Books about Excavating from Amazon.com

From the author of Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy comes a guided excavation for women who suspect that there's something more to life than the top layer pursuits of money, sex, and love. In service to these restless souls who want to scratch beneath the surface, Ban Breathnach offers tidbit-sized essays that help women unearth pay dirt--their reason for being. Using archaeology as her frame of reference, Ban Breathnach suggests imaginative exercises at the end of each chapter, which she refers to as "Field Work." Although it occasionally feels overdone, the archaeology metaphor works well--helping readers unearth their past choices and circumstances to better understand the soul's current mission. Early in the book, Ban Breathnach offers this enticing invitation to go on a spiritual dig: "Besides the fact that your soul is one of the last unlooted sources of the miraculous, with discoveries as spectacular as any found in the Delta of Venus or Egypt's Valley of the Kings, you can embark on a soul trip and be back before anyone even notices you're missing. They might be curious about that gleam in your eye and that flush on your cheek, but I'll never tell if you won't. Are you game? We're heading to the sacred site of your soul." --Gail Hudson.
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"Why did Jesus happen when and where he happened?" is the question that drives Excavating Jesus, a collaboration between the leading historical Jesus scholar John Dominic Crossan and noted Galilean archeologist Jonathan Reed. Excavating Jesus is a groundbreaking work of popular biblical scholarship, an extraordinarily mature and accessible integration of textual study with archeological research. "Words talk. Stones talk too. Neither talks from the past without interpretive dialogue with the present. But each demands to be heard in its own way," the authors write. True to this principle, Crossan and Reed consider archaeology and exegesis "as twin independent methods, neither of which is subordinate or submissive to the other." The bulk of the book identifies, analyzes, and integrates what the authors believe to be the "top 10" archeological discoveries pertaining to the life of Jesus (such as the house of the apostle Peter at Capernaum), and the top 10 exegetical discoveries (such as the Dead Sea Scrolls). Their excavation of the most important sites and texts, accompanied by stunning illustrations and photographs, provide perhaps the most precise picture of the world in which Jesus lived. For many readers, this information will also shed light on the central themes of Christianity. For instance, in the first century in Galilee, "the Kingdom" meant the Roman Empire. "When, therefore, Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God, he chose the one expression most calculated to draw Roman attention to what he was doing. Not the 'people' or the 'community' of God, but the 'Kingdom' of God." That's why the Baptism movement of John and the Kingdom movement of Jesus started there and then." --Michael Joseph Gross.
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A fully updated edition of Mike Davis's visionary work.

No metropolis has been more loved or more hated. To its official boosters, "Los Angeles brings it all together " To detractors, LA is a sunlit mortuary where "you can rot without feeling it." To Mike Davis, the author of this fiercely elegant and wide-ranging work of social history, Los Angeles is both utopia and dystopia, a place where the last Joshua trees are being plowed under to make room for model communities in the desert, where the rich have hired their own police to fend off street gangs, as well as armed Beirut militias. In City of Quartz, Davis reconstructs LA's shadow history and dissects its ethereal economy. He tells us who has the power and how they hold on to it. He gives us a city of Dickensian extremes, Pynchonesque conspiracies, and a desperation straight out of Nathaniel West—a city in which we may glimpse our own future mirrored with terrifying clarity.

In this new edition, Davis provides a dazzling update on the city's current status..
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Mike Davis peers into a looking glass to divine the future of Los Angeles, and what he sees is not encouraging: a city--or better, a concatenation of competing city states--torn by racial enmity, economic disparity, and social anomie. Looking backward, Davis suggests that Los Angeles has always been contested ground. In the 1840s, he writes, a combination of drought and industrial stock raising led to the destruction of small-scale Spanish farming in the region. In the 1910s, Los Angeles was the scene of a bitter conflict between management and industrial workers, so bitter that the publisher of the Los Angeles Times retreated to a heavily fortified home he called "The Bivouac." And in 1992, much of the city fell before flames and riot in a scenario Davis describes as thus: "Gangs are multiplying at a terrifying rate, cops are becoming more arrogant and trigger-happy, and a whole generation is being shunted toward some impossible Armageddon." Davis's voice-in-a-whirlwind approach to the past, present, and future of Los Angeles is alarming and arresting, and his book is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary affairs. --Gregory MacNamee.
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Young children will love this very special board book. Even babies and toddlers will enjoy turning the pages and touching the different textures. 9 3/4 x 7 3/8 inches. 10 pages. For ages 9 months and up..
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