A gloriously illustrated overview of angels across art, religion, and literatureIneffable, invisible, inscrutable—angels are enduring creatures across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and human experiences of the divine as mediated by spiritual emissaries are an aspect of almost every religious tradition. In popular culture, angels are often reduced to the most gauzy, sentimental, and saccharine of images: fat babies with wings and guardians with robes, halos, and harps. By contrast, in scripture whenever one of the heavenly choirs appears before a prophet or patriarch, they first declare “Fear not!� for terror would be the most appropriate initial reaction to these otherworldly beings. Angels are often not what we’d expect, but it’s precisely in that transcendent encounter that something of the strangeness of existence can be conveyed. Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology is a follow-up volume to Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology, and like the earlier title, this book offers an account of the angelic hierarchies as they’ve been understood across centuries and cultures and of the individual personages, such as the archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel, who have marked the mythology of the West.

Pandemonium: An Illustrated History of Demonology presents for this first time Satan's family tree, providing a history and analysis of his fellow fallen angels from Asmodeus to Ziminiar. Throughout there will be short entries on individual demons, but Pandemonium will be more than just a visual encyclopedia. It will also focus on the influence of figures like Beelzebub, Azazel, Lilith, and Moloch on Western religion, literature, and art. Ranging from the earliest scriptural references to demons in the New Testament through the Enlightenment and Romantic eras when our devils took on a subtler form, Pandemonium functions as a compendium of Lucifer's subjects from Dante's The Divine Comedy to John Milton's Paradise Lost, and all points in between. Containing rarely seen illustrations of very old treatises on demonology as well as more well-known works by the great masters of Western painting, this book will celebrate the art of hell like never before!

Starstruck: An American Tale maps the artist Shimon Attie’s newest project, a cut through the layers of America past and present at the site of the historic steel town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The monograph documents Attie’s multi-year project filming community members and the resulting exhibition at the Lehigh University Art Galleries. Starstruck: An American Tale maps the artist Shimon Attie’s newest project, a cut through the layers of America past and present at the site of the historic steel town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The monograph documents Attie’s multi-year project of excavating stories of the city by filming community members, clothed in contemporary and historical dress, transiting iconic local buildings and topography – and the resulting exhibition at the Lehigh University Art Galleries, anchored by a two-channel video and a modified scaled facsimile of Bethlehem’s 90-foot tall lighted sculptural representation of the biblical Star of Bethlehem, a civic project from the 1930s that overlooks the city to this day. The book is published together with the Lehigh University Art Galleries. From the city’s founding by Moravian Christian utopian settlers in 1741, through to its industrial heyday in the late 19th to 20th centuries as a capital of the American steel industry, to the collapse of its steel mill and manufacturing in the 1980s and 1990s, and subsequent post-industrial reincarnation with a new casino and gambling, Bethlehem is a microcosm of America’s hopes and dreams, failures and realities. Starstruck: An American Tale probes this uneasy, distinctly American blend of utopian aspirations, industrial capitalism, and the dream of “making it big�, which have defined life in Bethlehem and other communities across the United States since the country’s founding.

At a moment of cultural and political crisis, with forces of reaction seemingly ascendant throughout the West, it's fair to ask what use does anyone have for America, God, or any other similar fictions? What use does theological language have for the radical facing the apocalypse? Among the subjects considered: the need for an Augustinian left, legacies of American violence, speaking in tongues, the humanities facing climate change, the maturity of realizing that you will die, how to sail towards Utopia, and witches. 'Ed Simon's essays help readers to understand how we got to this complicated moment in American religious history. Deft, thoughtful, and creatively told.' Kaya Oakes, author of Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture

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MOSCOW IN THE MAKING By Snt E. D. SIMON. M.A. PREFACE By SIR E. D. SIMON MY wife and I had long felt that the best way to attempt to understand something of the great Russian experiment would be to study a single aspect of Russian life which would bring us into effective contact with Russians dealing with a kind of work which we understood. We decided, therefore, to investigate the city government of Moscow, my wife dealing with educational administration, while I tackled housing and town planning. We were fortunate in securing the collaboration of Professor Jewkes and Dr. Robson to deal with the wider aspects of the work of the Mossoviet in finance and administration respectively which we thought would be necessary to a proper understanding of education and housing. We regret that it was not possible to deal with other important aspects of the work of the Mossoviet, particularly public health. We found it exceedingly difficult to get printed information in spite of efforts continued for many months, we got almost nothing in advance of our visit, and even while in Moscow we got comparatively little. But we were received in the most friendly manner by leading members and officials of the Mossoviet, who gave us, in some cases individually, in some cases jointly, interviews lasting from two to four hours, during which they explained the work on which they were engaged and answered our questions not only patiently, but, so far as we could judge, quite frankly as regards all matters dealing with the affairs of the Mossoviet. We spent four weeks in Moscow, and so far as it was practicable each of us interviewed those officials of the Mossoviet and of the national government who were concerned vith our own specialities. Some of us also paid short visits to Leningrad and Kharkov. We met each day to talk matters over, and found the mutual discussion and criticism helpful. But we did not always reach full agreement: for example, Professor Jewkes and Dr, Robson both dissociate themselves from some of the statements and views of the other, and indeed we are perhaps none of us fully agreed as to the exact extent of the responsibilities and powers of the Mossoviet in relation to the central government. Many other differences of emphasis and interpretation can no doubt be found in the various chapters. It should be made clear that each member takes responsibility only for his own chapter or chapters. In many ways our investigation was carried out under great difficulties: we none of us spoke Russian, nor had we visited Moscow before. We apologize for any inconsistencies and inaccuracies that the book may prove to contain. We owe our sincerest thanks to Mr. Maisky, the Russian Ambassador in London, to the Foreign Office in Moscow, who did much to help us, and to the numerous members and officials of the Mossoviet, who freely gave us much of their valuable time. Intourist looked after our travel arrangements admirably and provided us with excellent interpreters, who were in every way helpful and efficient. Voks were kind enough to provide us with an admirable Interpreter for our more important interviews. We are most grateful to Dr. S. P. Turin, who was very helpful in finding Russian sources of information and summarizing or trans lating them for us. We owe to Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb not only our thanks for encouragement and suggestions in our preliminary discussions our whole investigation was due to the stimulus of their book Soviet Communism: A New Civilization?, which provided us with an invaluable background for understanding the work of the Mossoviet.