Whatever our cultural and religious background or personal psychology, a greater intimacy with myth provides a vital link with meaning, the absence of which is so often behind the neuroses of our time. Here the acclaimed author of The Middle Passage (title 59) explains why a connection with our mythic roots is crucial for us as individuals and as responsible citizens of our age.

Also available in an open-access, full-text edition at http: //oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/85764 "What we wish to know, and most desire, remains unknowable and lies beyond our grasp." With these words, James Hollis leads readers to consider the nature of our human need for meaning in life and for connection to a world less limiting than our own. In The Archetypal Imagination, Hollis offers a lyrical Jungian appreciation of the archetypal imagination. He argues that without the human mind's ability to form energy-filled images that link us to worlds beyond our rational and emotional capacities, we would have neither culture nor spirituality. Drawing upon the work of poets and philosophers, Hollis shows the importance of depth experience, meaning, and connection to an "other" world. Just as humans have instincts for biological survival and social interaction, we have instincts for spiritual connection as well. Just as our physical and social needs seek satisfaction, so the spiritual instincts of the human animal are expressed in images we form to evoke an emotional or spiritual response, as in our dreams, myths, and religious traditions. The author draws upon the work of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies to elucidate the archetypal imagination in literary forms. To underscore the importance of incarnating depth experience, he also examines a series of paintings by Nancy Witt. With the power of the archetypal imagination available to all of us, we are invited to summon courage to take on the world anew, to relinquish outmoded identities and defenses, and to risk a radical re-imagining of the larger possibilities of the world and of the self.

* Chicago Tribune "Fall literary preview: books you need to read now" * Vulture "The Best and Biggest Books to Read This Fall" * The Guardian "A best book of 2019" After moving with his wife and two children to a smallholding in Ireland, Paul Kingsnorth expects to find contentment. It is the goal he has sought — to nest, to find home — after years of rootlessness as an environmental activist and author. Instead he finds that his tools as a writer are failing him, calling into question his foundational beliefs about language and setting him at odds with culture itself. Informed by his experiences with indigenous peoples, the writings of D.H. Lawrence and Annie Dillard, and the day-to-day travails of farming his own land, Savage Gods asks: what does it mean to belong? What sacrifices must be made in order to truly inhabit a life? And can words ever paint the truth of the world — or are they part of the great lie which is killing it?

Tales told by shadowy elders around ancient campfires offered both explanation and comfort. Life hasn't changed that much; our dependence on explanation and comfort still lies just under our busy ambition and constant yearning. Most of the time, the basic assumptions of our early years were so viscerally absorbed that we have never made them articulate, and therefore never had any way to evaluate their relevance for us now. What if they are outdated? Immature? Beside the point? In this new volume, James Hollis shows us a way to bring those stories to consciousness -- what questions to ask, and when. And also what to expect of ourselves in the process. This is not a quick fix book; in fact, waking up to our truth is sometimes very painful. But it's real. And it may be the only way to discover that sense of meaning and personal authenticity that no amount of outer success can provide. Book jacket.

The first Priscilla Hutchins novel from Jack McDevitt, hailed by Stephen King as “the logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.” Humans call them the Monument-Makers. An unknown race, they left stunning alien statues on distant planets in the galaxy. Each relic is different. Each inscription defies translation. Yet all are heartbreakingly beautiful. And for planet Earth, on the brink of disaster, they may hold the only key to survival for the entire human race.

Ryan Van Loan's The Sin in the Steel is a sparkling debut fantasy set in a diverse world, featuring dead gods, a pirate queen, shapeshifting mages, and a Sherlockian teenager determined to upend her society. Heroes for hire. If you can pay. Buc: Brilliant street-rat Her mind leaps from clues to conclusions in the blink of an eye. Eld: Ex-soldier Buc’s partner-in-crime. No. Not in crime—in crime-solving. They’ve been hired for their biggest job yet—one that will set them up for a life of ease. If they survive. Buc and Eld are the first private detectives in a world where pirates roam the seas, mages speak to each other across oceans, mechanical devices change the tide of battle, and earthly wealth is concentrated in the hands of a powerful few. It’s been weeks since ships last returned to the magnificent city of Servenza with bounty from the Shattered Coast. Disaster threatens not just the city’s trading companies but the empire itself. When Buc and Eld are hired to investigate, Buc swiftly discovers that the trade routes have become the domain of a sharp-eyed pirate queen who sinks all who defy her. Now all Buc and Eld have to do is sink the Widowmaker's ship.... Unfortunately for Buc, the gods have other plans. Unfortunately for the gods, so does Buc. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

After a health scare, an atheist travels the world searching for an experience of the divine, from meditating with Tibetan lamas in Nepal and unblocking his chi in China, to studying the Kabbalah in Israel.