Prepare to meet the wicked progeny of the master of modern horror. In Lovecraft's Monsters, H. P. Lovecraft's most famous creations--Cthulhu, Shoggoths, Deep Ones, Elder Things, Yog-Sothoth, and more--appear in all their terrifying glory. Each story is a gripping new take on a classic Lovecraftian creature. Contributors include such literary luminaries as Neil Gaiman, Joe R. Lansdale, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Karl Edward Wagner, Elizabeth Bear, and Nick Mamatas.

Between 1925-27, H.P. Lovecraft wrote Supernatural Horror in Literature, an extended essay about about the history of the weird tale. In it he describes supernatural horror from its earliest manifestations up to the 1920s. Lovecraft offers his own candid opinions on the merits (and deficiencies) of the world's canon of strange literature. The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society recorded the essay as an audiobook. Read by society founders Sean Branney and Andrew Leman, the recording is approximately three hours long.

In this classic work, Professor George G. M. James methodically shows how the Greeks first borrowed and then stole the knowledge from the Priests of the African (Egyptian) Mystery System. He shows how the most popular philosophers including Thales, Anaximander, Plato and Socrates were all treated as men bringing a foreign teaching to Greece. A teaching so foreign that they were persecuted for what they taught.

A mind-expanding and myth-destroying exploration of notions of white race—not merely a skin color but also a signal of power, prestige, and beauty to be withheld and granted selectively. Ever since the Enlightenment, race theory and its inevitable partner, racism, have followed a crooked road, constructed by dominant peoples to justify their domination of others. Filling a huge gap in historical literature that long focused on the non-white, eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter guides us through more than two thousand years of Western civilization, tracing not only the invention of the idea of race but also the frequent worship of “whiteness” for economic, social, scientific, and political ends.

So revolutionary, so original, so convincing, that the most faithful Christians will be moved; here is the book that has sparked worldwide controversey.

i>Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson's brilliant book on nationalism, forged a new field of study when it first appeared in 1983. Since then it has sold over a quarter of a million copies and is widely considered the most important book on the subject. In this greatly anticipated revised edition, Anderson updates and elaborates on the core question: What makes people live and die for nations, as well as hate and kill in their names?

In his poetry, Walt Whitman set out to encompass all of America, and in so doing, heal its deepening divisions. This magisterial biography demonstrates the epic scale of his achievement, as well as the dreams and anxieties that impelled it, for it places the poet securely within the political and cultural context of his age.

From a New York Times best-selling historian comes the story of how the alphabet ordered our world. A Place for Everything is the first-ever history of alphabetization, from the Library of Alexandria to Wikipedia. The story of alphabetical order has been shaped by some of history's most compelling characters, such as industrious and enthusiastic early adopter Samuel Pepys and dedicated alphabet champion Denis Diderot. But though even George Washington was a proponent, many others stuck to older forms of classification.

Are history books giving us the whole story? Or is civilization far more complex and for older than we have been taught? Our school textbooks barely mention the 6,000-year-old Sumerian civilization, yet the latest archaeological findings at sites such as Jericho, and most recently, Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, have been dated to 10,000 BC. Civilization goes back at least another 10,000 years, if we are willing to believe what our ancestors themselves claimed.

Alex Ross, renowned New Yorker music critic and author of the international best seller and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Rest Is Noise, reveals how Richard Wagner became the proving ground for modern art and politics - an aesthetic war zone where the Western world wrestled with its capacity for beauty and violence.

In the course of their investigation into Leonardo da Vinci, Lynn Pickett and Clive Prince found clues about his strangely passionate belief in the importance of John the Baptist. Here, along with a reassessment of the significance of Mary Magdalene and the sacred feminine, the authors reveal that Da Vinci’s apparently peculiar religion was shared by the Knights Templar. And their profoundly heretical belief that the Baptist was superior to Jesus himself still has the power to pose a threat to the very foundations of the Christian Church….

Widely hailed as a revelation of a "lost" golden age, this history brings to vivid life the rich and thriving culture of medieval Spain, where, for more than seven centuries, Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in an atmosphere of tolerance, and literature, science, and the arts flourished.

Martin Puchner leads us on a remarkable journey through time and around the globe to reveal the powerful role stories and literature have played in creating the world we have today. Puchner introduces us to numerous visionaries as he explores 16 foundational texts selected from more than 4,000 years of world literature and reveals how writing has inspired the rise and fall of empires and nations, the spark of philosophical and political ideas, and the birth of religious beliefs. Indeed, literature has touched generations and changed the course of history.

Winner of the John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences, Jaroslav Pelikan is Professor Emeritus of history at Yale University and past president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This examination of the history of the Bible reflects half a century of study and research by the author. In Whose Bible Is It?, Pelikan traces the transformation of the Bible from its earliest oral traditions to its modern forms.

How We Got the Bible provides factual, accessible answers to questions such as: How and when did the books of the Bible originate? In what sense are these books different from other books? How have these books been preserved and transmitted to us? Why do we have so many different translations of the Bible? A popular guide for Bible students, it has sold more than one million copies during its 40 years in print. Learn about the development of the most important book in history.

Millions of words of scholarship have been expended on the world's most famous author and his work. And yet a critical part of the puzzle, Shakespeare's library, is a mystery. For four centuries people have searched for it: in mansions, palaces, and libraries; in riverbeds, sheep pens, and partridge coops; and in the corridors of the mind. Yet no trace of the Bard's manuscripts, books, or letters has ever been found.

From a New York Times best-selling historian comes the story of how the alphabet ordered our world. A Place for Everything is the first-ever history of alphabetization, from the Library of Alexandria to Wikipedia. The story of alphabetical order has been shaped by some of history's most compelling characters, such as industrious and enthusiastic early adopter Samuel Pepys and dedicated alphabet champion Denis Diderot. But though even George Washington was a proponent, many others stuck to older forms of classification.

The foundations of modern knowledge - philosophy, math, astronomy, geography - were laid by the Greeks, whose ideas were written on scrolls and stored in libraries across the Mediterranean and beyond. But as the vast Roman Empire disintegrated, so did appreciation of these precious texts. Christianity cast a shadow over so-called pagan thought, books were burned, and the library of Alexandria, the greatest repository of classical knowledge, was destroyed. Yet some texts did survive and The Map of Knowledge explores the role played by seven cities around the Mediterranean....

Long before books were mass-produced, scrolls hand-copied on reeds pulled from the Nile were the treasures of the ancient world. Papyrus is the story of the book’s journey from oral tradition to scrolls to codices, and how that transition laid the very foundation of Western culture. Irene Vallejo evokes the great mosaic of literature in the ancient world, all the while illuminating how ancient ideas about education, censorship, authority, and identity still resonate today.

Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf and frescoes, or filled with bean bags and children’s drawings - the history of the library is rich, varied, and stuffed full of incident.

From the earliest oral traditions to ink on parchment and ultimately the printing press, this is the story behind the best-selling book of all time. Original texts were captured and passed down from generation to generation by elders and leaders, many inked by hand in extreme conditions. Christians and Jews canonized the Christian, Catholic, and Hebrew Bibles over a period of thousands of years. Devoted people dedicated their lives throughout time to put this unique book into the hands of people worldwide.

The theory that Shakespeare may not have written the works that bear his name is the most horrible, unspeakable subject in the history of English literature. Scholars admit that the Bard’s biography is a “black hole,” yet to publicly question the identity of the god of English literature is unacceptable, even (some say) “immoral.” In Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies, journalist and literary critic Elizabeth Winkler sets out to probe the origins of this literary taboo.

"The North" is simultaneously a location, a direction, and a mystical concept. Although this concept has ancient roots in mythology, folklore, and fairy tales, it continues to resonate today within modern culture. McIntosh leads listeners through the magical and spiritual history of the North, as well as its modern manifestations, as documented through physical records, such as runestones and megaliths, but also through mythology and lore. This mythic conception of a powerful, mysterious Northern civilization was known to the Greeks as "Hyberborea" - the "Land Beyond the North Wind".

Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world's first comprehensive Encyclopedie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity - for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality.

Coming face to face with an important illuminated manuscript in the original is rather like meeting a very famous person. We may all pretend that a well-known celebrity is no different from anyone else, and yet there is an undeniable thrill in actually meeting and talking to a person of world stature. The idea for this book, which is entirely new, is to invite the listener into an intimate conversation with a selection of the most famous manuscripts in existence and to let each of those manuscripts illuminate the Middle Ages and sometimes the modern world too.

Between 1925-27, H.P. Lovecraft wrote Supernatural Horror in Literature, an extended essay about about the history of the weird tale. In it he describes supernatural horror from its earliest manifestations up to the 1920s. Lovecraft offers his own candid opinions on the merits (and deficiencies) of the world's canon of strange literature. The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society recorded the essay as an audiobook. Read by society founders Sean Branney and Andrew Leman, the recording is approximately three hours long.

Ovid's sensuous and witty poetry brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation - often as a result of love or lust - where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best-known myths and legends of Ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy.

The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books tells the story of the first and greatest visionary of the print age, a man who saw how the explosive expansion of knowledge and information generated by the advent of the printing press would entirely change the landscape of thought and society. He also happened to be Christopher Columbus’ illegitimate son.

One of the world's leading historians provides a revolutionary tour of the Ancient World, dusting off the classics for the twenty-first century. Mary Beard, drawing on thirty years of teaching and writing about Greek and Roman history, provides a panoramic portrait of the classical world, a book in which we encounter not only Cleopatra and Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Hannibal, but also the common people - the millions of inhabitants of the Roman Empire, the slaves, soldiers, and women.

Indiana Jones meets The Da Vinci Code in an old Egyptian synagogue - the amazing story of one of the most important discoveries in modern religious scholarship. In 1897, Rabbi Solomon Schechter of Cambridge University stepped into the attic of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt, and there found the largest treasure trove of medieval and early manuscripts ever discovered.