Customer Reviews

Mythology: The Illustrated Anthology of World Myth and Storytelling

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Full color photographs and beautiful artwork adorn each and every page of this massive collection. This book covers nearly every religous culture of the ancient world including: Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Celtic, Nordic, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Native American, Mesoamerican, South American, African, Aboriginal, and Polynesian. Worth far more than what Amazon is selling it for. A terrific reference for all those studying ancient history or comparitive religion.

Yes, this is a "coffee table book." And yes, it is huge and heavy. But then, it would have to be to cover so much material and to include so many beautiful illustrations.

Before I get into the "meat" of the book, I'd like to discuss the illustrations. It is difficult to imagine the amount of study and research it must have taken to find these illustrations. They range from thousand year old papyrus illustrations to frescoes to ancient pottery, to antique stone and jade carvings to statuary and on and on. They come from a myriad of ancient cultures and sources. If there were no text in MYTHOLOGY, it would be worth owning just for the art work.

But text there is! The text is broken down by geographical area, and by culture within that area. Also included, are maps where appropriate. For instance, the locations of the labors of Herakles (Hercules to the Romans) which I will discuss further later.

From the standpoint of depth of detail, this is not a scholarly reference. Rather, it is the work of good story tellers, for, after all, the ancient myths were good stories. By this I mean that the book is aimed at the layman (like me), and wherever you open it at random, you will find a great tale of ancient gods, monsters, giants, heroes, and just plain humans. These tales have come down through time, some predating the advent of writing.

MYTHOLOGY opens with a general discussion of mythology, comparing myths with magic mirrors which reflect the hopes and fears of ancient civilizations, and often, those of our civilization, today. Mythological tales, we are told, form the basis of much of the world's literature, philosophy and religion.

As I mentioned, MYTHOLOGY makes wonderful reading, last night I opened it randomly to the section on Herakles and spent a wonderful half an hour or so reading about Herakles and his labors, the lustiness of some gods, the pettiness of others, and the good and the deceitful sides of men. All that in thirty minutes.

Pick a mythological character be he god or monster, hero or human, and the chances are good that you will find him here.

This massive coffee-table style book gives a good overview of some of the major mythologies in the world. Overall, it has both good and bad points, with the good generally outweighing the bad.

The good points include the wide range of mythological stories that are related. While Greek mythology - certainly the most well-known and influential in Western culture - gets more space than any other culture (over one hundred pages), there is plenty of space dedicated to the whole world of mythology: Egyptian, Babylonian, Norse, Chinese, Indian and Japanese amongst them. A wide range of illustrations and photos help tell the stories.

Although wide-ranging, I think there are some noticeable gaps, both within specific sections (for example, no story of Eros and Psyche in the Greek myths) and significant types of myths that are neglected. It would have been interesting to see a little about the Arthurian legends, which are a big part of British mythology. The other thing that is missing is any sort of comparisons. While many cultures had creation and flood stories, there is little direct commentary on the similarities or differences. It would have also been interesting to see some discussion on parallels between myths and the stories of the Bible.

Of course, this book is big enough as it is, and editing decisions needed to be made. While this book suffers from the flaw of incompleteness, it does not have flawed writing, which makes it a good book although (literally) not a light read.

A reference book of this quality is an excellent addition to your reference library... especially if you are the type of person who likes to understand other's at a deep level. Whatever your subject, students of many different topics would also find this an indispensable title to have in your library. With more than 700 colour photographs and nearly 700 pages of information-packed pages to look through, `Mythology' is an excellent value reference book to add to your collection.

Even though there is a lot of information presented in this book, it is set out in a way that makes it easy to find the information you are looking for. The chapters are set out in the following structure:

1. Meaning of Myth
2. Cradles of Civilisation
Egypt's Divine Kingship
Ancient Mesopotamia
The Glories of Greece and Rome
3. The Celtic, Viking and Germanic Worlds
Celtic Deities and Heroes
Sagas of the Norsemen
4. The Eastern World
India's Eternal Cycle
China's Heavenly Mandate
Japan's Realm of the Rising Sun
5. The New World
North America's Mother Earth, Father Sky
Mesoamerica's Gods of Sun and Sacrifice
South American Kingdoms of Gold
6. The Southern World
The Ancestral Voices of Africa
The Unseen Worlds of Australiasia

If you are not sure which section your myth belongs to you can always use the index, which is very well set out too.

I would recommend `Mythology' as a reference book for artists, writers, those of your involved in religious studies and/or readers who just have a curious mind!

This is an absolutely gorgeous coffee-table book that speaks of the mythologies of cultures from around the world. I bought it primarily for the art; brilliant color photographs and original drawings are included to illustrate most of the stories.

This book is also remarkable for its inclusion of often-marginalized cultures. I've seen many a "world mythology" book that doesn't seem to notice that Africa or the Americas exist. This is not one of them.

It does seem to generalize a little--nobody can be a complete expert on every mythology in the world. For example, the Celtic section emphasizes the role of male sky and sun gods, like those of Greek myth, when in fact there were many non-sky gods (both male and female) who were just as popular, and when there are many solar-related goddesses to be found in that mythology. But this is definitely a beautiful and useful reference if you are looking for general information.

this anthology collects a broad overview of myths from around the world... it is great as a reference book, and for readers who want to familiarize themselves with the central myths of various cultures. the illustrations are excellent, and the format makes for easy reading- within the longer myths, smaller boxes contain snippets and short stories that introduce the god/esses and other characters.

the way the book is written in interesting- half of the myths are told in story or fable style, while the other half are moreso theoretical overviews and analyses (really very basic and introductory, nothing tooooo deep here).

the trouble i have with this book, for my purposes (collecitng myths to use in high school English classes) is that the retelling and style of myths is inconsistent throughout the anthology. i gather that different writers produced the different sections, and it is sometimes obvious (some sections are much better than others, more clear and comprehensible).

ultimately this book is an overview, and is great for what it is.

It's impossible to fit every myth from every part of the world into one book, but the editors did an admirable job in collecting various myths and organizing them in this book. The myths are concise and the book is easy to read due to its excellent organization and its lovely pictures. For anyone wishing to learn about world mythology or just one country's tales, this is a wonderful introduction. This book has a treasured place on my bookshelf, and for good reason.

This book is the best thing I have bought in a long time!! It gives great overviews of most of the non-christian religions and mythologies from all over the world. It is easy to read and very enjoyable to read. Because of its already large size it can't give every detail of every mythology, but it definitely gives you enough information so you could know where to look to find more details.