History

How did the shift from matriarchy to patriarchy come about? In fascinating detail, Merlin Stone tells us the story of the Goddess who reigned supreme in the Near and Middle East.

A "marvelous" (Economist) account of how the Christian Revolution forged the Western imagination....

Whenever we worry about what to eat, how to love, or simply how to be happy, we are worrying about how to lead a good life....

Here, you will meet the fascinating, ancient polytheistic peoples of the Mediterranean and beyond, their many gods and goddesses, and their public and private worship practices, as you come to appreciate the foundational role religion played in their lives....

The most accessible and informative version of the Buddhist classic available in English, with instruction in meditation, illuminating commentary, and guidance in the practical use of the prayers....

A riveting journey to the truth about the most remarkable event in history: the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the proof behind it. From the award-winning, best-selling work The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel, this audiobook is perfect for Easter or any time of the year....

Katrina Hazzard-Donald explores African Americans' experience and practice of the herbal, healing folk belief tradition known as Hoodoo. Working against conventional scholarship, the author argues that Hoodoo emerged first in three distinct regions she calls "regional Hoodoo clusters"....

In an era of hardening religious attitudes and explosive religious violence, this book offers a welcome antidote....

Jerusalem is the universal city, the capital of two peoples, the shrine of three faiths; it is the prize of empires, the site of Judgement Day and the battlefield of today’s clash of civilizations....

A major new history of the Crusades with an unprecedented wide scope, told in a tableau of portraits of people on all sides of the wars, from the New York Times best-selling author of The Templars....

At last, the world will discover what happens to the greatest salesman when he finally emerges from his lonely retirement to commence a new career. At first, he finds failure - until he receives a special gift from someone he has not seen in half a century....

Jesus declared war on an ancient enemy at the very beginning of His ministry. He hinted at the identity of this entity through the locations of His baptism, the Transfiguration, and the Olivet Discourse. This enemy was cast down from the mountain of God.

The Papyrus of Ani is a papyrus manuscript in the form of a scroll with cursive hieroglyphs and color illustrations that was created c.1250 BCE during the 19th Dynasty of the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt....

Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion "God" frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described....

Vengeance Is Mine documents southern Utah leaders’ attempts to cover up their crime by silencing witnesses and spreading lies....

The Essential Talmud is a masterful introduction by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz to the great repository of Jewish wisdom, the Talmud....

Lost Enlightenment chronicles this forgotten age of achievement, seeks to explain its rise, and explores the competing theories about the cause of its eventual demise....

In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers the question of how Jewish missionaries ended up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church by reconstructing the life of the earliest Jerusalem community....

Discover the beguiling history of witchcraft, magic, and superstition through the centuries and across the world in this stunning audiobook....

Embark on an epic journey into the captivating world of Norse mythology, where gods, goddesses, and mythical creatures come alive with rich detail and vibrant storytelling.

The Middle Ages was a time of major historical shifts and transformations. This amazing era reverberates with discoveries, events, and processes integral to the world we know now. In these 24 lectures, Professor Salisbury leads you on a sumptuous tour of this incredible historical epoch....

Reza Aslan explores humanity's quest to make sense of the divine and sounds a call to embrace a deeper, more expansive understanding of God....

"The Egyptian Book of the Dead," translated by E.A. Wallis Budge, is a pivotal work that opened the ancient Egyptian world of the afterlife to the West.

Paradise: that elusive place where the anxieties, struggles, and burdens of life fall away. Most of us dream of it, but each of us has very different ideas about where it is to be found. For some it can be enjoyed only after death; for others, it’s in our midst—or just across the ocean....

Ronald Hutton is known for his colorful, provocative, and always exhaustively researched studies on original subjects. This work is no exception: the first full-scale scholarly study of the only religion England has ever given the world, that of modern pagan witchcraft....

This second book (How They Wrote the Gospels Volume 2) fulfils the promise of the first volume “How They Wrote the Gospels”. This book surveys the literature about how the gospels might have been written. Falling firmly on the idea that the writing of the gospels was a project in which four or more writers had copies of a source document that they were charged with editing and converting into a document about the “Life of Jesus”. The source document in question was a history of the Jewish War probably written by Marcus Agrippa Jr and appropriated by his secretary, the man we call ...

What to Expect When You're Dead chronicles the ways ancient peoples answered questions such as: How to achieve a good death and afterlife? What's the best way to dispose of a body? Do the dead face a postmortem judgement—and where do they end up? Do the dead have bodies in the afterlife—and can they eat, drink, and have sex? And what can the living do to stay on good terms with the nonliving?

What happens when a prophet dies and forgets to leave a forwarding address? After the Prophet Fell is a blistering, unapologetic, and darkly hilarious dive into the holy mess that followed the death of Joseph Smith—the founder of the Mormon Church, self-declared prophet, and the man who left behind a movement with no plan, no instructions, and way too many people claiming to be his successor. Told with biting wit and backed by historical receipts, this book pulls back the sacramental curtain to expose the succession crisis that tore the Latter-day Saints apart. From Brigham Young’s ...

What do you get when you mix divine visions, secret wives, homemade money, and a printing press smashed by order of God’s self-declared mouthpiece? A body on the jailhouse floor and a story too wild for Sunday School. In this blisteringly funny, historically ruthless follow-up to Before the Revelation, Argor Barpha drags you through the final years of Joseph Smith—the American mystic who wasn’t content just starting a church. He wanted a kingdom. Maybe even a crown. From the ruins of Kirtland to the blood-soaked cornfields of Missouri, from the swamp city of Nauvoo to the Carthage ...

Currently there are four billion people on the planet whose religious tradition traces back to Abraham. There would be more, except that, historically, they have had a tendency to slaughter each other, in the name of God. Have you thought to ask yourself, who exactly was this Abraham, that has left humanity such a legacy? More importantly, what religion did he belong to, that has had such a profound effect on our world? A tantalising journey then opens up for the curious, whether believer or non-believer: where did religion itself came from? Does it make any sense? This is a book to help ...