“Where do national myths originate? They do not emerge by happenstance. Rather their creation and spread are an exercise of power. Influential historical actors, from antebellum slaveholders to the moguls of Hollywood and those Slotkin calls the ‘political classes’, have attempted to develop and disseminate broadly acceptable myths to serve their own interests.”
Thank you for your comment. A varied reading list keeps boredom away and helps to improve mood. After all, it is said that “variety is the spice of life”.
“But the four men who rode atop the wave of the Gilded Age were Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan. Their business activities during the final four decades of the nineteenth century drove America’s ascension into the most powerful industrial nation on the planet. And they shaped the rules that governed the US economy for decades to come.”
God’s Ghostwriters by Candida Moss review – did enslaved scribes write the New Testament?
“And if the Roman family that purchased them as a scribe had subsequently converted to Christianity, either openly or secretly as many did in the first and second centuries CE, they may well then have been drafted in to write down the words of the great Christian missionary preachers who criss-crossed the empire and came to its capital, including of course Paul.”
@bookstodon Maybe everyone already knows this, but in case you don't: there is a great way to search for library e-books you might like.
If you have Libby, do a filtered search for whatever you like in general. While perusing the results, tap on any book you have already read and enjoyed. Scroll down past the description, and it will give you suggestions of other books you might like. This really helped me.
This only works in filtered search, not direct search.
“…what bothers me about this educational approach—the “problem” approach, the “STEAM” (STEM + arts) approach—is what it leaves out. It leaves out the humanities. It leaves out books. It leaves out literature and philosophy, history and art history and the history of religion. It leaves out any mode of inquiry—reflection, speculation, conversation with the past—that cannot be turned to immediate practical ends.”
What do you do when you have reached a ‘reading block’? I have a small primer to read and have no motivation whatsoever to complete it. I must add that I have also just finished a seven hundred odd page philosophy book.
“In this video I show you how to read any book in just one week. I then go on to give you some of my best reading tips to helped you stay focused and actually accomplish your reading goals.”
#Video length: nine minutes and forty seven seconds.
“In this video I show you how to read any book in just one week. I then go on to give you some of my best reading tips to helped you stay focused and actually accomplish your reading goals.”
#Video length: nine minutes and forty seven seconds.
“In this video I show you how to read any book in just one week. I then go on to give you some of my best reading tips to helped you stay focused and actually accomplish your reading goals.”
#Video length: nine minutes and forty seven seconds.
“The most potent enemy of reading, it goes without saying, is the small, flat box that you carry in your pocket. In terms of addictive properties, it might as well be stuffed with meth. There’s no point in grinding through a whole book—a chewy bunch of words arranged into a narrative or, heaven preserve us, an argument—when you can pick up your iPhone, touch the Times app, skip the news and commentary, head straight to Wordle, and give yourself an instant hit of euphoria and pride by taking just three guesses to reach a triumphant guano.”
“The fakes created during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century tell us another story, one of the rediscovery of the ancient Near East within the Orientalism movement. This fascination about the Orient and the past led certain individuals to create some fantastic stories and theories, such as those published by the writer Zecharia Stichin (1920–2010) who took the mythological battles of gods related in the authentic Babylonian Epic of Creation to be real astronomic phenomena.”
Michel, C. 2020. Cuneiform Fakes: A Long History from Antiquity to the Present Day. In: Michel, C. and Friedrich, M. ed. Fakes and Forgeries of Written Artefacts from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern China. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 25-60. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110714333-002
"The breakthrough of the alphabetic script early in the first millennium BCE coincides with the appearance of several new languages and civilizations in ancient Syria-Palestine. Together, they form the cultural setting in which ancient Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and, transformed by Hellenism, the New Testament took shape."
Science of Naples: Making knowledge in Italy’s Pre-Eminent City, 1500–1800
“Individual chapters demonstrate the extent to which Neapolitan scholars and academies contributed to debates within the Republic of Letters that continued until deep into the nineteenth century. They also show how studies of Neapolitan natural disasters yielded unique insights that contributed to the development of fields such as medicine and earth sciences.”