Charles Raven's biography of the seventeenth-century English naturalist John Ray is one of the great works in the history of science. The author's command of Latin (the language in which all Ray's biological works were written) and his enthusiasm for natural history enabled him to interpret superbly to the modern reader John Ray's remarkable scientific work and to rescue Ray's reputation from undeserved neglect. Raven reveals the unique influence Ray had on the development of modern science and in particular explains sympathetically the key role of Ray's last, most popular and most influential work, The Wisdom of God, which was the forerunner of the great 'Darwinian' controversies between science and religion in the nineteenth century.

A guide to configuring and using the cross-platform networking system for Internet and Intranet use. Users can apply the skills they learn in the early part of the book to real-world-oriented tasks depicted later.

The gospel of John, one of the key books of the Bible, reads like an intimate biography—from the pen of “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” This verse-by-verse exploration of John’s gospel brings to life the miracles and majesty of Jesus of Nazareth. Including life-related illustrations for application, the book features Bible passages within text and answers the question, “Who is Jesus?”

Read the Bldg Blog interview with Mary Beard about the Wonders of the World series(Part I and Part II) The Rosetta Stone is one of the world's great wonders, attracting awed pilgrims by the tens of thousands each year. This book tells the Stone's story, from its discovery by Napoleon's expedition to Egypt to its current--and controversial-- status as the single most visited object on display in the British Museum. A pharaoh's forgotten decree, cut in granite in three scripts--Egyptian hieroglyphs, Egyptian demotic, and ancient Greek--the Rosetta Stone promised to unlock the door to the language of ancient Egypt and its 3,000 years of civilization, if only it could be deciphered. Capturing the drama of the race to decode this key to the ancient past, John Ray traces the paths pursued by the British polymath Thomas Young and Jean-Francois Champollion, the "father of Egyptology" ultimately credited with deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. He shows how Champollion "broke the code" and explains more generally how such deciphering is done, as well as its critical role in the history of Egyptology. Concluding with a chapter on the political and cultural controversy surrounding the Stone, the book also includes an appendix with a full translation of the Stone's text. Rich in anecdote and curious lore, The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt is a brilliant and frequently amusing guide to one of history's great mysteries and marvels.

A portrait of ancient Egypyt that evokes the flavor of life in that time through profiles of eleven actual people and the god Osiris.

Selected as a Top Ten Sensational Debut Novel by Barnes and Noble This provocative novel takes the reader on a wild ride inside the mind of a Mississippi Delta good-old-boy ex-deputy sheriff who is as vicious and racist as the worst 1950s-'60s stereotypes. Junior Ray Loveblood narrates the story in his own profane, colloquial voice, telling why he hates just about everybody and why he wants to shoot Leland Shaw, a shell-shocked World War II hero and poet who is hiding in a silo from what he believes are German patrols. Through a series of sleights of hand, misdirections, and near misses, Junior Ray and his sidekick Voyd give a dark tour of the Delta country as they chase their mysterious prey. Junior Ray's thoughts are peppered with excerpts from Shaw's notebooks--sometimes starkly different from Junior Ray's diatribe, sometimes eerily similar--and by the end of the story, it is up to the reader to sort out whose reality is more fantastic, Shaw's or Loveblood's, as the one stalks the other through the pages of this highly original and darkly comedic story.