From the ancient Book of the Dead to Dante's Divine Comedy, the living have attempted to describe the world of the dead. Tours of Hell focuses on one form of that attempt: the tours of hell found in Jewish and Christian apocalypses of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Himmelfarb examines seventeen texts, preserved in five languages and spanning a thousand years of human history. These include Hebrew texts and Christian texts in Greek, Latin, Ethiopic, and Coptic, such as the Apocalypse of Peter and the Apocalypse of Paul family. Muslim texts, medieval visions, and other related literatures are also discussed. Himmelfarb details the common elements of the tour tradition, including such features as a hero or heroine figure, a heavenly revealer, and descriptions of the punishments awaiting those who arrive in hell. She convincingly refutes the accepted nineteenth-century critical view of the earliest of these tours, the Apocalypse of Peter, as a Christian form of an "Orphic-Pythagorean" descent to Hades. She place the work instead on the family tree of the tour apocalypse, a genre she traces back to the third century B.C.E. Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36). Linking the Apocalypse of Peter with later Jewish tours of hell, Himmelfarb reveals significant sin-and-punishment combinations that seem to point to a common source, which she theorizes to be a lost Jewish Tour work of the late Second Temple period. Rich and fascinating texts seldom before brought to light are treated in detail in this pioneering study. A comprehensive work on the apocalyptic tradition, Tours of Hell will be of great interest to scholars and students of religion, history, ancient and medieval literature, and Dante studies.

An “irresistibly readable” pair of novellas skewering Americans abroad—by the New York Times–bestselling author and National Book Award finalist(The New York Times Book Review). “In a style that is bold, witty, richly detailed, and suffused with a wry subtlety,” Francine Prose offers penetrating portraits of Americans in Europe who have brought all their baggage—ego, ambition, sexual desire—with them (Elle). Guided Tours of Hell When the insecure (and rightfully so) playwright Landau travels from New York to Prague to read at the first annual Kafka conference, he’s certain this is his chance to prove himself—and his work. But he quickly finds himself upstaged by Jiri Krakauer, a charismatic Holocaust survivor whose claim to fame is a long-ago death-camp love affair with Kafka’s sister. On a group tour to the camp-turned-tourist-attraction, Landau sets out to prove that Krakauer is lying—with unexpected results. Three Pigs in Five Days Ambitious young journalist Nina has been stranded in Paris by her editor and sometimes boyfriend, Leo. When he finally shows up, playfully suggesting a romantic tour of the catacombs, prisons, and shadows of the City of Light, the bloom begins to come off the rose for the infatuated Nina—who must ask herself how much of herself she is willing to sacrifice for love.

Take a trip through the realms of hell with a man whose temporary visitor’s pass gave him a horrifying—and enlightening—preview of its torments. This true account of Sam Bercholz’s near-death experience has more in common with Dante’s Inferno than it does with any of the popular feel-good stories of what happens when we die. In the aftermath of heart surgery, Sam, a longtime Buddhist practitioner and teacher, is surprised to find himself in the lowest realms of karmic rebirth, where he is sent to gain insight into human suffering. Under the guidance of a luminous being, Sam’s encounters with a series of hell-beings trapped in repetitious rounds of misery and delusion reveal to him how an individual’s own habits of fiery hatred and icy disdain, of grasping desire and nihilistic ennui, are the source of horrific agonies that pound consciousness for seemingly endless cycles of time. Comforted by the compassion of a winged goddess and sustained by the kindness of his Buddhist teachers, Sam eventually emerges from his ordeal with renewed faith that even the worst hell contains the seed of wakefulness. His story is offered, along with the modernist illustrations of a master of Tibetan sacred arts, in order to share what can be learned about awakening from our own self-created hells and helping others to find relief and liberation from theirs.

A New York Times best-selling scholar's illuminating exploration of the earliest Christian narrated journeys to heaven and hell “[An] illuminating deep dive . . . An edifying origin story for contemporary Christian conceptions of the afterlife.”—Publishers Weekly From classics such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid to fifth-century Christian apocrypha, narratives that described guided tours of the afterlife played a major role in shaping ancient notions of morality and ethics. In this new account, acclaimed author Bart Ehrman contextualizes early Christian narratives of heaven and hell within the broader intellectual and cultural worlds from which they emerged. He examines how fundamental social experiences of the early Christian communities molded the conceptions of the afterlife that eventuated into the accepted doctrines of heaven, hell, and purgatory. Drawing on Greek and Roman epic poetry, early Jewish writings such as the Book of Watchers, and apocryphal Christian stories including the Acts of Thomas, the Gospel of Nicodemus, and the Apocalypse of Peter, Ehrman demonstrates that ancient tours of the afterlife promoted reflection on matters of ethics, faith, ambition, and life’s meaning, the fruit of which has been codified into Christian belief today.

Join Chris Martin for a poetic walking tour of hell—or is it heaven? In this wickedly clever collection, Martin asks how we go about living in the tension between protesting lunatic politicians and picking up the kids from school, mourning a dying Earth and making soup, combating white supremacy and loving our dear ones. Martin’s poems pick at the tender scabs protecting our national and individual identities, and call for more honest healing. Things to Do in Hell channels 2016 anger into 2020 action with sophisticated, rhythmic verse that compels us to beat our swords into ploughshares and join the fight.

The #1 New York Times Bestseller: “A hilarious take on that age-old problem: getting the beloved child to go to sleep” (NPR). “Hell no, you can’t go to the bathroom. You know where you can go? The f**k to sleep.” Go the Fuck to Sleep is a book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don’t always send a toddler sailing blissfully off to dreamland. Profane, affectionate, and radically honest, it captures the familiar—and unspoken—tribulations of putting your little angel down for the night. Read by a host of celebrities, from Samuel L. Jackson to Jennifer Garner, this subversively funny bestselling storybook will not actually put your kids to sleep, but it will leave you laughing so hard you won’t care.

"A collection of texts on Buddhist Hell, including, The Great Story, Middle-Length Discourses, Friendly Epistle, Sutra on the Eighteen Hells, Sutra Spoken by the Buddha, Avalokiteswara's Descent into the Hell, Mu-Lien Rescues His Mother, T'ai Tsung in Hell, Essentials of Pure Land Rebirth, The Precious Record, Miao-Shen Visits Hell, and others, plus notes, glossary, links to web resources"--Provided by publisher.

As you read this, hundreds of bands are on tour, criss-crossing the country. Some are travelling in tour buses, playing huge venues to thousands of people. Others are in beat-up Ford Econoline vans, playing in tiny clubs to no one. They all have stories about their tours. Some are funny...some are nightmares. This is a compilation of some of those stories.

"From the Bible through Dante and up to Treblinka and Guantánamo Bay, here is a rich source for nightmares." --The New York Times Book Review Three thousand years of visions of Hell, from the ancient Near East to modern America From the Hebrew Bible's shadowy realm of Sheol to twenty-first-century visions of Hell on earth, The Penguin Book of Hell takes us through three thousand years of eternal damnation. Along the way, you'll take a ferry ride with Aeneas to Hades, across the river Acheron; meet the Devil as imagined by a twelfth-century Irish monk--a monster with a thousand giant hands; wander the nine circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno, in which gluttons, liars, heretics, murderers, and hypocrites are made to endure crime-appropriate torture; and witness the debates that raged in Victorian England when new scientific advances cast doubt on the idea of an eternal hereafter. Drawing upon religious poetry, epics, theological treatises, stories of miracles, and accounts of saints' lives, this fascinating volume of hellscapes illuminates how Hell has long haunted us, in both life and death.

Vietnam 365 - Our Tour Through Hell is an honest reflection of one man's tour of duty in Southeast Asia...the true story of Spec-5 David McCormack, who left his home in Elizabethtown, Kentucky to serve with the Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, 5th Battalion, 2nd Artillery Automatic Self Weapons group located on Duster Compound, attached to 30th ARVN Rangers and a Navy Seal A-TEAM of 5th Special Forces. A master mechanic, McCormack was assigned to the Duster Compound near Ben Hoi as the personal driver and courier for the head of the Battalion Deployment and Recovery Division, Chief Silvers, the man who taught him how to survive a year running the "Thunder Road" throughout the region, avoiding threats from both enemy combatants and dishonest American officers. Known as "Billy the Kid" for his fearless attitude, McCormack shares what life was really like for those who served in Vietnam from 1970-71, where the threat of death could come at any time, and Hell seemed like home for 365 days.