New Releases by David Adams

In the first comprehensive narrative study of the mythology of the Middle East, David Leeming ranges from prehistoric figures such as the Mother Goddess of Çatal Hüyük to Mesopotamian gods such as Marduk and mythic heroes such as Gilgamesh, to the pantheon of Egyptian mythology, including the falcon-headed sky-sun god Horus and jackal-headed Anubis. The author also offers an illuminating exploration of the mythology of the three great monotheistic religions of the region: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

This book provides the first complete account of the life and work of Charles Warren Eaton. It also fills an enormous gap in American art history by telling the story of the Tonalist movement.

Annotation - A fascinating account of Britain's mythic traditions.

At the pinnacle of his career, Sir James Douglas, fur trader and colonial governor, was knighted by the order of Queen Victoria, and greatly enjoyed the pomp of his position. Considering his modest beginnings as a mixed-race baby in South America, this lofty status was remarkable. The life of Amelia, companion throughout James' long rise, saw even more surprising changes. Amelia was of mixed blood too, being part-Cree, part-Scot. She never left the northern Canadian forests until she married James, but ended up a respected lady of the Empire. Between them, James and Amelia Douglas knew everybody who was anybody in western North America. Their lives saw astonishing contrasts, from crossing North America by canoe to touring Europe by train, from Native uprisings to frantic gold rushes. They met with grief as well as glory, losing seven of their beloved children. This is an engaging story of courage and companionship - though James Douglas's role as a public figure is well known, this book offers the first real glimpses of him as a private man, husband and father.

Recounts more than seventy Native American myths from a variety of cultures, covering gods, creation, and heroes and heroines, and discusses each myth within its own context, its relationship to other myths, and its place within world mythology.

Presents a variety of myths, tales, and legends. Includes Native American tales about creation, goddesses, trickster gods, the Indian and the white man, as well as Hispanic American, Asian American, Anglo American, and African American stories. Features patriotic heroes, American loners, frontiersman, and tall tales, Western outlaws, lawmen, and cowboys, slave rebels, and Blues legends, among other topics.

This invaluable book presents an unbiased framework for modelling and using sensors to aid mobile robot navigation. It addresses the problem of accurate and reliable sensing in confined environments and makes a detailed analysis of the design and construction of a low cost optical range finder. This is followed by a quantitative model for determining the sources and propagation of noise within the sensor. The physics behind the causes of erroneous data is also used to derive a model for detecting and labelling such data as false. In addition, the author's data-processing algorithms are applied to the problem of environmental feature extraction. This forms the basis of a solution to the problem of mobile robot localisation. The book develops a relationship between the kinematics of a mobile robot during the execution of successive manoeuvres, and the sensed features. Results which update a mobile vehicle's position using features from 2D and 3D scans are presented.

Leeming illustrates the various rites of passage of the mythic universal hero, from birth to childhood, through trial and quest, death, descent, rebirth, and ascension. The arrangement of texts by themes such as "The Descent to the Underworld" and "Resurrection and Rebirth" strip mythic characters of their national and cultural "masks" to reveal their archetypal aspects. Real figures, including Jesus and Mohammed, are also included to underline the theory that myths are real and can be applied to real life. This updated edition includes additional myths, as well as Navajo, Indonesian, Indian, Chinese, and African tales.

David Leeming and Jake Page gather some seventy-five of the most potent and meaningful of these tales in an extraordinary rich and readable introduction of this divine figure as she has emerged from prehistory to the present.

A major life of one of the most influential black writers of our time, James Baldwin (Go Tell It on the Mountain, The Fire Next Time). Leeming, Baldwin's friend for 25 years, accessed all of Baldwin's private papers to bring readers closer than ever to the complex man who struggled out of Harlem to become a legend of American literature. Photos.

Covering thousands of years of intricate creation tales, this book is the first and most comprehensive work devoted to creation myths from cultures throughout the world.

Hercules, Zeus, Thor, Gilgamesh--these are the figures that leap to mind when we think of myth. But to David Leeming, myths are more than stories of deities and fantastic beings from non-Christian cultures. Myth is at once the most particular and the most universal feature of civilization, representing common concerns that each society voices in its own idiom. Whether an Egyptian story of creation or the big-bang theory of modern physics, myth is metaphor, mirroring our deepest sense of ourselves in relation to existence itself. Now, in The World of Myth, Leeming provides a sweeping anthology of myths, ranging from ancient Egypt and Greece to the Polynesian islands and modern science. We read stories of great floods from the ancient Babylonians, Hebrews, Chinese, and Mayans; tales of apocalypse from India, the Norse, Christianity, and modern science; myths of the mother goddess from Native American Hopi culture and James Lovelock's Gaia. Leeming has culled myths from Aztec, Greek, African, Australian Aboriginal, Japanese, Moslem, Hittite, Celtic, Chinese, and Persian cultures, offering one of the most wide-ranging collections of what he calls the collective dreams of humanity. More important, he has organized these myths according to a number of themes, comparing and contrasting how various societies have addressed similar concerns, or have told similar stories. In the section on dying gods, for example, both Odin and Jesus sacrifice themselves to renew the world, each dying on a tree. Such traditions, he proposes, may have their roots in societies of the distant past, which would ritually sacrifice their kings to renew the tribe. In The World of Myth, David Leeming takes us on a journey "not through a maze of falsehood but through a marvellous world of metaphor," metaphor for "the story of the relationship between the known and the unknown, both around us and within us." Fantastic, tragic, bizarre, sometimes funny, the myths he presents speak of the most fundamental human experience, a part of what Joseph Campbell called "the wonderful song of the soul's high adventure."

US Air Force Airman Amanda Turner is trapped underground. Locked in a massive underground vault. The world outside is toxic, the ground below them solid rock. There is no way out. No escape. There are three thousand, nine hundred, and ninety one men. And nine women. Nine. A novel in three acts, set in Hugh Howey's world of Wool.