Nonfiction. Photography. "[Michael Ernest Sweet] is a genius at composition, finding the beauty in the shapes and surprises of everyday life. His works often look set up and arranged, but in reality they're capturing the stylistic sexiness of the urban jungle as it pops up in spontaneous ways that only a photo could let you ponder and dissect." Michael Musto, from the Foreword"

The universe may well have begun with an immense act of fragmentation, "the big bang," that sent particles flying in all directions to perform spectacular acts of creation and destruction. The fragment, volatile and unpredictable, is not simply the static part of a once-whole thing but itself something in motion. Drawing upon art history, archaeology, literature, numismatics, philosophy, and film, this book explores the significance of the fragment and addresses the powerful drives that have impelled it into the cultural mainstream. Book jacket.

Aboard a long-range research vessel, in the vast reaches of the South Pacific, the cast and crew of the reality show Sealife believe they have found a ratings bonanza. For a director dying for drama, a distress call from Henders Island—a mere blip on any radar—might be just the ticket. Until the first scientist sets foot on Henders—and the ultimate test of survival begins. For when they reach the island’s shores, the scientists are utterly unprepared for what they find—creatures unlike any ever recorded in natural history. This is not a lost world frozen in time; this is Earth as it might have looked after evolving on a separate path for half a billion years—a fragment of a lost continent, with an ecosystem that could topple ours like a house of cards.

Published in 1904 (CW 10) "Not everyone can immediately achieve spiritual vision; but the discoveries of those who have it can be health-giving life nourishment for all. The results of supersensible knowledge, when properly employed in life, prove to be not impractical, but rather, practical in the highest sense.... The acquisition of higher knowledge is not the end, but the means to an end; the end consists in the attainment, thanks to this knowledge, of greater and truer self-confidence, a higher degree of courage, and a magnanimity and perseverance such as cannot, as a rule, be acquired in the lower world." This is the classic account of the modern Western esoteric path of initiation made public by Steiner in 1904. He begins with the premise that "the capacities by which we can gain insights into the higher worlds lie dormant within each one of us." Steiner carefully and precisely leads the reader from the cultivation of the fundamental soul attitudes of reverence and inner tranquility to the development of inner life through the stages of preparation, illumination, and initiation. Steiner provides practical exercises of inner and outer observation and moral development. By patiently and persistently following his guidelines, new "organs" of soul and spirit begin to form, which reveal the contours of the higher worlds thus far concealed from us. Steiner in this important work becomes a teacher, a counselor, and a friend whose advice is practical, clear, and effective. The challenges we face in life require increasingly deeper levels of understanding, and Steiner's text helps readers to cultivate the capacities for such insights and places them at the service of humanity. This is Steiner's most essential guide to the modern path of initiation he advocated throughout his life. It has been translated into many languages and has inspired hundreds of thousands of readers around the world. How to Know Higher Worlds has been admired by some of the most brilliant minds of our time. "The methods by which a student is prepared for the reception of higher knowledge are minutely prescribed. The direction he is to take is traced with unfading, everlasting letters in the worlds of the spirit where the initiates guard the higher secrets. In ancient times, anterior to our history, the temples of the spirit were also outwardly visible; today, because our life has become so unspiritual, they are not to be found in the world visible to external sight; yet they are present spiritually everywhere, and all who seek may find them." Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment is a translation from German of the written work Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten? (GA 10).

"The first approach can be called vertical since what is explored here is the human body's relationship to the divine, to the bestial and to the machines that imitate or simulate it. The second approach covers the various junctures between the body's "outside" and "inside": it can therefore be called a "psychosomatic" approach, studying the manifestation - or production - of soul and the expression of emotions through the body's attitudes, and, on another level, the speculations inspired by cenesthesia, pain and death. Finally, the third approach ... brings into play the classical opposition between organ and function by showing how a certain organ or bodily substance can be used to justify or challenge the way human society functions ..." - foreword Part 3.

Reassesses the philosophical and pedagogical contributions of Protagoras Protagoras and Logos brings together in a meaningful synthesis the contributions and rhetoric of the first and most famous of the Older Sophists, Protagoras of Abdera. Most accounts of Protagoras rely on the somewhat hostile reports of Plato and Aristotle. By focusing on Protagoras's own surviving words, this study corrects many long-standing misinterpretations and presents significant facts: Protagoras was a first-rate philosophical thinker who positively influenced the theories of Plato and Aristotle, and Protagoras pioneered the study of language and was the first theorist of rhetoric. In addition to illustrating valuable methods of translating and reading fifth-century B.C.E. Greek passages, the book marshals evidence for the important philological conclusion that the Greek word translated as rhetoric was a coinage by Plato in the early fourth century. In this second edition, Edward Schiappa reassesses the philosophical and pedagogical contributions of Protagoras. Schiappa argues that traditional accounts of Protagoras are hampered by mistaken assumptions about the Sophists and the teaching of the art of rhetoric in the fifth century. He shows that, contrary to tradition, the so-called Older Sophists investigated and taught the skills of logos, which is closer to modern conceptions of critical reasoning than of persuasive oratory. Schiappa also offers interpretations for each of Protagoras's major surviving fragments and examines Protagoras's contributions to the theory and practice of Greek education, politics, and philosophy. In a new afterword Schiappa addresses historiographical issues that have occupied scholars in rhetorical studies over the past ten years, and throughout the study he provides references to scholarship from the last decade that has refined his views on Protagoras and other Sophists.