Discover how the ancient Egyptians controlled their immortal destiny! This book, edited by Foy Scalf, explores what the Book of the Dead was believed to do, how it worked, how it was made, and what happened to it.

Examining a wide array of ancient writings, Brent Nongbri dispels the commonly held idea that there is such a thing as ancient religion. Nongbri shows how misleading it is to speak as though religion was a concept native to pre-modern cultures.

This study focuses on the complex relations between author, publisher and contemporary reading public in 19th-century America; in particular, the emergence of Irving and Cooper as America's first successful literary entrepreneurs, how Poe's and Melville's successes and failures affected their writing, the popularization of poetry in the 1830s and 1840s, the role of the literary magazine in the 1840s and 1850s, and the beginnings of book promotion. It pays particular attention to the way social and economic forces helped to shape literary works.