This book synthesizes views of America's changing environment, and the Ideal of that environment, from the time of the Founding Fathers to the present. It is an exceptionally engaging account of American attitudes toward pristine and altered landscapes which they encountered, settled in, modified, and moved westward from during the last three centuries.

Illustrated throughout with rare stills, and organized so as to provide historical context, this book surveys an array of films that have offered us glimpses of a life that is meaningful, free from strife, devoid of pain and privation, and full of harmony in every sense.

The author demonstrates that the apparent contradictions in the poetic, dramatic, and conceptual framework of Paradise Lost are purposive, indeed central, to Milton's kinesthetic poetics.

R. Michael is always seeking the joys of beauty in all of life loving, working, living and learning in NYC. He has also sought it through the eyes of others. This is his eighth work.

Echoes of a Vision of Paradise Volume 1 presents the idea that a human, Soul-possessing Spirit Being—a gated, unmodulated potential carrier of light—who is unaware of the Divine Plan is not yet considered enlightened. To be enlightened one must be a Soul-possessing Spirit (gated and modulated) Being or an enlightened (aware of the engraved Image and Beauty of God within-Soul-possessing), Spirit (gated, modulated carrier), a Light being! To be an enlightened being, you are aware that you are aware that you are a manifestation of God—able to reflect, as in an image. Second, you have the knowingness that God does what He Wills and as He Pleases. In other words, you are His design and no matter what, all paths lead to God! Whatever one may be doing will eventually lead to the process of enlightenment. The only question remaining is, how do you choose to make your journey? Swift and smooth, or slow and harsh? *** One dot of light is a symbol used to represent the whole of Creation. Within this dot of light, everything that is unmanifested and manifested, hidden and seen, far and near is contained as an ever-present potential in transit, expanding and transcending over time into unified fields of a—the Spirit of slow, collapsing gating systems. Infinite points of entry are assembled into structures with forms and functions that translate information into systems of intelligent life and more, male and female human pairings as eternal companions that vibrate in a definite pattern of Light.

We have not heard of anyone besides the present author who has experienced near-death multiple times over a forty-year period. In fact, this author has experienced going to the other side more than half-a dozen times, each different than the one before, as well as over a dozen out-of-body events that leave the body interacting with others who remain unaware of the occurrence. We also know others who have died and come back. These unique experiences were meant to open up a new realm of understanding that tells a more complete story of existencea story of eternity that takes entities outside the box. We are seekers of knowledge and the love of God. Once we are connected to the root (the soul), responding to the clarion call from the beloved, forming communities of the Called (Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Bahai, and others), awaiting to be chosen, obtain our missions, and assist in the advance of an eternal civilization, having each found, through the journey, his or her eternal companion. We exist to serve God, lord of all the worlds, eternally. We are entities, potentials in transit and transcendence, from one to other worlds of God. We are Soul-possessingthe engraved image of the Creator through which He reveals His beauty. This gives each of us a soul-based state of awarenesstenth-dimensionally speaking. We are spirits, imperceptible fields of activity, the precursor engine of all that becomes manifested.