Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence: A Voegelinian Analysis is an account of the life, works and vision of two prominent mystical thinkers, Etty Hillesum and Eric Voegelin, whose lives were shaped by the totalitarian Nazi-regime. This book explores how mystical attunement to the flow of presence is the key to the development of Etty Hillesum’s life and writings. Eric Voegelin’s analysis of the history of order is focused on the responses of individuals and societies to the divine presence. Etty Hillesum’s The Letters and Diaries illustrates her heroic struggle to come to terms with her personal life in the context of her gradual response to the flowing presence. Etty Hillesum died at the age of twenty-nine in Auschwitz midway through World War II. All her energy had been absorbed in a daily search for the meaning of her life, for an understanding of her relationships with others, and for an insight into the ultimate purpose of each individual’s contribution to the well being and maintenance of the human spirit. Eric Voegelin’s philosophical symbol "the flow of presence" ("the intersection of time with the timeless") is designed to “catch’’ changes and shifts in the mode of human responsiveness to the divine presence and it is especially helpful in clarifying what is taking place in the soul of Etty Hillesum. Her response to the flow of presence while she was undergoing significant breakthroughs in her spiritual life in the context of a period of overwhelming social disorder, amounts to a testament of great courage. It is an inspiration and an affirmation of the indestructible wonder of life. In one of his final conclusions Coetsier writes: “The complexity of the human condition will require the ability to be human in transcending our immediate and simply given context through an attunement to the flow of presence.” Etty Hillesum and Eric Voegelin have provided a welcome antidote to the restless and wandering spirit of a complex and turbulent era and this book guides the reader to the heart of their mystical thought. With the current explosion of interest in inter-religious dialogue, peace studies, Judaism, the holocaust, gender studies and mysticism, it is an attempt to respond to the signs of the times. Accompanying the treatment of Voegelin’s and Hillesum’s writing, this book includes an extensive bibliography of international scholarship on both authors.

Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence: A Voegelinian Analysis

The story follows a Thranx, Ryozenzuzex (i.e. Ryo, of Family Zen, clan Zu, Hive Zex) who came from an odd numbered hatching (thranx offspring almost always come in multiples of two) immediately making him somewhat different from his brethren. Setting himself aside as different Ryo decides that he has to know what is the secret of the new space faring race that supposedly wear "their skeletons inside". To accomplish this un-thranxlike task Ryo travels from his home planet, Willow-Wane, to the ice caps of the Thranx home world, Hivehom with the aid of the wealthy Wuuzelansem, a poet in-search of inspiration. Once on Hivehom he is confronted with the "monsters" and comes to the conclusion that they must set them free, believing that an alliance between Thranx and these so-called "humans" is the only way to stop the aggressive advances of the AAnn Empire. Thranx military and scientists, by studying the contained humans tendency to fight amongst each other came to the conclusion that the entire species could be insane and would destroy Thranx society if they were to attempt any further contact. Ryo, after spending a good amount of time with the humans decides to aid in their escape from Hivehom. Once they escape they return to a human research station where the reaction to Ryo is worse than anticipated. When the scientists there decide to kill and dissect Ryo the crew he rescued from Hivehom returns the favor and helps him escape his death sentence. It is at this point Ryo and the crew come to the conclusion that they must start a long term program in order to properly integrate human and thranx society. With the scientists he befriended on Hivehom, Ryo brings a group of human children and researchers to interact with a group of Thranx larvae on his home of Willow-Wane in an attempt to build lasting race relations. The larvae and human children seem to get along well and the compatibility between the two races is confirmed. When an AAnn raiding party attacks Ryo''s hive the militant humans take action which results in a formal first contact between both human and Thranx governments. By his risky actions, Ryo plants the seeds of what would become the Humanx Commonwealth.

Nor Crystal Tears

Jerome Horowitz Elementary School is going to hold its second annual Invention Convention. George and Harold are eager to enter, because the winners of the Invention Convention get to be Principals for the Day. Unfortunately, their principal, Mr. Krupp, wants to avoid a fiasco like last year''s, in which George and Harold used their invention (a homemade, body-activated superglue) to glue everyone to their seats, and bans George and Harold from the Invention Convention, forcing them to stay in study hall all day. In retaliation, they decide to secretly sabotage everyone''s inventions. While sneaking in to sabotage the inventions, they run into Melvin Sneedly, the school brainiac and tattletale. Melvin is working late on his invention, the PATSY 2000, an acronym of Photo-Atomic Trans-Somgobulating Yectofantriplutoniczanziptomiser, which is a photocopier that turns 1 and 2-dimensional objects into breathing, 3-dimensional objects. To demonstrate, he puts in a photo of a mouse and out comes a real mouse. George and Harold assume Melvin put the real mouse in earlier, and he''s just trying to fool them. They promise not to sabotage Melvin''s invention as long as he doesn''t report them for what they are doing. Thanks to George and Harold, the Invention Convention is a bigger disaster than the previous one (with reflecting the first book where a series of pranks automatically happening). Melvin Sneedly breaks his promise and tattles on George and Harold. Infuriated, Mr. Krupp puts George and Harold in detention for the rest of the school year, with the threat that they''ll be suspended if they leave the detention room once. George and Harold get assigned writing lines on the chalkboards in the detention room. With each boy using a quick line-writing device (a series of joined poles with pieces of chalk in them) they are able to write all their lines in 3 and a half minutes. With their free time, the boys decide to write a comic called "Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets" in which Captain Underpants defeats zillions of vicious talking toilets and their leader, the Turbo Toilet 2000. George and Harold sneak out to make copies of their new comic; however, the copy machine in the office is surrounded by teachers. They decide to copy off of Melvin''s photocopy machine, still thinking it''s a normal photocopier, but Melvin''s machine really does turn 1-and-2-dimensional objects into living 3-dimensional objects, so the evil, vicious talking toilets come to life and attack everyone in the school. George and Harold are also caught outside the detention room by Mr. Krupp and are both suspended. Before George and Harold can leave, Mr. Meaner, the gym teacher opens the door to the gym and is promptly eaten by one of the toilets. Ms. Ribble then snaps her fingers at a toilet, making Mr. Krupp turns into Captain Underpants, who comes up with a plan to stop the Talking Toilets and they eaten the other teachers. George and Harold chase after him as Captain Underpants takes several pairs of underwear from unsuspecting clotheslines. Once back at the school, George, Harold and Captain Underpants use the underwear as a sling shot to shoot food in the Talking Toilets'' mouths. Since it is disgusting cafeteria food (A.K.A. creamed chipped beef), the Talking Toilets vomit all the teachers out and die. The Turbo Toilet 2000 bursts out of the school (he was turned to life like all the other Talking Toilets, but, as stated by George, was previously unseen). After a quick battle The Turbo Toilet 2000 swallows Captain Underpants whole. George and Harold sneak into the school and use Melvin Sneedly''s machine to make a super-powered robot called the Incredible Robo-Plunger, who does whatever they say. The Incredible Robo-Plunger defeats the Turbo Toilet 2000 and gives the final blow by plunging into the Turbo Toilet 2000''s mouth, killing him, giving the boys a chance to save Captain Underpants (who is now turned back to Mr. Krupp, thanks to the water inside the Turbo Toilet 2000). Noticing the damge in the school caused by the toilets, Krupp fears that he will lose his job. Fortunately, at the boys'' command, the Robo-Plunger repairs all the school damage, and flies off to Uranus with the command never to return. In return for the boys fixing the school, Krupp withdraws their detention and suspension and officially places them as "Principals for the Day". As the Principals, they hold an all-day carnival and put the teachers (and Melvin Sneedly) in detention. After telling Mr. Krupp that they sold most of the school''s furniture to pay for the carnival and running away for their lives, Miss Anthrope snaps her fingers, causing Mr. Krupp to become Captain Underpants again.

Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets

Jack Kelso, an American ace pilot in World War 1, is shot down and nursed back to health by a German nurse, Baroness Elsa von Halder. They marry and return to America after the war. After Jack is killed in a car accident, Elsa returns to Germany with their eldest son Max, who assumes the title of Baron von Halder. Harry, his identical younger (by twenty minutes) brother, remains with his grandfather, millionaire Abe Kelso. Inspired by their father''s example, both brothers become ace and much decorated pilots in opposing forces. Max joins the Luftwaffe and Harry, after fighting in Finland, returns to England, joining the Royal Air Force as a ''Finn''. The brothers rise in rank and number of ''kills'', occasionally hearing of the others exploits. They actually meet again in the skies and also when Harry is shot down. Max summons an English rescue boat using his airborne radio. Elsa continues her social climbing amongst the nazi elite, although Max warns her of the potential danger. Harry becomes a special duties pilot and crashes in France whilst landing a French Resistance leader. He is imprisoned at a local chateau where he and Max finally meet face to face. Himmler, learning of the capture of one ace, arranges for the brothers to be blackmailed. Max is to assume Harry''s character, ''escape'' in England and assassinate General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Fearing for his Mother''s life, Max is forced to agree and flies back home. Elsa tries to commit suicide, but is shot dead in the attempt. The brothers'' plot fails, mainly because the brothers see themselves as flyers and honourable men, not assassins. Max returns to France, rescues Harry and flies back to England, but Max is killed when they are intercepted by an Me109. Harry returns to flying and is killed in a later mission, late in the war. The narrative is surrounded by a ''frame story'', with a prologue and epilogue. In 1998, the author and his wife, an experienced pilot, are forced to ditch their airplane in the English channel and are rescued by the Cold Harbour lifeboat. They learn something of what happened in Cold Harbour during the War and later meet other surviving characters. A central character of the story is ''Tarquin'', a bear wearing flying kit with both RAF and RFC insignia. He was Jack''s lucky mascot, later Harry''s and was lost when Harry crashed. Tarquin passed to a French family and was later bought in an English antiques shop by the author''s wife, also as a flying mascot. There are a few twist reveals in the final chapter of the story, having to do with the fate of some of the earlier characters. Also when the twins are split after their father dies, they argue over who will take possession of Tarquin, they agree the bear stays in America, Max the oldest wins the toss and stays with his grandfather as "Harry" sending Harry to Germany as "Max"...so when Himmler forces Max to become Harry, they are actually switching back to their original selves. The book is supposedly based on a true story. pl:Lot Orłów

Flight of Eagles

Emily St. Aubert is the only child of a landed rural family whose fortunes are now in decline. Emily and her father share an especially close bond, due to their shared appreciation for nature. After her mother''s death from a serious illness, Emily and her father grow even closer. She accompanies him on a journey from their native Gascony, through the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean coast of Roussillon, over many mountainous landscapes. During the journey, they encounter Valancourt, a handsome man who also feels an almost mystical kinship with the natural world. Emily and Valancourt quickly fall in love. Emily''s father succumbs to a long illness. Emily, now orphaned, is forced by his wishes to live with her aunt, Madame Cheron, who shares none of Emily''s interests and shows little affection to her. Her aunt marries Montoni, a dubious nobleman from Italy. He wants his friend Count Morano to become Emily′s husband, and tries to force her to marry him. After discovering that Morano is nearly ruined he brings Emily and his wife to his remote castle of Udolpho. Emily fears to have lost Valancourt forever. Morano searches for Emily and tries to carry her off secretly from Udolpho. Emily refuses to join him because her heart still belongs to Valancourt. Morano′s attempt to escape is discovered by Montoni, who wounds the Count and chases him away. In the following months Montoni threatens his wife with violence to force her to sign over her properties in Toulouse, which upon her death would otherwise go to Emily. Without resigning her estate Madame Cheron dies of a severe illness caused by her husband′s harshness. Many frightening but coincidental events happen within the castle, but Emily is able to flee from it with the help of her secret admirer Du Pont, who was a prisoner at Udolpho, and the servants Annette and Ludovico. Returning to the estate of her aunt, Emily learns that Valancourt went to Paris and lost his wealth. In the end she takes control of the property and is reunited with Valancourt.

The Mysteries of Udolpho

War between Earth and insectoid-dominated Alpha III ended over a decade ago. (According to the novel, "Alphane" refers to the nearest star to our own system, Alpha Centauri). Some years after the end of hostilities, Earth intends to secure its now independent colony in the Alphane system, Alpha III M2. As a former satellite-based global psychiatric institution for colonists on other Alphane system worlds unable to cope with the stresses of colonisation, the inhabitants of Alpha III M2 have lived peacefully for years. But, under the pretence of a medical mission, Earth intends to take their colony back. Against this background, Chuck Rittersdorf and his wife Mary are separating. Although they think they are going their separate ways, they soon find themselves together again on Alpha III M2. Mary travels there through government work, Chuck sees it as a chance to kill Mary using his remote control simulacrum. Along the way he is guided by his Ganymedean slime mold neighbour Lord Running Clam and Mary finds herself manipulated by the Alphane sympathiser, comedian Bunny Hentman.

Clans of the Alphane Moon

Ultimately, we find out that Delmarre''s neighbor and fellow roboticist Jothan Leebig was working on a way of subverting the robots'' inability to kill humans. This was achieved by understanding a missing word in the Three Laws of Robotics: "knowingly". He used this knowledge to cause the death of Rikaine at the hands of his wife Gladia, because Rikaine was opposed to his plans. Later on, he also managed to poison the Security Secretary using a pair of robots. The key to this technique is that a robot cannot knowingly kill a human or knowingly allow a human to come to harm. But if the robot does not know that its actions will cause harm, then it will not be stopped by the Laws. The future implication of this was pointed out by Elijah, that it can be extended to the point at which robots could be used to fight wars. (In the Asimov universe, this would otherwise be unthinkable, given the Three Laws.) Leebig kills himself before he can be taken into custody, because of a very Solarian fear of human contact. The irony is that the "human" he was afraid of was Olivaw, a robot. Despite knowledge of Gladia''s guilt, Baley never discloses her role in the murder—in part because he feels sorry for her and believes that her breakdown was caused by the pressure of the Solarian way of life. He manages to have her sent to the Spacer capital planet of Aurora, where she can further her growth as a human being, something she could never do on Solaria. After investigating the murder to a satisfactory conclusion, Baley returns to Earth a hero. The information he brings back is invaluable to the government, which was predicting the downfall of Spacer societies; the similarities between the nature of Solarian society and Earth society in their closed natures suggests a fundamental flaw in the Terran society. A more thorough description of the aftereffects can be found in the sequel to the Naked Sun, The Robots of Dawn. We also discover the remote end-point of Solaria''s odd development in Foundation and Earth. The Foundation series and the Spacer/Robot series seem originally to have been separate, though with some overlap of ideas. If the Galactic Empire is the far future, where have the robots gone? In Foundation''s Edge Asimov begins to supply the answer, expanded in the other sequels and prequels.

The Naked Sun

Sophie and Josh Newman – 15 year-old twins – are in Paris with the alchemyst, Nicholas Flamel, and his friend, Scathach. They now face Niccolò Machiavelli and his colleague, but also rival, John Dee, both work for the Dark Elders. Machiavelli is plotting to capture the twins and Flamel with the missing pages of the Codex – or Book of Abraham the Mage – before Dee can arrive in France from San Francisco. The twins seek out a friend and student to Nicholas, Comte de Saint-Germain, who teaches Sophie to use the elemental magic of Fire. Saint-Germain''s wife, Joan of Arc, helps Sophie to learn to control her aura and to sort out the Witch of Endor''s memories from her own. Josh is given the legendary stone sword Clarent, twin blade of Excalibur, by Nicholas. Clarent is an ancient Fire Elemental sword. Josh, Joan, and Scathach encounter three Disir, more commonly referred to as Valkyries. The Disir are ancient enemies of Scathach and bring along the soul-devouring Nidhogg, a ferocious monster once trapped in the roots of Yggdrasil – the world tree. The monster was freed after Dee destroyed Yggdrasil and attacks Scathach but fails to slay her. Instead, it captures Scathach in its claws, but flees with Scathach when the ancient sword Clarent, wielded by Josh, wounds it. Meanwhile, Nicholas'' wife, Perenelle Flamel, who had been captured, is taken to Alcatraz as a prisoner. While Josh is fighting Nidhogg, Joan of Arc and Sophie are busy fighting two of the Disir. After a lengthy battle, Sophie manages to freeze the two in an iceberg. They chase after Nidhogg. As Nidhogg flees, Dee, Machiavelli and Dagon (Machiavelli''s assistant), who are watching, express remorse at the Disir''s failure. Machiavelli then allows Dagon to chase Nidhogg and kill Scathach if the beast fails to do so. The monster escapes through the streets of Paris, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. One of the trio of Disir, as well as Josh (who is still trying to save Scathach) follow. They arrive on the banks of the Seine and, with the help of Dee, Josh manages to stall the Disir and escape. He then leaves with Dee and Machiavelli. Sophie, Joan, and Nicholas arrive, defeat the Disir and Nidhogg, and save Scathach. On Alcatraz, Perenelle is helped by the ghost of Juan Manuel de Ayala, a Spanish sailor. Sophie, Joan, and Nicholas are talking to Scathach when Dagon erupts out of the river and drags her back in with him. The group miss Scathach, but decide to go after Josh, and, by using Sophie''s aura, they track Dee and his comrades to the catacombs of Paris. There, Josh''s magical ability is awakened by Mars Ultor and he is given a special "gift" similar to what Sophie received from the Witch of Endor – Josh now has Mars'' military knowledge. When Sophie, Josh, and the rest escape from the catacombs, Dee and Machiavelli have set a trap, making the gargoyles and statues of Paris come to life and attack. Josh, Sophie, Saint-Germain, and Joan of Arc combine powers to destroy the statues. Flamel and the twins escape via a train and head for London. Perenelle is still stuck on Alcatraz and fears recapture.

The Magician: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel

The United States campaigns mirror Sherman''s march to the sea as U.S. armies drive through the center of the Confederacy, while a second U.S. force drives into Virginia to capture Richmond. The Confederacy (with some quiet help from Great Britain) manages to produce a fission bomb. The bomb is smuggled via truck into the de facto U.S. capital of Philadelphia, and detonated; however, the bomb explodes only on the city''s outskirts and does not damage any government buildings. In retaliation, the United States drops nuclear bombs on Newport News, Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina. The Newport News bomb narrowly misses Confederate President Jake Featherston. Texas declares independence from the Confederacy and signs a separate peace with the United States. Jake Featherston attempts to escape to the Deep South but his plane is shot down. He survives the crash landing, only to be caught and killed by a black guerrillero, Cassius. The fourth and presumably final war between the United States and Confederate States ends officially on July 14, 1944, at 6:01 p.m after an unconditional surrender is signed between General Irving Morrell and the acting Confederate President Don Partridge. The United States commences a full occupation of the former Confederate States and Canada, though Texas apparently remains independent but still hosts American soldiers in its territory. For the first time in almost a century, the Stars and Stripes flies over the whole of the pre-1861 United States territory, and Americans express their determination never to let go of the former Confederate territories, after Featherston came so close to crushing them. The Confederates are bitter and far from being reconciled to their fate; they constantly attack the occupying US forces, despite grim retaliations including the execution of civilian hostages. Though outlawed, the Freedom Party is still very much an active underground force. Moreover, the United States itself - while dissolving the Confederate government and declaring its firm intention never to let it rise again - refrains from any formal annexation and (re)admitting Southern states to the Union, since any free elections would likely fill Congress with the United States'' most staunch enemies. Rather, the former Confederate territories are left in the same legal limbo in which Canada has been since 1917, being offered neither independence nor civil liberties and kept under an open-ended, harsh military rule. Despite the enormous victory won by the US, the war has not truly ended, but rather changed its form. To their chagrin, most of the soldiers and sailors conscripted "for the duration" are not discharged but set to occupation duty. The US is faced with the daunting task of keeping under indefinite harsh military occupation vast rebellious territories with hostile populations, with the conquered Confederate territories being added to the previously held Canadian ones, as well as the smaller Mormon Utah. And at the same time, the Nuclear Age has been launched with the destruction of three cities in America and six in Europe, and a fast scramble to obtain nuclear arms by powers not yet possessing them. The United States and Germany are determined in trying to prevent Russia and Japan from going nuclear, but these efforts are apparently doomed to failure; moreover, these erstwhile allies themselves seem likely to drift into a Cold War, glaring at each other across the Atlantic. Moreover, aside from the nuclear issue, Japan is presenting an unresolved problem to the US - having won the Battle of Midway, consolidated its hold on the Western Pacific and Eastern Asia and established a concrete threat to Australia. Having to deal with the Confederacy - either as a belligerent neighbor or as a rebellious occupied territory - the US can spare only limited resources for confronting Japan, and the idea of "an island-hopping campaign" across the Pacific is rejected out of hand by one character.

Settling Accounts: In at the Death

Jase (Jason Mason) works as a lagger, one of a gang of labourers considered "too dumb to draft" into the army and thus conscripted into labour on public works. His group has the task of connecting a new nuclear-power station to the grid in the Highlands of Scotland, which have become colder and sparsely inhabited due to climate-change. This takes place against the backdrop of a long-running war between China and the West, which started due to an air-rage incident when a Chinese businessman, under stress due to a smoking-ban, got mistaken for a terrorist. Jase and his fellow laggers encounter a hitchhiker named Ailiss, whom Jase identifies as one of a group of New Age Settlers (also known as crusties or bandits), people who foresee the imminent end of modern society and who have retreated to a semi-hidden rural commune. However, their presence worries the authorities, who become concerned about the security of their nuclear-power station. Believing that they have inadvertently set the settlers up for arrest or worse, three laggers travel to the commune to warn them. Discovering the commune under attack, they accidentally defeat the government forces by allowing their truck to crash into and destroy a helicopter. Jase finds himself acclaimed a hero by the settlers, and decides to join them.

The Highway Men

Pinker argues that modern science has challenged three "linked dogmas" that constitute the dominant view of human nature in intellectual life: * the blank slate (the mind has no innate traits) &mdash; empiricism * the noble savage (people are born good and corrupted by society) &mdash; romanticism * the ghost in the machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology) &mdash; mind/body dualism Much of the book is dedicated to examining fears of the social and political consequences of his view of human nature: * "the fear of inequality" * "the fear of imperfectibility" * "the fear of determinism" * "the fear of nihilism" Pinker claims these fears are non sequiturs, and that the blank slate view of human nature would actually be a greater threat if it were true. For example, he argues that political equality does not require sameness, but policies that treat people as individuals with rights; that moral progress doesn''t require the human mind to be naturally free of selfish motives, only that it has other motives to counteract them; that responsibility doesn''t require behavior to be uncaused, only that it respond to praise and blame; and that meaning in life doesn''t require that the process that shaped the brain must have a purpose, only that the brain itself must have purposes. He also argues that grounding moral values in claims about a blank slate opens them to the possibility of being overturned by future empirical discoveries. He further argues that a blank slate is in fact inconsistent with opposition to many social evils since a blank slate could be conditioned to enjoy servitude and degradation. Evolutionary and genetic inequality arguments do not necessarily support right-wing policies. Pinker writes that if everyone was equal regarding abilities it can be argued that it is only necessary to give everyone equal opportunity. On the other hand, if some people have less innate ability through no fault of their own, then this can be taken as support for redistribution policies to those with less innate ability. Further, laissez-faire economics is built upon an assumption of a rational actor, while evolutionary psychology suggests that people have many different goals and behaviors that do not fit the rational actor theory. Raising living standards, also for the poor, is often used as an argument that inequality need not be reduced, while evolutionary psychology may suggest that low status itself, apart from material considerations, is highly psychologically stressful and may cause dangerous and desperate behaviors, supporting a society reducing inequalities. Finally, evolutionary explanations may also help the left create policies with greater public support, suggesting that people''s sense of fairness (caused by mechanisms such as reciprocal altruism) rather than greed is a primary cause of opposition to welfare, if there is not a distinction in the proposals between what is perceived as the deserving and the undeserving poor. Pinker also gives several examples of harm done by the belief in a blank slate of human nature: * totalitarian social engineering. If the human mind is a blank slate completely formed by the environment, then ruthlessly and totally controlling every aspect of the environment will create perfect minds. * Inappropriate or excessive blame on and guilt for parents since if their children do not turn out well this is assumed to be entirely environmentally caused and in particular due to the behavior of the parents. * release of dangerous psychopaths who quickly commit new crimes. * construction of massive and dreary tenement complexes since housing and environmental preferences are assumed to be culturally caused and superficial. * persecution and even mass murder of the successful who are assumed to have gained this unfairly. This includes not only individuals but entire successful groups who are assumed to have become successful unfairly and by exploitation of other groups. Examples include kulaks in the Soviet Union; teachers and "rich" peasants in the Cultural Revolution; and city dwellers and intellectuals under the Khmer Rouge.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

Velikovsky had put forward his ideas briefly in Theses for the Reconstruction of Ancient History in 1945, where he claimed that the history of the ancient Near East down to the time of Alexander the Great is garbled, but Ages in Chaos was his first full-length work on the subject. His starting point for the first volume of the series was that the Exodus took place not, as orthodoxy has it, at some point during the Egyptian New Kingdom, but at the fall of the Middle Kingdom. In this and later volumes, he made heavy use of the concept of "ghost doubles" or alter-egos: historical figures who were known by different names in two different sources (e.g. Egyptian and Greek) and were considered to be entirely different people living in different centuries, but who he proposed to be actually erroneously dated accounts of the same individuals and events. First he claimed that the Ipuwer Papyrus came from the beginning of Egypt''s Second Intermediate Period, and that this was an Egyptian account of the Plagues of Egypt. He then identified Tutimaios as the Pharaoh of the Exodus (much earlier than any of the mainstream candidates), the Hyksos with the biblical Amalekites, the Egyptian Pharaoh Hatshepsut with the Biblical Queen of Sheba, the land of Punt with Solomon''s kingdom, and Pharaoh Thutmose III with the Biblical King Shishak. He claimed that the Egyptian Amarna letters from the late 18th Dynasty describe events from the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, from roughly the time of King Ahab.

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Read - Listen - Learn

Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence: A Voegelinian Analysis

By Meins G. S. Coetsier

Nor Crystal Tears

By Alan Dean Foster

Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets

By Dav Pilkey

Flight of Eagles

By Jack Higgins

The Mysteries of Udolpho

By Ann Radcliffe

Clans of the Alphane Moon

By Philip K. Dick

The Naked Sun

By Isaac Asimov

The Magician: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel

By Michael Scott

Settling Accounts: In at the Death

By Harry Turtledove

The Highway Men

No Author Listed

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

By Steven Pinker

Ages in Chaos

By Immanuel Velikovsky