One of the most profound, deeply affecting questions we face as human beings is the matter of our mortality--and its connection to immortality. Ancient animist ghost cultures, Egyptian mummification, late Jewish hopes of resurrection, Christian eternal salvation, Muslim belief in hell and paradise all spring from a remarkably consistent impulse to tether a triumph over death to our conduct in life.In After Lives, British scholar John Casey provides a rich historical and philosophical exploration of the world beyond, from the ancient Egyptians to St. Thomas Aquinas, from Martin Luther to modern Mormons. In a lively, wide-ranging discussion, he examines such topics as predestination, purgatory, Spiritualism, the Rapture, Armageddon and current Muslim apocalyptics, as well as the impact of such influences as the New Testament, St. Augustine, Dante, and the Second Vatican Council. Ideas of heaven and hell, Casey argues, illuminate how we understand the ultimate nature of sin, justice, punishment, and our moral sense itself. The concepts of eternal bliss and eternal punishment express--and test--our ideas of good and evil. For example, the ancient Egyptians saw the afterlife as flowing from ma'at, a sense of being in harmony with life, a concept that includes truth, order, justice, and the fundamental law of the universe. "It is an optimistic view of life," he writes. "It is an ethic that connects wisdom with moral goodness." Perhaps just as revealing, Casey finds, are modern secular interpretations of heaven and hell, as he probes the place of goodness, virtue, and happiness in the age of psychology and scientific investigation.With elegant prose, a magisterial grasp of a vast literary and religious history, and moments of humor and irony, After Lives sheds new light on the question of life, death, and morality in human culture.

In a theater commune in Iowa, Anya, the willful and ambitious director, and Mac, a practical Canadian poet and resident craftsman, move toward the irrevocable denouement of their lives and careers

Gathered from one hundred prominent writing workshops around the United States and Canada, including the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Sewanee Conference, this updated anthology of short fiction presents a wide variety of new voices, settings, and styles that capture all facets and visions of North American life. Original. 25,000 first printing.

Product Description: This facsimile edition is of a hitherto unpublished manuscript, a beautiful workbook of impeccable penmanship by an early nineteenth-century dancing master. The title page reads "Dance Book T B. 1826".The author uses colors in diagrams that depict the figures, and the dancers ranging in number from one to twelve...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience...read more

Product Description: CLASSICSThe First Six Books of the Elements of EuclidWithCopious Annotations and Numerous ExercisesByJohn Casey This edition of the Elements of Euclid, undertaken at the request of the prin-cipals of some of the leading Colleges and Schools of Ireland, is intended to supply a want much felt by teachers at the present day - the production of a work which, while giving the unrivalled original in all its integrity, would also contain the modern conceptions and developments of the portion of Geometry over which the Elements extend...read more

The winner of the 1989 National Book Award for Spartina presents a tragi-comic novel about two Virginia liberals--a lawyer and an artist--whose marriage collapses under the pressure of an ill-considered congressional campaign. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

Product Description: Cultural Writing. A collection of papers presented at the IMAGING HUMANITY conference, held at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Italy on April 22 and 23, 1999. The interdisciplinary conference, conceived to examine the notions of humans as both creators and creatures of images, promoted interdisciplinary dialogue and probed the meaning of a liberal arts education at the graduate level...read more

Product Description: First published in 1971, the five essays in this book were written by young philosophers at Cambridge at that time. They focus on two major questions of ethical theory: ‘What is it to judge morally?’ and ‘What makes a reason a moral reason?’...read more

Product Description: This intriguing exploration of the post-Civil War period through its fiction and nonfiction illuminates how the era spawned a new understanding of war veterans that lives on today. Scholars of the Civil War era have commonly assumed that veterans of the Union and Confederate armies effortlessly melted back into society and that they adjusted to the demands of peacetime with little or no difficulty...read more

Product Description: This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience...read more

The study of the virtues has largely dropped out of modern philosophy, yet it was the predominant tradition in ethics fom the ancient Greeks until Kant. Traditionally the study of the virtues was also the study of what constituted a successful and happy life. Drawing on such diverse sources as Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Shakespeare, Hume, Jane Austen, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Sartre, Casey here argues that the classical virtues of courage, temperance, practical wisdom, and justice centrally define the good for humans, and that they are insufficiently acknowledged in modern moral philosophy. He suggests that values of success, worldliness, and pride are active parts of our moral thinking, and that the conflict between these and our equally important Christian inheritance leads to tensions and contradictions in our understanding of the moral life.

Product Description: Crime threats are increasingly global and all police agencies must now routinely deal with transnational and international issues such as terrorism, e-crime, and human trafficking. Police officers often find themselves working closely with colleagues from other countries either as part of international investigations or on assignment with one of the increasing number of police contingents deployed in peacekeeping and capacity building roles...read more

Product Description: This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work...read more