A rose, a cross, a heart, and hundreds of other common items hold great symbolic value--their meanings as varied as they are powerful. This encyclopedic work explores the rich and diverse meanings of more than 2,000 symbols, delving into the power of symbols in the past and present worlds of mythology, fairy tales, religion, literature, history, and archaeology. Over 600 illust...(展开全部)

Images of the Buddha are everywhere—not just in temples but also in museums and homes and online—but what these images mean largely depends on the background and circumstance of those viewing them. In Behold the Buddha, James Dobbins invites readers to imagine how premodern Japanese Buddhists understood and experienced icons in temple settings long before the advent of museums ...(展开全部)

Modern men and women go about their lives without really knowing why. Why do we work for such a long time every day? Why are we so obsessed with technology? Why do we continuously construct scandals? Why do we finish one war only to fight another? If we had to explain these things, we would say "it just makes sense" or "it's necessary" or "it's what good (or bad) people do". Bu...(展开全部)

Modern men and women go about their lives without really knowing why. Why do we work for such a long time every day? Why are we so obsessed with technology? Why do we continuously construct scandals? Why do we finish one war only to fight another? If we had to explain these things, we would say "it just makes sense" or "it's necessary" or "it's what good (or bad) people do". Bu...(展开全部)

In "The Meanings of Social Life", Jeffrey Alexander presents a new approach to how culture works in contemporary societies. Exposing our everyday myths and narratives in a series of empirical studies that range from Watergate to the Holocaust, he shows how these unseen, yet potent cultural structures translate into concrete actions and institutions. Only when these deep pattern...(展开全部)

Coca-Cola. Harley-Davidson. Nike. Budweiser. Valued by customers more for what they symbolize than for what they do, products like these are more than brands--they are cultural icons. How do managers create brands that resonate so powerfully with consumers? Based on extensive historical analyses of some of America's most successful iconic brands, including ESPN, Mountain Dew, V...(展开全部)

Archimedes to Hawking takes the reader on a journey across the centuries as it explores the eponymous physical laws-from Archimedes' Law of Buoyancy and Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion-whose ramifications have profoundly altered our everyday lives and our understanding of the universe. Throughout this ...(展开全部)

Archimedes to Hawking takes the reader on a journey across the centuries as it explores the eponymous physical laws-from Archimedes' Law of Buoyancy and Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Hubble's Law of Cosmic Expansion-whose ramifications have profoundly altered our everyday lives and our understanding of the universe. Throughout this ...(展开全部)

Extending the inquiry of his early groundbreaking books, Christopher Small strikes at the heart of traditional studies of Western music by asserting that music is not a thing, but rather an activity. In this new book, Small outlines a theory of what he terms "musicking," a verb that encompasses all musical activity from composing to performing to listening to a Walkman to singi...(展开全部)

Symbolism of Evil is a Beacon Press publication.