{"title":"Michael Taylor","description":"\u003cp\u003eMichael Taylor’s works delve into the mysterious intersections of history, spirituality, and the unseen forces shaping our world. With titles like \u003cem\u003eIlluminati\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eImpossible Monsters\u003c\/em\u003e, his books offer a captivating exploration of secret societies, esoteric knowledge, and the myths that challenge our understanding of reality.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eReaders interested in the hidden depths of history and the profound questions of faith will find Taylor’s writing both thought-provoking and richly detailed. His unique blend of historical insight and spiritual inquiry encourages a deeper reflection on the unseen influences within human experience.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"impossible-monsters-by-michael-taylor-9781847926791","title":"Impossible Monsters","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom fossil-hunting to the end of faith, this gripping narrative history of the seventy-five-year culture war transformed how we think about the universe and our place in it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1811, when the self-schooled daughter of a carpenter pulled some strange-looking bones from Britain's southern shoreline, few people dared to question that the Bible told the accurate history of the world. But Mary Anning had discovered the \u003cem\u003efirst\u003c\/em\u003e dinosaur, and over the next seventy-five years—as the science of palaeontology developed, as Charles Darwin posited theories of evolutionary biology, and as religious scholars identified the internal inconsistencies of the Scriptures—everything changed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBy the 1850s, dinosaurs were a prominent feature of the second Crystal Palace exhibition. By the 1860s, when Matthew Arnold stood on Dover Beach and saw faith ebbing away, Britain had plunged into a crisis of religious belief. By the 1870s, T.H. Huxley—Darwin's 'bulldog'—was preaching a new history of the world in which mankind was merely an accident of evolution. By 1886, following a six-year battle which had seen him beaten, imprisoned, and forcibly removed from Parliament, Charles Bradlaugh was able to take his seat in the House of Commons as the first openly atheist MP.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTold through the lives of the men and women who found these vital fossils and who fought about their meaning—some humble, some eccentric, some utterly brilliant—\u003cem\u003eImpossible Monsters\u003c\/em\u003e tells the story of the painful, complicated relationship between science and religion over these seventy-five years, of the growth of secularism, and of the role of dinosaurs and their discovery in changing perceptions about the Bible, history, and mankind's place in the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Penguin Random House NZ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46833193550060,"sku":"9781847926791","price":40.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/25995363482845.jpg?v=1758444591"},{"product_id":"impossible-monsters-by-michael-taylor-9781529931341","title":"Impossible Monsters","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA superb narrative history of the discovery of dinosaurs and how they revolutionised our understanding of the Earth's and mankind's origins.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eImpossible Monsters\u003c\/em\u003e is the captivating story of the discovery of the dinosaurs and how it upended our understanding of the origins of the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e'An astonishing book about an extraordinary subject'\u003c\/em\u003e - PETER FRANKOPAN\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003e'As thrilling as it is sweeping'\u003c\/em\u003e - TOM HOLLAND\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003e'This book dazzles in its originality . . . a triumph'\u003c\/em\u003e - SATHNAM SANGHERA\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1811, a twelve-year-old girl uncovered some strange-looking bones on Britain's southern shoreline, sparking a crisis that would engulf science and religion for the next six decades. By its end, the literal reading of the Bible had been overturned, science had been liberated from religion, and the secular age had begun.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eImpossible Monsters\u003c\/em\u003e takes us into the lives and minds of the extraordinary men and women whose discovery of the dinosaurs revolutionised our understanding of the world, as well as those who resisted them and those, like Charles Darwin, who took great risks to construct a new account of the Earth's and mankind's origins. It is the riveting story of a group of people who dared to think impossible things and then showed them to be true.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e'Truly marvellous ... an intellectual thriller'\u003c\/em\u003e - RICHARD HOLMES\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003e'A stunning work ... of surprises and revelations'\u003c\/em\u003e - STEVE BRUSATTE\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Penguin Random House NZ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46834768117996,"sku":"9781529931341","price":32.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/19735133482732.jpg?v=1758523414"},{"product_id":"illuminati-by-michael-taylor-9781847928399","title":"Illuminati","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first proper history of the world's most notorious secret society and its bizarre and dangerous afterlife.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eOn 1 May 1776, a radical young professor named Adam Weishaupt founded a secret society whose aim was to infiltrate and overturn the system of world power from within. Intellectuals, judges, politicians and poets joined, united by Enlightenment ideals and liberal attitudes towards politics and religion. They called themselves the Order of the Illuminati.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWithin a decade, the Order, with its bizarre ciphers and melodramatic rituals, was gone. Outed and banned by the authorities, its leaders were prosecuted and exiled; its effects had been minimal. Yet to this day, millions of people worldwide maintain that its collapse was a sham and that for 250 years, this shadowy cabal of self-appointed power brokers, whose members allegedly include Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Bill Gates and Taylor Swift, has been manipulating world events—starting wars, swaying elections, setting interest rates and creating celebrities.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the first complete history of the brief, troubled life of the Illuminati and the conspiracy theory they spawned, from which so many others have since derived. From the birth of the theory in the revolutionary war and terror of the 1790s, through the great upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and into the present, it shows how at moments of spectacular transformation, fear and perceived betrayal, people—including even George Washington and Winston Churchill—have turned to the theory for explanation or advantage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFor centuries, the Illuminati have maintained a deep and unsettling hold on the public imagination. Michael Taylor's meticulously sourced and gripping account of this story exposes and explains the power of conspiracist thinking as never before.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Penguin Random House NZ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233125183724,"sku":"9781847928399","price":40.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781847928399-illuminati-1.jpg?v=1787726601"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.live\/collections\/michael-taylor.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}