Library Access!

My current ebooks Understanding Ancient Thought, The Sacred History of Being, and J.G. Frazer and the Platonic Theory of Being, have been uploaded to the British Library via their portal for electronic legal deposit.

In the near future, these books will appear in the various electronic catalogues of legal deposit libraries in the British Isles  - The British Library, The National Library of Wales, The National Library of Scotland, Trinity College Dublin,  Cambridge University Library. and The Bodleian Library in Oxford. Subsequently, details of these books will be available from the catalogue aggregators WorldCat and Copac.  OCLC's WorldCat is the place to go to find which local institutions have copies of books you want to consult

These books will be available to consult free in these institutions, if you can visit one of them and register as a user. They will not be available for loan of course, but many students will  be able to access them without having to buy a copy.

TY, August 31, 2017.


As of September 6, 2017, the books are listed in the main catalogue of the British Library. Search on 'Yaeger, Thomas'. The listings will spill out to the other catalogues in the British Isles in due course. Below is a screenshot of the result of the search.

TY, September 6, 2017

As of September 12, my books are also listed in the catalogues of the National Library of Scotland (search by title), The Bodleian Library in Oxford, Cambridge University Library (via iDiscover search) ,  and the Copac, and WorldCat catalogues (search on Anshar Press).

TY, September 12, 2017

As of September 19, my books are listed at Trinity College Dublin Library (search by title). 

TY, September 19, 2017

An interview with Thomas Yaeger

As published at Smashwords, August 24, 2017. It is an updated version of the one which was uploaded in November 2015.


What are you working on next?


I've just finished 'Understanding Ancient Thought' (published August 20, 2017), which is intended as a companion of sorts to 'The Sacred History of Being' (published in 2015). It is much more discursive in style, and (I think) an easier read. I'm now working on a volume which looks at the same body of ideas, but within a later time frame. It is an interesting story of survival: all the way through the neoplatonists and up to the Italian renaissance. And not much written about since then. It should be available around summer 2018.

What is the story behind your first book?


There are two stories about it. The argument of 'The Sacred History of Being' runs counter to much modern speculation about the origins of philosophy. This isn't down to me being contrarian and vexatious for the sake of it, but because when you look closely at the evidence, the consensus model doesn't hang together properly. The book is both an analysis of what is wrong with our agreed picture of the origins of philosophy, and a preliminary attempt at a reconstruction of a history of the subject which is more likely, and which makes more sense of the evidence.

The second story is how I came to write the book. It started from very little things: I'd been interested in philosophy for many years, and was familiar with Plato and Aristotle, the Sophists, and Greek philosophy in general, I found in a book on Ancient Egyptian literature by the eminent German Egyptologist Adolf Erman, a translation of Akhenaten's Hymn to the Aten, which invoked the idea of completion. I was familiar with that idea from Aristotle, where the concept is a key part of his understanding of how the world is put together. But Aristotle belongs to the 4th century B.C.E. Akhenaten belongs to the *14th century* B.C.E. That's a thousand years or so of difference. How could this be?

That was the start of the project, though I had no idea at the time that I was already in motion, and no clue as to where the project would take me. I had no map. I ended up studying ancient history in London, in order to have a map. There is a story to be told about that. I've addressed part of that story already on my blog and in the course of the book, but a full account of the twists and turns on the way to the writing of The Sacred History of Being might be useful to other researchers who find themselves starting on something completely new.

Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?


I grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland. It's a place which has had its fair share of writers. R.L. Stevenson came from Edinburgh, and wrote about dual or conflicted personality more than once, and the city itself is a bit like that. It has a dark side. So what you see often isn't the whole of what is there. How complicated things can turn out to be when you start to unpick them! I learned that while living in Edinburgh.

What motivated you to become an indie author?


I wanted to cut out a number of filters that usually stand between writers and the public. I worked as a magazine editor for five years, and also contributed articles to a number of other magazines, So I know the importance of copy-editing. But I wanted to avoid editorial compromise with the structure and focus of the book I was in the process of writing. Taking the indie route gave me that level of control.

What is the greatest joy of writing for you?


Research. And figuring things out. A lot of things emerge from the act of writing up research. As D'Arcy Thompson pointed out, when you assemble pieces of information, they will tell stories about each other. So you find out things that you didn't know were there.

Who are your favorite authors?


In fiction: George Orwell; Hermann Hesse; Robert Graves; Lewis Carroll; and Frederik Pohl.
In non-fiction Michael Harrison (author of 'Fire from Heaven'.), partly for his style of writing, Thomas Kuhn (the Structure of Scientific Revolutions); Jean Seznec; Alan Watts; Cicero; and Carl Jung (particularly for his book on 'The Nature of the Psyche'). 

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When did you first start writing?


I started to create small comics when I was at primary school. At secondary school as part of a project I wrote a thirty page essay about Rembrandt, and later for my own interest I wrote a gazetteer of the solar system, which was about fifty pages long. I remember also working with someone at school on a paper about statues in Edinburgh, which was fun to research. We found out how good the Central Public Library was as a resource for all things Edinburgh. There was other stuff too.

Describe your desk


It depends on what I'm doing at the time. The basic kit is a laptop, printer, a jar of pens and pencils, and a radio/cd player. It is a gatefold table, and if I'm consulting a lot of books I will fold it out to accommodate them. In the winter there will be a lamp next to my desk.

What inspires you to get out of bed each day?


Coffee.

When you're not writing, how do you spend your time?


Listening to music or watching movies, particularly film noir from the 40s and 50s. Cooking is a pleasure. Food and movies with friends

.Published 2017-08-24.

Current Books by Thomas Yaeger

'Understanding Ancient Thought' is now available (August 20 2017) from Itunes, Barnes & Noble, Blio, Inktera, Rakuten, Smashwords, and other major ebook retailers. 

'Understanding Ancient Thought' is the third of a quartet of books concerning the antiquity of philosophy, and its connection with divine cult in the ancient world. The fourth book of the quartet is expected to be available sometime in 2018. The title will be announced shortly. 

Purchasing and ereader options are  also available for the book at the foot of the chapter listing. 

A sample of the text is available from the library supplier Overdrive (below). You can't buy it directly from them (unless you are a library), so you need to go to one of the regular online bookstores such as Barnes and Noble, etc.   

Retailers carrying 'Understanding Ancient Thought' (2017)

Below is a selection of screenshots from retailer sites. These are Itunes, Rakuten Kobo, Rakuten (Japan), Livraria Cultura (Brazil), and Barnes & Noble for North America. The book will be available on August 21. Some sites are offering it for pre-order, though not all sites do this. The book will appear on other sites, such as Blio, from the 21st. The book will also be available (on the 21st) directly from Smashwords, my principal distributor. 

A chapter listing complete with chapter summaries is available at: http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/nineteen-meditations.html. The page also contains direct links to retailers, and information about ereaders and ebook management software. 

The Splendor of Totality

The announced date for the publication of Understanding Ancient Thought was August 29. The date was picked initially to allow me plenty of time to fix any formatting problems, to allow the distributor Smashwords time to review the book visually, and to acquire an ISBN for the ePub version.

In fact there were no formatting issues at all with the book (by the time you've got to your third one you've got the hang of the process); the ISBN arrived within minutes of the request, and the book was visually reviewed inside two days. It is now in the Smashwords Premium catalogue, and is available for pre-order.

August 29 is not a significant date for me. A little desk research lets me know that it is John Locke's birthday (1632), about whom I've written a fair amount (in connection with his doctrine of the association of ideas); that in 1831 Michael Faraday demonstrated the first electric transformer; that in 1742 Edmond Hoyle published his "Short Treatise" on the card game whist; and in 1842, Great Britain & China signed the Treaty of Nanking, which ended the infamous Opium war. A few other things have occurred on August 29 in history of course, but it isn't a stand out date.

A much more interesting date for publishing the book is August 21, when a total solar eclipse will be visible over a large part of the continental United States. Not many radical texts have been published to coincide with a solar eclipse, but I have the capacity to change the publication date, bringing it forward by eight days.

My book concerns ancient patterns of thought, many of which now seem very strange to us, and which are more or less unintelligible, except through a great deal of unpicking. I haven't written about eclipses and eclipse prediction in Understanding Ancient Thought, but eclipse prediction was one way in antiquity to demonstrate to a population that a priesthood had an understanding of the mind of God. That connection with what is Divine, that understanding of it, is one of the main themes of the book.

So I choose the more auspicious August 21 for the formal publication date. Available (in ePub format) from Barnes & Noble, Itunes, Inktera, Blio, Smashwords, and other eBook retailers.

UAT will now be released in the US at midnight EST on August 20 2017.

[Post updated August 11, 2017]