The Phoenix is a Strange Bird is a novel about two honest men caught in a war that has lost both glory and support, but nevertheless remains their mission. Advisors on a team providing assistance to a provincial government north of Saigon, the Colonel and the Captain face a weakened enemy that seldom shows its face, but manages to control the villages through terror at night. The two Americans devise a way to make pacification work. Success in a war that is winding-down has many enemies.

An “insightful cultural history of the mythical, self-immolating bird” from Ancient Egypt to contemporary pop culture by the author of The Book of Gryphons (Library Journal). The phoenix, which rises again and again from its own ashes, has been a symbol of resilience and renewal for thousands of years. But how did this mythical bird come to play a part in cultures around the world and throughout human history? Here, mythologist Joseph Nigg presents a comprehensive biography of this legendary creature. Beginning in ancient Egypt, Nigg’s sweeping narrative discusses the many myths and representations of the phoenix, including legends of the Chinese, where it was considered a sacred creature that presided over China’s destiny; classical Greece and Rome, where it appears in the writings of Herodotus and Ovid; medieval Christianity, in which it came to embody the resurrection; and in Europe during the Renaissance, when it was a popular emblem of royals. Nigg examines the various phoenix traditions, the beliefs and tales associated with them, their symbolic and metaphoric use, and their appearance in religion, bestiaries, and even contemporary popular culture, in which the ageless bird of renewal is employed as a mascot and logo. “An exceptional work of scholarship.”—Publishers Weekly

Ash, who is studying in Itsutsu city to revive the convenient and plentiful life from the legends of the ancient civilization, managed to successfully produce compost and reintroduce tomatoes as an officially accepted edible food. After recovering from his fight with the werewolf, he once again aims to further improve the living standards of the city! Amidst all that, his fellow student Hermes is mocked for crafting a model airplane and daring to dream of soaring through the skies. In a world without the internal combustion engine, let alone cars, such ambitions only provoke laughter amongst his classmates, but Hermes persists. Deeply impressed by Hermes’ passion for flying, and slightly motivated by self-interest, Ash decides to help him revive aeronautical technology. He is determined to have the last laugh. This is the third chapter of the story about a young boy who sets out to revolutionize the world in order to rebuild civilization and create his ideal life!

Since the birth of the Yinyang Continent, the two races of Yin and Yang had been born and bred. The Yang Race possessed the attribute of 'goodness', and possessed all sorts of superpowers to defend their 'goodness'. The attribute of the Yin Clan was' evil '. Demons, demons, ghosts, and other creatures belonged to it. They wanted to enslave the Yang Clan and control the entire continent. A youth who had comprehended 'creating from nothing' from the 'Classic of Virtue' was not tolerated by the current Heavenly Dao and had his body destroyed. His soul, by chance and coincidence, was taken in by the Yinyang Continent and reborn into the body of an ordinary Yang Clan youth. None: "The Yang race is good, forsaken by the Evil God; the Yin race is evil, born of the Good God. Tell me what is evil and what is good? " Close]

Omar Khayyam's Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination, by Mohammad H. Tamdgidi, is a 12-book series of which this book is the 11th volume, subtitled Khayyami Robaiyat: Re-Sewing the Tentmaker's Tent: 1000 Bittersweet Wine Sips from Omar Khayyam's Tavern of Happiness. Each book, independently readable, can be best understood as a part of the whole series. In Book 11, having shared the three parts of the Robaiyat attributed to Khayyam in the Books 8, 9, and 10 of the series, Tamdgidi offers the entire set of the 1000 quatrains, including the Persian originals and his new English verse translations for each. The poems, comprising Khayyam's songs of doubt, hope, and joy, are organized according to the three-phased method of inquiry he introduced in his philosophical writings, respectively addressing the questions: "Does Happiness Exist?"; "What Is Happiness?"; and "Why Does (or Can) Happiness Exist?" When Khayyam discussed the three-phased method of inquiry in his treatise "Resalat fi al-Kown wa al-Taklif" ("Treatise on the Created World and Worship Duty"), he noted an exception to the rule of asking, when studying any subject, whether it exists, what it is, and, why it exists (or can exist). He distinguished between things objectively existing independent of the human mind, and those created by the human mind. The normal procedure applies to the former, but for products of the human mind, he advised, the procedure must be modified to asking first what something is, then, whether it exists, and, then, why it exists or can exist. This is because, for products of the human mind, such as created works of art, we would not know whether something exists and why it exists unless we first know what it is. To illustrate his point, he used the example of the mythical bird Anqa (Simorgh in Persian or the Phoenix in English). He argued that only when we know what the metaphor stands for would we be able to say whether it exists (say, in a work of art, or even as a person represented by it), and why it exists or can exist. Khayyam's elaboration implies that one has to make a distinction between objective and human objectified realities, which implies that for some objects, such as happiness, we in fact confront a hybrid reality where aspects of it may be externally conditioned, but other aspects being dependent on the human will. Once we realize the significance of Khayyam's point, then, we appreciate that his Robaiyat can also be regarded as a way of poetically portraying and advancing human happiness, its poetic Wine being not just reflective but also generative of the happiness portrayed. By way of his poetry, therefore, Khayyam has offered a severe critique of the then prevalent fatalistic astrological worldviews blaming human plight on objective conditions, in favor of a conceptualist view of reality in which happiness can be achieved despite the odds, depending on the creative human agency, itself being an objective force. Tamdgidi further shows that the triangular geometry of the logic governing Khayyam's Robaiyat-the numerical values of whose three sides are proportional to the Grand Tent governing Khayyam's birth chart-further supports the view (expressed in Khayyam's own quatrains) that for him his Robaiyat poetically represented the tent of which he regarded himself to be a tentmaker, revealing another key explanation for his pen name. The geometric structure of a tent proportional to the Grand Tent of Khayyam's chart, as well as the metaphor of the Robaiyat as Simorgh songs, are hidden in the deeper structure of Khayyam's 1000-piece solved puzzle, the same way he embedded his own triangular golden rule in the design of the North Dome of Isfahan. Khayyam's Robaiyat are his Simorgh's millennial rebirth songs served in his tented tavern as 1000 sips of his bittersweet Wine of happiness.

Omar Khayyam's Secret: Hermeneutics of the Robaiyat in Quantum Sociological Imagination, by Mohammad H. Tamdgidi, is a 12-book series of which this book is the 9th volume, subtitled Khayyami Robaiyat: Part 2 of 3: Quatrains 339-685: Songs of Hope Addressing the Question "What Is Happiness?": Explained with New English Verse Translations and Organized Logically Following Omar Khayyam's Own Three-Phased Method of Inquiry. Each book, independently readable, can be best understood as a part of the whole series. In Book 9, Tamdgidi offers the second of a three-part set of 1000 quatrains he has chosen to include in this series from a wider set that have been over the centuries attributed to Khayyam. Part 2 includes quatrains 339-685 for each of which the Persian original along with Tamdgidi's new English verse translation and a transliteration for the same are shared. Each quatrain is indexed according to the frequency of its inclusion in manuscripts, the earliest known date of its appearance in them, the extent to which it has "wandered" into other poets' works, and its rhyming scheme. Brief comments about the meaning of each quatrain in relation to other quatrains and works attributed to Khayyam are then offered along with any notes regarding its new translation as shared. Tamdgidi shows that the quatrains 339-685 address the question "What Is Happiness?" The latter is the second of a set of three methodically phased questions Khayyam has identified in his philosophical works as being required for investigating any subject. The order in which the quatrains are presented shows that the quatrains included in Part 2 follow a logically deductive reasoning process through which Khayyam advances in the causal chain of moving from methodological to explanatory and practical quatrains, by way of addressing the question noted above. The thematic topics of the quatrains of Part 2 as shared in Book 9 are: X. The Drunken Way; XI. Willfulness; XII. Foes and Friends; XIII. Wealth; XIV. Today; XV. Pottery; XVI. Cemetery; and XVII. Paradise and Hell. Khayyam begins with reflections on God's created world, suggesting that its unitary existence cannot be understood using either/or dualistic lenses where the ways of knowing by the head, the heart, and senses are pursued separately. Instead, he advocates, building on the idea of the Wine trope discovered in Part 1, a "Drunken way" by which he means a unitary way of knowing symbolized by the spiritual indivisibility of Wine in contrast to the fragmentations of the grapes. He then embarks on a deductive method of emphasizing human willfulness, also created by God, offering humankind a chance for playing a creative role in shaping its own world. Khayyam then continues to apply such an explanatory model in dealing with social matters having to do with foes, friends, and wealth, leading him to advocate for the practical significance of "stealing" the chances offered in the here-and-now of today to transform self and society in favor of happier and more just outcomes. Using the tropes of visiting the jug-maker's shop and the cemetery, he then emphasizes the need to maintain a wakeful awareness of the inevitability of one's physical death in order to use the opportunity of life to cultivate universal self-awareness before it is too late, that paradise and hell and judgment days are not otherworldly, but realities of our here and now living. He thus transcends the sentiment of a promised future hope by advising us to create a happy life in the cash of the here-and-now, his own poetry itself being a means toward that end. Part 2 must then be understood in consideration of the other two parts of his book of poetry, one already shared in Book 8 addressing the questions "Does Happiness Exist?" and the next to follow in Book 10 addressing the question "Why Does (or Can) Happiness Exist?"