Books about Hero worship from Amazon.com

What evils await the tortured he-men in Jasper's five stories? Just imagine what it's like to be one man alone, stripped naked, bound in chains and completely at the mercy of ravenous and sadistic females. Gangs of them! Whether a medieval dungeon or modern-day medical office, the old American West or the wilds of Africa, Jasper's heroes are fully prepared...
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Reprint of the "Sterling Edition" of Carlyle's Complete Works, in 20 volumes.
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The work provides a unique study of superheroes and gods in literature, popular culture, and ancient myth. The author selects a number of mythological figures (e.g., Babylonia's Gilgamesh and Enkidu), ancient gods (e.g., Greece's Eros and Tartarus), and modern superheroes (e.g., the United States' Superman and Captain Marvel) and identifies the often striking similarities between each unique category of characters. The author contends that the vast majority of mythological superheroes follow the same archetypal character patterns, regardless of each hero's unique time period or culture. Each of the first nine chapters examines the heroes and gods of a particular region or country, while the final chapter examines modern descendants of the hero prototype like Batman and Spiderman and several infamous anti-heroes (for example, Dracula and The Hulk)..
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Beginning beneath the walls of Troy and culminating in 1930s Europe, a magisterial exploration of the nature of heroism in Western civilization.
Our need for heroes is a timeless phenomenon; from ancient Greece to September 11, we have always looked to great figures for inspiration and leadership. In this riveting and insightful cultural history, Lucy Hughes-Hallett brings to life eight exceptional men from history and myth whose outsized accomplishments made them heroes of their times.

Alcibiades was Athens’s most dazzling citizen but an incorrigible traitor. El Cid was an invincible but self-interested warlord. Albrecht von Wallenstein terrified both enemies and allies in the Thirty Years’ War. Despite their flaws, all three were celebrated as superhuman paragons of virility. We see them in contrast to heroes of a different kind: Cato, the stubborn opponent of dictatorship; Sir Francis Drake, who used wit instead of might to defeat the Spanish; and Giuseppe Garibaldi, the gallant revolutionary and international celebrity. Framing these six men are the two paradigmatic Homeric heroes: Achilles, who sacrificed his life for glory, and Odysseus, who lied and cheated and stole, doing anything to survive.

As Hughes-Hallett vividly re-creates these extraordinary lives, she illuminates the attractions and dangers of hero worship. This is a fascinating book about dictatorship and democracy, seduction and mass hysteria, politics and culture, and the eternal tension between the Achillean glorification of death and the Odyssean affirmation of life..
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In its review of Turbulent Souls, the New York Times wrote: "While it is clearly better for Stephen Dubner if his turbulent soul stays quiet, I think readers of this wonderful book will rather hope that a continued measure of unsettlement inspires him to write more."

Now Stephen J. Dubner has returned with the brilliant Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper, a true story that reads like the wisest of novels. Dubner embarks on the kind of search that tantalizes every one of us -- the search for a long-forgotten childhood hero -- and in so doing, plumbs the secrets to his own survival.

When he was a boy, Dubner developed a fierce attachment to a football player, Franco Harris, the famed and mysterious running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers. When Dubner's father died, this attachment became an obsession. He dreamed of his hero every night; he signed his school papers "Franco Dubner." Though they never met, it was Franco Harris who shepherded Dubner through a fatherless boyhood.

Fast-forward twenty years. Dubner, by now an accomplished writer, happens to catch sight of Harris, now a businessman, on a magazine cover. His long-dormant obsession comes roaring back. He is driven to journey to Pittsburgh and even move there if necessary. He is certain that Harris will embrace him. He is convinced that he will wrest from his old hero the mysteries of the universe. And he is ... well, wrong.

Told with the grit of a journalist and the grace of a memoirist, Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper is a breathtaking, heartbreaking, and often humorous story of astonishing developments. It is also a sparkling meditation on the nature of hero worship -- which, like religion and love, tells us as much about ourselves as about the object of our desire. Dubner also manages to discuss the perils of celebrity, the psychology of nudity, and the vast difference between Jewish and Christian ideas about hero worship.

Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper is a must-read for anyone who has ever had a hero or wanted one; for anyone who considers football, as the Trappist monk Thomas Merton once wrote, "one of the really valid and deep American rituals"; and especially for those who read about others to find the truth in themselves.

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In One Jesus, Many Christs  Gregory Riley reveals that there was not just one true Christianity, but many different Christianities from the very beginning United by passionate allegiance to Jesus as hero, these early, doctinally diverse Christianities have led to the development of many different kinds of Christian churches among us today. Riley shows that early Christianity harbored major doctrinal differences about all aspects of Jesus' life, death, resurrection and divinity.

An expert on the historical context in which Christianity arose, Riley illuminates the Greco-Roman world of the early Christians, a world steeped in heroic ideals. Jesus was embraced as a new and compelling hero that one could follow into a whole new life of caring community and transcendant hope. Riley boldly asserts that it was only as Christianity became the religion of the empire that the myth of the Apostles' Creed was created, thereby promulgating the illusion that the Apostles had gathered together and agreed upon a core set of doctrines essential to the Christian faith. But the reality is that doctrinal orthodoxy was not an issue for the early Christians. Rather, they focused, in quite varied ways, on following Jesus as a model for living.

This book not only provides a whole new understanding of the nature of earliest Christianity, but it also conveys a vital message for today about what Christian faith is really about. Riley reveals the authentic character of Christianity as inherently pluralistic and tolerant of diverse ideas while passionately centered in Jesus..
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I. The Hero As Divinity. Odin. Paganism: Scandinavian Mythology.
II. The hero as prophet. Mahomet: Islam.
III. The Hero As Poet. Dante: Shakespeare.
IV. The Hero As Priest. Luther; Reformation: Knox; Puritanism.
V. The Hero As Man Of Letters. Johnson, Rousseau, Burns.
VI. The Hero As King. Cromwell, Napoleon: Modern Revolutionism.
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Before there was Che Guevara, there was Emiliano Zapata, the charismatic revolutionary who left indelible marks on Mexican politics and society. The sequel to Samuel Brunk's 1995 biography of Zapata, The Posthumous Career of Emiliano Zapata traces the power and impact of this ubiquitous, immortalized figure.

Mining the massive extant literature on Zapata, supplemented by archival documents and historical newspaper accounts, Brunk explores frameworks of myth and commemoration while responding to key questions regarding the regime that emerged from the Zapatista movement, including whether it was spawned by a genuinely "popular" revolution.

Blending a sophisticated analysis of hegemonic systems and nationalism with lively, accessible accounts of ways in which the rebel is continually resurrected decades after his death in a 1919 ambush, Brunk delves into a rich realm of artistic, geographical, militaristic, and ultimately all-encompassing applications of this charismatic icon.

Examining all perspectives, from politicized commemorations of Zapata's death to popular stories and corridos, The Posthumous Career of Emiliano Zapata is an eloquent, engaging portrait of a legend incarnate.

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