The very human need for religion and magic as supplements to scientific and technological knowledge is the subject of this work. In 1942 Hsu witnessed a cholera epidemic in a small rural settlement in Yunnan province, China, and found that, contrary to anthropological expectations, the Chinese responded to the crisis with a combination of conciliatory rituals and practical hygienic measures. More than thirty years later, he witnessed the elaborate ritualistic prepartions for another epidemic in the Shatin sub-division of Hong Kong and found the supernatural/empirical response to be virtually the same as in 1942. The author argues that, in spite of technological and intellectual sophistication, the human psychic need for magic and religion persists. He pursues this contention in a longitudinal analysis of this phenomenon in the South Seas, East Africa, and Indian and white America.

The first major history of what happened in Germany immediately after the Second World War 'Frederick Taylor is one of the brightest historians writing today.' Newsweek 'Taylor's book is popular history at its best, essential reading for anyone who is interested in the Nazis and wants to know what happened next.' New Statesman Germany had entered the twentieth century united, prosperous, and strong, admired by almost all humanity for its remarkable achievements. By 1945 it was a broken shell: its great cities lay in ruins and its shattered industries and cultural heritage seemed utterly beyond saving. The Germans themselves had come to be regarded as evil monsters. After six years of warfare how were the exhausted victors to handle the end of a horror that to most people seemed without precedent? In Exorcising Hitler, Frederick Taylor tells the story of Germany's year zero and what came after. As he describes the final Allied campaign, the hunting down of the Nazi resistance, the vast displacement of peoples in central and eastern Europe, the attitudes of the conquerors, the competition between Soviet Russia and the West, the hunger and near starvation of a once proud people, the initially naive attempt at expunging Nazism from all aspects of German life and the later more pragmatic approach, we begin to understand that despite almost total destruction, a combination of conservatism, enterprise and pragmatism in relation to former Nazis enabled the economic miracle of the 1950s. And we see how it was only when the '60s generation (the children of the Nazi era) began to question their parents with increasing violence that Germany began to awake from its 'sleep cure'.

A truly remarkable explosion of interest in the self has taken place in the past two decades, in psychology and related disciplines. This book presents a wide range of recent work on the self, from self-awareness in chimpanzees to multiple-personality disorders, self-esteem in adolescents, as well as fundamental issues going back to the work of James, Cooley and others. Three main groups or clusters of themes emerge. The first cluster consists of chapters that discuss the organization and coherence of the self; the second one deals with self-awareness and self-deception; and the third one examines, in new ways, the question of the relationship between self and other. While it is difficult to predict exactly where future work on the self will lead scholars, this work points in some significant directions and provides a firm reference in the field.

Superstition and Magic in Early Modern Europe brings together a rich selection of essays which represent the most important historical research on religion, magic and superstition in early modern Europe. Each essay makes a significant contribution to the history of magic and religion in its own right, while together they demonstrate how debates over the topic have evolved over time, providing invaluable intellectual, historical, and socio-political context for readers approaching the subject for the first time. The essays are organised around five key themes and areas of controversy. Part One tackles superstition; Part Two, the tension between miracles and magic; Part Three, ghosts and apparitions; Part Four, witchcraft and witch trials; and Part Five, the gradual disintegration of the 'magical universe' in the face of scientific, religious and practical opposition. Each part is prefaced by an introduction that provides an outline of the historiography and engages with recent scholarship and debate, setting the context for the essays that follow and providing a foundation for further study. This collection is an invaluable toolkit for students of early modern Europe, providing both a focused overview and a springboard for broader thinking about the underlying continuities and discontinuities that make the study of magic and superstition a perennially fascinating topic.

Jake Dee is your average private detective. Finding lost items, doing background checks, not getting himself murdered, the usual. Except he’s an independent wizard in a world of Covens that will not tolerate his existence if they ever find him out. One spring day at sunset, he sees an angel fall right in front of him. She’s everything he ever wanted in a leading lady: beautiful, cold and probably dangerous. He immediately elects himself to protect her, whether from demons who want a fight or his best friend, Lucifer Morningstar, the First of the Fallen and a terrible flirt. Finding her shoeless and homeless, he takes her to his apartment. She’s new to Earth and has a lot to learn, and Jake’s the one who’s more than willing to teach her. So what sparks will fly between a boy with a private license and a girl with black wings?

The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine is an extensive, interdisciplinary guide to the nature of traditional medicine and healing in the Chinese cultural region, and its plural epistemologies. Established experts and the next generation of scholars interpret the ways in which Chinese medicine has been understood and portrayed from the beginning of the empire (third century BCE) to the globalisation of Chinese products and practices in the present day, taking in subjects from ancient medical writings to therapeutic movement, to talismans for healing and traditional medicines that have inspired global solutions to contemporary epidemics. The volume is divided into seven parts: Longue Durée and Formation of Institutions and Traditions Sickness and Healing Food and Sex Spiritual and Orthodox Religious Practices The World of Sinographic Medicine Wider Diasporas Negotiating Modernity This handbook therefore introduces the broad range of ideas and techniques that comprise pre-modern medicine in China, and the historiographical and ethnographic approaches that have illuminated them. It will prove a useful resource to students and scholars of Chinese studies, and the history of medicine and anthropology. It will also be of interest to practitioners, patients and specialists wishing to refresh their knowledge with the latest developments in the field. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

Most people believe that science arose as a natural end-product of our innate intelligence and curiosity, as an inevitable stage in human intellectual development. But physicist and educator Alan Cromer disputes this belief. Cromer argues that science is not the natural unfolding of human potential, but the invention of a particular culture, Greece, in a particular historical period. Indeed, far from being natural, scientific thinking goes so far against the grain of conventional human thought that if it hadn't been discovered in Greece, it might not have been discovered at all. In Uncommon Sense, Alan Cromer develops the argument that science represents a radically new and different way of thinking. Using Piaget's stages of intellectual development, he shows that conventional thinking remains mired in subjective, "egocentric" ways of looking at the world--most people even today still believe in astrology, ESP, UFOs, ghosts and other paranormal phenomena--a mode of thought that science has outgrown. He provides a fascinating explanation of why science began in Greece, contrasting the Greek practice of debate to the Judaic reliance on prophets for acquiring knowledge. Other factors, such as a maritime economy and wandering scholars (both of which prevented parochialism) and an essentially literary religion not dominated by priests, also promoted in Greece an objective, analytical way of thinking not found elsewhere in the ancient world. He examines India and China and explains why science could not develop in either country. In China, for instance, astronomy served only the state, and the private study of astronomy was forbidden. Cromer also provides a perceptive account of science in Renaissance Europe and of figures such as Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. Along the way, Cromer touches on many intriguing topics, arguing, for instance, that much of science is essential complete; there are no new elements yet to be discovered. He debunks the vaunted SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project, which costs taxpayers millions each year, showing that physical limits--such as the melting point of metal--put an absolute limit on the speed of space travel, making trips to even the nearest star all but impossible. Finally, Cromer discusses the deplorable state of science education in America and suggests several provocative innovations to improve high school education, including a radical proposal to give all students an intensive eighth and ninth year program, eliminating the last two years of high school. Uncommon Sense is an illuminating look at science, filled with provocative observations. Whether challenging Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions, or extolling the virtues of Euclid's Elements, Alan Cromer is always insightful, outspoken, and refreshingly original.

Renowned author Ariel Dorfman, obsessed for twenty-five years with the malignant shadow General Pinochet cast upon Chile and the world, followed every twist and turn of the four year old trial in Great Britain, Spain and Chile as well as in the U.S., the country that had created Pinochet. Told as a suspense thriller, filled with court-room drama and sudden reversals of fortune, the book at the same time addresses some of today's most burning issues, made all the more urgent after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001. What are the limits of national sovereignty in a globalizing world? How does an ever more interconnected world judge crimes committed against humanity? What role do memory and pain and the rights of the survivors play in this struggle for a new system of justice? But above all, the author, by listening carefully to the voices of Pinochet's many victims, explores how can we purge ourselves of terror and fear once we have been traumatized, and asks if we can build peace and reconciliation without facing a turbulent and perverse past.

Witchcraft has always been a fluid and intriguing belief system that has enchanted and sometimes terrified humanity. For over forty years, A History of Witchcraft has provided the authoritative history of witchery and the occult. Beginning with magic in the ancient world, Jeffrey Russell explores the definition of witchcraft in its many diverse forms, from the worship of the Greek goddess of magic, Hecate, through the witch-crazes of the 15th and 16th centuries to the development of modern witchcraft by Aleister Crowley and Gerald Gardner in the early 20th century. Brooks Alexander analyses the development of witchcraft and neopaganism in the present day, charting the dissemination of modern witchcraft through modern media and the tensions that arise when a secretive cult becomes an open and recognized religion. This updated edition features a new chapter exploring the challenges that witchcraft has faced in the past decade, including the rise of social media platforms like Instagram and Tik Tok, the coronavirus pandemic and new neopagan groups.