This is the most complete version of the Navajo creation story to appear in English since the publication of Washington Matthew's 'Navaho Legends' in 1897. Paul G Zolbrod's new translation attempts to render the power and delicacy of the oral storytelling performance on the page. His use of a poetic English idiom appropriate to the Navajo oral tradition gives us a translation that retains the social and religious significance of the original stories. He has worked with archival materials including transcriptions of early twentieth century Navajo performances and has talked with Navajo elders who helped him to salvage portions of the creation story that might otherwise disappear.

African cults and religions enrich all aspects of Cuba's social, cultural and everyday life, and encompass all ethnic and social groups. Politics, art, and civil events such as weddings, funerals, festivals and carnivals all possess distinctly Afro-Cuban characteristics. Miguel Barnet provides a concise guide to the various traditions and branches of Afro-Cuban religions. He distinguishes between the two most important cult forms - the Regla de Ocha (Santeria), which promotes worship of the Oshira (gods), and the traditional oracles that originated in the old Yoruba city of Ile-Ife, which promote a more animistic worldview. Africans who were brought to Cuba as slaves had to recreate their old traditions in their new Caribbean context. As their African heritage collided with Catholicism and with Native American and European traditions, certain African gods and traditions became more prominent while others lost their significance in the new Afro-Cuban culture. This book, the first systematic overview of the syncretization of the gods of African origin with Catholic saints, introduces the reader to a little-known side of Cuban culture.

Addressing problems of objectivity and authenticity, Sabine MacCormack reconstructs how Andean religion was understood by the Spanish in light of seventeenth-century European theological and philosophical movements, and by Andean writers trying to find in it antecedents to their new Christian faith.