Donna Rosenberg (–2017)

Around the world numerous different peoples came up with explains about the natural world and their own cultural heritage, though separated by vast distances create obvious differences there is also many similarities. World Mythology: An Anthology of Great Myths and Epics by Donna Rosenberg brings together the stories of different cultures both well-known and hardly known together for a mass audience.

Rosenberg covers all corners of the world from such the well-known epics of Gilgamesh, The Iliad, Beowulf, King Arthur of the Middle East, Greece, Northern Europe and Britain while also covering from the Segu in African, Bakaridjan Kone, and from the Inuit, Sedna. Rosenberg also covered numerous creation and fertility myths from those same cultures or nearby neighboring cultures. Before each piece, Rosenberg would give an introduction and historical background giving the reader better context for what they are about to read.

This collection brings together well-known myths and epics that “Western” audiences know as well as those not known from the “Western” perspective, with a few exceptions like The Ramayana. From the standpoint of getting a large audience introduced to these myths, the book succeeds. However, Rosenberg literally sets off alarm bells to any discerning reader when she says that she will be retelling these myths for the modern world. While I didn’t expect the entirety of The Iliad or Beowulf to be republished in this collection, I expected a fairly authentic telling of these myths and the butchering of them made me appreciate less those myths and epics I hadn’t read before like The Aeneid or The Ramayana or that I hadn’t known of before like the aforementioned Bakaridjan Kone and Sedna because I knew it wasn’t a true representation of the myth. To add further insult were Rosenberg’s introductions and historical background that were wrong on history thus making her explanations of the myth questionable especially when she wants to push forward the Great Goddess theory on every myth that has an important female deity or heroine—I don’t deny that there was important Great Goddess religions but not every myth Rosenberg claims is a patriarchal takeover of a matriarchal religious system.

While World Mythology is an okay introduction to numerous cultural myths from around the globe, but do not get this for the classics nor consider those other myths you’ll read as the definitive versions.… (meer)

We bought this book to get more information about Greek Mythology following reading the [b:D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths|79626|D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths|Ingri D'Aulaire|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170970293s/79626.jpg|891861] version of Greek Mythology for kids. Over the years we have jumped around and read different myths and epics in this book, but we have mostly focused on the Greeks.

This time, however, we started with the old favorites and have just plowed through without picking and choosing. There are some very entertaining aspects of some of the unfamiliar myths. In one myth, the creator creates demons by farting them out of his rear end. This produced roars of laughter and continues to produce endless jokes in our house.

Regardless of origination of the various myths, we are finding a lot of similarities. For example, there are plenty of floods that happen to annihilate entire races that don't meet the expectations of the gods. I don't know if the editor is highlighting them or we are seeing how people are more similar than we think, especially in their story telling.

Some of the myths provoke a lot of discussion. One creation myth from Africa was particularly annoying. There are two major gods in this myth, Olorun (male) and Olokun (female). Olorun is the god of the sky and Olokun is the goddess of the sea. There is no land at this time. One of the lesser gods, Obatala, decides that it would be fun to create the earth. Following the directions of some of the other gods, he pours dirt into the water and land is formed. Essentially, he steals part of the Olokun's kingdom. Nowhere in the story does Obatala consult with Olokun about this action. Later in the story she gets angry and creates a big flood. Still, there is no discussion abnout resolving the issue fairly or appeasement going on. In the end, Olokun relents without any discussion and Obatala is not made to pay for stealing. I don't like the messages this myth sends out, but the discussions we had were interesting.

The abridgment isn't very good in this book, but it isn't terrible either. The editor writes/edits so the language is quite repetitive and leaves out some critical parts of the various stories. The abridgment (and translation of the Kotan Utunnai is particularly repetitive). The editing also has a lot to be desired. There are words that are obviously wrong (warned instead of warmed in the Liu Chun/Bao Chu myth from China). Still, this book is getting us ready for the full versions.
… (meer)

I would rate this book as a 5 out of 5. This book was very helpful with understanding everything to do with Greek Mythology. We read this book in class and it took us about a month and a half. It took us that long because we would read one or two myths a night and the next day we would completely analyzed and pick apart the myth to get as much information out of it as we could. This made learning about the myths extremely easy. Not only that but you would not think it, but we use Greek mythology a lot. For example, the idea of heliocentric, which was the idea that everything in the solar system revolves around the sun. If you looked at the name you would not truly understand but the Greek god of the sun was named Helios. So that was only one example of Greek mythology used in science, but there are many more then that. If you have time in your busy schedules to read this book I highly recommend it because personally, the myths are a quick read. Not only that but I felt that some of the myths were extremely funny. Just pick up the book and read the myths and I would guarantee that you would love the book.… (meer)

Mythology and You is an excellent book for students. It gives the reader guided reading questions, and even discussion questions to use in classroom setting. The book tells the tales of the Greek myths in depth, but also in an interesting way. The vocabulary in the book can be difficult, which is a downside to the text. I enjoyed the many different kinds of stories in the book, and I liked how the stories related to things in real life. I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to understand more about ancient Greek times and about the Greek religion.… (meer)