Carlo Borromeo earned sainthood by attempting to turn Milan into a holy city. This book is the first to interpret his program of penitential discipline as an effort to reshape Lombard society by reaching into the souls of its inhabitants.

A passionate tale of love, freedom, and conquest from the New York Times bestselling author of The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende. Born into a poor family in Spain, Inés Suárez, finds herself condemned to a life of poverty without opportunity as a lowly seamstress. But it's the sixteenth century, the beginning of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Struck by the same restless hope and opportunism, Inés uses her shiftless husband's disappearance to Peru as an excuse to embark on her own adventure. After learning of her husband's death in battle, she meets the fiery war hero, Pedro de Valdivia and begins a love that not only changes her life but the course of history. Based on the real historical events that founded Chile, Allende takes us on a whirlwind adventure of love and loss seen through the eyes of a daring, complicated woman who fought for freedom.

"A scientist's claim that he's found the secrets of the universe's origin encoded in DNA sparks a race against time to uncover the truth in this fast-paced thriller of science and faith, power and murder, loss and redemption. Dan Lawson, a former government cyber-intelligence analyst, is surprised to be contacted by his estranged friend Stephen Bishop, a renowned geneticist. Stephen says that he's discovered amazing information within DNA, including evidence of a creator, and needs Dan's help to protect his findings. Dan is skeptical and wonders whether he is being manipulated, or if the recent illness of Stephen's only child, Ava, has caused his childhood friend to fall back on religion for answers to questions best left to science. Spurred by his desire for proof that life has meaning, however, Dan puts aside his doubts and agrees to help. When an experiment goes terribly awry, Dan realizes he must get to the bottom of Stephen's discoveries. With the help of Trish Alighieri, a pediatric oncologist trying to save Ava's life, Dan desperately searches for answers--including whether the human soul can survive science's conquest of nature"--

This work summarizes results from neuroscience and recent work with artificial neural networks that together suggest a unified set of answers to questions about how the brain actually works; how it sustains a thinking, feeling, dreaming self; and how it sustains a self-conscious person.

Drawing from Eastern and Western literatures, Heinrich Zimmer presents a selection of stories linked together by their common concern for the problem of our eternal conflict with the forces of evil. Beginning with a tale from the Arabian Nights, this theme unfolds in legends from Irish paganism, medieval Christianity, the Arthurian cycle, and early Hinduism. In the retelling of these tales, Zimmer discloses the meanings within their seemingly unrelated symbols and suggests the philosophical wholeness of this assortment of myth. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Before French conquest, education played an important role in Moroccan society as a means of cultural reproduction and as a form of cultural capital that defined a person's social position. Primarily religious and legal in character, the Moroccan educational system did not pursue European educational ideals. Following the French conquest of Morocco, however, the French established a network of colonial schools for Moroccan Muslims designed to further the agendas of the conquerors. The Moroccan Soul examines the history of the French education system in colonial Morocco, the development of Fren.

Do we all possess a soul? If so, what is it? Can it be defined? Crawford argues that it is important that we have a soul because if it is immortal then we can hope for life after death. But some religions insist that it is the resurrection of the body which is vital. How can the belief in an immortal soul and resurrection of the body be reconciled? Crawford attempts to answer this question in the context of six world religions and the science and technology of twenty-first century society.

This compelling ethnography explores the issue of cultural continuity and change as it has unfolded in the representative Guatemala Mayan town Santiago Atitlán. Drawing on multiple sources, Robert S. Carlsen argues that local Mayan culture survived the Spanish Conquest remarkably intact and continued to play a defining role for much of the following five centuries. He also shows how the twentieth-century consolidation of the Guatemalan state steadily eroded the capacity of the local Mayas to adapt to change and ultimately caused some factions to reject—even demonize—their own history and culture. At the same time, he explains how, after a decade of military occupation known as la violencia, Santiago Atitlán stood up in unity to the Guatemalan Army in 1990 and forced it to leave town. This new edition looks at how Santiago Atitlán has fared since the expulsion of the army. Carlsen explains that, initially, there was hope that the renewed unity that had served the town so well would continue. He argues that such hopes have been undermined by multiple sources, often with bizarre outcomes. Among the factors he examines are the impact of transnational crime, particularly gangs with ties to Los Angeles; the rise of vigilantism and its relation to renewed religious factionalism; the related brutal murders of followers of the traditional Mayan religion; and the apocalyptic fervor underlying these events.

To Train His Soul in Books explores numerous aspects of this rich religious culture, extending previous lines of scholarly investigation and demonstrating the activity of Syriac-speaking scribes and translators busy assembling books for the training of biblical interpreters, ascetics, and learned clergy.

Shaun MacGregor is a complex man who struggles with alcoholism and relationships with women. He becomes involved in a battle for the control of Earth. Groomed by his mentor, John Running Bull, Shaun assists the alien Arcturians in saving humanity from the evil Annunaki. With his psychic abilities, Shaun mediates the transformation of evil humans controlled by the Annunaki, changing monsters into harmless clones by presenting them to the Arcturians for adjustments to their souls. Shaun’s stepfather, Mike “Mad Dog” MacGregor, who appears as a human, is the supreme leader of the Annunaki. A retired Air Force colonial, Mad Dog plots to wipe out humanity, so that his people may colonize Earth. The colonel has long viewed Shaun as his nemesis because Shaun is a Nephilim--half human and half Arcturian. He soon threatens Shaun’s existence. With the help of John Running Bull and the ex-Annunaki cyborg Bart, Shaun, and his new love interest Vicki kayak sixty miles to the point deep in the Red River Gorge area in Eastern Kentucky where they are extracted to safety. Along the way down the river, the group experiences many dangers, including learning of the Annunaki’s plan to wipe out humanity by transforming the Earth’s atmosphere so that it is unable to support human life by replacing oxygen with methane gas and carbon dioxide, perfect for the Annunaki. Human activities such as hydraulic fracturing and fossil fuel consumption have long been wrecking the Earth, but the process is taking too long. Nubira, home planet of the Annunaki, is rapidly being destroyed as their sun turns into a supernova. In addition to speeding up the destruction of the planet, Mad Dog MacGregor urges his cohorts to release a virus via their Annunaki Manchurian candidate in Wuhan, China, thus expediting the complete demise of the human species. Extraction is complete when Shaun and Vicki escape by jumping off Seventy Six Falls near Lake Cumberland in Kentucky. There the pair are forced into a wormhole that deposits them into the decade of the 1950s. Such time travel is the Arcturians’ version of a cosmic witness protection plan. When Shaun and Vicki arrive in the 50s, their identities are altered, but not their souls. Shaun becomes a famous writer and uses his influence for good. Finally, Shaun makes it back to the year 2020, and is faced with horrors that threaten his sanity, and threatens his ability to protect humanity from the evils of the Annunaki. Will Shaun survive long enough to save the planet, or will he become just another instrument in the Annunaki conquest of earth.