A myth is a narrative projection of a given cultural group's sense of its sacred past and its significant relationship with the deeper powers of the surrounding world and universe. A myth is a projection of an aspect of a culture's soul. In its complex but revealing symbolism, a myth is to a culture what a dream is to an...
Clashes between European powers and the indigenous peoples of the Americas began almost immediately upon the arrival of the first Europeans on the shores of the New World. Such conflict seems inevitable in retrospect, and perhaps it should have been expected at the outset as well. The great disparity between the two cultures,...
This invaluable A-to-Z reference work presents nearly 300 entries that survey the history of prisoners of war and interned civilians from the earliest times to the present, with emphasis on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It explores such themes as famous prisoners of war throughout history, medical conditions, atrocities, escapes,...
From Kosovo to Kashmir, from Northern Ireland to Nigeria, most conflicts in the world today are ethnic conflicts over territory. This encyclopedia covers ethnic separatism and related topics. Members of an ethnic group share a common culture and can be distinguished from members of other groups by some social characteristic such as race,...
This book is a biographical listing of the 198 British leaders who filled the top four offices of state and the post of secretary of state for the colonies between 1730 and the present. The entries are arranged in alphabetical order either by birth name or by title—whichever the given individual was best known by. For...
The title of this book implies that it is about things—gadgets and necessities within the twentieth-century home. In a way it is, but we hope that it is a little more than that. It is about people and their ideas, about their relationships with things and the value they placed upon them. It is also about people as the...
From our very first contacts, our relationships with Native American healers has continually been a love-hate affair. This unusual dichotomy stems from the fact that Native Americans have always seen external reality through different eyes. They inhabit a world in which the Creator is known only as a "Great Mystery." Such...
It is estimated that 20 percent of all emergency room visits are due to foodborne illness. As dietary habits change to include more meals prepared away from home, higher consumption of fresh foods, and more imported foods, the risks of foodborne illness change. Food safety procedures that we learned from our parents may not be sufficient to keep us...
Any folklorist who saw the 1998 Columbia Pictures film Urban Legend will probably remember the library scene for its depiction of one aspect of folklore research. In this scene the beautiful student Natalie (played by Alicia Witt) suspects that recent campus mayhem was inspired by urban legends, the same kind of stories...
At first glance, it would seem that Mexico and the United States should have been good neighbors in the nineteenth century—they were both relatively young countries that had rebelled against a mother nation to establish republics. As they grew, they both had to deal with states with populations that believed that their...
Seal (of the Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia) has put together an interesting if sporadic collection of folk heroes. He refers to it as a "representative collection of legendary, historical, and magical heroes from many of the world's extensive folklores." South and Central America receive very little coverage....
