Discover Myth

“Now there’s nobody quite like Joseph Campbell. He understands the huge sweep of man’s breathtaking past as few men possess ever known it.” —The Community Voice

Joseph Campbell famously compared mythology to a kangaroo pouch for the human mind and spirit: “a womb with a watch.” In Common myths to Live By, he examines all of the ways that myth helps and guides us, offering our lives meaning. Like and war, science and religion, East and Western world, internal space and outer space—Campbell shows how the misconceptions we live by can reconcile many of these pairs of opposites and bring a feeling of the complete.

This classic continues to be newly annotated in its first new edition since its original publication. In the custom of The Power of Myth and Pathways to Bliss, Misconceptions to Live By remains among Joseph Campbell’s most long lasting, popular, and accessible works.