Recommendations based on "Becoming Fully Human"

David Lynch erupted onto the cinema landscape in 1977 with Eraserhead, establishing himself as one of the most original and imaginative directors at work in contemporary cinema. Over the course of his career, he has remained true to a vision of the innocent lost in darkness and confusion, balancing hallucination and surrealism with a sense of Americana that is as pure and simple as his compelling storylines. In this volume, Lynch speaks openly about his films as well as about his lifelong commitment to painting, his work in photography, his television projects, and his musical collaborations with Angelo Badalamenti.

The most popular occult work of the twentieth century--now in a hardbound edition that evokes the original volume, with a new introduction by scholar of mysticism Richard Smoley.For generations, readers have debated the origins and studied the knowledge of this mysterious exploration of Hermetic wisdom, attributed to "Three Initiates."Now in its second century, The Kybalion is restored to hardcover in a commemorative volume that evokes the appearance of the occult landmark's first edition.The new introduction by Richard Smoley, a celebrated scholar of mystical traditions, makes this a historical keepsake.

Featuring a new introduction by Casey Nelson Blake, this classic text provides the essence of Mumford's views on the distinct yet interpenetrating roles of technology and the arts in modern culture. Mumford contends that modern man's overemphasis on technics has contributed to the depersonalization and emptiness of much of twentieth-century life. He issues a call for a renewed respect for artistic impulses and achievements. His repeated insistence that technological development take the Human as its measure -- as well as his impassioned plea for humanity to make the most of its "splendid potentialities and promise" and reverse its progress toward anomie and destruction -- is ever more relevant as the new century dawns.

From Kirkus Reviews ( Jolande Jacobi first met Carl Jung on a social occasion when she was thirty-eight; she then experienced a dream which she described to him, and he replied, ""Now you are caught, now you can't get away."" Dr. Jacobi's studies had been curtailed by marriage at nineteen; Jung insisted that she get her doctorate even though she was physically in danger in pre-World War II Vienna--a danger that became imminent for her husband and sons in Hungary, but saw her to safety in Switzerland, where her life today has, according to David Holt, an ""extraordinarily vivid quality, wounded yet inviolate."" This exposition of Jung's concept of individuation has importance, she feels, for present survival and for shaping the it deals with social, ethical, and religious problems through a growing self-awareness of the individual and society. The ""individuation process"" can be experienced in natural (occurring almost autonomously) or artificial form (aided for instance by analysis, developed by definite methods, and consciously experienced). Dr. Jacobi describes the two main phases of the transformation with the ""change of dominance"" in the second half; the stages of individuation; the relation of ego and Self; the finding of the ""individual way"" (what is needed is a vocation); conscious realization, the religious factor. A lucid presentation of a major if not dominant theorist which will appeal to a special, predisposed audience.

Leonardo is the greatest, most multi-faceted and most mysterious of all Renaissance artists, but extraordinarily, considering his enormous reputation, this is the first full-length biography in English for several decades. Prize-winning author Charles Nicholl has immersed himself for five years in all the manuscripts, paintings and artefacts to produce an 'intimate portrait' of Leonardo. He uses these contemporary materials - his notebooks and sketchbooks, eye witnesses and early biographies, etc - as a way into the mental tone and physical texture of his life and has made myriad small discoveries about him and his work and his circle of associates. Among much else, the book identifies what Nicholl argues is an unknown portrait of the artist hanging in a church near Lodi in northern Italy. It also contains new material on his eccentric assistant Tomasso Masini, on his homosexual affairs in Florence, and on his curious relationship with a female model and/or prostitute from Cremona. A masterpiece of modern biography.

At the end of the eighteenth century, scientists for the first time demonstrated what medieval and renaissance alchemists had long suspected; ice is not lifeless but vital, a crystalline revelation of vigorous powers. Studied in esoteric and exoterical representations of frozen phenomena, several Romantic figures - including Coleridge and Poe, Percy and Mary Shelley, Emerson and Thoreau - challenged traditional notions of ice as waste and instead celebrated crystals, glaciers, and the poles as special disclosures of a holistic principle of being. The Spiritual History of Ice explores this ecology of frozen shapes in fascinating detail, revealing not only a neglected current of the Romantic age but also a secret history and psychology of ice.

"Hanssen’s exacting, expansive study of the ways Benjamin reconceives history and nature in one another’s presence, or distance, is part of the increasing recognition of what it must take intellectually and imaginatively to come to terms with this thinker’s soaring innovations."—Stanley Cavell, Harvard University"In this profoundly learned book Hanssen interprets Benjamin's The Origin of German Tragic Drama as the key to understanding his entire corpus. . . . Many books about Benjamin are impenetrable. This one is not." —S. Gittleman, Choice"Beatrice Hanssen has provided an arresting new reading of Benjamin, based on a wide range of materials and a subtle understanding of theoretical issues, both in his time and our own. Her interpretation is informed by contemporary deconstructionist approaches to the fundamental questions raised by Benjamin’s texts, which she demonstrates anticipate many of the concerns of Derrida, Levinas and other recent thinkers."—Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley"Beatrice Hanssen elaborates Benjamin's extremely novel and complex notion of 'history' with unparalleled thoroughness, cogency, and clarity."—Samuel Weber, University of California, Los Angeles

The most comprehensive best-selling anthology of its kind, the second volume in this two-part survey enables readers to choose among the most important canonical and less-familiar texts of the Western literary tradition in Europe and the Americas. It offers complete texts whenever possible, uses the best translations of foreign-language material, and, when appropriate, presents more than one text by each author. Volume Two provides detailed historical and biographical notes and introductions to the later literary periods including Neoclassicism and Romanticism; Realism and Naturalism; and Modern and Contemporary. Individuals interested in a comprehensive look at Western literature through the ages.

Campbell offers a systematic and fascinating comparison of the themes that underlie the art, worship, and literature of the Western world. "The high function of Occidental myth and ritual . . . is to establish a means of relationship--of God to Man and Man to God".--Joseph Campbell.

This is a major new study of Kant's ethics that will transform the way students and scholars approach the subject in future. Allen Wood argues that Kant's ethical vision is grounded in the idea of the dignity of the rational nature of every human being. It focuses for the first time on the central role played in Kant's ethical theory by the value of rational nature as an end itself. In addition, it shows the importance of Kant's systematic theory of human nature and history, and its implications for the structure, formulation, and application of Kant's moral principles. This comprehensive study will be of critical importance to students of moral philosophy, the history of ideas, political theory, and religious studies.