Jalal Toufic is a thinker and a mortal to death. He was born in 1962 in Beirut or Baghdad and died before dying in 1989 in Evanston, Illinois. This second edition of a collection of his essays whirls around the appearance of the unworldly in art, culture, history, and the present.

Jalal Toufic is a thinker and a mortal to death. He was born in 1962 in Beirut or Baghdad and died before dying in 1989 in Evanston, Illinois. This second edition of a collection of his essays whirls around the appearance of the unworldly in art, culture, history, and the present.

“What Was I Thinking? is an initiation into thinking. With a mind that is extremely analytical and yet extremely capable of rendering all kinds of knowledge and experiences permeable to each other, Jalal Toufic creates here a 'summa,' but an open-ended one. He looks into the arts as if they were the privileged site of thinking, even when they inevitably fail, and still confronts his insights/thoughts with texts taken from the traditional religions and mystics of the past. He has reached in this work an Olympian attitude—tuned to his basically Dionysian temperament—that announces the beginning of a detachment, of a remarkable serenity (a joy in thinking that Nietzsche had already understood). Jalal Toufic is today, and has been for some time, the most original thinker on the planet. He assumes the challenge stated by Heidegger in What Is Called Thinking? by his own thinking (by writing this book). To imagine the best possible worlds, to go into uncharted territory; these worlds are eminently those of the arts (as he practices them, as he delves into their layers, their paradoxes, their darings, ever admitting their maddening inbuilt inaccessibility). His kind of an endeavor takes a tremendous courage. And a unique freedom: letting his mind go into unpredicted ascertainments, so that his writing 'does not fall apart two days later.' Situated somewhere close to the spirit of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and Nietzsche's breakthroughs, we can say that Jalal Toufic is indeed a 'destiny.'”—Etel Adnan Series edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Stephen Squibb, Anton Vidokle

Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds. Second Life is one of the largest of these virtual worlds. The residents of Second Life create communities, buy property and build homes, go to concerts, meet in bars, attend weddings and religious services, buy and sell virtual goods and services, find friendship, fall in love--the possibilities are endless, and all encountered through a computer screen. At the time of its initial publication in 2008, Coming of Age in Second Life was the first book of anthropology to examine this thriving alternate universe. Tom Boellstorff conducted more than two years of fieldwork in Second Life, living among and observing its residents in exactly the same way anthropologists traditionally have done to learn about cultures and social groups in the so-called real world. He conducted his research as the avatar "Tom Bukowski," and applied the rigorous methods of anthropology to study many facets of this new frontier of human life, including issues of gender, race, sex, money, conflict and antisocial behavior, the construction of place and time, and the interplay of self and group. Coming of Age in Second Life shows how virtual worlds can change ideas about identity and society. Bringing anthropology into territory never before studied, this book demonstrates that in some ways humans have always been virtual, and that virtual worlds in all their rich complexity build upon a human capacity for culture that is as old as humanity itself. Now with a new preface in which the author places his book in light of the most recent transformations in online culture, Coming of Age in Second Life remains the classic ethnography of virtual worlds.

9 new chapters and 6 more updated.It's been nearly 10 years since the first edition of Sunday's Coming was published. Prophecy is being fulfilled at an ever increasing pace. The whole book has been updated and is applicible for today.Inside you'll read:The significance of the John Paul II funeral,The Religious Right's policical power,The latest ecumenical movements,How "the church" changed the day of worship

With a timely new chapter on immigration in the current age of globalization, a new Preface, and new appendixes with the most recent statistics, this revised edition is an engrossing study of immigration to the United States from the colonial era to the present.

Seven years after its most recent release, You Private Person now returns in a brand-new edition by With an X Books. Named one of Publisher's Weekly's 10 Essentials Books of the American West, these stories are sharp, romantic, and heartbreaking to the core. A beloved collection, a cult classic, and a perfect pop song, You Private Person is your favorite writer's favorite book.

Provides resources for teaching elementary and secondary school students about Christopher Columbus and the discovery of America.

In this fast-paced sequel to The Shroud Conspiracy “that Dan Brown fans will love” (Library Journal), the child cloned from the blood on the Shroud of Turin has the potential to change the world—or to destroy it for good. “John Heubusch is brilliant. I would read anything he writes” (Peggy Noonan, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and bestselling author). In this “sensational sequel” (Steve Forbes), a fallen angel is mistakenly resurrected from the blood of an evil “Watcher” taken from the Shroud of Turin, and the fiend bestows an unstoppable plague on the world. Dr. Jon Bondurant, the forensic anthropologist and avowed atheist, joins with devout Domenika Josef to bring another child of the Shroud into the world to save it, this one borne of DNA believed to be that of Jesus Christ. Can this child be the answer to their—and mankind’s—prayers? His parents are uncertain just who the child is or what he will become, but when he starts demonstrating remarkable powers to heal, they begin to understand that whatever he is, he is not of this world. Might he bring miracles to the world when it needs them the most? Or has science given mankind a tool with which it will destroy itself as the tempting power of the Watcher unfolds? What follows is a globe-spanning chase to uncover the truth and stop a pandemic that just may wipe out humanity once and for all in a “smart, electrifying thriller that delivers cover-to-cover” (Brad Thor, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Spymaster).

The author, son of an Iraqi father and a Palestinian mother, lived in Lebanon for 17 years; this extraordinary fictionalized memoir derives much of its intensity from Toufic's exposure to three of the world's most devastated peoples. Viewing life through the eyes of Nietzsche and Kafka, he deftly turns sitting in a cafe into an autobiographical narrative blended with philosophy and observations on cinema gleaned from his own experience as a filmmaker. The text turns on a metaphoric excavation of an always underway process or state of 'distraction'-- A state which for Toufic is not so much an attitude or level of concentration as it is an ontological modality. Insightful, funny, erotic, at times bizarre, Distracted offers an indelible vision of daily life by a man born on the twin currents of art and history.