"The themes in this book relate to the background of many present day moral concerns including abortion, women's liberation and war. It reveals the flow of ideas from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and discusses the alternative approaches to life found in societies from the Nile to the Euphrates. Biblical myths and modern myths are examined with a final section devoted to future myths. Problems of change and human identity are considered. The myths are organized according to type and grouped under country of origin. This book raises questions and helps to evaluate the way in which the ancient past affects present life styles."-Publisher.

Seminal work by the author of Ego and Archetype, proposing a new world-view based on the creative collaboration between the scientific pursuit of knowledge and the religious search for meaning.

"The themes in this book relate to the background of many present day moral concerns including abortion, women's liberation and war. It reveals the flow of ideas from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and discusses the alternative approaches to life found in societies from the Nile to the Euphrates. Biblical myths and modern myths are examined with a final section devoted to future myths. Problems of change and human identity are considered. The myths are organized according to type and grouped under country of origin. This book raises questions and helps to evaluate the way in which the ancient past affects present life styles."-Publisher.

Ubiquitous and enduring, myths are an inherent part of culture. These 10 essays explore the role of myth in the modern world, delving not only into science fiction and fantasy, but also into sport, terrorist rhetoric and television. Contributors contemplate the changing face of the hero in Breaking Bad, Justified and the Japanese film trilogy 20th Century Boys; explore ideology in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice novels and the HBO series Game of Thrones, Showtime's The L Word, and The Day the Earth Stood Still; and examine Al Qaeda's use of myth to justify its violent actions. Other essays consider the hero ideal in sport, the wolf myth in Twilight and the comic persona of Hercules in the Travel Channel series Man v. Food. The power of myth, this volume reveals, extends beyond ancient stories of gods and heroes to express the hopes, fears and reality of everyday life.

With The Modern Myths, brilliant science communicator Philip Ball spins a new yarn. From novels and comic books to B-movies, it is an epic exploration of literature, new media and technology, the nature of storytelling, and the making and meaning of our most important tales. Myths are usually seen as stories from the depths of time—fun and fantastical, but no longer believed by anyone. Yet, as Philip Ball shows, we are still writing them—and still living them—today. From Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein to Batman, many stories written in the past few centuries are commonly, perhaps glibly, called “modern myths.” But Ball argues that we should take that idea seriously. Our stories of Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Sherlock Holmes are doing the kind of cultural work that the ancient myths once did. Through the medium of narratives that all of us know in their basic outline and which have no clear moral or resolution, these modern myths explore some of our deepest fears, dreams, and anxieties. We keep returning to these tales, reinventing them endlessly for new uses. But what are they really about, and why do we need them? What myths are still taking shape today? And what makes a story become a modern myth? In The Modern Myths, Ball takes us on a wide-ranging tour of our collective imagination, asking what some of its most popular stories reveal about the nature of being human in the modern age.