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Summary
Summary
In this fascinating installment of the New York Times bestselling Don't Know Much About® series, Kenneth C. Davis explores the great myths of the world and their implications for art, science, religion and culture throughout history.
What is an Egyptian pyramid doing on the U. S. dollar bill? * Did a pharaoh inspire Moses to worship one God? * What's a Canaanite demoness doing at a rock concert?
Since the beginning of time, people have been insatiably curious. They've asked questions about where we come from, why the stars shine and the seasons change, and what constitutes evil. The imaginative answers crafted by our ancestors have served as religion, science, philosophy, and popular literature.
In an engaging and delightfully irreverent question-and-answer style, Davis tackles the epic of Gilgamesh; Achilles and the Trojan War; Stonehenge and the Druids; Odin, Thor, and the entire Norse pantheon; Native American myths, and much more, including the dramatic life and times of the man who would be Buddha. From Mount Olympus to Machu Picchu, here is an insightful, lively look at the greatest stories ever told.
Author Notes
Kenneth C. Davis is an American popular historian, best known for his Don't Know Much About... series. Born in Mount Vernon, New York, Davis attended Concordia College, Bronxville in New York, and Fordham University at Lincoln Center, New York City. Davis's second book, Don't Know Much About History, spent 35 consecutive weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and sold nearly 1.5 million copies. This unexpected success launched the Don't Know Much About... series.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
What is a myth? How does it differ from legend, fairy tale and allegory? Do myths cross cultures? Davis (Don't Know Much About the Civil War) answers these and many other questions with his characteristic humor and charming storytelling. He examines the myths created by societies ranging from Egypt, Greece and Rome to Africa, India and the Americas, proceeding, as in his other books, by way of question and answer as he surveys each mythmaking culture. A who's who for each culture is also helpful. He shows the connections between myths of various cultures, such as the flood story of Noah in Genesis and that of the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilsh. Among the questions and answers, Davis intersperses "mythic voices" from characters in the stories so readers can virtually hear the heroes of bygone eras. Because Davis ranges widely and with such sparkling wit through a broad sweep of myths, his survey provides a superb starting point for entering the world of mythology. Agent, David Black. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-An enthusiastic introduction to world mythology. As a child, Davis was enthralled by the tales of gods and heroes, and he makes a compelling case for myth's enduring power to awe, inspire, and entertain. Each chapter focuses on a particular country or cultural group. He has included Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, India, China, Japan, sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, the Pacific Islands, the Celts, and the Norse. A list of questions to pique readers' interest, such as "Was there really a Trojan war?" introduces each chapter. A time line featuring important dates in political, military, religious, and cultural history is accompanied by detailed descriptions of all the major gods. The introductory questions are answered, creation myths are discussed, and fascinating parallels in stories of the destruction of the world by floods are explored. Some of the greatest adventure stories of lesser-known heroes such as Gilgamesh, Finn MacCool, and Sigurd are highlighted. To give readers a taste of the original stories, excerpts of the tales and holy books are included. Using data from recent archaeological finds, Davis shows how our understanding of the past continues to change. Students will find this book useful both as a quick reference source and as a means of gaining greater understanding of complex ancient religions, or learning which events were shaping different countries at the same time.-Kathy Tewell, Chantilly Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
The latest addition to the Don't Know Much About series (Don't Know Much About History, 2003, etc.) is an engaging handbook on gods, goddesses and the civilizations they have inspired. A bestselling explicator of subjects as varied as history and astrophysics, Davis is clearly the owner of a questing mind. His goal as an author is to infect readers with his own intellectual eagerness, and he succeeds admirably with this idiosyncratic tour of world mythology. Davis covers material that will probably be new to many readers--the sacred stories and pantheons of India, Japan, China, Africa, the Americas and the Pacific Islands--and he offers intriguing and up-to-date perspectives on more familiar subjects. His chapter on classical mythology, for example, isn't just a rehash of Olympian exploits; rather, it places tales of the gods in a historical context and explains how Greek religion was created from and influenced by a diverse array of Mediterranean cultures. Davis also considers the contemporary ramifications of ancient beliefs, such as court battles over Native American relics and ongoing debates about the likelihood of a matriarchal prehistory. Davis is a playful teacher, too--one who reminds his students that they probably got their first taste of Norse myth watching Bugs Bunny sing the role of Brunhilde in "What's Opera, Doc?" Specialists in the upper echelons of academia will no doubt find something to grumble about in Davis's popularizing methodology, but even professors will have to concede that Davis has done his research--his annotated bibliography is excellent--and that he's a laudably conscientious scholar. An accessible and informed guide to an always-fascinating subject, and an ideal reference for the general reader. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Get prepped for Canongate's new series, previewed above. From the best-selling author who knows everything. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Don't Know Much About Mythology Everything You Need to Know About the Greatest Stories in Human History but Never Learned Chapter One All Men Have Need of the Gods What are myths? Myths, legends, fables, folktales: What are the differences? Where does the urge to make myths come from? Are all myths historical? Who was the man who "found" Troy? How did an ancient myth cast doubt on the divinity of the Bible? When does myth become religion? And what's the difference? Are myths all in our minds? You're driving down the highway and you pass an accident along the road. Admit it. Without even thinking, you slow down and rubberneck, just like everybody else. Instantly, your mind seeks an explanation for what you see. You may have had only a fleeting glimpse of the accident scene -- maybe you saw sets of skid marks, a car upended, dazed people talking to the police. You hear an ambulance wail in the distance as a trooper or firefighter waves you past. You don't know what happened. But you see the effects and want to explain the cause. If you are like most people, you begin to stitch together a theory of what went wrong. Almost without consciously thinking about it, you begin to manufacture a narrative of what happened. "That driver was probably drinking." "He had to be going too fast." "The driver must have fallen asleep and swerved across the road." "One car probably cut off the other." In other words, without any facts or much evidence, you try to create a coherent story to explain what you have seen. Maybe it is that simple: this is what makes us truly human. The innate need to explain and understand is what has gotten us to where we are today, in the early days of the twenty-first century. Myths may have begun, in the oldest sense, as a way for humans to explain the "car wrecks" of their world -- the world they could see as well as the world they could not see. Long before science envisioned a Big Bang. Long before Greek philosophers reasoned, Siddhartha Gautama sought enlightenment, or Jesus walked the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Long before there was a Bible or a Koran. Long before Darwin proposed natural selection. Long before we could know the age of a rock and before men walked on the moon, there were myths. Myths explained how Earth was created, where life came from, why the stars shine at night and the seasons change. Why there was sex. Why there was evil. Why people died and where they went when they did. In short, myths were a very human way to explain everything. Mythic Voices Look now how mortals are blaming the gods, for they say that evils come from us, but in fact they themselves have woes beyond their share because of their own follies. -- Homer, The Odyssey (c. 750 BCE) What are myths? When people use the word "myth" today, they often have in mind something that is widely believed but untrue. Like alligators in the sewers of New York City -- which is really not a myth at all but an "urban legend." In another sense, it is now common to talk about the "myth" of the cowboys of the Old American West, and there are plenty of other so-called myths in American history -- old ones that die hard and new ones being created all the time. Myths about the Founding Fathers, the Civil War, slavery, the Sixties -- just about any period or movement in America's past has been "mythologized" and layered with legend to some degree. In bookstores today, you'll also find a profusion of books with titles and subtitles that underscore this notion of a myth as something that is commonly believed but is not true: The Beauty Myth, The Mommy Myth, The Myth of Excellence . Most of these recent books with "myth" in the title tend to treat a "myth" as an old and possibly dangerous idea that needs to be debunked. Like most words, "myth" means different things to different people, but in its most basic sense, a myth is defined as "A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the world view of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology , customs , or ideals of society ." ( American Heritage , emphasis added.) "Explaining aspects of the world" -- that's another way to say "science" or "religion," the two principal ways people have used to explain the world. "The psychology, customs, or ideals of a society." That's a large mouthful that covers just about everything else not covered by science and religion -- but gets to the heart of what we think and believe, even if we can't "know" it. In the ancient world, myth had a meaning that is almost completely opposite to our modern concept of myth as an "untruth." In the earliest days of humanity, myths existed to convey essential truths . They were, in a very real sense, what many people today might call gospel. Or as David Leeming put it in A Dictionary of Creation Myths , "A myth is a . . . projection of a . . . group's sense of its sacred past and its significant relationship with the deeper powers of the surrounding world and universe. A myth is a projection of . . . a culture's soul." Ananda Coomaraswamy, a twentieth-century Indian philosopher, put it this way: "Myth embodies the nearest approach to absolute truth that can be expressed in words." Viewed in this very ancient and much broader sense, myths are about what makes us tick. They are as old as humanity and as current as the news. The word myth is derived from the Greek word mythos , for "story," and when the Greek philosopher Plato coined the word "mythology" more than two thousand years ago, he was referring to stories that contained invented figures. In other words, the great Greek thinker conceived of myths as elaborate fiction, even if they expressed some larger "Truth." Plato -- using the voice of Socrates as his Narrator -- criticized the myths as a corrupting influence, and in his ideal state, set out in The Republic , banned poets and their tales. Don't Know Much About Mythology Everything You Need to Know About the Greatest Stories in Human History but Never Learned . Copyright © by Kenneth Davis. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Don't Know Much about Mythology: Everything You Need to Know about the Greatest Stories in Human History but Never Learned by Kenneth C. Davis All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
