Philip Wilkinson’s & Neil Philip’s Mythology presents readers with myths from the classical world, Europe, Asia, the Americas, Africa, and Oceania. These tell stories about god and goddesses, deities of animals, fertility, love, fate, war, and the underworld.
These are tales about the environment, their covenant between nature, the divine, and humanity. The myths are flexible and adapt to their societies. They are metaphors of reality and pathways to the sacred. They offer social cohesion, determine behavior; calibrate cultures, and spiritual underpinnings of people. ( )

The book details mythologies around the world, giving close attention to creator gods and other myths of creation. The author includes pictures of various representations of gods, and cross-references to similar stories, as well as indicating what a given god is called in a different culture, especially in the classical period when many Roman gods were adoptions into the pantheon from conquered peoples. This collection is interesting and the work is well written; if it was meant to be inspiring, it failed. In fact, it is a good demonstration of the total hatred of religions for the things and people of this world, and the desire for some sort of utopia, as well as the fact that the gods were not going to be good to humans in most cases. It details more human suffering than human inspiration or hope, bringing into question the already questionable assertion that religion brings hope to the hopeless. A good reference collection, but perhaps a bit better if it included an appendix with the names, regions, and roles of the various gods for ease of comparison. ( )

Ganz guter Überblick über vieles, zwangsläufig nicht ausführlich, aber mit Quellenangaben