Special areas: Japanese language, festivals, Noh theatre.

Developed in close collaboration with W. G. Beasley, this book contains a wide and substantial cross-section of writings, thematically structured around essays in the special areas of Bakufu and Meji Studies.

Digging the Vein's unnamed narrator has a problem: He has a burgeoning drug habit and a wife he's only known for two days, but no job, no money, and no way out. As the narrator's life crumbles, the pills, booze, and problems multiply until he hits on a brilliant solution: heroin. Soon the narrator is associating with a cabal of street freaks. Just as the comedy is piling up, things go sour, making Digging the Vein a brutal look at a self-destructed, marginal life.

During our brief and perilous journey ex irritum ad irritum, how are we to find, what the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (Sein und Zeit) would call, the true approach to being? How do we answer the question posed by the Apostle Thomas when he asked how can we know the way (Jn. 14:5)? In other words, how should we fill that parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity, which James Joyce (Ulysses) maintained, demarcates each of our lives? The Bible has often been put forth as a supposedly infallible guidebook charting the correct path to an authentic existence (e.g. 2 Tim. 3:16-17). According to its proponents, Scripture is an absolutely dependable life-manual because it is the word of God (Summa Theologica, First Part, Q. 1, Art. 10). However, close inspection of the Bible calls into question its divine authorship; and, thus, its reliability as an accurate roadmap for the soul. In fact, under close examination it proves to be nothing more than a mundane and cobbled together collection of archaic superstitions beginning with the outlandish speculations of Moses concerning the creation of the world and ending with the maniacal ravings of John regarding its destruction. Exposing the true nature of Holy Writ was the main purpose for writing Unholy Writ. The modus operandi for this expos involved a thoroughgoing critical analysis of Scripture. The results from such a careful consideration of its contents clearly demonstrated that any claim that the Bible is some sort of sacrosanct ethical vade mecum is completely invalid. Specifically, the multiple contradictions and absurdities contained in the Bible confer an unreliability upon it that undermines its function as a guide for anything, let alone as some sort of moral map for the journey through life. Furthermore, many of the ideas that are promoted in Holy Writ are actually spiritually harmful. In addition, unless the condoned misogyny, violence, intolerance, injustice, and cruelty can be removed, then it is difficult to view the Scriptures as anything like an unwavering celestial beacon that clearly lights the way through the moral fog that at times engulfs our lives. Moreover, the many errors that it contains, including those about the natural world, undermine the pivotal claim that the Bible is divinely inspired.

Includes Appendix

This New York Times bestselling gritty memoir Hero of the Underground offers a no-holds-barred look at the twisted underbelly of a seemingly perfect life. Jason Peter, an All-American football player, captain of the National Champion Nebraska Cornhuskers, first round NFL draft pick. . . and heroin addict. I wasn't afraid of death. How could I be? I lived under death's shadow every day. When you swallow sixty Vicodin, twenty sleeping pills, drink a bottle of vodka, and still survive, a certain sense of invulnerability stays with you. When you continually use drugs with the kind of reckless determination that I did, the limit to how much heroin or crack you can ingest is not defined by dollar amounts but by the amounts your body can withstand without experiencing a seizure or respiratory failure. . . . I found myself contemplating death again. Only this time I wasn't going to leave it to chance. I was going to buy a gun, load the thing, place the barrel in my mouth, and blow my fucking brains out. "Had Hunter Thompson been a football player instead of a fan, this is the book he'd have written. Flat-out, mash-your-face-in-the-dirt amazing." —Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight