Myths to Live By

(The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)

By: Joseph Campbell, Johnson E. Fairchild - foreword, David Kudler - editor

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's Summary

Discover Myth

“There’s no one quite like Joseph Campbell. He knows the vast sweep of man’s panoramic past as few men have ever known it.” (The Village Voice)

Joseph Campbell famously compared mythology to a kangaroo pouch for the human mind and spirit: “a womb with a view.” In Myths to Live By, he examines all of the ways in which myth supports and guides us, giving our lives meaning. Love and war, science and religion, East and West, inner space and outer space - Campbell shows how the myths we live by can reconcile all of these pairs of opposites and bring a sense of the whole.

This classic has been newly annotated in its first new edition since its original publication. In the tradition of The Power of Myth and Pathways to Bliss, Myths to Live By remains one of Joseph Campbell’s most enduring, popular, and accessible works.

Cover image “Earthrise” credit: NASA. 

©1972 Joseph Campbell (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Revised electronic edition © 2011 by the Joseph Campbell Foundation (JCF)

Priceless Text, Joyless Narrator

I carried this book with me for years. I love every word of it. I wish this author had listened, just once, to Joseph Campbell speak. The man had so much passion and love for myth. The narrator here sounds like his dog was just put down.

Misleading interpretation

Knowing the voice of Joseph Campbell, having watched his manner and heard his cadence, I found this narrator's reading to be more of a dramatic recitation who's imposed emphasis presents Campbell as a believer, rather than an observer. At times it's hard to discern when a story ends and Campbell's words begins.

ties Joseph Campbell all together

this book was so good that I went through it a second time immediately after finishing it. It is full length fully detailed the narrator loves his subject and I've heard Professor Campbell many times in many locations but this seems to be amongst the origins of the many stories he tells.

I really can't explain it any better than that Fiat epilogue describing Joseph Campbell himself was very loving and very Illuminating.

I'm tempted to buy another copy and print just to be able to reference some of the quotes.

For instance on my Facebook page I have already quoted

Krishna's dictum do you want to make a change in the world, work on perfecting yourself.

One thing I was surprised about is that Professor Campbell has a Mean Streak there are some subjects about which he is nearly to the point of hostility oh, and one of those of course is the misunderstanding of the nature of Miss itself and In the comparison of the science of today versus the science and astronomy of six thousand years ago.

All in all, I make no claims to being cultured, but this book has added to my understanding of human nature and the human psyche

I've already given it away as a gift.

We can all dance...

Beautifully illustrated look at how all the world mythologies dance with each other, how we may dance with each other! Malcolm Hillgartner is my favorite Narrator for the Joseph Campbell books by far. I found that reading Campbell's work was a little difficult, but listening to it gives me the freedom to think while the words flow together.

What more could you want?

It is Joseph Campbell, what more could you want? I have a deep appreciation for his approach to mythology, literature, psychology, and religion. Well done to the deceased author and to the JCF.

Superb

This series of essays is incredible, progressing in scope and magnitude. The Buddhist will find new stories and analogies to spark insight, the free think new fuel for the intellect, and atheists an understanding of what the great traditions tell us about the Absolute through the universal human vehicle of myth. Simply wonderful, as an introduction or as an advanced foray into this fascinating world of meaning.