'James Crowden is Britain's best cider writer ... Cider Country is the book we've all been waiting for.' Oz Clarke Join James Crowden as he embarks on a journey to distil the ancient origins of cider, uncovering a rich culture and philosophy that has united farmer, maker and drinker for millennia. LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 ANDRE SIMON FOOD AND DRINK AWARD Cidermaking has been at the heart of country life for hundreds of years. But the fascinating story of how this drink came into existence and why it became so deeply rooted in the nation's psyche has never been told. In order to answer these questions, James Crowden traces an elusive history stretching back to the ancient, myth-infused civilisations of the Mediterranean and the wild apple forests of Kazakhstan. Meeting cider experts, farmers and historians, he unearths the surprising story of an apple that travelled from east to west and proved irresistible to everyone who tasted it. Upon its arrival in Britain, monks, pirates and politicians formed a pioneering and evangelical fan base, all seeking the company of a drink that might guide them through uncertain times. But the nation's love-affair with cider didn't fully blossom until after the reformation, when the thirst for knowledge about the drink was at its peak. This infatuation with experimentation would lead to remarkable innovations and the creation of a 'sparkling cider', a technique that pre-dated Dom Perignon's champagne by forty years. Turning to the present day, Crowden meets the next generation of cider makers and unearths a unique philosophy that has been shared through the ages. In the face of real challenges, these enterprising cider makers are still finding new ways to produce this golden drink that is enjoyed by so many. Spanning centuries and continents, Cider Country tells the story of our country through the culture, craft and consumption of our most iconic rural drink.

Avian Aesthetics in Literature and Culture: Birds and Humans in the Popular Imagination closes the gap between ornithological and humanities knowledge. This book contains fifteen innovative essays that bridge various environment-focused perspectives and methodologies in order to include birds in current conversations within the field of animal studies. This collection challenges species centrism, advances a biodiverse ontology, and embraces bird-centered topics as diverse as gaming, comic strips, window collisions, conservation literature, youth birding, mourning theory, and the "Birds Aren't Real" movement.

Legends of Maui (1910) is a collection of Hawaiian folktales and myths anthologized by W. D. Westervelt. Paying homage to the importance of Maui across Polynesian cultures, Westervelt introduces his groundbreaking collection of legends on Hawaii's founding deity. Westervelt's collection connects the origin story of Hawaii to the traditions of other Polynesian cultures, providing an invaluable resource for understanding the historical and geographical scope of Hawaiian culture. Drawing on the work of David Malo, Samuel Kamakau, and Abraham Fornander, Westervelt, originally from Ohio, became a leading authority on the Hawaiian Islands, publishing extensively on their legends, religious beliefs, and folk tales. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally designed manuscript, this edition of W. D. Westervelt's Legends of Maui is a classic of Hawaiian literature reimagined for modern readers.

A colorful illustration of Hawaii's most cherished origin story, the myth of Pele and Hiiaka. Pele and Hiiaka: A Myth From Hawaii (1915) is a collection of folktales by Nathaniel B. Emerson. Drawing from written histories, personal experience, and extensive interviews, Emerson provides a lyrical account of the myth surrounding these goddess sisters. Pele, the goddess of volcanoes and ruler of Kilauea, and her sister Hiiaka encounter adventure, tragedy, and love during their respective journeys. These stories are not only appreciated for their beauty, but also their deep religious and cultural impact. With a professionally designed cover and manuscript, this edition of Nathaniel B. Emerson's Pele and Hiiaka: A Myth From Hawaii is a classic of Hawaiian literature reimagined for modern readers.

The amphibious cult classic: a magical tale of a suburban housewife's affair with a frogman ... 'Disturbing but seductive ... Wonderful.' Margaret Atwood 'Perfect.' Max Porter 'Still outpaces, out-weirds, and out-romances anything today.' Marlon James 'A feminist masterpiece: tender, erotic, singular.' Carmen Maria Machado ''Genius ... A broadcast from a stranger and more dazzling dimension.' Patricia Lockwood 'Kind of weird and cool. ' Irvine Welsh 'Genius ... Like Revolutionary Road written by Franz Kafka ... Exquisite.' The Times 'Incredibly liberates readers from the awfulness of convention to a state where weirdness and otherness are beautiful.' Sarah Hall 'A devastating fable of mythic proportions ... Wondrously peculiar.' Irenosen Okojie (foreword) Dorothy is a grieving housewife in the Californian suburbs; her husband is unfaithful, but they are too unhappy to get a divorce. One day, she is doing chores when she hears strange voices on the radio announcing that a green-skinned sea monster has escaped from the Institute for Oceanographic Research - but little does she expect him to arrive in her kitchen. Muscular, vegetarian, sexually magnetic, Larry the frogman is a revelation - and their passionate affair takes them on a journey beyond their wildest dreams ... Rachel Ingalls's Mrs Caliban is a bittersweet fable, a subversive fairy tale, as magical today as it was four decades ago 'A miracle . A perfect novel.' New Yorker 'Every one of its 125 pages is perfect ... Clear a Saturday, please, and read it in a single sitting.' Harper's What Readers Are Saying: 'Maybe the most gorgeous, lyrical book ever written'***** 'A fantastic wee novel, strange and brilliant, and absolutely the inspiration for The Shape of Water.'***** 'Wonderful, sharp minimal prose offers big truths. Superb - brilliant, in fact.'***** 'Absolutely incredible. It's weird, funny, and heartbreaking, like a Richard Yates novel except with lizardman sex.'***** 'One of the best tongue-in-cheek social satires that I've ever read. It delves into gender politics. It takes a long, hard look at mental health. It addresses female sexual freedom and agency. It asks the reader to examine what it means to be human ... Genius.'***** 'Really brilliant: a deconstruction of suburbia by way of monster movies that examines sad realities with hilarious verve ... Sometimes you need a sexy frog person to break you out of the ties that bind. '***** 'Hooked me so deeply I picked it up and finished it the same night ... Beautiful ... Will stay with me.'***** 'What the hell just happened?'*****

'A coming-of-age story filled with magic in language and plot: beautiful and devastating' Observer, Books of the Year 'I felt consumed by this book. I loved it, you will love it' Daisy Johnson, author of Sisters 'A page-turning Appalachian coming-of-age story told in undulating prose that settles right into you' Naoise Dolan, author of Exciting Times 'Vivid and lucid, Betty has stayed with me' Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies 'I loved Betty' Fiona Mozley, author of Hot Stew 'Breahtaking' Vogue 'A GIRL COMES OF AGE AGAINST THE KNIFE' So begins the story of Betty Carpenter. Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a white mother and a Cherokee father, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings: the world they inhabit in the rural town of Breathed, Ohio, is one of poverty and loss, of lush landscapes and blazing stars. Despite the hardships she encounters, Betty is resilient. Her curiosity about the natural world, her fierce love for her sisters and her father's brilliant stories are kindling for the fire of her own imagination, and in the face of all to which she bears witness - the horrors of her family's past and present - Betty discovers an escape: she begins to write.

The West Virginia University Mountaineer is not just a mascot: it is a symbol of West Virginia history and identity embraced throughout the state. In this deeply informed but accessible study, folklorist Rosemary Hathaway explores the figure's early history as a backwoods trickster, its deployment in emerging mass media, and finally its long and sometimes conflicted career - beginning officially in 1937 - as the symbol of West Virginia University. Alternately a rabble-rouser and a romantic embodiment of the state's history, the Mountaineer has been subject to ongoing reinterpretation while consistently conveying the value of independence. Hathaway's account draws on multiple sources, including archival research, personal history, and interviews with former students who have portrayed the mascot, to explore the complex forces and tensions animating the Mountaineer figure. Often serving as a focus for white, masculinist, and Appalachian identities in particular, the Mountaineer that emerges from this study is something distinct from the hillbilly. Frontiersman and rebel both, the Mountaineer figure traditionally and energetically resists attempts (even those by the University) to tame or contain it.

Winner, Wayland D. Hand Prize, American Folklore Society, 2018 Originating in a homicide in St. Louis in 1899, the ballad of "Frankie and Johnny" became one of America's most familiar songs during the first half of the twentieth century. It crossed lines of race, class, and artistic genres, taking form in such varied expressions as a folk song performed by Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly); a ballet choreographed by Ruth Page and Bentley Stone under New Deal sponsorship; a mural in the Missouri State Capitol by Thomas Hart Benton; a play by John Huston; a motion picture, She Done Him Wrong, that made Mae West a national celebrity; and an anti-lynching poem by Sterling Brown. In this innovative book, Stacy I. Morgan explores why African American folklore-and "Frankie and Johnny" in particular-became prized source material for artists of diverse political and aesthetic sensibilities. He looks at a confluence of factors, including the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, and resurgent nationalism, that led those creators to engage with this ubiquitous song. Morgan's research uncovers the wide range of work that artists called upon African American folklore to perform in the 1930s, as it alternately reinforced and challenged norms of race, gender, and appropriate subjects for artistic expression. He demonstrates that the folklorists and creative artists of that generation forged a new national culture in which African American folk songs featured centrally not only in folk and popular culture but in the fine arts as well.

'A masterly achievement, a work of imaginative grandeur and complete artistic control' Ian McEwan 'Brilliant and unputdownable' Salman Rushdie He's a trickster, a player, a jester. His handshake's like a pact with the devil, his smile like a crack in the clouds; he's watching you now and he's gone when you turn. Tyll Ulenspiegel is here! In a village like every other village in Germany, a scrawny boy balances on a rope between two trees. He's practising. He practises by the mill, by the blacksmiths; he practises in the forest at night, where the Cold Woman whispers and goblins roam. When he comes out, he will never be the same. Tyll will escape the ordinary villages. In the mines he will defy death. On the battlefield he will run faster than cannonballs. In the courts he will trick the heads of state. As a travelling entertainer, his journey will take him across the land and into the heart of a never-ending war. A prince's doomed acceptance of the Bohemian throne has European armies lurching brutally for dominion and now the Winter King casts a sunless pall. Between the quests of fat counts, witch-hunters and scheming queens, Tyll dances his mocking fugue; exposing the folly of kings and the wisdom of fools. With macabre humour and moving humanity, Daniel Kehlmann lifts this legend from medieval German folklore and enters him on the stage of the Thirty Years' War. When citizens become the playthings of politics and puppetry, Tyll, in his demonic grace and his thirst for freedom, is the very spirit of rebellion - a cork in water, a laugh in the dark, a hero for all time.

A magical, captivating tale of adventure set in imperial Russia. St Petersburg, Russia 1725. Katinka Dashkova is running for her life because everything she knows is changing. Katinka, a dazzling ballerina with a hunched back, and her friends Alexei the Giant and Nikolai the dwarf are different. That's why they are part of Peter the Great's Circus of Curiosities. But the Tzar is dead and they must flee the Winter Palace. Guided by a special map, they set out across Russia running for their lives. An enthralling and delicious blend of history and fiction.

Why are the names of the chief characters in the biblical Book of Esther those of Mesopotamian deities? Stephanie Dalley argues that the narrative reflects real happenings in seventh-century Assyria, where the widespread belief that revenge belongs to the gods explains why Assyrian kings described punitive campaigns as divine acts, leading to the mythologizing of certain historical events. Ashurbanipal's sack of Susa, led by the deities Ishtar and Marduk, underlies the Hebrew story of Esther, and that story contains traces of the cultic calendar of Ishtar-of-Nineveh. Dalley traces the way in which the long-term settlement of lost tribes' in Assyria, revealed by the fruits of excavation in Iraq and Syria, inspired a blend of pagan and Jewish traditions.

Global in scope and multidisciplinary in approach, "Creolization as Cultural Creativity" explores the expressive forms and performances that come into being when cultures encounter one another. Creolization is presented as a powerful marker of identity in the postcolonial creole societies of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the southwest Indian Ocean region, as well as a universal process that can occur anywhere cultures come into contact.

An extraordinary number of cultures from Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe, the southern United States, Trinidad and Tobago, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Reunion, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Suriname, Jamaica, and Sierra Leone are discussed in these essays.

Drawing from the disciplines of folklore, anthropology, ethnomusicology, literary studies, history, and material culture studies, essayists address theoretical dimensions of creolization and present in-depth field studies. Topics include adaptations of the Gombe drum over the course of its migration from Jamaica to West Africa; uses of "ritual piracy" involved in the appropriation of Catholic symbols by Puerto Rican "brujos"; the subversion of official culture and authority through playful and combative use of "creole talk" in Argentine literature and verbal arts; the mislabeling and trivialization ("toy blindness") of objects appropriated by African Americans in the American South; the strategic use of creole techniques among storytellers within the islands of the Indian Ocean; and the creolized character of New Orleans and its music. In the introductory essay the editors address both local and universal dimensions of creolization and argue for the centrality of its expressive manifestations for creolization scholarship."

Goddesses In You illuminates how archetypal patterns are the doorway into a hidden universe, the key to who you truly are. From Greta Thunberg to Jacqueline Kennedy, influential women of today can be understood by looking at the 12 ancient goddess archetypes. Together, they span the panorama of features, the fullness of femininity, that exists in human imagination and the collective unconscious. Using an intuitive blend of mythology, psychology, feminism and spirituality and as a psychic lens, Goddesses In You reveals how you can better connect with these powerful inner forces that shape our lives. With profiles of sixty well-known women from celebrities to activists, creatives to pioneers, Goddesses In You highlights how these underlying archetypes are the powerful invisible threads, the DNA, that shape the roles and govern the beliefs, drives, motivations, actions and emotions of most women at some stage in their lives. Discovering how these mythological goddesses from a patriarchal past and their feminine archetypes shape behaviour and personality, influence emotions and relationships, and are responsible for the major differences in women, can awaken us to a new way of seeing ourselves and the world around us. The truth is every woman is a goddess, and therefore innately divine. Goddesses In You will help you discover the myths and archetypes that are your reality.

Placing heroes from a wide range of medieval traditions shoulder to shoulder, this title provides the opportunity to examine what is common across medieval mythic, legendary, and folkloric traditions, as well as what seems unique. Myths of gods, legends of battles, and folktales of magic abound in the heroic narratives of the Middle Ages. Mythology in the Middle Ages: Heroic Tales of Monsters, Magic, and Might describes how Medieval heroes were developed from a variety of source materials: Early pagan gods become euhemerized through a Christian lens, and an older epic heroic sensibility was exchanged for a Christian typological and figural representation of saints. Most startlingly, the faces of Christian martyrs were refracted through a heroic lens in the battles between Christian standard-bearers and their opponents, who were at times explicitly described in demonic terms. The book treats readers to a fantastic adventure as author Christopher R. Fee guides them on the trail of some of the greatest heroes of medieval literature. Discussing the meanings of medieval mythology, legend, and folklore through a wide variety of fantastic episodes, themes, and motifs, the journey takes readers across centuries and through the mythic, legendary, and folkloric imaginations of different peoples. Coverage ranges from the Atlantic and Baltic coasts of Europe, south into the Holy Roman Empire, west through the Iberian peninsula, and into North Africa. From there, it is east to Byzantium, Russia, and even the far reaches of Persia. Each chapter begins with historical context, includes examination of key terms, and ends with suggestions for further reading A chronology and bibliography are also included

In Folklore Figures of French and Creole Louisiana, Nathan J. Rabalais examines the impact of Louisiana's remarkably diverse cultural and ethnic groups on folklore characters and motifs during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Establishing connections between Louisiana and France, West Africa, Canada, and the Antilles, Rabalais explores how folk characters, motifs, and morals adapted to their new contexts in Louisiana. By viewing the state's folklore in the light of its immigration history, he demonstrates how folktales can serve as indicators of sociocultural adaptation as well as contact among cultural communities. In particular, he examines the ways in which collective traumas experienced by Louisiana's major ethnic groups-slavery, the grand d? (R)rangement, linguistic discrimination-resulted in fundamental changes in these folktales in relation to their European and African counterparts. Rabalais points to the development of an altered moral economy in Cajun and Creole folktales. Conventional heroic qualities, such as physical strength, are subverted in Louisiana folklore in favor of wit and cunning. Analyses of Black Creole animal tales like those of Bouki et Lapin and Tortie demonstrate the trickster hero's ability to overcome both literal and symbolic entrapment through cleverness. Some elements of Louisiana's folklore tradition, such as the rougarou and cauchemar, remain an integral presence in the state's cultural landscape, apparent in humor, popular culture, regional branding, and children's books. Through its adaptive use of folklore, French and Creole Louisiana will continue to retell old stories in innovative ways as well as create new stories for future generations.