About this title: We want to tell the story again. This book details about major international marketing and PR campaign at publication, including a national newspaper partner, events at the Royal Festival Hall and blanket review and feature coverage. Karen Armstrong is one of Britain's most renowned religious and social commentators. "Human beings have always been mythmakers." What are myths? How have they evolved? And, why do we still so desperately need them? The history of myth is the history of humanity; our stories and beliefs, our curiosity and attempts to understand the world, link us to our ancestors ...
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Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Brilliance Audio on CD Unabridged
ISBN-13:9781423307693ISBN:1423307690
Description: Fair. Purchasing this DVD supports the North Central Regional Library. Thriftbooks and NCRL have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Library ID found on DVD and case. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Canongate U. S
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9781841958002ISBN:184195800X
Description: Good. Used item may show library stamps, stickers and marks. Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Canongate Books
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9781841957166ISBN:184195716X
Description: Fine in fine dust jacket. Like new, never read condition with minor edge wear and scuffing to dust jacket. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 159 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Audiobook CD
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9781423307693ISBN:1423307690
Description: New in new dust jacket. 3 CDs in box. Audience: General/trade. Three BRAND NEW audio CDs sealed in the shrink wrap box factory sealed. NEW! Gift quality. Publisher remainder mark over the barcode under the shrink wrap. Enjoy this new unabridged audio performance! read more
Description: Third Printing. 8vo., 159pp., white cloth. Small coffee stain on rear board and at upper edge of text block, otherwise in fine jacket. ISBN: 184195716X. read more
"A rather nice overview. Armstrong tells things clearly and doesn't make the reader feel stupid. There is plently about myth connecting to religion, in particular how the age of Enlighment led to a reading of the Bible as truth, which Armstrong points out does a disservice to reliigon and myth. I found her idea about our age doing away with myth except in terms of literature to be interesting. She has a point, but the writers do carrry it. Perhaps we have just changed the nature of our myths - the popularity of vampires at the moment for instant could be tied, and is most likely tied to, this need for a myth as well as a need to re-invent it. For instance, how many UF vampires are really taken from the old vampiric folklore?
Armstrong also does a good job of showing the difference between myth and icons. She believes that we have now have icons (Princess Diana, for example) instead of myths."
"Armstrong clearly lays out the key eras of human history - paleolithic, neolithic, the first civilizations, the Axial Age, the post-Axial Period and then modern history (post 1500)- and shows how myth reflects the dominant worldviews of each of these eras (hunters, agriculture, urban communities, etc.). A common theme to all myths is the human relationship to a trans-human world, including any post-life existence. However that relationship manifested itself, humans were integrated with another world that provided meaning and comfort, if not the promise of eternal life. That relationship changed with the Greeks who began to develop science (logos) to compete with stories (myth) as a way to define that world. Over the last 500 years of the modern era, for much of the West at least, myth has lost its potency and has been replaced with a sterile rationalistic worldview that discounts all myth as "untrue." The adverse, psychological consequences of this transformation are noted by Armstrong. Where Armstrong goes astray is that she wants to bring myth back because she wants it to teach compassion, to each us to identify with humans not our tribes, etc. But she butts up against her own description of the modern era: made up stories cannot and do not survive a scientific and materialist worldview. In an uncaring universe, nothing really matters. However, as Eliade wrote, modern-day rationalists think they have stripped their intellect clean of myth, but it comes in through the back door so that now we have "logos" myths about rational man (perfect man), economic man (utilitarian man), famous man (heroic man), connected man (bored man), etc. This, not her aspiration for a brighter future, is the more logical extension of her short history of myth."
"I think I need to re-read this one. There is a lot of info in this book, even on entitled "A short history." What I did like was the use of previous myths in Christian mythology (like how the Noah's arc story was a copy of a previous myth) and a brief delving into the mythology of Asia. Like linguistics, the mythos of a people can usually trace their heritage and can yield clues into earlier incarnations of a dead culture, which I find fascinating. My biggest problem with this book is that the author takes the clues about early cultures and presents them as more or less facts. I feel that we cannot broadly assume the intent of a culture with no recorded history based on a cave painting or artifact- we are simply biased with our own cultural lens."
"A good overview, more an appetizer to help you figure out what you might want to read about next, or a refresher to bring back long-forgotten knowledge. The first two-thirds were somewhat vague, but I found the last third, in which the author discusses the state of mythology in today's world, to be compelling. I read with mild interest up to that point, then woke right up for the last bit."
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