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Neither dogmatic nor apologetic, sectarian or denominational, this mode of reading acknowledges the inherently charged strangeness of writing and fiction, whereby authors have the ability to seemingly create entire universes from words alone.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eEd Simonconsiders the theological depth, resonance, and mystery of the acts of reading and writing. 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In popular culture, angels are often reduced to the most gauzy, sentimental, and saccharine of images: fat babies with wings and guardians with robes, halos, and harps. By contrast, in scripture whenever one of the heavenly choirs appears before a prophet or patriarch, they first declare “Fear not!” for terror would be the most appropriate initial reaction to these otherworldly beings. Angels are often not what we’d expect, but it’s precisely in that transcendent encounter that something of the strangeness of existence can be conveyed. Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology is a follow-up volume to Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology, and like the earlier title, this book offers an account of the angelic hierarchies as they’ve been understood across centuries and cultures and of the individual personages, such as the archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel, who have marked the mythology of the West.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49745032446225,"sku":"NGR9781419767579","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51024964321553,"sku":"NIN9781419767579","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51150711849233,"sku":"GOR014187100","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1419767577.jpg?v=1751272157"},{"product_id":"devil-s-contract-book-ed-simon-9781685891046","title":"Devil's Contract","description":"From ancient times to the modern world, the idea of the Faustian bargain - the exchange of one's soul in return for untold riches and power - has exerted a magnetic pull upon our collective imaginations. 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Presented as a substantial hardcover volume with extensive color imagery throughout, the book brings together visual history and cultural analysis in a form designed for browsing as much as reading.  Written by scholar and cultural critic Ed Simon, the book examines the enduring symbolic power of the seven deadly sins and their corresponding virtues—concepts that have shaped ethical thought and artistic expression for centuries. Unlike angels bound to obedience or demons consigned to rebellion, human beings occupy an unsettled moral terrain, defined by competing impulses toward excess and restraint, vice and virtue.  Across its generously illustrated pages, the book draws on a wide range of visual material, including religious art, painting, manuscript imagery, and later cultural representations. Each chapter situates a sin and its corresponding virtue within theological, philosophical, and historical contexts, showing how these moral categories have evolved over time—from tools of instruction and warning to frameworks for interpreting human behavior and social order.  Designed as both a visual reference and a cultural history, the book invites readers to linger over imagery while tracing the shifting meanings of concepts such as pride and humility, greed and generosity, lust and chastity. The result is a volume that captures humanity at its most aspirational and most flawed, through illustrations as compelling as the ideas they reflect.  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With the infamous four horsemen as its guide, Writing During the Apocalypse honors the literary life even during the end of the world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53613034078481,"sku":"NGR9798765123218","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53663491129617,"sku":"NIN9798765123218","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9798765123218.jpg?v=1780316163"},{"product_id":"writing-during-the-apocalypse-book-ed-simon-9798765123225","title":"Writing During the Apocalypse","description":"All of American literature is a tragedy. What we’re living through now isn’t a tragedy, however – it’s a horror novel. Why bother writing when the world’s on fire?     Rising authoritarianism. Covid. Inflation. Wealth disparity. War. Climate change. While every time period is marked by apocalyptic fears, it certainly seems like our current anxieties aren’t ill placed. And yet, art and literature persist.   In captivating and culturally savvy prose, Ed Simon grapples with the notion that writers and their work ought to distract readers from the dire situation we face in these fetid days of the Anthropocene. He also addresses the wider question of what it's like to write during what could be the last decades of human civilization, arguing that to craft imaginative spaces through the magic of words isn’t superfluous. Instead it exists at the core of human experience – as it always has and always will.   Examining creativity as it has manifested in similarly dire circumstances in human history – in a broad range of authors and texts, such as the Bible, Boccaccio’s Decameron, Voltaire, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, and Stephen King’s The Stand – Writing During the Apocalypse eschews the easy defeatism of nihilism. Instead, it offers a hopeful perspective on the various ways that literary expression can endow a meaningless world with meaning and generate a spark in the darkness.   With the infamous four horsemen as its guide, Writing During the Apocalypse honors the literary life even during the end of the world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53636380360977,"sku":"NLS9798765123225","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53663491195153,"sku":"NIN9798765123225","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9798765123225.jpg?v=1781000446"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-au\/collections\/author-books-by-ed-simon.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}