Worlds to Shatter, Shattered Worlds is a classically styled dramatic work often compared to the style and substance of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead. In Worlds to Shatter, you will encounter the all-too-strange world inhabited by such denizens as Sea-faring Time-worshippers and the Keeper of the Nothingness. Paul JJ Payack is a Silicon Valley marketing executive by day but by night he constructs the elaborate all-too-strange worlds such as that found in Worlds to Shatter, Shattered Worlds. Over his career as a writer, Payack has created hundreds of 'metafictions, ' in the various forms of novella, short stories, 'polyplays, ' essays, and 'collage narratives' that have been published in some dozen collections and hundreds of reviews and anthologies around the world, including The Paris Review, New Letters, Creative Computing, and Boulevard. At the same time, Payack has served as a senior executive for some of the world's leading high technology companies. Currently, Payack serves as Chairman, President & The WordMan at yourDictionary.com, the leading global language portal. According to Sylvia Berkman, "What continues to even more forcefully distinguish Paul Payack's later work is the nature of the creative intelligence from which it stems. This is an intelligence cool yet engaged, composed, witty, immensely concerned with the broad pivotal elements of the human experience."

What I present to you here is an Idea Mine. This Idea Mine, which consists of nearly one thousand creative works, has taken some twenty-five years to construct, create and compile. In this Idea Mine are dozens, even, scores of hidden gems that are ready for you to discover—and ready to assume their proper place in the world of ideas (today rather unceremoniously referred to as 'content'). Many of the works collected in this Idea Mine have been published in such places as The Paris Review, Creative Computing, and the Gnosis Anthology (English and Russian), while the collages have appeared in such varied outlets as New Letters, Boulevard, and Asimov’s Science Fiction. (For years I belonged to the Science Fiction Writers of America, but I do not classify myself as a science fiction writer.) During my career I’ve served as a senior executive for marketing and communications at several of the world’s leading high technology companies, including Legato Systems, Intelliguard Software, Intersolv, The Network Systems Corporation, Dun & Bradstreet, Unisys, and Apollo Computer, Inc. During this career, I have contributed to over $6 billion in growth. I’ve also had the dubious privilege of watching these very same enterprises shed billions in market value and employees by the tens of thousands. Timing is everything.

Attacked by mysterious assassins…Landing on a hostile foreign shore…Janis must fight to survive… They attacked in the night. Elite assassins with skills he’d never confronted before. As he tried to rescue Shle and Ruck, Shle punched a hole in the hull and the water took him. He wakes on a beach littered with the flotsam of crashed ships from around Urias. Soldiers in strange armor pick among the ruined hulls, looking for something. A little girl brings him to safety, but how much can he trust her? He doesn’t speak the language or understand the customs, but he must learn to if he wants to survive, find his friends, and continue his hunt for Renea. Janis uncovers how wide and deep her conspiracy goes, and how shattering the consequences will be if she succeeds in her plan. He has to catch her, but this strange land and its politics stand in his way. With every fresh kill, he feeds the beast inside himself. He knows it will consume him soon. Time is running out... Read Paladin of the Eclipse and escape to a gigantic universe filled with unique magic, high-stakes rivalries, and complex cultures. It’s Book 3 of The Shattered World series, which tells a bloody story of self-discovery as Janis realizes he’ll have to face the demon inside himself if he wants redemption. Reviewer Adam Wright at Reedsy Discovery calls it “A short but satisfying action-packed epic adventure with lots of magic and revenge. ...If you like series such as Elric of Melnibone by Micheal Moorcock and Bloodstone by Karl Edward Wagner you'll enjoy Disciple of Vengeance [Book 1].” If you enjoy this and want more free content, visit https://www.ccrasmussen.com/.

The first anthology of Jewish mythology in English, Tree of Souls reveals a mythical tradition as rich and as fascinating as any in the world. Drawing from the Bible, the Pseudepigrapha, the Talmud and Midrash, the kabbalistic literature, medieval folklore, Hasidic texts, and oral lore collected in the modern era, Schwartz has gathered together nearly 700 of the key Jewish myths. The myths themselves are marvelous. We read of Adams diamond and the Land of Eretz (where it is always dark), the fall of Lucifer and the quarrel of the sun and the moon, the Treasury of Souls and the Divine Chariot. We discover new tales about the great figures of the Hebrew Bible, from Adam to Moses; stories about God's Bride, the Shekhinah, and the evil temptress, Lilith; plus many tales about angels and demons, spirits and vampires, giant beasts and the Golem. Equally important, Schwartz provides a wealth of additional information. For each myth, he includes extensive commentary, revealing the source of the myth and explaining how it relates to other Jewish myths as well as to world literature (for instance, comparing Eves release of evil into the world with Pandoras). For ease of use, Schwartz divides the volume into ten books, Myths of God, Myths of Creation, Myths of Heaven, Myths of Hell, Myths of the Holy Word, Myths of the Holy Time, Myths of the Holy People, Myths of the Holy Land, Myths of Exile, and Myths of the Messiah.

This extended essay joins an old conversation at the intersection of freedom and necessity. Though it takes place at the beginning of the twenty-first century by the “Christian” reckoning that has become an integral part of European identity, it will at times read like a conversation between classical Greece and nineteenth-century Europe. The cast consists of characters drawn from Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Plato as well as the authors themselves - Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard, MacIntyre, and Nussbaum. Some of these writers have been associated with displaced, displacing claims of universality; but each is in place and in time in ways that are instructive for ethics. Myth, the matter of stories, becomes also the matter of critical reflection, which in turn is subjected to critical reflection. Every fragment of philosophy is a contribution to the reflection, and it is nothing if it is separated from the matter - the stories, the myths, and the characters (including us) who both make them and live in them.

The World of Colonial America: An Atlantic Handbook offers a comprehensive and in-depth survey of cutting-edge research into the communities, cultures, and colonies that comprised colonial America, with a focus on the processes through which communities were created, destroyed, and recreated that were at the heart of the Atlantic experience. With contributions written by leading scholars from a variety of viewpoints, the book explores key topics such as -- The Spanish, French, and Dutch Atlantic empires -- The role of the indigenous people, as imperial allies, trade partners, and opponents of expansion -- Puritanism, Protestantism, Catholicism, and the role of religion in colonization -- The importance of slavery in the development of the colonial economies -- The evolution of core areas, and their relationship to frontier zones -- The emergence of the English imperial state as a hegemonic world power after 1688 -- Regional developments in colonial North America. Bringing together leading scholars in the field to explain the latest research on Colonial America and its place in the Atlantic World, this is an important reference for all advanced students, researchers, and professionals working in the field of early American history or the age of empires.

This book seeks to include among accounts of modern lyric poetry a theory of the poem's relation to the unintelligible. DeSales Harrison draws a distinction between sites of unintelligibility and sights of difficulty; while much has been said about modernist difficulty, little has been said about the attention that poets give to phenomena that by definition arrest, impede, obscure, damage, or destroy the capacity for intelligible representation.