Here are 100 books that The Wisdom of the Myths fans have personally recommended if you like
The Wisdom of the Myths.
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I have been writing poetry for 60 years, often basing my poems on Greek myths and Hebrew stories. I have won various prizes for my work and now sit on the Advisory Board of The Society of Classical Poets in New York. In addition, I am a regular feature writer on culture, classics, and poetry for The Epoch Times. Thus, I live and breathe myth, epic, and poetry! Also, I have a First Class honors degree (aka: Summa Cum Laude) in English Literature alongside two post-graduate degrees, one with Distinction.
I love this book because it tells the well-known stories of the early Greek gods and investigates many of their mythology's lesser-known aspects.
Furthermore, the book is written in a witty and entertaining style whilst simultaneously remaining erudite and deep–a difficult balance to achieve. This is a perfect complement to Fry’s equally brilliant The Ode Less Travelled, and it left me wanting to know more.
STEP INTO ANOTHER WORLD - OF MAGIC, MAYHEM, MONSTERS AND MANIACAL GODS - IN STEPHEN FRY'S MOMENTOUS SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, MYTHOS
'A romp through the lives of ancient Greek gods. Fry is at his story-telling best . . . the gods will be pleased' Times ___________
No one loves and quarrels, desires and deceives as boldly or brilliantly as Greek gods and goddesses.
In Stephen Fry's vivid retelling, we gaze in wonder as wise Athena is born from the cracking open of the great head of Zeus and follow doomed Persephone into the dark and lonely realm of the Underworld.…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I have been writing poetry for 60 years, often basing my poems on Greek myths and Hebrew stories. I have won various prizes for my work and now sit on the Advisory Board of The Society of Classical Poets in New York. In addition, I am a regular feature writer on culture, classics, and poetry for The Epoch Times. Thus, I live and breathe myth, epic, and poetry! Also, I have a First Class honors degree (aka: Summa Cum Laude) in English Literature alongside two post-graduate degrees, one with Distinction.
This is a short, easy-to-digest book, but what a genius book it is! While the other books are specifically about Greek myths, Armstrong deals with the question of myth across all cultures.
Her definition of a myth is one of the profoundest I have come across, and I regularly quote it: “A myth, it will be recalled, is an event that–in some sense–happened once, but which also happens all the time.” Hence why we can talk about the Oedipus complex and such-like: for they happen all the time.
As long as we have been human, we have been mythmakers. In A Short History of Myth, Karen Armstrong holds up the mirror of mythology to show us the history of ourselves, and embarks on a journey that begins at a Neanderthal graveside and ends buried in the heart of the modern novel.
Surprising, powerful and profound, A Short History of Myth examines the world's most ancient art form - the making and telling of stories - and why we still need it.
The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a…
I have been writing poetry for 60 years, often basing my poems on Greek myths and Hebrew stories. I have won various prizes for my work and now sit on the Advisory Board of The Society of Classical Poets in New York. In addition, I am a regular feature writer on culture, classics, and poetry for The Epoch Times. Thus, I live and breathe myth, epic, and poetry! Also, I have a First Class honors degree (aka: Summa Cum Laude) in English Literature alongside two post-graduate degrees, one with Distinction.
This book not only tells the tales but also points out their significance for us today. The author is a psychiatrist and so there is a profound psychological approach to un-packing what is going on.
The book covers not the entire sweep of Greek myths, but instead focuses on just 12, and what a brilliant selection it is: ranging from the well-known myth of Narcissus to the less well-known Plato’s myth of Er. Fascinating stuff.
Not just the stories, but what they mean. Are myths really the repositories of deep wisdom and mystical secrets?
Readers' Favorite Book Award Winner
What is myth, and why does it have such a hold on the human mind? How does myth relate to near forms such as legend and fairy tale, and to other modes of understanding such as religion and science? What is a hero, what is a monster, and what function does magic serve? How has our relationship with myth and mythology changed over the centuries? And are there any modern myths?
Stealing technology from parallel Earths was supposed to make Declan rich. Instead, it might destroy everything.
Declan is a self-proclaimed interdimensional interloper, travelling to parallel Earths to retrieve futuristic cutting-edge technology for his employer. It's profitable work, and he doesn't ask questions. But when he befriends an amazing humanoid robot,…
I have been writing poetry for 60 years, often basing my poems on Greek myths and Hebrew stories. I have won various prizes for my work and now sit on the Advisory Board of The Society of Classical Poets in New York. In addition, I am a regular feature writer on culture, classics, and poetry for The Epoch Times. Thus, I live and breathe myth, epic, and poetry! Also, I have a First Class honors degree (aka: Summa Cum Laude) in English Literature alongside two post-graduate degrees, one with Distinction.
This book is really the definitive replacement to Robert Graves’ awesome The Greek Myths, which held sway for 50 years or so as the go-to book for detailed explanation alongside obscure erudition.
The good thing is, March’s book, whilst amazingly erudite and ‘complete’ (if one can ever be), is also highly readable and organized in a much superior and reader-friendly way than the Graves’ volumes. I like reference books, and this is my default classical reference book now.
What were the twelve labours of Herakles? Why did Zeus turn himself into a shower of gold? What was the name of the guard-dog of the Underworld? Which two-faced Roman god gave his name to the month January? What is the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx?
The myths of ancient Greece and Rome are the most dramatic and unforgettable tales of love, war, heroism and betrayal ever told. Whether it's Ikaros flying too close to the sun, Prometheus stealing fire from the gods or the tragedy of Oedipus, their characters have inspired art, literature, plays and films, and…
The best fiction explores complex relationships between friends and lovers. I’ve been fascinated by this for as long as I can remember because love and friendship are the cornerstones of human existence. As concepts, they give life meaning yet can also take it away. They bring us together but can also leave us estranged. The sun-soaked cities of Europe have for so long been playgrounds for young lovers and friends, enjoying both the best of life and the most melancholy. I love traveling Europe–the grandeur, the romance, the happy-sad sentiment of it all. It embodies the topic and makes for the most beautiful setting.
Fitzgerald’s mastery of the English language is beautiful to behold. This book is one of the most eloquent expositions of the control of his prose while at the same time confronting his greatest weakness in life: an inability to find happiness and true love that loves him back. Set on the French Riviera, Tender is the Night is honest and painful. It’s an insight into Fitzgerald’s melancholy world of excess.
This is both fantastic to be a part of and tragic. The tragedy and the beauty are juxtaposed in the most fantastic way–this makes this book one of my favorite romances. I read this book for pure enjoyment. Each sentence makes me smile with its beauty and its profundity.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in a friend's copy of Tender Is the Night, "If you liked The Great Gatsby, for God's sake read this. Gatsby was a tour de force but this is a confession of faith." Set in the South of France in the decade after World War I, Tender Is the Night is the story of a brilliant and magnetic psychiatrist named Dick Diver; the bewitching, wealthy, and dangerously unstable mental patient, Nicole, who becomes his wife; and the beautiful, harrowing ten-year pas de deux they act out along the border between sanity and madness. In Tender Is…
Moral injury, post-traumatic stress, and the dark night of the soul are human conditions I understand well. See, over the course of a lengthy military career, I deployed overseas many times, including to Afghanistan. In my last two deployments, I served as the legal advisor to a joint special operations task force. In this role, I advised on more than 500 “strikes”: air attacks intended to kill humans. When I returned from Afghanistan in 2018, I noticed a change in me, and I’ve been living with moral injury and post-traumatic stress since. This list helped me, particularly with the lesser-known “moral injury,” and I sincerely hope it helps you too.
Oftentimes, we focus on the injured individual, forgetting that the injuries extend to—and harm—others in our immediate orbit: spouses, children, family, and friends. I appreciated, therefore, that Wood, in detailing moral injuries to our servicemembers, simultaneously exposes the reader to the soul wound-adjacent injuries to our loved ones, reminding us of the aphorism, “hurt people hurt people.”
My list contains a theme, of course: that the responsibility for helping those living with moral injury and post-traumatic stress heal lies beyond the individual, requires the community. So I welcomed Wood’s willingness to cite the “prefab patriotism,” to borrow Barbara Ehrenreich’s words, of American civilians and their “thank you for your service” platitudes as also worthy of blame. Healing, as Wood rightfully suggests, requires listening without judgment.
Most Americans are now familiar with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and its prevalence among troops. In this groundbreaking new book, David Wood examines the far more pervasive yet less understood experience of those we send to war: moral injury, the violation of our fundamental values of right and wrong that so often occurs in the impossible moral dilemmas of modern conflict. Featuring portraits of combat veterans and leading mental health researchers, along with Wood's personal observations of war and the young Americans deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, WHAT HAVE WE DONE offers an unflinching look at war and those…
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
I am a Partner at Dalberg Global Development Advisors, where I lead a lot of our finance and investment advisory work with development finance institutions, family offices, and impact investors. I also serve on several impact investment and field-building organization advisory boards and regularly contribute to the ecosystem through thought leadership and speaking engagements at leading conferences. Over the course of my 20+ year career, I have played the role of advisor, investor, and technical assistance provider on more than 200 individual projects across the globe.
This is an inspiring read from a real changemaker.
Morgan is also someone I have had the pleasure of getting to know through the impact investing conference circuit, and I enjoyed reading her firsthand account of how she combined her social activist desires with the practical tools of finance and investment to create ‘real impact.’
One of my favorite sections of the book was on her early days and successes with shareholder activism. This book and her story are ones that many impact-minded leaders can learn from.
Impact investment, the support of social and environmental projects with a financial return, has become a hot topic in the world's philanthropy and development circles, and is growing exponentially: in the next decade, it is poised to eclipse traditional aid by ten times. Yet for all the excitement, there is work to do to ensure it actually realizes its potential. Will impact investment empower millions of people worldwide, or will it just replicate the same failures that have plagued the aid and antipoverty industry?
Enter Morgan Simon. When she was a twenty-year-old college student at Swarthmore, Simon compelled Lockheed Martin…
AO: I have been intrigued by the Adam and smith (a play on Adam Smith’s name due to K. Boulding) of social sciences ever since, as a graduate student, I was given the privilege to teach a history-of-thought course. I found a lot of wisdom in Smith’s works and continue to find it with every new read. BW: I first met Adam Smith when I was studying for my master’s degree in economics almost twenty years ago. Since then, I have enjoyed rereading him, always finding new sources of fascination and insights. For me, Smith's work is endlessly rich and remains astonishingly topical, three centuries after his birth.
Smith is generally considered as the father of economics, laying its foundations in the eighteenth century.
But he can also be an inspiration for rethinking economics (providing more realistic assumptions about human conduct) and laboratory experiments in the twenty-first century, helping us to build a new “Humanomics” (see also McCloskey’s two books on this subject). That’s what Vernon Smith (Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002) and Bart Wilson convincingly argue for in their uncommon and innovative book. Smith is still alive (and well alive) today.
While neo-classical analysis works well for studying impersonal exchange in markets, it fails to explain why people conduct themselves the way they do in their personal relationships with family, neighbors, and friends. In Humanomics, Nobel Prize-winning economist Vernon L. Smith and his long-time co-author Bart J. Wilson bring their study of economics full circle by returning to the founder of modern economics, Adam Smith. Sometime in the last 250 years, economists lost sight of the full range of human feeling, thinking, and knowing in everyday life. Smith and Wilson show how Adam Smith's model of sociality can re-humanize twenty-first century…
I’ve been an astronomer since I was young and lucky enough to make a living at it. I ventured into space mining when I found Mining the Sky. I started doing some calculations using the newest research. What I found was surprising and ignited a new passion in me that has led me from asteroids to the Moon to the ends of the Solar System and from pure astrophysics into questions of law, government, and ethics. Now, I write almost entirely about our future in space.
After I got all fired up about space mining with the other books, Erika Nesvold raised all sorts of questions that I hadn’t considered. What sort of “world” do I want to see when people expand across the solar system?
After reading her book, I realize that despite my urge to just get on and do it, a Wild West in space isn’t what we’re after.
Can we do better in space than we’ve done here on Earth?
We’ve pinpointed the destination, refined the technology, designed the habitat, outfitted our space residents. Are we forgetting something? A timely reminder that it’s not just rocket science, this thought-provoking book explores the all-too-human issues raised by the prospect of settling in outer space. It’s worth remembering, Erika Nesvold suggests, that in making new worlds, we don’t necessarily leave our earthly problems behind. Accordingly, her work highlights the complex ethical challenges that accompany any other-worldly venture—questions about the environment, labor rights, and medical ethics, among others.
The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circular…
I’m a communication professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, a social media user, and a mom. After Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, I wrote an op-ed for CNN arguing that he’d won the election on social media, and I just never stopped writing. A few hundred op-eds and a book later, I’m still interested in what social media is doing to us all and the issues women are up against in our society. My book allowed me to explore how social media is impacting every single aspect of the lives of women and girls and exactly what we can do about it. I wrote it as a call to arms.
Quinn’s description of their abuse by online trolls is one of the most harrowing I’ve ever heard. I think it’s an incredibly important account of how dangerous it can be to be a woman on the internet (Quinn is now nonbinary).
One thing that really stood out to me is that, despite everything, Quinn still thinks the internet is an amazing place. This had a big influence on my view that women shouldn’t stop using social networks even though they’re so toxic. Social networks are also places where women can empower ourselves (Quinn developed their career and overcame the challenges of dating as a queer teen online), and we need to be able to wield this power.
You've heard the stories about the dark side of the internet--hackers, #gamergate, anonymous mobs attacking an unlucky victim, and revenge porn--but they remain just that: stories. Surely these things would never happen to you.
Zoe Quinn used to feel the same way. She is a video game developer whose ex-boyfriend published a crazed blog post cobbled together from private information, half-truths, and outright fictions, along with a rallying cry to the online hordes to go after her. They answered in the form of a so-called movement known as #gamergate--they hacked her accounts; stole nude photos of her; harassed her family,…
