"At last, she arrives at the fatal end of the plank . . . and, with her hands crossed over her chest, falls straight downward, suspended for a moment in the air before being devoured by the burning pit that awaits her. . . ." This grisly 1829 account by Pierre Dubois demonstrates the usual European response to the Hindu custom of satis sacrificing themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands horror and revulsion. Yet to those of the Hindu faith, not least the satis themselves, this act signals the sati's sacredness and spiritual power.
"Ashes of Immortality" attempts to see the satis...

"An impressive and important cross-cultural study that has vast implications for history, religion, anthropology, folklore, and other fields. . . . Remarkably wide-ranging and extremely well-documented, it covers (among much else) the following: medieval Christian legends such as the 14th-century Ethiopian "Gadla Hawaryat" (Contendings of the Apostles) that had their roots in Parthian Gnosticism and Manichaeism; dog-stars (especially Sirius), dog-days, and canine psychopomps in the ancient and Hellenistic world; the cynocephalic hordes of the ancient geographers; the legend of Prester John;...

Revised and reissued in light of recent events, this classic and now increasingly important book is an exception in the literature on terrorism. Based on complex observations of actual movement participants, Wieviorka's book addresses a broad spectrum of terrorist activity-from Italian left-wing terrorists to Basque nationalist groups to the international terrorism of Palestine and the Middle East. The result is an incisive analysis of what terrorists believe and what they hope to achieve through their actions. For this new edition, Wieviorka adds new material that remaps the state of...