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Heaven in the American Imagination

2011-06-01 Religion
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Release : 2011-06-01
Genre : Religion
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 703/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Heaven in the American Imagination by : Gary Scott Smith

Download or read book Heaven in the American Imagination written by Gary Scott Smith. This book was released on 2011-06-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does heaven exist? If so, what is it like? And how does one get in? Throughout history, painters, poets, philosophers, pastors, and many ordinary people have pondered these questions. Perhaps no other topic captures the popular imagination quite like heaven. Gary Scott Smith examines how Americans from the Puritans to the present have imagined heaven. He argues that whether Americans have perceived heaven as reality or fantasy, as God's home or a human invention, as a source of inspiration and comfort or an opiate that distracts from earthly life, or as a place of worship or a perpetual playground has varied largely according to the spirit of the age. In the colonial era, conceptions of heaven focused primarily on the glory of God. For the Victorians, heaven was a warm, comfortable home where people would live forever with their family and friends. Today, heaven is often less distinctively Christian and more of a celestial entertainment center or a paradise where everyone can reach his full potential. Drawing on an astounding array of sources, including works of art, music, sociology, psychology, folklore, liturgy, sermons, poetry, fiction, jokes, and devotional books, Smith paints a sweeping, provocative portrait of what Americans-from Jonathan Edwards to Mitch Albom-have thought about heaven.

Nearest Thing to Heaven

2007-11-20 History
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Release : 2007-11-20
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 129/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Nearest Thing to Heaven by : Mark Kingwell

Download or read book Nearest Thing to Heaven written by Mark Kingwell. This book was released on 2007-11-20. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new perspective on a beloved cultural icon, its place in our history, and its meaning in the American imagination This elegantly written appreciation of the Empire State Building opens up the building's richness and importance as an icon of America. The book leads us through the facts surrounding the skyscraper's conception and construction, then enters into a provocative theoretical discussion of its function as an icon, its representation in pictures, literature, and film, and the implications of its iconic status as New York's most important architectural monument to ambition and optimism. The Empire State Building literally cannot be seen in its totality, from any perspective. And paradoxically, this building of unmistakable solidity has been made invisible by familiarity and reproduction through imagery. Mark Kingwell encourages us to look beneath the strong physical presence of the building, to become aware of its evolving layers of meaning, and to see how the building lives within a unique imaginative space in the landscape of the American consciousness. He offers new ways of understanding the Empire State Building in all its complexity and surprising insights into its special role as an American icon.

The Afterlife in Popular Culture

2023 SOCIAL SCIENCE
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Release : 2023
Genre : SOCIAL SCIENCE
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : /5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Afterlife in Popular Culture by : Kevin O'Neill

Download or read book The Afterlife in Popular Culture written by Kevin O'Neill. This book was released on 2023. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Afterlife in Popular Culture: Heaven, Hell, and the Underworld in the American Imagination gives students a fresh look at how Americans view the afterlife, helping readers understand how it's depicted in popular culture. What happens to us when we die? The book seeks to explore how that question has been answered in American popular culture. It begins with five framing essays that provide historical and intellectual background on ideas about the afterlife in Western culture. These essays are followed by more than 100 entries, each focusing on specific cultural products or authors that feature the afterlife front and center. Entry topics include novels, film, television shows, plays, works of nonfiction, graphic novels, and more, all of which address some aspect of what may await us after our passing. This book is unique in marrying a historical overview of the afterlife with detailed analyses of particular cultural products, such as films and novels. In addition, it covers these topics in nonspecialist language, written with a student audience in mind. The book provides historical context for contemporary depictions of the afterlife addressed in the entries, which deal specifically with work produced in the 20th and 21st centuries.

A History of Heaven

1999-01-03 History
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Release : 1999-01-03
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 840/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis A History of Heaven by : Jeffrey Burton Russell

Download or read book A History of Heaven written by Jeffrey Burton Russell. This book was released on 1999-01-03. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Well known for his historical accounts of Satan and hell, Jeffrey Burton Russell explores the brighter side of eternity: heaven. He not only examines concepts found among Jews, Greeks and Romans, but asks how time 'passes' in eternity.

The Book of Heaven

2014-11-04 Fiction
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Release : 2014-11-04
Genre : Fiction
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 557/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Book of Heaven by : Patricia Storace

Download or read book The Book of Heaven written by Patricia Storace. This book was released on 2014-11-04. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the acclaimed Dinner with Persephone comes a radically original novel about four women who invite us to imagine the divine anew: what if “a woman’s point of view” were also God’s? Patricia Storace’s Eve begins by telling us her version of what happened in Eden, and by revealing that our familiar constellations conceal other heavens we have never allowed ourselves to see. Each of the four subsequent chapters is the story of one of these new zodiacs, featuring images central to women: a knife, a cauldron, a garden, a pair of embracing lovers. The four women whose stories they tell are Job’s daughter, the Queen of Sheba, a polytheistic cook, and a transformed Sarah, wife of Abraham. Storace brilliantly reimagines the worlds of these women, freeing them from the old tales in which they were trapped and putting them in the foreground of their stories and of the Old Testament itself.

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