Drs. Christopher Fee and David Leeming have crafted an extraordinary work examining the marriage of Celtic, Germanic, and Norse cultures and religious beliefs in Britain (particularly as they are seen via the literary traditions that chronicled them) in an effort to understand how the impact of pre-Christian peoples influenced the unique Christianity of Medieval Britain. While Dr. Leeming has provided extensive retellings of pagan myths, Dr. Fee has written insightful analyses of these myths and their import to the creation of a British religious ideology. Beginning with a scrutiny of the various pagan pantheons, the work then moves through detailed examinations of, among other things, types of deities, heroes and heroines, and the different sagas of the individual cultures. As an apocalypticist, I found the retellings and subsequent commentaries on Ragnarok and the Anglo-Saxon Fire of Judgment immensely informative and useful.
This is an extraordinarily accessible book. It is intended for the non-specialist and, as such, would be perfect for an undergraduate survey course, for an upper-level topical course on British mythology/religion, or for any scholar seeking an understanding of Britain's pre-Christian culture. I would also recommend it highly as a handbook for any medievalist who needs quick and informed accounts of any and all of these topics. Not only have Drs. Fee and Leeming eloquently opened up the field of pagan Britain to further inquiry and discussion, but they have done so in a work that is, above all, easy and enjoyable to read.

This book is a great read. It's obviously well-researched, and filled with intriguing facts. Furthermore, Fee has a writing style that draws the reader in and keeps him/her interested throughout. Highly recommended!

really intersting read with lots of interesting facts, not for the faint hearted, makes you think and relise alot of different things

This book is very confusing for teenager but once you get into the book one can see how good it really is. Baldwin brings up thought prokving points. His essays are well developed.

I am the original editor of "Notes of a Native Son," which Baldwin, in his foreword to the last edition during his lifetime, said that I forced him to write. It is not widely enough known that a distinguished board appointed by the Modern Library selected "Notes of a Native Son" as #19 of the top 100 Books of the Century.

This book stands out in my mind as one of the most inspiring that I've ever read. Baldwin exposes himself so freely, and what is revealed is a real, flawed, but ultimately very wise human being. His writing style is clear and evocative, chock full of great quotables. Read it!

James E. Coleman, Jr., writing in the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1999 notes: "Whether Leeming is as successful in taking on an artist's life as he had been with the literary life of [James] Baldwin, I am not certain. His knowledge of Baldwin's literary world is not quite matched by his savvy of the art world of the same period. Nevertheless, we have a fine introduction to an artist whose reputation is growing and who lived a fascinating life." That's high praise coming from Coleman, editor of The Encyclopedia Homophilica.

America's artistic milieu is known for dismissing from its memory those artists whose works and lives are deemed trivial and not worthy of consideration. Such an attitude has denied younger generations of artists the experience of knowing some of the great artistic man and women of our time. Beauford Delaney was one of those artists relegated to the halls of obscurity.

Amazing Grace is David Leemings biographical piece that examines Delaney's life and contributions to the art world. He looks at the forces which brought forth America's premiere modernist artist and shows how his gift impacted on the way one views life and art.

Who is this man, Delaney? A superficial view of his life reveals him as an impoverished homosexual Black artist who is plagued by many demons as he struggles to find himself as an artist and at peace with his sexuality. James Baldwin called him his spiritual father who was a cross between Brer Rabbit and St. Francis of Asissi. Others knew him as the good negro or an eccentric gadfly. Whatever one may call him, Delaney's goal was to infuse the concept of love within his work that would bring him the wholeness that he failed to capture in his life.

Plagued by paranoia, alcoholism and guilt over his homosexuality, Delaney failed to achieve intimacy in his relationships but poured out his inner struggle through his art. Like many artists, he went through several stages of development in his career which reached its climax in France. Unfortunately the demon of paranoia stripped him of his artistic ability in his later years.

This book must be read to get a handle on the artistic struggles of African Americans and how they succeeded inspite of their alienation from the mainstream art world. Delaney also struggled with being homosexual which undoubtably alienated him from his family and Black colleagues. His struggle opens up a new chapter in examining how sexuality impacts on a minority artists life. Delaney was saved from obscurity through this view of his life. Whether he was saved by grace is a moot point for his demonic voices did him in.

Overall, I was favorably impressed by "The Children's Dictionary of Mythology," edited by David Adams Leeming. The book is full of entries from "Achilles" to "Zeus." It is an ambitiously multicultural work which includes the mythology of many regions: Africa, the Middle East, Australia, North America, the South Pacific, India, Japan, etc.

Each entry is a short, informative essay. Some entries, like "African Mythology" or "Animism," are general in nature, while others focus on specific deities, heroes or relevant cultural phenomena. Some sample entry topics are "Book of the Dead," "Coyote," "Dikithi" (a Bantu trickster), "Kali," "Lilith," "Quetzalcoatl," etc.

One of the book's strongest aspects is its rich assortment of full-color illustrations. There are many photographs of artwork of all types: a Hopi cloth, a sculpture of the serpent-headed Medusa, a stained-glass window depicting Sir Galahad, a knife handle carved to represent the trickster Raven, a wooden statue of the Chinese goddess Kuan Yin, Egyptian paintings, and much more.

A note to the reader declares, "Myths are sacred tales about gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines." Thus I was puzzled by the book's failure to include many important figures from Jewish, Christian, and Islamic sacred narrative. Yes, "Adam" and "Eve" are included, but there are no articles on "Abraham," "Moses," "Jesus," "Mary," and others. Yet the editors include figures from other living religions, like Hinduism. Certainly, by the book's own definition of myth, the excluded figures merit entries. This selective process of inclusion and exclusion left me somewhat dissatisfied with the book. Despite its flaws, however, this book is an admirable reference work for young readers.

Actually, "The Children's Dictionary of Mythology" is slightly more ambitious than what the title suggests. This volume is closer to an encyclopedia than a dictionary since many of the entries are several paragraphs long. The idea behind these 300+ entries is to invite cross-cultural comparisons: virtually ever culture represented has its creation myth detailed within these pages. This is intended as a general introduction to mythology, which is distinguished from religion by the editors. Judeo-Christianity is basically reduced to the creation story (i.e., Adam and Eve in the garden), while the rest of the entries cover not only Greek and Roman (i.e., classical) mythology, but ancient Egypt, Summeria, India, Japan, China, Australia, the South Pacific, Africa and the Americas.

In addition to the standard entries, stories about characters, such as Adventures of Theseus and the Journey of Pele, and important cultural myths, such as Cherokee Creation Myths and Incan Flood, are highlighted. These features appear in colored boxes near a character's alphabetical entry or close to the story's alphabetical order. Most of the entries are cross-referenced that will point young readers to related subjects discussed elsewhere in the book. Within these pages young readers will find elements from several mythological traditions. In addition to dozens of deities and characters, many of which you can readily find elsewhere, the strength of this book is it facilitates comparative mythological analysis by covering themes of mythology (Quest, Creation, Afterlife, Flood) and recurring places in mythology (City, Labyrinth, Underworld). "The Children's Dictionary of Mythology" also has entries on sources of mythological narratives from the "Epic of Gilgamesh" to the "Enuma Elish," and mythological events like the "Cattle Raid of Cooley" and "Jason and the Golden Fleece."

I do not think I would have been happier with this book if it had been a true dictionary, with two or three times the entries because none of them were more than a paragraph long. I am leaning at this point to wishing the book being organized by the themes it isolates, because that is were it makes the best case for cross-cultural comparisons. Still, with a little effort, teachers can put together those units on their own. The selected bibliography provides a list of books by culture for further information. For teachers putting together a mythology unit for younger students, this book is an ideal first place to look for not just information but also ideas.

A book I would never have gotten if not for my final course I took in univeristy, a course on Mythology and Symbolism, I went into this book thinking, "Gosh, myths. Yawn."

I was sadly mistaken. Parallelling Joseph Campbell's notion of universal myths, this book is an exciting journey through various myth-types that seem to crop up in nearly every culture. Explore Creation Myths, Flood Myths, Hero Myths, and Object Myths, for a few examples, in a way that crosses cultures and time periods with ease. A truly diverse selection is in this work, this is not just your typical compilation of Greek and Roman myths. Eastern and Western mythologies tie in with Celtic and Asian and Nordic and Hebrew.

If you are at all interested in mythology, this is the book for you.

This is a wonderful collection of Mythology from all over the world. It is very useful in determining common threads of myth in different socieities...

Like other reviewers, I would have not given this book a second thought were it not one of my textbooks for English 102. I was pleasantly surprised! It is a very enjoyable introduction to viewing myths from the Jungian perspective. There are stories from all over the world, including the Bible, the Torah, and the Koran. While I am suspicious of a couple of the sources that Leeming uses, most are wonderful, from scholars like Joseph Campbell and Samuel Noah Kramer. I appreciate the most that there are actual translations of important myths like those of Inanna and Pan instead of paraphrasing or summaries: hearing them in their original lyrical form makes a BIG difference! There are few books that I will not sell back at the end of the semester: this is one that I hung on to!

Native American myths are always primitive, raw, peculiar, and sometimes entertaining, but might not be for everyone. This particular book is not daunting, at about 200 pages, with most of the myths being relatively short. What the authors have tried to do is present the myths in a general, more literary approach, and with some reference to similarities with other mythic traditions. Starting with the native "pantheons", then to their conception of the cosmos (creation, flood, afterlife, end of world), then to hero myths. Of these the last section was the most entertaining, the other myths end up being etiological and rather simple. If you are interested in the mysths in their more original forms there is "American Indian Myths and Legends". This book is more like a primer, but is at least a good overall introduction to what is really a vast mythological tradition.

This book is straightforward, breaking down each step of the heroic journey, from the hero's birth to apotheosis, using examples from various mythologies/religions to establish the classical pattern used in literature. If you just want to brush up and increase your ability to identify the pattern in literature/pop culture (ie. Aliens movies, The Matrix, Xena, Buffy, Providence...) this is a handy reference and a quick read.

A surpirse indeed. I was actually expecting and anthology of folktales ranging from Paul Bunyan to Casey Jones and Johnny Appleseed etc. Although most of these also appear in the book, the book delves into the historical roots of many of the belief systems of american indians as well. Tracing European, African and Asian beliefs/myths/legends about creation and the development of (wo)mankind makes for fascinating reading. How these belief systems intermingled and adapted to thier new environment and formed a basis for the new "American way of life" - highly recommended reading!

I was hoping for a factual/investigative account of the tragedy of the Atlanta child murders. Instead, this book seemed to be an essay written on the problems of racial injustice and ignorance in Atlanta, America, and the world. Nothing wrong with that, but then I take into account that the essay was written in a most meandering and disjointed fashion, full of incomprehensible references, with an overwhelming tone of arrogance. Baldwin is right, everyone else is wrong and to blame. Not persuasive, just a waste of time.

This is a difficult read because Baldwin's thoughts come across like a man too perplexed to ask "Why?". And so there are many crosscurrent thoughts, parentheticals that are not in parenthesis, and sheer rage. The question: who could be murdering the children in Atlanta? And has the years of systematic oppression and racism made it possible for a black man to be become that cruel? Has the oppressed become the oppressor?

And I can understand Baldwin's great perplexity...he wants to point the finger at the American way of life. How years and years of being considered not human has affected the mindset of the average person of color. And of having to come through identity crises, legal crises, social crises to be confronted with who...? A person who is this insane enough to be killing innocent kids? Why have we struggled so much, Baldwin seems to be asking, to create this monster?

And so, it is another probing we received from the always philosophical, questioning, always provocative Baldwin.

Why read the book now? Well, although this murderer has been found and given punishment based on the fullest extent of the law, the questions remains.

How have we come to this?