey, Penelope rises as a major force with whom to be reckoned. Shifting between first-person reflections, Ithaca Forever reveals the deeply personal and powerful perspectives of both wife and husband as they struggle for respect and supremacy within a marriage that has been on hold for twenty years. Translated by PEN award-winner Douglas Grant Heise, Luigi Malerba’s novel gives us a remarkable version of this greatest work of western literature: Odysseus as a man full of doubts and Penelope as a woman of great depth and strength.




Bohemian Los Angeles


Book Description

Historian Hurewitz brings to life a vibrant and all-but-forgotten milieu of artists, leftists, and gay men and women whose story played out over the first half of the twentieth century and continues to shape the entire American landscape. In a hidden corner of Los Angeles, the personal first became the political, the nation's first enduring gay rights movement emerged, and the broad spectrum of what we now think of as identity politics was born. Portraying life over more than forty years in the hilly enclave of Edendale (now part of Silver Lake), Hurewitz considers the work of painters and printmakers, looks inside the Communist Party's intimate cultural scene, and examines the social world of gay men. He discovers why and how these communities, inspiring both one another and the city as a whole, transformed American notions of political identity with their ideas about self-expression, political engagement, and race relations.--From publisher description.




Jephthah’s Daughter, Sarah’s Son


Book Description

Late antiquity was a perilous time for children, who were often the first victims of economic crisis, war, and disease. They had a one in three chance of dying before their first birthday, with as many as half dying before age ten. Christian writers accordingly sought to speak to the experience of bereavement and to provide cultural scripts for parents who had lost a child. These late ancient writers turned to characters like Eve and Sarah, Job and Jephthah as models for grieving and for confronting or submitting to the divine. Jephthah's Daughter, Sarah’s Son traces the stories these writers crafted and the ways in which they shaped the lived experience of familial bereavement in ancient Christianity. A compelling social history that conveys the emotional lives of people in the late ancient world, Jephthah's Daughter, Sarah's Son is a powerful portrait of mourning that extends beyond antiquity to the present day.




The Poem of the Cid


Book Description

One of the greatest works of Spanish literature, this eight-hundred-year-old epic details the legendary exploits of the soldier-adventurer Ruy Díaz of Bivar, El Cid, and of his part in the long struggle between Christianity and Islam. The epic poem recounts the adventures of the Cid; of his peerless steed, Babieca, and of his two famous swords, Colada and Tizón; of his wife, Doña Ximena, and his two daughters, Doña Elvira and Doña Sol, who found sanctuary with Abbot Don Sancho in the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña during the Cid's exile; and of the despicable and black-hearted princes of Carrión, Diego and Fernando González. It is a powerful epic that sings of universal human values and failures, of loyalty and betrayal.




A Passion for Society


Book Description

What does human suffering mean for society? And how has this meaning changed from the past to the present? In what ways does “the problem of suffering” serve to inspire us to care for others? How does our response to suffering reveal our moral and social conditions? In this trenchant work, Arthur Kleinman—a renowned figure in medical anthropology—and Iain Wilkinson, an award-winning sociologist, team up to offer some answers to these profound questions. A Passion for Society investigates the historical development and current state of social science with a focus on how this development has been shaped in response to problems of social suffering. Following a line of criticism offered by key social theorists and cultural commentators who themselves were unhappy with the professionalization of social science, Wilkinson and Kleinman provide a critical commentary on how studies of society have moved from an original concern with social suffering and its amelioration to dispassionate inquiries. The authors demonstrate how social action through caring for others is revitalizing and remaking the discipline of social science, and they examine the potential for achieving greater understanding though a moral commitment to the practice of care for others. In this deeply considered work, Wilkinson and Kleinman argue for an engaged social science that connects critical thought with social action, that seeks to learn through caregiving, and that operates with a commitment to establish and sustain humane forms of society.