What it means to be a man or a woman is questioned today like never before. While traditional gender roles have been eroding for decades, now the very categories of male and female are being discarded with reckless abandon. How does one act like a gentleman in such confusing times? The Catholic Gentleman is a solid and practical guide to virtuous manhood. It turns to the timeless wisdom of the Catholic Church to answer the important questions men are currently asking. In short, easy- to-read chapters, the author offers pithy insights on a variety of topics, including • How to know you are an authentic man • Why our bodies matter • The value of tradition • The purpose of courtesy • What real holiness is and how to achieve it • How to deal with failure in the spiritual life

“France’s conversion is deeply touching . . . This is religious discovery for a postmodern generation.” —Philip Zaleski, Los Angeles Times The tiny, arid Greek island of Patmos is one of the most sacred places in the Christian world—a place of bewitching power, where people come for a brief summer visit and end up returning, year after year, for the rest of their lives. They respond to an unexplainable force that they can find nowhere else. Perhaps it is the invigorating “Greek light” that infuses the Holy Island’s rocks and hills with a breathtaking sharpness and clarity, dating back to the time when Zeus raised the island from the bed of the sea. Or perhaps it is Patmos’s incredible history. Almost two thousand years ago, Saint John was exiled here, and lived as a hermit in the cave of Revelation, where he experienced a vision that led to the most famous piece of apocalyptic literature, the Book of Revelation. In A Place of Healing for the Soul, BBC commentator Peter France—who arrived on the island a hardened skeptic—tells how he came to change his life perspective. Learning from the island’s gregarious inhabitants and its religious eccentrics—hermits, ascetics, monks, and nuns—he discovered the pleasure and security of living simply and doing without, in a timeless realm where history, myth, and spirituality are endlessly alive. “France, an erudite and amiable companion, who spices his writing with self-deprecating wit and thoughtful commentary on the eternal mysteries of the universe, has created a delight for open, even if skeptical, minds.” —Booklist

The present volume owes its ongm to a Colloquium on "Alchemy and Chemistry in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries", held at the Warburg Institute on 26th and 27th July 1989. The Colloquium focused on a number of selected themes during a closely defined chronological interval: on the relation of alchemy and chemistry to medicine, philosophy, religion, and to the corpuscular philosophy, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The relations between Medicina and alchemy in the Lullian treatises were examined in the opening paper by Michela Pereira, based on researches on unpublished manuscript sources in the period between the 14th and 17th centuries. It is several decades since the researches of R.F. Multhauf gave a prominent role to Johannes de Rupescissa in linking medicine and alchemy through the concept of a quinta essentia. Michela Pereira explores the significance of the Lullian tradition in this development and draws attention to the fact that the early Paracelsians had themselves recognized a family resemblance between the works of Paracelsus and Roger Bacon's scientia experimentalis and, indeed, a continuity with the Lullian tradition.

An expanded edition of the critical history of Doctor Who covering the series' 45 years, from creation to triumphant rebootOpening with an in-depth account of the creation of the series in the early 1960s, each decade of the show is tackled through a unique political and pop cultural historical viewpoint, exploring the links between contemporary Britain and the stories Doctor Who told, and how such links kept the show popular with a mass television audience. This book reveals how Doctor Who is at its strongest when it reflects the political and cultural concerns of a mass audience (the 1960s, 1970s, and 21st Century), and at its weakest when catering to a narrow fan-based audience (as in the 1980s). Chapters range from discussions on the cultural and political relevance of Doctor Who monsters like the Daleks (based on lingering wartime fears) and the Cybermen (1960s spare part replacement surgery), through to themes like energy and the environment in the 1970s (Doctor Who stories tackled big real-life themes in a fantasy format and so connected with a mass audience). The book also addresses the cancellation of the show in the late 1980s (following the series becoming increasing self-obsessed) and the ways in which a narrowly-focused dedicated fandom contributed to the show's demise and yet was also instrumental in its regeneration for the 21st century under Russell T. Davies, and analyzes the new series to reveal what has made it so popular, reflecting real world issues like consumerism and dieting.

Presents a survey of sixty Venetian Renaissance paintings of the calibre of Bellini and Titian's "Feast of the Gods" in Washington and Giorgione's "Laura and Three Philosophers" in Vienna.