HOWARD MEANS

Los dioses no existen, incluyendo por supuesto al Dios hebreo, Jehová y su reedición tricéfala cristiana son un invento patriarcal de los hombres primitivos para sojuzgar la tierra y a sus habitantes, particularmente a las mujeres. La religion es el prejuicio mas dañino de la humanidad por lo que debe erradicarse.

This portrait of Johnny Appleseed restores the flesh-and-blood man beneath the many myths. It captures the boldness of an iconic American life and the sadness of his last years, as the frontier marched past him, ever westward. And it shows how death liberated the legend and made of Johnny a barometer of the nations feelings about its own heroic past and the supposed Eden it once had been. It is a book that does for Americas inner frontier what Stephen Ambroses Undaunted Courage did for its western one. No American folk heronot Davy Crockett, not even Daniel Booneis better known than Johnny Appleseed, and none has become more trapped in his own legends. The fact is, John Chapmanthe historical Johnny Appleseedmight well be the best-known figure from our national past about whom most people know almost nothing real at all. One early historian called Chapman the oddest character in all our history, and not without cause. Chapman was an animal whisperer, a vegetarian in a raw country where it was far easier to kill game than grow a crop, a pacifist in a place ruled by gun, knife, and fist. Some settlers considered Chapman a New World saint. Others thought he had been kicked in the head by a horse. And yet he was welcomed almost everywhere, and stories about him floated from cabin to cabin, village to village, just as he did. As eccentric as he was, John Chapman was also very much a man of his times: a land speculator and pioneer nurseryman with an uncanny sense for where settlement was moving next, and an evangelist for the Church of the New Jerusalem on a frontier alive with religious fervor. His story is equally Americas story at the birth of the nation. In this tale of the wilderness and its taming, author Howard Means explores how our national past gets mythologized and hired out. Mostly, though, this is the story of two men, one real and one invented; of the times they lived through, the ties that link them, and the gulf that separates them; of the uses to which both have been put; and of what that tells us about ourselves, then and now.

Choose a stroke and get paddling through the human history of swimming! From mans first recorded dip into whats now the driest spot on earth to the splashing, sparkling pool party in your backyard, humans have been getting wet for 10,000 years. And for most of modern history, swimming has caused a ripple that touches us all--the heroes and the ordinary folk; the real and the mythic. Splash! dives into Egypt, winds through ancient Greece and Rome, flows mostly underground through the Dark and Middle Ages (at least in Europe), and then reemerges in the wake of the Renaissance before taking its final lap at todays Olympic games. Along the way, it kicks away the idea that swimming is just about moving through water, about speed or great feats of aquatic endurance, and shows you how much more it can be. Its history offers a multi-tiered tour through religion, fashion, architecture, sanitation and public health, colonialism, segregation and integration, sexism, sexiness, guts, glory, and much, much more. Unique and compelling, Splash! sweeps across the whole of humankinds swimming history--and just like jumping into a pool on a hot summers day, it has fun along the way.

This fascinating history of how, where and why humans swim...is perfect reading for those missing a splash-about during the lockdown.GuardianFrom the first recorded dip into whats now the driest spot on earth to the recreational swimmers in your local pool, humans have been getting wet for 10,000 years. And for most of modern history, swimming has caused a ripple that touches us all.Splash! dives into Egypt, winds through ancient Greece and Rome, flows mostly underground through the Dark and Middle Ages (at least in Europe), and then re-emerges in the wake of the Renaissance before taking its final lap at the modern Olympic Games. Along the way, it kicks away the idea that swimming is just about speed or great feats of aquatic endurance, revealing how its history spans religion, fashion, architecture, public health, colonialism, segregation, sexism, sexiness, guts, glory and much, much more.As refreshing as jumping into a pool on a hot summers day, Splash! sweeps across the whole of humankinds swimming history with an irrepressible enthusiasm that will make you crave your next dip.

Cahaba Prison, Alabama, April 1865 Finally, you learn to wait. You learn to wait while the rain falls for four days and nights; wait as the rivers rise over their banks, carrying with them the town shit and your own; wait as this new sewer-lake begins seeping into the cotton warehouse that is now a prison, your home. And then you learn to wait in your skin and bones: wait as the sewer-lake-pond-river consumes your toes, your feet, your ankles; wait as it crawls up your shins and over your knees; wait until your balls and prick are sodden; and then wait some more because when you are standing in a flood and not allowed to leave, there is nothing else to do. Thus begins this compelling work of historical fiction that, while taking place mostly on land, begins and ends, as it must, in water: The river that overflowed a Confederate prison camp in Alabama and, at the other end, the mighty Mississippi, all that stood between broken men finally returning to homes and loved ones they had left behind years earlier. At the heart of the novel are four invented prisoners from Indiana, the Muncie MenGeorge, Ephraim, Henry, and Jakeand a boy named Boy. This is their story, but its also the story of the tens of thousands of real-life captives who survived, or didnt, often unspeakable conditions in Civil War prison camps, both North and South, and of the greed and corruption that often thrives on the sidelines of great conflicts. The Sultana had a listed capacity of 376 passengers when it set out from Vicksburg, Mississippi, on the night of April 24, 1865, with more than 2,000 on board, the vast majority of them Union Army POWs, homeward bound at last. A single surviving photograph captures the joy of that passage. Nothing other than fiction can capture its end. Writes author Howard Means: "I hope this novel at least offers solace because, most of all, this is a book about love."