Summary: A classic philosophical work about the historical inevitability of cultural decay and rebirth, written by one of Adolf Hitler's most devoted admirers. Savitri Devi couches her arguments in metaphor, using "lightning" to refer to forces of destruction and "sun" to refer to building in accordance with nature's eternal laws. Both are necessary, says Devi, since to build the pure and new one must first sweep away the rotting debris of the corrupt old order. Violence, per se, has no moral assignment; it's either worth its while or not, depending on what it aims for. For illustration, the author examines in detail the lives of three figures from history: Akhnaton, Genghis Khan, and Adolf Hitler. She argues that we are at the end of a cycle of history in which corruption and lies prevail over honor and truth, and that the time is ripe for the storm of violence that will precede the next golden age.
Summary: Volume 2 of the Nobel Prize-winner’s towering masterpiece: the story of Solzhenitsyn's entrance into the Soviet prison camps, where he would remain for nearly a decade.
Summary: Often described as "the lost book" of the Bible, The Book of Enoch seems to have been written in Palestine by several different authors in the first and second centuries B.C. For hundreds of years it was accepted by the early church fathers, but it was rejected by the council of Laodicea in A.D. 364. Today, it remains a written remnant of the Apocalypse — an ardent testament to hope and the triumph of good over evil in the dawning of a world to come. Rife with concepts of original sin, fallen angels, demonology, resurrection, and the last judgment, it is a vital document to the origins of Christianity.
Summary: Contents of Volume I: A HISTORY OF GREECE is the thrilling story of the rise to power and influence of the greatest civilization the world has ever known. As Cyril Robinson's exquisite narrative unfolds, we find ourselves plunged into mankind's greatest and most magnificent adventure. The story begins in Minoan Crete, but quickly shifts to a dimly understood mainland culture. We follow the heroic deeds of the Mycenians and the Trojan war, the glorious artistic and intellectual triumphs of the Ionians, the turmoil of the Doric invasion and resultant dark age, the slow recovery culminating in the epic Persian wars and the renewed splendor of Periclean Athens. In the fifth century B.C., philosophy, literature, art and architecture reach a pinnacle in Athens which no civilization has ever equaled. But civil strife soon follows and eventually embroils all of Greece.
Contents of Volume II: A HISTORY OF GREECE continues with the bitter struggle between Sparta and Athens for mastery of the Hellenic world. Though Sparta finally emerges victorious, her victory soon turns to ashes with the ascendancy of Thebes and the still greater power of Philip of Macedon. Philip unites an unwilling Greece with his iron policy. Athens gives up her independence, but maintains an aloof intellectual and artistic leadership in the Greek world. Across this magnificent fabric of history strides Alexander the Great, who takes the banner of Hellenic culture all the way across the Persian Empire and into India itself, a stunning event that altered the course of human history. This is followed by the Hellenistic age and the final subjugation of Greece by Rome. An incredible epic, indeed.
Summary: Among the seminal texts of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell's nightmarish vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff's attempt to find individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell's prescience of modern life—the ubiquity of television, the distortion of the language—and his ability to construct such a thorough version of hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks among the most terrifying novels ever written.
Summary: Rudolf Steiner emphasizes the astonishing and special relationship between our own time and that of ancient Egypt--how, in the natural rhythm of the ages, the so-called third post-Atlantian (Egyptian) epoch is mirrored by the fifth (present) epoch. In this sense, today it is especially relevant to look at ancient Egypt with fresh eyes. The evolution of Western civilization has been profoundly influenced by Egyptian myths through the Greek mysteries. Because of other influences, however, this heritage has degenerated; thinking has mummified and and myth has all but disappeared. Consequently, it is important to revive the seed of goodness passed down to us from ancient Egypt.
Through true imagination, it is our task to renew human knowledge related to the creative forces in nature, which the Egyptians attempted through the Osiris-Isis myth, and the Greeks through the myth of Demeter. This is what Rudolf Steiner attempts in this lecture cycle.
Steiner's subjects include: experiences of Egyptian initiations; esoteric anatomy and physiology; the stages of evolution of the human form; and much more. The final lecture is on the Christ impulse as the conqueror of matter.
Summary: Such were the words of Adolf Hitler in his untitled,unpublished, and
long suppressed second work written only a few years after the publication of Mein Kampf. Only two copies of the 200 page manuscript were originally made, and only one of these has ever been made public. Kept strictly secret under Hitler's orders, the document was placed in an air raid shelter in 1935 where it remained until it's discovery by an American officer in 1945.
Written in 1928, the authenticity of the book has been verified by Josef Berg (former
employee of the Nazi publishing house Eher Verlag), and Telford Taylor (former
Brigadier General U.S.A.R., and Chief Counsel at the Nuremburg war-crimes trials) who,
after an analysis made in 1961,comments: "If Hitler's book of 1928 is read against thebackground of the intervening years , it should interest not scholars only, but the general reader.
Summary: In this, the first prose history in European civilization, Herodotus tells the heroic tale of the Greeks' resistance to the vast invading force assembled by Xerxes, King of Persia, as recently retold in the feature film 300. Here are not only the great battles Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis but also penetrating human insight and a powerful sense of epic destiny at work.
Summary: The first contemporary analysis of Bedouin and biblical cultures sheds new light on biblical laws, practices, and Bedouin history
Written by one of the world’s leading scholars of Bedouin culture, this groundbreaking book sheds new light on significant points of convergence between Bedouin and early Israelite cultures, as manifested in the Hebrew Bible. Bailey compares Bedouin and biblical sources, identifying overlaps in economic activity, material culture, social values, social organization, laws, religious practices, and oral traditions. He also examines the question of whether some early Israelites were indeed nomads as the Bible presents them, offering a new angle on the controversy over their identity as well as new cultural perspectives to scholars of the Bible and the Bedouin alike.