This changes everything we thought we knew about John Steinbeck. After languishing in the CIA’s archives for 60 years, a letter is uncovered in John Steinbeck’s own hand that shatters everything history tells us about the author’s life. Written in 1952, to CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith, Steinbeck makes an offer to become an asset for the Agency during a trip to Europe later that year. More shocking than Steinbeck’s letter is Smith’s reply accepting John’s proposal. Discovered by author Brian Kannard, these letters create the tantalizing proposal that John Steinbeck was, in fact, a CIA spy. Utilizing information from Steinbeck’s FBI file, John’s own correspondence, and interviews with John’s son Thomas Steinbeck, playwright Edward Albee, a former CIA intelligence officer, and others, Steinbeck: Citizen Spy uncovers the secret life of American cultural icon and Nobel Prize–winner, John Steinbeck. •Did Steinbeck actively gather information for the intelligence community during his 1947 and 1963 trips to the Soviet Union? •Why was the controversial author of The Grapes of Wrath never called before the House Select Committee on Un-American Activities, despite alleged ties to Communist organizations? •Did the CIA influence Steinbeck to produce Cold War propaganda as part of Operation MOCKINGBIRD? •Why did the CIA admit to the Church Committee in 1975 that Steinbeck was a subject of their illegal mail-opening program known as HTLINGUAL? These and a host of other resources leave little doubt that there are depths yet unplumbed in the life of one of America’s most treasured authors. Just how heavily was Steinbeck involved in CIA operations? What did he know? And how much did he sacrifice for his country? Steinbeck: Citizen Spy brings us one step closer to the truth.

An essential notion in the #1 New York Times bestseller The Da Vinci Code is the existence of an age-old French society, the Priory of Sion, whose task it is to protect Christ's sacred bloodline. In The Sion Revelation, Picknett and Prince reveal the story of the Priory, taking readers on a highly significant, disturbing, and even alarming ride through history into an intriguing world where a great many uncomfortable facts will have to be faced, both religious and political. Drawing on a wealth of astonishing evidence, they answer numerous questions that shroud this society, including: • Does the Priory actually exist or is the group's entire history an elaborate hoax? • Was Leonardo da Vinci really one of the Priory's Grand Masters? • What is the truth behind Pierre Plantard, the enigmatic French aristocrat who claimed to be a Priory Grand Master -- and who some claim was a Nazi sympathizer? • Could the Priory be a front for other occult societies in Europe with religious or even political agendas? By carefully untangling centuries of obfuscation, rumor, and documented fact, The Sion Revelation unravels the great intricacies of this secret society and takes us on a historical journey that is as groundbreaking in its explanation as it is riveting in its telling.

Enter a place born from all of Lovecrafts creations, and governed by servitors of the Old Ones.

On a snowy January morning in 1889, a worried servant hacked open a locked door at the remote hunting lodge deep in the Vienna Woods. Inside, he found two bodies sprawled on an ornate bed, blood oozing from their mouths. Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary appeared to have shot his seventeen-year-old mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera as she slept, sat with the corpse for hours and, when dawn broke, turned the pistol on himself. A century has transformed this bloody scene into romantic tragedy: star-crossed lovers who preferred death together than to be parted by a cold, unfeeling Viennese Court. But Mayerling is also the story of family secrets: incestuous relationships and mental instability; blackmail, venereal disease, and political treason; and a disillusioned, morphine-addicted Crown Prince and a naïve schoolgirl caught up in a dangerous and deadly waltz inside a decaying empire. What happened in that locked room remains one of history’s most evocative mysteries: What led Rudolf and mistress to this desperate act? Was it really a suicide pact? Or did something far more disturbing take place at that remote hunting lodge and result in murder? Drawing interviews with members of the Habsburg family and archival sources in Vienna, Greg King and Penny Wilson reconstruct this historical mystery, laying out evidence and information long ignored that conclusively refutes the romantic myth and the conspiracy stories.

"There is a widespread perception that the development process is in a state of multiple crisis. While the notion of sustainable development is supposed to address adequately its environmental dimensions, there is still no agreed framework relating women to this new perspective. This book is an attempt to present and disentangle the various positions put forward by major actors and to clarify the political and theoretical issues that are at stake in the debates on women, the environment and sustainable development. Among the current critiques of the western model of development which the authors review are the feminist analysis of Science itself and the power relations inherent in the production of knowledge; Women, Environment and Development (WED); Alternative Development; Environmental Reformism; and Deep Ecology, Social Ecology and Ecofeminism. In traversing this important landscape of ideas, they show how they criticise the dominant developmental model at the various levels of epistemology, theory and policy. The authors also go further and put forward their own ideas as to the basic elements they consider necessary in constructing a paradigmatic shift -- emphasising such values as holism, mutuality, justice, autonomy, self-reliance, sustainability and peace. This unique work is a signally useful contribution to clarifying thinking on a topic with immense implications for all women."--Publisher's description.

Dieser Band versammelt Beiträge von namhaften europäischen und amerikanischenAltertumswissenschaftlern und Religionswissenschaftlern, die einen repräsentativen Querschnitt der zeitgenössischen Erforschung des Mythos, seiner Erscheinungsformen und seiner Transformationen in unterschiedlichen Bereichen und Epochen darbieten.