It's still the Wild West in Colleen's Durango. Colleen Miller grew up in her parents' motel in Durango, Colorado, during the 1950s and 1960s. A tourist town in the southwestern corner of the state, alive with people from all over the world during the summer, Durango became an isolated, typical small town the rest of the year. These are the stories of her childhood, filled with the hilarious, larger-than-life characters that populated her family and the town around them. Told in the words of a precocious child who doesn't miss a thing, Colleen has the courage to name it all for what it is, telling anyone who will listen. Inside are her stories and more... "I laughed out loud so many times! Colleen is a brilliant storyteller and a compassionate coach with fresh and unique ideas for uncovering those parts of our past we've buried while integrating them into the person we want to be today." Chicken Soup for the Soul series and other books "What I love about Colleen's writing is that the stories come alive and draw me in. They make me cry and laugh, and help me to see the truth of my own authentic self." -Sally Bonkrude, MA, LPC, MT-BC, author of Conscious Performing...from fear to freedom!

Drawing from a rich corpus of art works, including sarcophagi, tomb paintings, and floor mosaics, Patrick R. Crowley investigates how something as insubstantial as a ghost could be made visible through the material grit of stone and paint. In this fresh and wide-ranging study, he uses the figure of the ghost to offer a new understanding of the status of the image in Roman art and visual culture. Tracing the shifting practices and debates in antiquity about the nature of vision and representation, Crowley shows how images of ghosts make visible structures of beholding and strategies of depiction. Yet the figure of the ghost simultaneously contributes to a broader conceptual history that accounts for how modalities of belief emerged and developed in antiquity. Neither illustrations of ancient beliefs in ghosts nor depictions of afterlife, these images show us something about the visual event of seeing itself. The Phantom Image offers essential insight into ancient art, visual culture, and the history of the image.

In 1683, an Ottoman army that stretched from horizon to horizon set out to seize the "Golden Apple," as Turks referred to Vienna. The ensuing siege pitted battle-hardened Janissaries wielding seventeenth-century grenades against Habsburg armies, widely feared for their savagery. The walls of Vienna bristled with guns as the besieging Ottoman host launched bombs, fired cannons, and showered the populace with arrows during the battle for Christianity's bulwark. Each side was sustained by the hatred of its age-old enemy, certain that victory would be won by the grace of God. The Great Siege of Vienna is the centerpiece for historian Andrew Wheatcroft's richly drawn portrait of the centuries-long rivalry between the Ottoman and Habsburg empires for control of the European continent. A gripping work by a master historian, The Enemy at the Gate offers a timely examination of an epic clash of civilizations.

Renaissance Fun is about the technology of Renaissance entertainments in stage machinery and theatrical special effects; in gardens and fountains; and in the automata and self-playing musical instruments that were installed in garden grottoes. How did the machines behind these shows work? How exactly were chariots filled with singers let down onto the stage? How were flaming dragons made to fly across the sky? How were seas created on stage? How did mechanical birds imitate real birdsong? What was ‘artificial music’, three centuries before Edison and the phonograph? How could pipe organs be driven and made to play themselves by waterpower alone? And who were the architects, engineers, and craftsmen who created these wonders? All these questions are answered. At the end of the book we visit the lost ‘garden of marvels’ at Pratolino with its many grottoes, automata and water jokes; and we attend the performance of Mercury and Mars in Parma in 1628, with its spectacular stage effects and its music by Claudio Monteverdi – one of the places where opera was born. Renaissance Fun is offered as an entertainment in itself. But behind the show is a more serious scholarly argument, centred on the enormous influence of two ancient writers on these subjects, Vitruvius and Hero. Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture were widely studied by Renaissance theatre designers. Hero of Alexandria wrote the Pneumatics, a collection of designs for surprising and entertaining devices that were the models for sixteenth and seventeenth century automata. A second book by Hero On Automata-Making – much less well known, then and now – describes two miniature theatres that presented plays without human intervention. One of these, it is argued, provided the model for the type of proscenium theatre introduced from the mid-sixteenth century, the generic design which is still built today. As the influence of Vitruvius waned, the influence of Hero grew.

"MacKendrick writes so enthusiastically that all laymen who have a serious interest in scholarship and antiquity will delight in following his story." --New York Times Book Review

Thought to be the father of modern witchcraft, Gerald Gardner published The Meaning of Witchcraft in 1959, not long after laws punishing witches were repealed. It was the first sympathetic book written from the point of view of a practicing witch. The Meaning of Witchcraft is an invaluable source book for witches today. Chapters include: Witch's Memories and Beliefs, The Stone Age Origins of Witchcraft, Druidism and the Aryan Celts, Magic Thinking, Curious Beliefs about Witches, Signs and Symbols, The Black Mass, Some Allegations Examined. The Meaning of Witchcraft is a record of witches' roots-and a tribute to a founding pioneer with the courage to set that record straight.

Do you love Philadelphia? Do you love good writing? Well, this is the book for you. It's about the people of Philadelphia--the good, the fine, and the imperfect. Yes, the sports heroes are here--Mike Schmidt, Julius ("Dr. J.") Erving. And the politicians--Ed Rendell, John Street. And the moguls--Brian Roberts, Comcast honcho. And the would-be moguls--Mark Yagalla, world-class embezzler. And so many more, including--writing in their own words--Terry Gross, Patti LaBelle, W. Wilson Goode, Sr., Judy Wicks, Judith Rodin, and Smarty Jones (proving that this horse is no one-trick pony). And so many more--25 of them in all. The people--and the horse--who have meant something to this city during the last 20 years. Ripped from the pages of Philadelphia magazine (well, OK, carefully removed and lovingly pasted into this book), here are profiles of the people who made an era.