Books about Strangely from Amazon.com

A hugely entertaining look at the institution of monarchy by Britain's most combative and best-loved broadcaster.

The notable characteristic of the royal families of Europe is that they have so very little of anything remotely resembling true power. Increasingly, they tend towards the condition of pipsqueak principalities like Liechtenstein and Monaco--fancy-dress fodder for magazines that survive by telling us things we did not need to know about people we have hardly heard of.

How then have kings and queens come to exercise the mesmeric hold they have upon our imaginations? In On Royalty renowned BBC journalist Jeremy Paxman examines the role of the British monarchy in an age when divine right no longer prevails and governing powers fall to the country's elected leaders. With intelligence and humor, he scrutinizes every aspect of the monarchy and how it has related to politics, religion, the military and the law. He takes us inside Buckingham Palace and illuminates the lives of the monarchs, at once mundane, absurd and magical. What Desmond Morris did for apes, Paxman has done for these primus inter primates: the royal families. Gilded history, weird anthropology and surreal reportage of the royals up close combine in On Royalty, a brilliant investigation into how an ancient institution struggles for meaning in a modern country..
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In her sympathetic pictures of contortionists, dwarves, ballroom dancers and wrestlers from small towns in Israel, Ukraine, Eastern Europe and England, Michal Chelbin offers a glimpse into worlds both strange and familiar. Her subjects--usually individuals on society's margins--tend to be portrayed offstage, at home or on the street or in a park, and in a disarmingly direct engagement with the viewer: "My aim is to record a scene where there is a mixture of direct information and enigmas and in which there are visual contrasts between young and old, large and small, normal and abnormal," she writes. This sense of candid confrontation between subject and camera is particularly disarming when those subjects are prepubescent girls, whose bodies, as Chelbin puts it, "might be still that of a child, [but] their gazes sometimes imply differently." Chelbin's palette is intensely saturated with distinctive pinks, blues and greens, evoking a painterly atmosphere, even occasionally making explicit reference to art history. Though her influences are evident--most notably August Sander and Diane Arbus--the compelling photographs gathered in this first monograph have a unique visual and emotional impact..
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Nick Bantock's illustrated novel, The Venetian's Wife, is part love story, part mystery, and part ghostly tale --and an altogether bewitching brew of sensuality and lost treasures Thoroughly bored with her job at the local museum, Sarah heads to the gallery to take another look at that new drawing, the one she can't stop thinking about, the one of the Hindu god Shiva, who dances...That's when it all begins. The next day, an e-mail message brings her a job offer: to find the few remaining pieces of a 15th-century adventurer's renowned collection of Indian sculptures. Her employer, curiously, wishes to communicate only by computer. She has no idea who he is or why he wants her. But other mysteries soon preoccupy her, such as the meaning of an enigmatic illuminated manuscript -- and the sensual transformation that seems to be overtaking her. Through her quirkily decorated diary and the artful e-mail exchanges between Sara and her mentor, Nick Bantock has conjured up a richly illustrated tale of a relentless quest, an amorous legacy, and the resonating power of art -- a lush, romantic adventure of the soul that tantalizes the reader to the last line.?

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"It was strangely like war. They attacked the forest as if it were an enemy to be pushed back from the beachheads, driven into the hills, broken into patches, and wiped out. Many operators thought they were not only making lumber but liberating the land from the trees. . ." from The Last Wilderness, by Murray Morgan, 1976

Derrick Jensen, prize-winning author of A Language Older than Words and The Culture of Make Believe, and George Draffan, activist, researcher, and co-author with Jensen of Railroads & Clearcuts, collaborate again to expose the escalating global war on trees. Ever since Gilgamesh cut down the ancient cedar forests of Mesopotamia, civilizations and empires have foundered and collapsed in the wake of widespread deforestation. Today, with three quarters of the world’s original forests gone and the pace of cutting, clearing, processing, and pulping ever accelerating, Jensen and Draffan lay bare the stark scenario we face—we being not only people, but the nonhuman fabric of life itself—unless deforestation is slowed and stopped. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the relationship between deforestation and our ecological crisis as well as an essential "handbook" for forest and anti-globalization activists..
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The notable characteristic of the royal families of Europe is that they have so very little of anything remotely resembling true power. Increasingly, they tend towards the condition of pipsqueak principalities like Liechtenstein and Monaco--fancy-dress fodder for magazines that survive by telling us things we did not need to know about people we have hardly heard of.

How then have kings and queens come to exercise the mesmeric hold they have upon our imaginations? In On Royalty, renowned BBC journalist Jeremy Paxman examines the role of the British monarchy in an age when divine right no longer prevails and governing powers fall to the country's elected leaders. What Desmond Morris did for apes, Paxman has done for these primus inter primates: the royal families..
Price: $5.05 [Notify me when price goes down.]

An English boy gains a personal acquaintance with John Wesley whose preachings change his entire life..
Price: $3.89 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In his seventh book on folklore and symbolism, Gary R. Varner provides a look at strange and grotesque images we see everyday on our churches, banks and in our cemeteries. Images with origins far older than the structures they adorn. What are the meanings behind these grotesque creatures, why are carvings of griffins and dragons, unicorns and Green Men found throughout the world on churches and cathedrals, government buildings and even apartment buildings? Illustrated with over 50 original photographs, Varner explores the meanings of the carvings found on both old and contemporary buildings, from France and Great Britain to New York and California. In addition, Varner explores strange images that are commonly seen in our cemeteries, engraved on grave-markers and tombs. This is a book for anyone interested in symbolism and folklore, architectural history and the development of religion. Gary R. Varner is a member of the American Folklore Society and the Foundation for Mythological Studies..
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Young Robert Upton peddled his father's wares on the streets of London. One day he met a fiery little preacher named John Wesley. Robert's life would never be the same again.
At first he didn't know what to think of the people called Methodists he helped some other boys break up an evening meeting by beating loudly on old pots and pans.
But Robert began to admire John Wesley. He saw how Wesley's preaching changed the lives of many people -- event some who tried to stop him. Robert heard people talk about being "converted." He wasn't sure what they meant.
Robert and his father went to Wesley's meetings whenever they coud. They saw that Wesley took an interest in common people like themselves. He wrote booklets and talked to people about God.
Gradually Robert began to understand what Wesley's preaching was all about. As he allowed God to work in his life, Robert found that his own heart, life Wesley's, was strangely warmed..
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"It was Rebecca's son, Thomas, who first realized the victim's identity His eyes were drawn to the victim's head, and aided by the flickering light of a candle, he 'clapt his hands and cryed out, Oh Lord, it is my mother.' James Moills, a servant of Cornell . . . described Rebecca 'lying on the floore, with fire about Her, from her Lower parts neare to the Armepits.' He recognized her only 'by her shoes.'"-from Killed Strangely

On a winter's evening in 1673, tragedy descended on the respectable Rhode Island household of Thomas Cornell. His 73-year-old mother, Rebecca, was found close to her bedroom's large fireplace, dead and badly burned. The legal owner of the Cornells' hundred acres along Narragansett Bay, Rebecca shared her home with Thomas and his family, a servant, and a lodger. A coroner's panel initially declared her death "an Unhappie Accident," but before summer arrived, a dark web of events-rumors of domestic abuse, allusions to witchcraft, even the testimony of Rebecca's ghost through her brother-resulted in Thomas's trial for matricide. Such were the ambiguities of the case that others would be tried for the murder as well.

Rebecca is a direct ancestor of Cornell University's founder, Ezra Cornell. Elaine Forman Crane tells the compelling story of Rebecca's death and its aftermath, vividly depicting the world in which she lived. That world included a legal system where jurors were expected to be familiar with the defendant and case before the trial even began. Rebecca's strange death was an event of cataclysmic proportions, affecting not only her own community, but neighboring towns as well.

The documents from Thomas's trial provide a rare glimpse into seventeenth- century life. Crane writes, "Instead of the harmony and respect that sermon literature, laws, and a hierarchical/patriarchal society attempted to impose, evidence illustrates filial insolence, generational conflict, disrespect toward the elderly, power plays between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, [and] adult dependence on (and resentment of) aging parents who clung to purse strings." Yet even at a distance of more than three hundred years, Rebecca Cornell's story is poignantly familiar. Her complaints of domestic abuse, Crane says, went largely unheeded by friends and neighbors until, at last, their complacency was shattered by her terrible death..
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