Just in time for the holidays comes this uplifting collection of true stories demonstrating faith in action and the extraordinary power of God's love. Christians everywhere will find these real-life tales are proof that everlasting refuge is indeed found Under God's Wings. -- The Miracle on the Doorstep -- An elderly widower searches for a reason to go on. Then, just days after Christmas, his prayer is answered: he awakens to someone who desperately needs him -- an abandoned newborn left out in the cold. -- Heavenly Express -- A young missionary celebrates his birthday far from home. Back in the United States, his mother has only one desire -- to take her son's annual portrait. A quick trip to the mailbox brings her a surprise -- a package clearly delivered by Heavenly Express. -- Angel in the Garden -- Kathleen Treanor's four-year-old daughter, Ashley, asked, Mommy, would you be sad if I died? Stunned, Kathleen answered, Of course I'd be sad, Ashley. I'd miss you so very much. Then, her daughter went on. But why, Mommy? I'd be with Jesus in heaven. I'd be an angel watching over you. Only days later, Ashley was tragically killed, a victim of the Oklahoma City bombing.

In the tradition of John Feinstein's best-selling A Season on the Brink, Nick Cotsonika will draw back the curtain on one of the most compelling stories in the history of sports. Never before has an NHL team brought together such a dazzling number of big names. Chris Chelios. Sergei Fedorov. Dominik Hasek. Brett Hull. Igor Larionov. Nicklas Lidstrom. Luc Robitaille. Brendan Shanahan. Steve Yzerman. And, of course, legendary coach Scotty Bowman. With this unprecedented talent comes the potential of unprecedented problems: competition for playing time and limelight, the burden of expectations in a Stanley Cup-crazy place like Detroit, a city that calls itself Hockeytown. With access to the players and coaches, Cotsonika will be witness to it all, how the players deal with themselves, how they clash with the mercurial Bowman, how they handle being part of the richest payroll in the sport's history, thanks to deep-pocketed, aggressive owner Mike Ilitch. Cotsonika will provide, in sharply engaging fashion, many details of a season in the NHL usually hidden from view.

In the north Indian state of Uttarakhand, in the Central Himalayas, Hindu deities are ever present in the lives of devotees. Through ritual practices of placemaking, spirit mediums, oracles, priests, and other specialists bring these beings into embodied form, calling on them for healing and counsel. In exchange for alleviating human suffering, deities ask that a place be made for them—in homes, villages, and temples, and in bodies, lives, and communities. Gods in the World is a richly descriptive and evocative ethnography of Hindu ritual practices that shows how deities and other supernatural agents come to matter to ordinary people. Aftab S. Jassal traces how acts of placemaking, including healing practices that repair and restore relations between people and deities, allow deities to participate and intervene in human affairs. Many of the professional healers, storytellers, musicians, spirit mediums, and lay devotees who are chronicled belong to marginalized Dalit communities. These communities are at the forefront of combined pressures of tourism, neoliberal development, and Hindutva nationalist politics and often find creative ways of responding to their changing worlds. Bringing together fresh insights on the dynamics of caste and gender with enduring questions about ritual, healing, and the nature of human-divine relations, Gods in the World offers a striking account of everyday Hinduism in a contested and rapidly changing region.

What would it be like to realize one day that everything you believed to be true was nothing but a lie? That you lived in an illusion constantly fed by those around you? That reality is often diametrically opposed to the chimera that was inoculated to you? That to learn the truth you need to forget everything you know? - What is God? - Are aliens real? - Is the material universe just an illusion? - Why are we here, where do we come from and where do we go after death? - Is Earth a prison? - Are humans the descendants of the gods of the past? - Is the Bible just a collection of plagiarized myths? - Was Christianity invented by Philo of Alexandria? - Was the Garden of Eden located on the territory of today's Romania? - Are Lucifer and Adam the same character? - Is Noah's Ark one of the Giza pyramids? - Is the Great Pyramid an interdimensional travel device? - Was the prophet Abraham a descendant of the Akkadian emperor Sargon the Great? - Was Moses really Pharaoh Akhenaton? - Is there an unseen war between the Aryan and Semitic races? - Did Alexander the Great discover the source of life in Dacia? - Did Pharaoh Tutankhamun's family practice black magic? - Does the Asteroid Belt come from the Mariana Trench? - Are the fallen angels at the top of the Masonic pyramid? - Is time travel possible? - Is the Apocalypse an event of the past? - Was Jesus possessed? All these questions (and many more) can be answered by "The Secrets of the Gods", a secret history of the world, based on the decoding of ancient myths, as well as on the results of modern scientific research. A unique and controversial interpretation of universal history, which brings to the general public the secrets of the gods, until now reserved only for the initiated.

The issue of how to represent God is a concern both ancient and contemporary. In this wide-ranging and authoritative study, renowned biblical scholar Mark Smith investigates the symbols, meanings, and narratives in the Hebrew Bible, Ugaritic texts, and ancient iconography, which attempt to describe deities in relation to humans. Smith uses a novel approach to show how the Bible depicts God in human and animal forms—and sometimes both together. Mediating between the ancients’ theories and the work of modern thinkers, Smith’s boldly original work uncovers the foundational understandings of deities and space.

Meisner offers a new interpretation of four Orphic theogonies: Derveni, Eudemian, Hieronyman, and Rhapsodic. The fragments of these poems, thought to be written by Orpheus, contained narratives of the creation of the cosmos and the births of the gods, but differed from the mainstream account of Hesiod's Theogony.

Theo and Leon Smith are flying to Athens with their parents to attend the Olympic Games when, passing Mount Olympus, the aeroplane is intercepted and embroiled in an ancient Greek battle that has raged for thousands of years. Forced to land, the captain is confronted with a conundrum in the clouds that could only have been created by some immortal force. Theo and Leon, fascinated by ancient Greece, are willing participants in the awesome but scary events that follow. Numerous criminals and a net full of birds imprisoned in the clouds by the gods are the source of the terror. Rescued and returned to Athens, the task of helping them to acclimatize to the twenty-first century falls to the Smith family and various academics. While visiting the ruins of Olympia with their ancient friends, the boys find themselves in Ancient Olympia with the race about to start. The all-important victors speech is interrupted by the unceremonious arrival of Theos teacher, instigating a series of perilous recriminations. Their lives are endangered many times as they become involved in the bloody battles and rituals of ancient Greece. Tragedy and redemption do not strike, however, until Theo and Leon return to Athens, AD 2004, in time for the Olympic Games.

Pula is the son of the rainmaker and he fishes with his father from a mokoro on the Okavango River. Above him he sees aircraft rising into the clouds and he too wants to fly. He and his dear friend Julia are caught in the biggest flood ever to hit the Okavango Delta. They are rescued from Shakawe by an American pilot flying a C130 Hercules…………… A huge wave of global change now swamps the world, old cultures and long-honoured beliefs are questioned, small languages and small communities are being destroyed, some people are endangered - not only birds and beasts. The cycles of flood and drought have been around since Gilgamesh’s time, so have unstable metaphysical explanations for them, the eternal role of fickle gods. Even Okavango Gods. Current change in the Okavango Delta and ancient change in the Euphrates are perhaps not so far apart after all. Man will bring about the change, the ancient gods are no longer reliable, the future lies in man’s volition.

"Human flight is not a simple matter of science and technology. It is a continuing epic of dreams and obsession, of yearning and striving to harness the intellect in the service of the emotions." In Like Sex with Gods: An Unorthodox History of Flight, Bayla Singer offers a unique approach to humanity's fascination with flying. Rather than merely tracing the factual prehistory of flight up to the success of the Wright Brothers, Bayla Singer considers the interaction and influence of our dreams, fantasies, culture, and technology on the age-old quest to fly. This enlightening study begins with the deities and other denizens of the heavens that humanity has created in its religion, literature, and art. At first a monopoly of the gods, flight came to interest humanity as a way to free itself from the physical and intellectual bonds of the earth. The myth of flight eventually gives way to the pursuit of actual flight. Singer shows in compelling detail the many flying machines that have been created, including balloons, gliders, and kites. The accomplishment of the Wright Brothers and our successful trips into space are merely stops on a continuing journey, as our ancient dream of flight continues to push us to new and loftier places. Filled with compelling stories and detailed illustrations, this book provides absorbing reading for aviation experts, those fascinated with the intimate relationship between technology and culture, and all of us who have even a passing interest in flying.

Hawaiian Legends of Ghosts and Ghost-Gods (1915) is a collection of Hawaiian folktales and myths by W. D. Westervelt. Connecting the origin story of Hawaii to the traditions of other Polynesian cultures, Westervelt provides an invaluable resource for understanding the historical and geographical scope of Hawaiian culture. Drawing on the work of David Malo, Samuel Kamakau, and Abraham Fornander, Westervelt, originally from Ohio, became a leading authority on the Hawaiian Islands, publishing extensively on their legends, religious beliefs, and folk tales. “The legends of the Hawaiian Islands are as diverse as those of any country in the world. They are also entirely distinct in form and thought from the fairy-tales which excite the interest and wonder of the English and German children. The mythology of Hawaii follows the laws upon which all myths are constructed.” Part ethnography, part geological description, Westervelt’s work is a powerful celebration of the cultural traditions of the Hawaiian Islands. In these legends, ghosts and gods interact with the environment and the daily lives of islanders, shaping human society and the land itself. Highlights include the story of the Wauhaula heiau, or temple, the legend of the enraged Hau-pu and the Rock of Kauai, and the tale of Nanaue, the shark-man of Waipio Valley. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of W. D. Westervelt’s Hawaiian Legends of Ghosts and Ghost-Gods is a classic of Hawaiian literature reimagined for modern readers.