HOLE IN THE HEAVENS


Book Description

The year is 1397, and Paris is awash with the gloom of the 100 Years War and the papal schism. With the arrival of a wonder-working Franciscan, a pitched battle between good and evil is set in motion. Brother Jacques is one of God's special friends: he performs miracles at Mass, heals the sick, instills peace of mind in the troubled, and even brings the dead back to life. And yet his arrival in Paris coincides with a series of murders and the rising tide of apocalyptic marvels. An unlikely coalition forms between a group of intellectuals: three priests and a clerical concubine, setting out to discover who Brother Jacques really is. The answer lies in deciphering a series of visions and the journal of a long dead heretic. What they learn will rock the very foundations of the Catholic church and challenge the nature of reality.




Mapping the Heavens


Book Description

A theoretical astrophysicist explores the ideas that transformed our knowledge of the universe over the past century. The cosmos, once understood as a stagnant place, filled with the ordinary, is now a universe that is expanding at an accelerating pace, propelled by dark energy and structured by dark matter. Priyamvada Natarajan, our guide to these ideas, is someone at the forefront of the research—an astrophysicist who literally creates maps of invisible matter in the universe. She not only explains for a wide audience the science behind these essential ideas but also provides an understanding of how radical scientific theories gain acceptance. The formation and growth of black holes, dark matter halos, the accelerating expansion of the universe, the echo of the big bang, the discovery of exoplanets, and the possibility of other universes—these are some of the puzzling cosmological topics of the early twenty-first century. Natarajan discusses why the acceptance of new ideas about the universe and our place in it has never been linear and always contested even within the scientific community. And she affirms that, shifting and incomplete as science always must be, it offers the best path we have toward making sense of our wondrous, mysterious universe. “Part history, part science, all illuminating. If you want to understand the greatest ideas that shaped our current cosmic cartography, read this book.”—Adam G. Riess, Nobel Laureate in Physics, 2011 “A highly readable, insider’s view of recent discoveries in astronomy with unusual attention to the instruments used and the human drama of the scientists.”—Alan Lightman, author of The Accidental Universe and Einstein's Dream




Holes in the Sky


Book Description

Miss Eula is back! In this heartwarming companion to Chicken Sunday, young Trisha is devastated when her grandmother passes away, but finds joy in bonds with a new friend, her new California neighborhood—and the invincible Miss Eula. There will never be anyone like her grandmother, Patricia Polacco thinks, when her grandmother passes away. But when she and her family move to California—in the middle of a drought—she meets a new friend, the irrepressible Stewart, and his amazing grandmother, Miss Eula, who not only takes Trisha under her wing, but, with Trisha and Stewart, steps up to lead their entire extraordinarily diverse neighborhood to help a hurting neighbor—and her once lush garden—survive the drought. Trisha's grandmother's old saying about the stars being Holes in the Sky turns out to be Miss Eula's, too, convincing Trisha that she has miraculously discovered another unforgettable grandmother.




Hole in the Sky


Book Description

William Kittredge's stunning memoir is at once autobiography, a family chronicle, and a Westerner's settling of accounts with the land he grew up in. This is the story of a grandfather whose single-minded hunger for property won him a ranch the size of Delaware but estranged him from his family; of a father who farmed with tractors and drainage ditches but consorted with movie stars; and of Kittredge himself, who was raised by cowboys and saw them become obsolete, who floundered through three marriages, hard drinking, and madness before becoming a writer. Host hauntingly, Hole in the Sky is an honest reckoning of the American myth that drove generations of Americans westward -- and what became of their dream after they reached the edge.




Uqalurait


Book Description

Uqalurait, pointed snowdrifts formed by Arctic blizzards, 'would tell us which direction to go in, ' says elder Mariano Aupilarjuk. This oral history, guided by the traditional knowledge of Inuit elders from across Nunavut, also follows the uqalurait, with thousands of quotes from elders on a wide range of subjects




God-Shaped Hole


Book Description

"God-Shaped Hole will change you as a reader, writer and human. It is rare books like this one that remind me why I fell in love with the written word."—Colleen Hoover When I was twelve, a fortune teller told me that my one true love would die young and leave me all alone... It's a dark prediction, but Beatrice Jordan never really believed in true love anyway. So, no harm done. She's accepted her lot in life: living in Los Angeles as an artist, not letting herself get too attached to anyone. It's not perfect, but nothing is. Until fate intervenes. It's a simple personal ad: "I am seeking a friend for the end of the world..." Eleven little words that change Beatrice's life irrevocably. Because they lead her to Jacob Grace, an unpredictable writer looking for something he can't name. Both of their worlds shift that day and what follows is a love story unlike any other; brimming with creativity and passion, as two lost souls find themselves in each other. From hole-in-the-wall record stores to late night phone calls, together, Beatrice and Jacob transcend the loneliness of their lives. But dark realities and secrets soon rise to the surface, as does Beatrice's fear of an inescapable fate. Despite it all, this is a story of real love: the kind that breaks you and remakes you, the kind that changes you forever. The kind of love worth having, even if it's short lived, even if you know you might lose it. God Shaped Hole is a brand new kind of love story, introducing dreamers to a quintessentially raw romance and inspires everyone to live and love as vividly as possible—the perfect book club or beach read for fans of The Girl He Used to Know by Tracey Garvis Graves, In Five Years by Rebecca Serle, and More Than Words by Jill Santopolo. Praise for God-Shaped Hole: "This generation's Love Story."—Kirkus "If Holden Caulfield were a twenty-seven-year-old woman living in LA, this is the book he'd write, or read. It's very fast and very funny, and at its core it's that rarest of things—a truly convincing love story."—Dave Eggers "With wit and humor, the author brings these characters and their quirky, artsy friends alive. Bottom Line: You'll dig it"—People




Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms


Book Description

Between AD 900-1600, the native peoples of the Mississippi River Valley and other areas of the Eastern Woodlands of the United States conceived and executed one of the greatest artistic traditions of the Precolumbian Americas. Created in the media of copper, shell, stone, clay, and wood, and incised or carved with a complex set of symbols and motifs, this seven-hundred-year-old artistic tradition functioned within a multiethnic landscape centered on communities dominated by earthen mounds and plazas. Previous researchers have referred to this material as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC). This groundbreaking volume brings together ten essays by leading anthropologists, archaeologists, and art historians, who analyze the iconography of Mississippian art in order to reconstruct the ritual activities, cosmological vision, and ideology of these ancient precursors to several groups of contemporary Native Americans. Significantly, the authors correlate archaeological, ethnographic, and art historical data that illustrate the stylistic differences within Mississippian art as well as the numerous changes that occur through time. The research also demonstrates the inadequacy of the SECC label, since Mississippian art is not limited to the Southeast and reflects stylistic changes over time among several linked but distinct religious traditions. The term Mississippian Iconographic Interaction Sphere (MIIS) more adequately describes the corpus of this Mississippian art. Most important, the authors illustrate the overarching nature of the ancient Native American religious system, as a creation unique to the native American cultures of the eastern United States.




Heaven Slaughter Stars


Book Description

The protagonist was a lazy person, and he was determined to be a popinjay. The main character could only cry out in frustration, "When will my path as a popinjay be opened?" [Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] [Next Chapter] But when he looked back, he laughed shamelessly, because he discovered that he could become a popinjay at any time, because his backer was "tall!" Faced with the "God's dimension" and "God's game" from another universe, the main character shouted, "I'm a kind playboy, how could I fight with you? Wouldn't that damage my prestige?" He then shouted, "Violet Feather!" [Close]




Knowledge ...


Book Description




Dream Child


Book Description

The broad scope of the dream material analyzed in this book allows the authors to touch upon many subjects associated with the nature of the psyche, not only those relevant to pregnant women. The careful interpretation of the amplificatory material drawn from a wide range of cultures also makes this an inspiring aid for the understanding of dreams, valuable to psychologists, doctors, midwives or anyone else interested in this human subject.