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Malaysia presents visitors with an exciting and fascinating medley of cultures—Malay, Chinese, Indian, Arab, Eurasian, Dayak, and Aboriginal. Though very much a modern nation state, its diverse communities retain a considerable amount of their unique heritage and, in its customs, religions, festivals, costume, cuisine, languages, and architecture, Malaysian society perfectly illustrates the virtues of a vibrant pluralism.

One August day, months after her marriage abruptly ended, a heart-shaped baking tin fell at Bee Wilson’s feet: the same one she had used to bake her wedding cake twenty-three years prior. This discovery struck a wave of emotions that propelled her in search of others who have invested kitchen objects with magical and personal properties. A favorite wooden spoon or a saltshaker inherited from a parent: these and other items become powerful symbols of identity and memory, representing friendship, grief, love, superstition, safety, and political resistance.

In Liturgies of the Wild, acclaimed mythographer, storyteller, and Christian thinker Martin Shaw proposes that we look to the “ancient technologies” the myths and initiatory rites for help achieving maturity and wholeness. Drawing on his experience as a guide for wilderness rites of passage, Shaw teaches you to read a myth the way it wants to be read; provides vivid retellings of tales powerful enough to carry you through life’s travails; and shows you how to gather and reshape your own thrown-away stories.

Nestled in the Caucasus Mountains at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, Georgia plays a geopolitical role far greater than its size would suggest. Its strategic location has been both a blessing and a curse, however. Once a battlefield of the Christian and Muslim worlds, today it is caught between its EU aspirations and its location in Russia’s backyard.

Have a richer and more meaningful experience abroad through a better understanding of the local culture. Chapters on history, values, attitudes, and traditions will help you to better understand your hosts, while tips on etiquette and communicating will help you to navigate unfamiliar situations and avoid faux pas.

Mythopedia is a fun, fact-filled A-Z treasury of myths inspired by natural events. Bringing together fifty legends from antiquity to the present, this delightfully entertaining book takes you around the world to explore sunken kingdoms and lost cities, accursed mountains and treacherous terrains, and lethal lakes and singing sand dunes, explaining the historical background and latest science underlying each tale.

In this enormously enjoyable introduction to a remarkable country, Christopher Harding traces Japan's rich history over several millennia. Beginning with its earliest coastal communities through to the spread of Buddhism, the rise of the warlords, the promise and menace of the West and Japan's own empire-building, Harding explores how a distinctly Japanese society and culture was forged.

Professor of Classics Peter Meineck traces Marvel’s lineage back to its earliest roots at the dawn of human culture. Using Marvel’s most beloved heroes (and antiheroes), such as Spider-Man and Deadpool, Meineck demonstrates how ancient themes continue to appear in our stories today and reintroduces characters like Achilles and Odysseus from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

Boston, Massachusetts, boasts countless stories of the supernatural. Many students at Boston College have encountered an unearthly hound that haunts O'Connell House to this day. Be on the watch for an actor who sits in on rehearsals at Huntington Theatre and restless spirits rumored to haunt Boston Common at night. From the Victorian brownstones of Back Bay to the shores of the Boston Harbor Islands, author Sam Baltrusis makes it clear that there is hardly a corner of the Hub where the paranormal cannot be experienced as he breathes new life into the tales of the long departed.

As English and German settlers migrated to Pennsylvania, they brought their beliefs in magic with them from the Old World—sometimes with dangerous consequences. In 1802, for example, an Allegheny County judge helped an accused witch escape an angry mob. But Susan Mummey was not so fortunate. In 1934, she was killed in her home by a young Schuylkill County man who was convinced that she had cursed him.

Popularized by Joseph Campbell, the hero's journey features narrative stages along which a person matures and transforms. But where heroes transform is just as important as what they do to get there. Holly Bellebuono shows you how the location of each hero's journey step is intimately tied to the challenges faced, setting the tone for the entire adventure.

In the nineteenth century, residents of Marblehead, Massachusetts, reported malicious pixies leading them in circles at dusk. In Aroostook County, Maine, elves called lutins exasperated farmers with their mischievous tricks and games. In Uncasville, Connecticut, beguiling creatures emerged for centuries at twilight to collect corn-filled baskets from members of the Mohegan Tribe. And in Harrisville, Rhode Island, a vision of fearful banshees augured death to an Irish seer.

Hidden in the dense brush and around oxbow lakes of the Rio Grande Valley wait sinister secrets, unnerving vestiges of the past, and wraiths of those claimed by the winding river. The spirit of a murdered student in Brownsville paces the locker room where she met her end. Tortured souls of patients lost in the Harlingen Insane Asylum refuse to be forgotten. Guests at the LaBorde Hotel in Rio Grande City report visions of the Red Lady, who was spurned by the soldier she loved and driven to suicide.

Mit Humor, Geduld und Neugier wirft Wladimir Kaminer einen Blick in die Seele der Deutschen. Wenn Deutsche das Besondere und Exotische suchen, dann reisen sie in ferne Länder. Dabei müssten sie nur über den Zaun schauen, nur um die Ecke biegen, und schon würden sie die unglaublichsten Entdeckungen machen. Denn mitten in Deutschland findet man flüssiges Gold, kann sich in seltsame Tänze einreihen oder einer Krönung beiwohnen. Es ist erstaunlich, welch geheime Welt ans Licht kommt, wenn man sich den Deutschen mit so liebevoller Geduld und freundlicher Neugier nähert, wie Wladimir Kaminer es tut.

Collectors are often praised for their taste in art or contributions to science, but there can be a darker side: their passion is sometimes driven by dangerous obsession. Roman emperors who lusted after statues; Chinese scholars obsessed with rocks and flowers; fin de siècle dandies surrounded by bibelots. History is full of stories about those who love things more than people, presenting a danger either to themselves or others.

In a time when communal rituals and cultural ceremonies fail, longtime scholar, storyteller, and ceremonialist Stephen Jenkinson asks what it means to lose cultural inheritance. In examining matrimony and its ritual twin, patrimony, Matrimony contemplates culture-making, building and preserving cultural memory, and the ache of living in a world bereft of meaning and connection. There is a real and palpable consequence to turning away from public ceremony—and not just for the celebrants.

Wandering through the labyrinth of Greek mythology can be daunting, especially when you're just starting out. But it doesn't have to be. If you want to discover this vast world and its relevance to modern-day life through manageable, bite-size chunks, then you need A Beginner's Guide to Greek Mythology.

In Evergreen, Cornell University professor Trent Preszler takes us on a riveting journey through history, culture, and science, exploring America’s story through the lives of its most resilient and cherished trees. From the annual hunt for the perfect Rockefeller Center spruce, back to the earliest days when Ancestral Puebloan builders crafted remarkable dwellings from pine beams, Evergreen reveals surprising connections between past and present that fueled America’s rise to global prominence.

Drawing together the mythology and tales of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, this book is a comprehensive collection of the fascinating gods, goddesses, heroes, and monsters that make up the compendium of Celtic myths and legends. Celtic Mythology offers an accessible exploration of the rich tapestry of stories and characters that define Celtic culture and have fascinated people for centuries.

Featuring iterations of fairy tales and sinister descendants of Greek myths and bible stories, as well as a cast of lesser-known characters with names like Tam Lim, Child Wynd and Maisery, Old Songs threads a tapestry of Britain's landscape, history and cultures. At the base of hills we can visit to this day, elf queens kidnap hapless poets and carry them through rivers of blood; and at the foot of a tree whose offspring still stand in the forests of Northumberland, a girl mimes combing the hairless head of a dragon who was once her brother.