Review by Ana Megrelishvili -- Mythic Worlds and the One...

Postby Ana Megrelishvili »

[Following is a volunteer review of "Mythic Worlds and the One You Can Believe In" by Harold Toliver.]
[rbc=4]id208550-125[/rbc]Mythic Worlds and the One You Can Believe In by Harold Toliver is a comprehensive, argumentative analysis on illusions and how they have influenced our society throughout human history. By dividing the book into 4 parts: Myths of the Commonwealth; The actual, the Hypothetical, and the Utterly false; Why People Took to Collective Illusions; Repair? Retrofit? Or Replace? the author does a great job of separating truth and false from each other.

“The myths block our vision of a reality”, - says Toliver and tries to enlighten its reader and raise awareness on the dark side of our “beloved” illusions. The author makes clear what he is trying to reach by writing this book - “The goal we should work toward is the disassembling of harmful myths of the commonwealth and blind faith partisanship.”

Even a slight glimpse on the book is enough to tell that the author is extremely educated, intelligent and experienced in writing. Harold Toliver is a professor emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine and he is the author of about 15 books and textbooks. The whole book looks like a perfectly organized and well-presented lecture, from which you can learn a lot. The main reason, why I loved this book is that while explaining in detail the main subject, the author provides us numerous amount of interesting historical and scientific facts, which broadens readers mind and general knowledge. Book gives us a whole new view on famous human beliefs and turns it around by 180 degrees. Moreover, the book is professionally edited. For those reasons, I rate this book 4 out of 4 stars.

The thing I did not like in this publication, is that it discusses the theme from the only negative perspective. Scientifically false illusions and beliefs make communities stronger and in some cases, they were the main reason why some nationalities, such as Georgians, survived and exist nowadays. Also, while reading this book I had my Google search tab opened because in some cases I could not keep up with the terminology. It would have been great if the book had a small appendix, where some words would be explained.

I would suggest this book to only experienced readers, who love to think outside the box and who are not afraid to see things from a different perspective. If you want to widen your general knowledge, this book is for you! I would not suggest this book to those who are very religious, as they might find it abusive.

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Mythic Worlds and the One You Can Believe In
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