Category: History
History
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Religious Journey Of Dwight D Eisenhower
$29.99Add to cartOur form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is. With us, of course, it is the Judeo-Christian concept, but it must be a religion that all men are created equal.
So said Dwight D. Eisenhower shortly after being elected president of the United States in 1952. Although this statement has been variously interpreted, it reflects one of his fundamental guiding principles: that for a country to thrive, it needs a shared identity, formed through common values, history, and purpose. For Eisenhower, this could be found most distinctly in shared faith–a concept that came to be known as American civil religion, which defined and drove much of the cohesion of the 1950s under Eisenhower’s leadership.
This biography tells the story of how deeply religious convictions ran through every aspect of Eisenhower’s public life: his decision to become a soldier, his crusade against fascism and communism, his response to the civil rights movement, his belief that only he as president could lead America through the Cold War, and his search for nuclear peace. Having been brought up in a devout family–first as part of the River Brethren and later Jehovah’s Witnesses–Eisenhower continued to see the world in terms of a dialectical struggle between divine and demonic forces throughout his life, even after joining the Presbyterian church. This perspective shaped his public image as a general in World War II and as president during some of the coldest years of the Cold War, when cultural differences between the atheistic Soviet Union and the religiously grounded United States began crystallizing.
As Eisenhower’s historical standing continues to rise, and his contrast with the modern Republican Party deepens, Jack Holl’s study of this consequential figure of twentieth-century American history shines a spotlight on what has changed in the intervening years. What can be learned from the religious outlook of a public servant who embraced moderation instead of partisan division? What is the nature of a faith that led a former general to a position of skepticism against the military-industrial complex? The era of American civil religion may be past, but Eisenhower’s religious journey is worth renewed attention among Americans in light of the enduring challenge of E pluribus unum–out of many, one.
Taking Paris : The Epic Battle For The City Of Lights
$30.00Add to cartMay 1940: The world is stunned as Hitler’s forces invade France with a devastating blitzkrieg aimed at Paris. Within weeks, the French government has collapsed, and the City of Lights, revered for its carefree lifestyle, intellectual freedom, and love of liberty, has fallen under Nazi control–perhaps forever.
As the Germans ruthlessly crush all opposition, a patriotic band of Parisians known as the Resistance secretly rise up to fight back. But these young men and woman cannot do it alone. Over 120,000 Parisians die under German occupation. Countless more are tortured in the city’s Gestapo prisons and sent to death camps. The longer the Nazis hold the city, the greater the danger its citizens face. As the armies of America and Great Britain prepare to launch the greatest invasion in history, the spies of the Resistance risk all to ensure the Germans are defeated and Paris is once again free.
The players holding the fate of Paris in their hands are some of the biggest historical figures of the era: Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, General George S. Patton, and the exiled French general Charles de Gaulle, headquartered in London’s Connaught Hotel. From the fall of Paris in 1940 to the race for Paris in 1944, this riveting, page-turning drama unfolds through their decisions–for better and worse. Taking Paris is history told at a breathtaking pace, a sprawling yet intimate saga of heroism, desire, and personal sacrifice for all that is right.
1 Life To Give
$27.00Add to cartThe famous words of patriots, such as Nathan Hale’s I regret that I have but one life to give for my country, have echoed through the centuries as embodiments of the spirit of the American Revolution. Despite the immortalized role these quotes play in America’s historical narrative, their origins remain obscure. We know little about what inspired words like these and how this spirit of sacrifice inspired the revolution itself. What was going on in the hearts and minds of young men who risked their lives for the revolutionary cause? The answer lies in the untold story of the spiritual backdrop of the American Revolution.
One Life to Give presents Nathan Hale’s execution on September 21, 1776, as the culmination of a story that spans generations and explains why many young American men reached the personal decision to commit to the revolutionary cause even if it meant death. As John Fanestil reveals, this is the story of how martyrdom shaped the American Revolution.
In colonial America, countless young revolutionaries, like their forebears, were raised and trained from infancy to understand that divine approval was attached to certain kinds of deaths–deaths of self-sacrifice for a sacred cause. Young boys were taught to expect that someday they might be called to fight and die for such a cause, and that should this come to pass, their deaths could be meaningful in the eyes of others and of God. Fanestil traces the deep history of the tradition of martyrdom from its classical and Christian origins, ultimately articulating how the spirit of American martyrdom animated countless personal commitments to American independence, and thereby to the war. Only by understanding the inextricable role played by martyrdom can we fully understand the origins of the American Revolution.
Short History Of Christian Zionism
$36.00Add to cartThis book is about an idea–namely, that Scripture mandates a Jewish return to the historical region of Palestine–which in turn morphed into a political movement, rallied around a popular slogan (A country without a nation for a nation without a country), and eventually contributed to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
Christian Zionism continues to influence global politics, especially U.S. foreign policy, and has deeply affected Jewish-Christian and Muslim-Christian relations. Donald M. Lewis seeks to provide a fair-minded, longitudinal study of this dynamic yet controversial movement as he traces its lineage from biblical sources through the Reformation to various movements of today. He explores Christian Zionism’s interaction with other movements, forces, and discourses, especially in eschatological and political thought, and why it is now flourishing beyond the English-speaking world. Throughout he demonstrates how it has helped British and American Protestants frame and shape their identity. A Short History of Christian Zionism seeks to bring clarity and context to often-heated discussions.
Hitler In The Crosshairs
$18.99Add to cartDiscover the untold World War II story of a young man’s courage and the saga of a dictator’s pistol that continues today.
The time is World War II. Young soldier Ira Teen Palm and his men burst into a Munich apartment, hoping to capture Adolf Hitler. Instead, they find an empty apartment . . . and a golden gun. As the authors trace the story of the man and the gun, they examine a time and place that shaped men like Palm and transformed them into heroes.
As you follow the strange journey of Hitler’s pistol, you will find:
*An imaginative historical adventure that will keep the pages turning*The never-before-told account of an assassination attempt on Hitler in Munich
*New, previously untold information about an uprising of German soldiers and citizens against the Nazi regime
*Inspiring, motivating, and entertaining storytelling by award-winning authors
Mercury Rising : John Glenn, John Kennedy, And The New Battleground Of The
$28.95Add to cartIf the United States couldn’t catch up to the Soviets in space, how could it compete with them on Earth? That was the question facing John F. Kennedy at the height of the Cold War–a perilous time when the Soviet Union built the wall in Berlin, tested nuclear bombs more destructive than any in history, and beat the United States to every major milestone in space. The race to the heavens seemed a race for survival–and America was losing.
On February 20, 1962, when John Glenn blasted into orbit aboard Friendship 7, his mission was not only to circle the planet; it was to calm the fears of the free world and renew America’s sense of self-belief. Mercury Rising re-creates the tension and excitement of a flight that shifted the momentum of the space race and put the United States on the path to the moon. Drawing on new archival sources, personal interviews, and previously unpublished notes by Glenn himself, Mercury Rising reveals how the astronaut’s heroics lifted the nation’s hopes in what Kennedy called the hour of maximum danger.
Doom : The Politics Of Catastrophe
$30.00Add to cartAll disasters are in some sense man-made.
Setting the annus horribilis of 2020 in historical perspective, Niall Ferguson explains why we are getting worse, not better, at handling disasters.
Disasters are inherently hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises. and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted, or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all.
Yet in 2020 the responses of many developed countries, including the United States, to a new virus from China were badly bungled. Why? Why did only a few Asian countries learn the right lessons from SARS and MERS? While populist leaders certainly performed poorly in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Niall Ferguson argues that more profound pathologies were at work–pathologies already visible in our responses to earlier disasters.
In books going back nearly twenty years, including Colossus, The Great Degeneration, and The Square and the Tower, Ferguson has studied the foibles of modern America, from imperial hubris to bureaucratic sclerosis and online fragmentation.
Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics, cliodynamics, and network science, Doom offers not just a history but a general theory of disasters, showing why our ever more bureaucratic and complex systems are getting worse at handling them.
Doom is the lesson of history that this country–indeed the West as a whole–urgently needs to learn, if we want to handle the next crisis better, and to avoid the ultimate doom of irreversible decline.
Aramaic : A History Of The First World Language
$70.00Add to cartIn this volume-the first complete history of Aramaic from its origins to the present day-Holger Gzella provides an accessible overview of the language perhaps most well known for being spoken by Jesus of Nazareth. Gzella, one of the world’s foremost Aramaicists, begins with the earliest evidence of Aramaic in inscriptions from the beginning of the first millennium BCE, then traces its emergence as the first world language when it became the administrative tongue of the great ancient Near Eastern empires. He also pays due diligence to the sacred role of Aramaic within Judaism, its place in the Islamic world, and its contact with other regional languages, before concluding with a glimpse into modern uses of Aramaic.
Although Aramaic never had a unified political or cultural context in which to gain traction, it nevertheless flourished in the Middle East for an extensive period, allowing for widespread cultural exchange between diverse groups of people. In tracing the historical thread of the Aramaic language, readers can also gain a stronger understanding of the rise and fall of civilizations, religions, and cultures in that region over the course of three millennia.
Aramaic: A History of the First World Language is visually supplemented by maps, charts, and other images for an immersive reading experience, providing scholars and casual readers alike with an engaging overview of one of the most consequential world languages in history.
Hunting The Unabomber
$19.99Add to cartThe spellbinding account of the most complex and captivating manhunt in American history.
On April 3, 1996, a team of FBI agents closed in on an isolated cabin in remote Montana, marking the end of the longest and most expensive investigation in FBI history. The cabin’s lone inhabitant was a former mathematics prodigy and professor who had abandoned society decades earlier. Few people knew his name, Theodore Kaczynski, but everyone knew the mayhem and death associated with his nickname: the Unabomber
For two decades, Kaczynski had masterminded a campaign of random terror, killing and maiming innocent people through bombs sent in untraceable packages. The FBI task force charged with finding the perpetrator of these horrifying crimes grew to 150 people, yet his identity remained a maddening mystery. Then, in 1995, a manifesto from the Unabomber was published in the New York Times and Washington Post, resulting in a cascade of tips–including the one that cracked the case.
Hunting the Unabomber includes:
*Exclusive interviews with key law enforcement agents who attempted to track down Kaczynski, correcting the history distorted by earlier films and streaming series*Never-before-told stories of inter-agency law enforcement conflicts that changed the course of the investigation
*An in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at why the hunt for the Unabomber was almost shut down by the FBI
New York Times bestselling author and former federal prosecutor Lis Wiehl meticulously reconstructs the white-knuckle, tension-filled hunt to identify and capture the mysterious killer. This is a can’t-miss, true crime thriller of the years-long battle of wits between the FBI and the brilliant-but-criminally insane Ted Kaczynski.
Pagans And Christians In The City
$29.99Add to cartTraditionalist Christians who oppose same-sex marriage and other cultural developments in the United States wonder why they are being forced to bracket their beliefs in order to participate in public life. This situation is not new, says Steven D. Smith: Christians two thousand years ago faced very similar challenges.
Picking up poet T. S. Eliot’s World War II-era thesis that the future of the West would be determined by a contest between Christianity and modern paganism, Smith argues in this book that today’s culture wars can be seen as a reprise of the basic antagonism that pitted pagans against Christians in the Roman Empire. Smith’s Pagans and Christians in the City looks at that historical conflict and explores how the same competing ideas continue to clash today. All of us, Smith shows, have much to learn by observing how patterns from ancient history are reemerging in today’s most controversial issues.
Story Of Bodri
$17.99Add to cartHedi spends her days playing with her dog Bodri in the park, but her quiet world starts to crumble the day she hears Adolf Hitler on the radio. Germany’s leader hates her and her family, just because they are Jewish. And Hitler doesn’t even know them-it doesn’t make any sense. Soon Nazi Germany invades Hedi’s country, and her life changes forever.
Inspired by the author’s experiences, this book is a thoughtful introduction to the Holocaust for young readers. Strikingly honest prose and illustrations share an unforgettable story about a faithful dog, a family in danger, and the power of hope in unimaginable circumstances.
Bomber Mafia : A Dream, A Temptation, And The Longest Night Of The Second W (Lar
$29.00Add to cartAn exploration of how technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
In The Bomber Mafia , Malcolm Gladwell weaves together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to examine one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history.
Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists, the Bomber Mafia, asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal?
In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but may have spared even more by averting a planned US invasion. In The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, Was it worth it?Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.
Bomber Mafia : A Dream, A Temptation, And The Longest Night Of The Second W
$27.00Add to cartAn exploration of how technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
In The Bomber Mafia , Malcolm Gladwell weaves together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard to examine one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history.
Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists, the Bomber Mafia, asked: What if precision bombing could cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal?
In contrast, the bombing of Tokyo on the deadliest night of the war was the brainchild of General Curtis LeMay, whose brutal pragmatism and scorched-earth tactics in Japan cost thousands of civilian lives, but may have spared even more by averting a planned US invasion. In The Bomber Mafia, Gladwell asks, Was it worth it?Things might have gone differently had LeMay’s predecessor, General Haywood Hansell, remained in charge. Hansell believed in precision bombing, but when he and Curtis LeMay squared off for a leadership handover in the jungles of Guam, LeMay emerged victorious, leading to the darkest night of World War II. The Bomber Mafia is a riveting tale of persistence, innovation, and the incalculable wages of war.
Posen Library Of Jewish Culture And Civilization Volume 1
$200.00Add to cartA Yale University Press Title
An anthology of the culture of ancient Israel, including its literature, legal documents, and visual arts
Volume 1 of The Posen Library covers the earliest period of Jewish civilization, from the second millennium BCE through 332 BCE. Organized by genre, this book presents a collection of some of the earliest products of Jewish culture, including extensive selections from the Hebrew Bible; extrabiblical inscriptions and documents by and about Israelites and Jews, found by archaeologists in the lands of Israel, Egypt, and Mesopotamia; and images representing the visual culture of ancient Israel. Combining genres that have never been presented together in a single publication, Volume 1 illustrates ancient Israel’s cultural innovations and commonalities with neighboring societies.
Black Power And The American Myth (Anniversary)
$21.95Add to cartIn 1970, C. T. Vivian, a close colleague of Martin Luther King, Jr. and a member of his executive staff, sat down to take stock of the civil rights movement and the progress it had made. His assessment was that it failed, and that the blame lay in the existence of myths about America.
As prophetic today as it was 50 years ago, Vivian’s voice rings out as a critique and a call to action for a society in deep need of justice and peace.
The civil rights struggle that began when Rosa Parks, a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, decided to sit in the front of a bus has deeply altered American society and the American conscience. Yet from several perspectives, that movement has resulted in failure. The Black struggle for independence is more of an uphill climb than ever. Why?
C. T. Vivian asserts that the civil rights movement failed because it was built on certain myths about America:
– the myth that Americans will do what is right as soon as they know what is right.
– the myth that legislation leads to justice.
– the myth that America is an open society where any minority group can advance.
– the myth that an ethic of love forms the core of the American conscience.We had assumed that America held the answers. But more than that, we assumed that America would implement those answers once we presented our case clearly to the nation. And again we were wrong. For we found not only that the answers did not exist, but further, that there was not even any concern about them. No one sought those answers, and no one would put them into effect once they were given. – C. T. Vivian
100 Bible Verses That Made America
$19.99Add to cartEsteemed author Robert J. Morgan explores 100 Bible verses that powerfully impacted our leaders during defining moments in American history and reflects upon what these verses mean for us as a nation today.
The Bible has played a starring role in American history from our nation’s beginnings. When George Washington was sworn into office as our first president, he did not place his hand on the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States, as hallowed as those documents are. Instead, he swore upon and even kissed the Bible to sanctify this important moment. The Bible, Washington knew, had ushered American history to this point.
Trying to explain American history without its Bible is like trying to understand the human body without its bloodstream. Had there been no Bible, there would be no America as we know it. It is the Bible that made America.
While not every Founding Father was a Christian, a Bible-believer, or a paragon of virtue and not every leader has honored the Bible nor appreciated its influence, there is an undeniable history of leaders who’ve been intimately acquainted with the contents of the Bible, who’ve studied its scriptures and respected its teachings. Journey with Robert J. Morgan as he teaches about the Bible’s role in the defining moments and impact on the people of our nation’s history, reminding us of the beauty at the intersection of faith and country and reigniting our hearts’ passions for both.
Age Of Entitlement
$18.00Add to cartA major American intellectual and one of the right’s most gifted and astute journalists (The New York Times Book Review) makes the historical case that the reforms of the 1960s, reforms intended to make the nation more just and humane, left many Americans feeling alienated, despised, misled–and ready to put an adventurer in the White House.
Christopher Caldwell has spent years studying the liberal uprising of the 1960s and its unforeseen consequences and his conclusion is this: even the reforms that Americans love best have come with costs that are staggeringly high–in wealth, freedom, and social stability–and that have been spread unevenly among classes and generations.
Caldwell reveals the real political turning points of the past half-century, taking you on a roller-coaster ride through Playboy magazine, affirmative action, CB radio, leveraged buyouts, iPhones, Oxycotin, Black Lives Matter, and internet cookies. In doing so, he shows that attempts to redress the injustices of the past have left Americans living under two different ideas of what it means to play by the rules.
Essential, timely, hard to put down, The Age of Entitlement is an eloquent and bracing book, full of insight ( New York magazine) about how the reforms of the past fifty years gave the country two incompatible political systems–and drove it toward conflict.
Lincoln On The Verge
$20.00Add to cartAs a divided nation plunges into the deepest crisis in its history, Abraham Lincoln boards a train for Washington and his inauguration-an inauguration Southerners have vowed to prevent by any means necessary. Drawing on new research, this account reveals the President-Elect as a work in progress, showing him on the verge of greatness, foiling an assassination attempt, and forging an unbreakable bond with the American people.
On the eve of his 52nd birthday, February 11, 1861, the President-Elect of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, walked onto a train, the first step of his journey to the White House, and his rendezvous with destiny.
But as the train began to carry Lincoln toward Washington, it was far from certain what he would find there. Bankrupt and rudderless, the government was on the verge of collapse. To make matters worse, reliable intelligence confirmed a conspiracy to assassinate him as he passed through Baltimore. It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of the Republic hung in the balance.
How did Lincoln survive this grueling odyssey, to become the president we know from the history books? Lincoln on the Verge tells the story of a leader discovering his own strength, improvising brilliantly, and seeing his country up close during these pivotal thirteen days.
From the moment the Presidential Special left the station, a new Lincoln was on display, speaking constantly, from a moving train, to save the Republic. The journey would draw on all of Lincoln’s mental and physical reserves. But the President-Elect discovered an inner strength, which deepened with the exhausting ordeal of meeting millions of Americans.
Lincoln on the Verge tells the story of America’s greatest president and the obstacles he overcame, well before he could take the oath of office and deliver his inaugural address.
America : The Last Best Hope – One Volume Edition
$29.99Add to cartA single-volume edition of William J. Bennett’s bestselling series, thoroughly revised and updated.
The role of history is to inform, inspire, and sometimes provoke us, which is why Bill Bennett’s wonderfully readable book is so important. –Walter Isaacson
A decade ago, William J. Bennett published a magisterial three-volume account of our nation’s history. Now, Bennett returns to that bestselling trilogy, revising and condensing his epic tale into one volume, a page-turning narrative of our exceptional nation. In Bennett’s signature gripping prose, Washington, Franklin, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Reagan, and others reemerge not as marble icons or dust-dry names in a textbook, but as full-blooded, heroic pioneers whose far-reaching vision forged a nation that attracted and still attracts millions yearning to breathe free.
From the heroism of the Revolution to the dire hours of the Civil War, from the progressive reforms of the early 1900s to the civil rights reforms of the 1960s, from the high drama of the Space Race to the gut-wrenching tension of the Cold War, from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of global Communism to the attacks of 9-11 and the war on terror, William J. Bennett captures the players, personalities, and pivotal moments of American history with piercing insight and unrelenting optimism. In this gripping tale of a nation, the story of what Lincoln referred to as the last best hope of earth comes alive in all its drama and personality.
Duty And Destiny
$28.99Add to cartAmid the wealth of biographical material on Winston Churchill, little has been said about his faith. Duty and Destiny rectifies this, offering a nuanced portrait of a great historical figure considered everything from a God-haunted man to a stalwart nonbeliever.
Churchill was far from transparent about his religious beliefs and never regularly attended church services as an adult, even considering himself not a pillar of the church but a buttress, in the sense that he supported it from the outside. But Gary Scott Smith assembles pieces of Churchill’s life and words to convey the profound sense of duty and destiny, partly inspired by his religious convictions, that undergirded his outlook. Reflecting on becoming prime minister in 1940, he wrote, It felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial. In a similarly grand fashion, he described opposing the Nazis-and later the Soviets-as a struggle between light and darkness, driven by the duty to preserve humane, enlightened, Christian society.
Though Churchill harbored intellectual doubts about Christianity throughout his life, he nevertheless valued it greatly and drew on its resources, especially in the crucible of war. In Duty and Destiny, Smith unpacks Churchill’s paradoxical religious views and carefully analyzes the complexities of his legacy. This thorough examination of Churchill’s religious life provides a new narrative structure to make sense of arguably the most important person of the twentieth century.
American Covenant : The Untold Story
$27.95Add to cartAs our national fabric unravels before a watching world, the unanswered question of the twenty-first century cries for a response: What happened to the America that once led the world by example?
To put it bluntly, we have forgotten the covenant that our Founders made with our Creator. Its very meaning has been canceled by a secular elite at war with the truth.
The American Covenant: The Untold Story documents in exciting and vivid detail the Biblically based principles and personalities that formed the foundation for America’s economic, governmental, legal, educational, and spiritual institutions. The brilliant strategy of our Founders is contained in this volume and is providing hope for families and nations worldwide.
Religion : A Very Short Introduction
$11.95Add to cartReligion plays a central role in human experience. Billions of people around the world practice a faith and act in accordance with it. Religion shapes how they enter the world and how they leave it – how they eat, dress, marry, and raise their children. It shapes their assumptions about who they are and who they want to be. Religion also identifies insiders and outsiders, who has power and who doesn’t. It sanctifies injustice and combats it. It draws national borders. It affects law, economy, and government. It destroys and restores the environment. It starts wars and ends them. Whether you notice it or not, religion plays a role in how billions conduct their lives. We are called, then, to understand this important factor in human life today.
Beginning with the first signs of religion among ancient humans and concluding with a look at modern citizens and global trends, leading scholar Thomas Tweed examines this powerful and enduring force in human society. Tweed deftly documents religion as it exists around the world, addressing its role in both intensifying and alleviating contemporary political and environmental problems, from armed conflict to climate change. Religion: A Very Short Introduction offers a concise non-partisan overview of religion’s long history and its complicated role in the world today.
Unfading Light : The Sustaining Insight And Inspiration Of Abraham Lincoln
$24.99Add to cartRich Fritzky poses five questions to forty-five individuals who have devoted much, if not all of their lives, to Abraham Lincoln. The individuals reveal what led them to him in the first place, the attribute or ‘fixed mark’ that sealed their belonging to him, the conversations that they would most have liked to have had with him, the words of his that they were most moved by, and the why and how of his, maybe just maybe, helping save the soul of the Republic yet again in our own time. Among those interviewed were eleven celebrated Lincoln scholars and historians, the leaders of the National Lincoln Forum, the Abraham Lincoln Association, Lincoln Groups, and Civil War Roundtables from coast to coast, two celebrated Lincoln artists, an array of Lincoln impersonators, including Gettysburg’s own, curators, animators, professors, teachers, presenters, and more. They so movingly responded, inspiring and driving the author deep into Lincoln’s universe and into much material that is not often considered especially as to racism and race, his shadow-boxing with God, his faith and doubt, his exquisite humanity and extraordinary ability to lead, his nation of suffering and the torture it exacted upon him, and his rich reverence for both all that America was and could be.
Faithful Witness : The Confidential Diaries Of Alan Don, Chaplain To The Ki
$62.99Add to cartNow, for the first time, these diaries of Alan Don are laid open. They offer a wealth of detailed insight into the ecclesiastical, royal and parliamentary affairs of Britain and her elite during two historically significant decades.
In May 1931, Alan Don travelled from Dundee to Lambeth Palace to become Chaplain to Archbishop Cosmo Lang. During that journey he began a diary. He kept it faithfully for the next fifteen years, during which he also became Chaplain to the King and to the Speaker of the House of Commons. These positions afforded him a ringside view of some of the most momentous events in both British and world history – including the abdication of Edward VIII, the coronation of George VI, the rise of Hitler and the trauma of the Second World War. Now, for the first time, these fascinating diaries are laid open. They offer a wealth of detailed insight into the ecclesiastical, royal and parliamentary affairs of Britain and her elite during two historically significant decades. They also open a window on the history of the Church of England and its role in the social, political and military upheavals of the 1930s and 40s. Anyone who wants to know more about how Great Britain survived those turbulent times, will be amply rewarded by this engaging, perceptive and revealing eye-witness account.
American Catholic : The Politics Of Faith During The Cold War
$29.95Add to cartA Cornell University Press Title
American Catholic places the rise of the United States’ political conservatism in the context of ferment within the Roman Catholic Church. How did Roman Catholics shift from being perceived as un-American to emerging as the most vocal defenders of the United States as the standard bearer in world history for political liberty and economic prosperity? D. G. Hart charts the development of the complex relationship between Roman Catholicism and American conservatism, and shows how these two seemingly antagonistic ideological groups became intertwined in advancing a certain brand of domestic and international politics.
Contrary to the standard narrative, Roman Catholics were some of the most assertive political conservatives directly after World War II, and their brand of politics became one of the most influential means by which Roman Catholicism came to terms with American secular society. It did so precisely as bishops determined the church needed to update its teaching about its place in the modern world. Catholics grappled with political conservatism long before the supposed rightward turn at the time of the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.
Hart follows the course of political conservatism from John F. Kennedy, the first and only Roman Catholic president of the United States, to George W. Bush, and describes the evolution of the church and its influence on American politics. By tracing the roots of Roman Catholic politicism in American culture, Hart argues that Roman Catholicism’s adaptation to the modern world, whether in the United States or worldwide, was as remarkable as its achievement remains uncertain. In the case of Roman Catholicism, the effects of religion on American politics and political conservatism are indisputable.
Hymns Of The Republic
$20.00Add to cartFrom the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of Empire of the Summer Moon and Rebel Yell comes a masterwork of history (Lawrence Wright, author of God Save Texas), the spellbinding, epic account of the last year of the Civil War.
The fourth and final year of the Civil War offers one of the most compelling narratives and one of history’s great turning points. Now, Pulitzer Prize finalist S.C. Gwynne breathes new life into the epic battle between Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant; the advent of 180,000 black soldiers in the Union army; William Tecumseh Sherman’s March to the Sea; the rise of Clara Barton; the election of 1864 (which Lincoln nearly lost); the wild and violent guerrilla war in Missouri; and the dramatic final events of the war, including Lee’s surrender at Appomattox and the murder of Abraham Lincoln.
A must-read for Civil War enthusiasts (Publishers Weekly), Hymns of the Republic offers many surprising angles and insights. Robert E. Lee, known as a great general and Southern hero, is presented here as a man dealing with frustration, failure, and loss. Ulysses S. Grant is known for his prowess as a field commander, but in the final year of the war he largely fails at that. His most amazing accomplishments actually began the moment he stopped fighting. William Tecumseh Sherman, Gwynne argues, was a lousy general, but probably the single most brilliant man in the war. We also meet a different Clara Barton, one of the greatest and most compelling characters, who redefined the idea of medical care in wartime. And proper attention is paid to the role played by large numbers of black union soldiers-most of them former slaves.
Popular history at its best, Hymns of the Republic reveals the creation that arose from destruction in this engrossing…riveting (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) read.
Did America Have A Christian Founding
$18.99Add to cartA distinguished professor debunks the assertion that America’s Founders were deists who desired the strict separation of church and state and instead shows that their political ideas were profoundly influenced by their Christian convictions.
In 2010, David Mark Hall gave a lecture at the Heritage Foundation entitled Did America Have a Christian Founding? His balanced and thoughtful approach to this controversial question caused a sensation. C-SPAN televised his talk, and an essay based on it has been downloaded more than 300,000 times.
In this new book, Hall expands upon this essay, making the airtight case that America’s Founders were not deists; that they did not create a godless Constitution; that even Jefferson and Madison did not want a high wall separating church and state; that most Founders believed the government should encourage Christianity; and that they embraced a robust understanding of religious liberty for biblical and theological reasons. In addition, Hall explains why and how the Founders’ views are absolutely relevant today.
This compelling and utterly persuasive book will convince skeptics and equip believers and conservatives to defend the idea that Christian thought was crucial to the nation’s founding–and that this benefits all of us, whatever our faith (or lack of faith).
Howard Thurman And The Disinherited
$28.99Add to cartTeacher. Minister. Theologian. Writer. Mystic. Activist. No single label can capture the multiplicity of Howard Thurman’s life, but his influence is written all over the most significant aspects of the Civil Rights movement. In 1936, he visited Mahatma Gandhi in India and subsequently brought Gandhi’s concept of nonviolent resistance across the globe to the United States. Later, through his book Jesus and the Disinherited, he foresaw a theology of American liberation based on the life of Jesus as a dispossessed Jew under Roman rule.
Paul Harvey’s biography of Thurman speaks to the manifold ways this mystic theologian and social activist sought to transform the world to better reflect that which is God in us, despite growing up in the South during the ugliest years of Jim Crow. After founding one of the first intentionally interracial churches in the country-The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco-he shifted into a mentorship role with Martin Luther King Jr. and other Civil Rights leaders. He advised them to incorporate more inward seeking and rest into their activism, while also thinking of their struggle for racial equality in a more cosmopolitan, universalist manner.
Few historical figures represent such diverse parts of the American religious tradition as Howard Thurman did. By telling the story of his religious lives, Paul Harvey gives the reader a window into many of the main currents of twentieth-century American religious expression.
Future Of Brexit Britain
$27.99Add to cartEssays from both sides of the Brexit debate that explore how British national identity should be understood in the light of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union.
This stimulating collection of essays brings together a range of voices from different sides of the Brexit debate to draw on the legacy of Anglican social and political theology and offer a rich and nuanced response to the crucial, defining question: after leaving the European Union, what does it mean to be British?
Only Plane In The Sky
$18.00Add to cartHailed as remarkable…incredibly evocative and compelling (The Washington Post) and oral history at its finest (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), Garrett M. Graff’s The Only Plane in the Sky is the most vivid and human portrait of the September 11 attacks yet, comprised of never-before-published transcripts, recently declassified documents, and original interviews and stories from nearly five hundred government officials, first responders, witnesses, survivors, friends, and family members. Here is a vivid, profound, and searing portrait of humanity on a day that changed the course of history, and all of our lives.
Talking Until Nightfall
$28.00Add to cartA Bloomsbury Continuum Title
‘Whoever listens to a witness, becomes a witness.’ – Elie Wiesel
When Nazi occupiers arrived in Greece in 1941, it was the beginning of a horror that would reverberate through generations. In the city of Salonica (Thessaloniki), almost 50,000 Jews were sent to Nazi concentration camps during the war, and only 2,000 returned. A Jewish doctor named Isaac Matarasso and his son escaped imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Nazis and joined the resistance. After the city’s liberation they returned to rebuild Salonica and, along with the other survivors, to grapple with the near-total destruction of their community.
Isaac was a witness to his Jewish community’s devastation, and the tangled aftermath of grief, guilt and grace as survivors returned home. Talking Until Nightfall presents his account of the tragedy and his moving tribute to the living and the dead. His story is woven together with his son Robert’s memories of being a frightened teenager spared by a twist of fate, with an afterword by his grandson Francois that looks back on the survivors’ stories and his family’s place in history. This slim, wrenching account of loss, survival, and the strength of the human spirit will captivate readers and ensure the Jews of Salonica are never forgotten.
A-Z Of The Knights Templar
$18.95Add to cartA The History Press Title
The best single-source reference work on the Templars
The Knights Templar were among the most famous of Christian military orders. Created after the First Crusade of 1096 and endorsed by the Catholic Church in 1129, the Order grew rapidly in membership and power. Templar knights were some of the best equipped, trained, and disciplined fighting units of the Crusades. But when the Holy Land was lost and the Templars suffered crushing defeats, support for the Order faded and rumors about their secret initiation ceremony created mistrust. When the Order suddenly disappeared, disbanded by the Pope, it gave rise to speculation and legends that have kept the name Templar alive. From Abbasids to Zion, The A-Z of the Knights Templar is an invaluable reference of the places, people, and themes of the Crusades, the Knights Templar, and their legacy.
Americas Expiration Date
$18.99Add to cartA warning and a wake-up call to learn history so we are not doomed to repeat it. A must-read for anyone who longs for a promising future for our great nation.
What is wrong with America today? Is it possible that America could crumble and our democracy fail?
Questions like these plague Americans and cause us to be anxious about the future of the land that we love. Individuals may come to different conclusions, but there seems to be a common thread – the deep-seated feeling that we need to improve our country. Our culture is increasingly immoral, the family structure is threatened from all sides, and government programs consistently overreach, creating massive debt.
In this powerful and prophetic book, nationally syndicated columnist and trusted political commentator Cal Thomas offers a diagnosis of what exactly is wrong with the United States by drawing parallels to once-great empires and nations that declined into oblivion. Citing the historically proven 250-year pattern of how superpowers rise and fall, he predicts that America’s expiration date is just around the corner and shows us how to escape their fate.
Through biblical insights and hard-hitting truth, he reminds us that real change comes when America looks to God instead of Washington. Scripture, rather than politics, is the GPS he uses to point readers to the right road – a road of hope, life, and change. Because, he says, if we’re willing to seek God first, learn from history, and make changes at the individual and community level, we can not only survive, but thrive, again.
This powerful, timely, and much-needed perspective is a must-read for anyone who longs for a promising future for our great nation.
Story Of The Mayflower
$7.99Add to cartBestselling author Patricia A. Pingry introduces young children to the historic voyage of the Mayflower with this simply written board book that releases just in time for the 400th anniversary of the landing of the ship.
What happened when the Pilgrims set sail on the Mayflower 400 years ago? With this simple and factual introduction, children can learn about the preparations, voyage, and landing of the Mayflower. Thoroughly researched and historically accurate, this board book distills a pivotal moment in history for little learners.
Bookshop In Berlin
$17.00Add to cartIn 1921, Franoise Frenkel-a Jewish woman from Poland-fulfills a dream. She opens La Maison du Livre, Berlin’s first French bookshop, attracting artists and diplomats, celebrities and poets. The shop becomes a haven for intellectual exchange as Nazi ideology begins to poison the culturally rich city. In 1935, the scene continues to darken. First come the new bureaucratic hurdles, followed by frequent police visits and book confiscations.
Franoise’s dream finally shatters on Kristallnacht in November 1938, as hundreds of Jewish shops and businesses are destroyed. La Maison du Livre is miraculously spared, but fear of persecution eventually forces Franoise on a desperate, lonely flight to Paris. When the city is bombed, she seeks refuge across southern France, witnessing countless horrors: children torn from their parents, mothers throwing themselves under buses. Secreted away from one safe house to the next, Franoise survives at the heroic hands of strangers risking their lives to protect her.
Published quietly in 1945, then rediscovered nearly sixty years later in an attic, A Bookshop in Berlin is a remarkable story of survival and resilience, of human cruelty and human spirit. In the tradition of Suite Franaise and The Nazi Officer’s Wife, this book is the tale of a fearless woman whose lust for life and literature refuses to leave her, even in her darkest hours.
Beyond Valor : A World War 2 Story Of Extraordinary Heroism, Sacrificial Lo
$26.99Add to cartA miraculous true story of a soldier’s unspeakable heroism, a teenage woman’s unfailing love, and the faith that secured them all.
On April 12, 1945, as a fleet of American B-29 bombers flew toward Japan, disaster struck: a phosphorous bomb detonated inside one of the planes. Staff Sergeant Henry E. Red Erwin absorbed the blast of burning phosphorous and threw overboard the still-flaming bomb, then collapsed from the third-degree burns over much of his body.
Erwin’s plane diverted to a military hospital to try to save him, and President Truman ordered Erwin be awarded the Medal of Honor. General Curtis LeMay ordered a squad of airmen on a 1,000-mile mission to smash their way into a display case and steal a medal of honor before Erwin died.
Meanwhile, a courageous teenage bride set out on her own mission, one of against-all-odds healing. Her mission’s success would mean an entirely new destiny for the twenty-three-year-old warrior–and years later make possible the birth of the book’s author, Jon Erwin. For Love and Honor is an extraordinary tale of bravery, heroism, faith, and devotion.
Socialism : The Real History From Plato To The Present How The Deep State C
$20.00Add to cartSOCIALISM: THE DREAM OF AN IDEAL SOCIETY?
Is it a wonderful utopia or a totalitarian nightmare? Will everything be free or will deep-state bureaucrats decide who gets what? Did Plato, Thomas More, & Francis Bacon propose social ownership of property? Is there a difference between socialism and communism? Did Pilgrims attempt a communistic plan of life? What happened? How did the Pilgrims’ covenant under God become the Age of Enlightenment’s social contract with a distant God, become the French Revolution’s social contract with no god, become Marxism’s the state is god? If the state gives rights, it can, and inevitably will, take away those rights-Eisenhower. Was France’s Reign of Terror a model for future socialist revolutions? The Bible talks about private property, yet Marx wrote: The theory of the communists may be summed up…Abolition of private property. Coolidge wrote It does not follow that because something ought to be done, the national government ought to do it.
Thomas Becket : An Intimate Portrait
$34.95Add to cartNearly 850 years after his death, Thomas Becket remains one of the most controversial and enigmatic figures in English history. As chancellor to King Henry II, as Archbishop of Canterbury, and ultimately as a martyr and saint, Becket (and his unconventional career) has taken hold of the historical imagination, both academic and popular. An apparently dedicated servant of Archbishop Theobald, Becket’s transfer to King Henry’s court shifted his loyalties to secular causes, only for them to swing back to the Church following his appointment to the archbishopric.
Thomas Becket: An Intimate Portrait offers a new approach to understanding the man: the writings of John of Salisbury, a fellow English churchman who was an associate of and advisor to Becket throughout his life. Becket and John attended school together in Paris, served Theobald at Canterbury, sparred while Becket was King Henry’s chancellor, and cooperated closely once Becket became archbishop and especially during his exile from England. John was present at the scene of Becket’s murder, after which he became a key figure in advancing the archbishop’s canonization and cult. From the time that John commenced his education until his own death in 1180, Becket was almost constantly in John’s sight. In consequence, the large body of writing that John produced-letters, philosophical tomes, hagiographies, histories, poetry-constitutes a virtual running commentary on the future saint’s life. Thomas Becket: An Intimate Portrait draws upon this vast source in pursuit of a singular opportunity to share one man’s up-close perceptions of and experiences with Becket over more than three decades.
Mayflower Pilgrims : Sifting Fact From Fable
$20.99Add to cartThis riveting reassessment of the voyage of the Mayflower explores the background and motives of those who sailed in her, taking us closer to the real reasons behind the epic journey.
The voyage of the Mayflower in 1620 has come to typify those qualities that many believe represent the best of America and the values it holds up to the rest of the world. And yet, if they lived today, the courageous men, women and children who made that journey would not recognize themselves in the romantic retelling of their story in popular books and movies of the last century or so. So what were the motivating forces behind this momentous voyage? Derek Wilson strips away the over-painting from the icon to discover the complex range of religious, political and commercial concerns that led this group of hopeful but fallible human beings to seek a new life on the other side of the world.
Exercise Of Power
$29.95Add to cartA Knopf Title
From the former secretary of defense and author of the acclaimed #1 best-selling memoir, Duty, a candid, sweeping examination of power in all its manifestations, and how it has been exercised, for good and bad, by American presidents in the post-Cold War world.
Since the end of the Cold War, the global perception of the United States has progressively morphed from dominant international leader to disorganized entity, seemingly unwilling to accept the mantle of leadership or unable to govern itself effectively. Robert Gates argues that this transformation is the result of the failure of political leaders to understand the complexity of American power, its expansiveness, and its limitations. He makes clear that the successful exercise of power is not limited to the use of military might or the ability to coerce or demand submission, but must encompass as well diplomacy, economics, strategic communications, development assistance, intelligence, technology, ideology, and cyber. By analyzing specific challenges faced by the American government in the post-Cold War period–Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Russia, China, and others–Gates deconstructs the ways in which leaders have used the instruments of power available to them. With forthright judgments of the performance of past presidents and their senior-most advisers, firsthand knowledge, and insider stories, Gates argues that U.S. national security in the future will require learning, and abiding by, the lessons of the past, and re-creating those capabilities that the misuse of power has cost the nation.
Americas Great Revivals (Revised)
$9.00Add to cartMoving and inspirational, America’s Great Revivals offers the stirring history of spiritual awakenings in America spanning from 1734 through 2000, and presents the ministry history of Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, Billy Graham, and more! May the stories of what God did in these centuries encourage you to pray for a new season of great revival.
Let The Monster Perish
$8.00Add to cartIn February 1865, just days after the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment banning slavery, Presbyterian pastor and abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet spoke before the U.S. Congress, becoming the first African American to do so. Garnet’s speech, titled Let the Monster Perish, celebrated the end of slavery and pleaded with humanity to never let it rise again. Garnet’s address would later set the tone for Congressional Reconstruction, providing the important and necessary perspective from those whose voices had been excluded from American democracy. His address is reproduced here along with a time line of his life.
In a time of division, we can have no better prophetic voice to frame today’s discussions of justice and freedom than a one-legged fugitive slave who came to a Capitol without a Dome to tell how the Constitution could be made more perfect, in the name of God.
-from a letter sent by the President of the Presbyterian Historical Society to the President of the Maryland State Senate.
Volunteer : One Man, An Underground Army, And The Secret Mission To Destroy
$19.99Add to cartThe incredible true story of a Polish resistance fighter’s infiltration of Auschwitz to sabotage the camp from within, and his death-defying attempt to warn the Allies about the Nazis’ plans for a Final Solution before it was too late.
To uncover the fate of the thousands being interred at a mysterious Nazi camp on the border of the Reich, a thirty-nine-year-old Polish resistance fighter named Witold Pilecki volunteered for an audacious mission: assume a fake identity, intentionally get captured and sent to the new camp, and then report back to the underground on what had happened to his compatriots there. But gathering information was not his only task: he was to execute an attack from inside–where the Germans would least expect it.
The name of the camp was Auschwitz.
Over the next two and half years, Pilecki forged an underground army within Auschwitz that sabotaged facilities, assassinated Nazi informants and officers, and gathered evidence of terrifying abuse and mass murder. But as he pieced together the horrifying truth that the camp was to become the epicenter of Nazi plans to exterminate Europe’s Jews, Pilecki realized he would have to risk his men, his life, and his family to warn the West before all was lost. To do so, meant attempting the impossible–an escape from Auschwitz itself.
Completely erased from the historical record by Poland’s post-war Communist government, Pilecki remains almost unknown to the world. Now, with exclusive access to previously hidden diaries, family and camp survivor accounts, and recently declassified files, Jack Fairweather offers an unflinching portrayal of survival, revenge and betrayal in mankind’s darkest hour. And in uncovering the tragic outcome of Pilecki’s mission, he reveals that its ultimate defeat originated not in Auschwitz or Berlin, but in London and Washington.
Galileo : And The Science Deniers
$28.00Add to cartGalileo’s story may be more relevant today than ever before. At present, we face enormous crises-such as the minimization of the dangers of climate change-because the science behind these threats is erroneously questioned or ignored. Galileo encountered this problem 400 years ago. His discoveries, based on careful observations and ingenious experiments, contradicted conventional wisdom and the teachings of the church at the time. Consequently, in a blatant assault on freedom of thought, his books were forbidden by church authorities.
Astrophysicist and bestselling author Mario Livio draws on his own scientific expertise to provide captivating insights into how Galileo reached his bold new conclusions about the cosmos and the laws of nature. A freethinker who followed the evidence wherever it led him, Galileo was one of the most significant figures behind the scientific revolution. He believed that every educated person should know science as well as literature, and insisted on reaching the widest audience possible, publishing his books in Italian rather than Latin.
Galileo was put on trial with his life in the balance for refusing to renounce his scientific convictions. He remains a hero and inspiration to scientists and all of those who respect science-which, as Livio reminds us in this gripping book, remains threatened even today.
Pioneers : The Heroic Story Of The Settlers Who Brought The American Ideal
$18.00Add to cartThe #1 New York Times bestseller by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important chapter in the American story that’s as resonant today as ever (The Wall Street Journal)-the settling of the Northwest Territory by courageous pioneers who overcame incredible hardships to build a community based on ideals that would define our country.
As part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler was instrumental in opening this vast territory to veterans of the Revolutionary War and their families for settlement. Included in the Northwest Ordinance were three remarkable conditions: freedom of religion, free universal education, and most importantly, the prohibition of slavery. In 1788 the first band of pioneers set out from New England for the Northwest Territory under the leadership of Revolutionary War veteran General Rufus Putnam. They settled in what is now Marietta on the banks of the Ohio River.
McCullough tells the story through five major characters: Cutler and Putnam; Cutler’s son Ephraim; and two other men, one a carpenter turned architect, and the other a physician who became a prominent pioneer in American science. With clarity and incisiveness, [McCullough] details the experience of a brave and broad-minded band of people who crossed raging rivers, chopped down forests, plowed miles of land, suffered incalculable hardships, and braved a lonely frontier to forge a new American ideal (The Providence Journal).
Drawn in great part from a rare and all-but-unknown collection of diaries and letters by the key figures, The Pioneers is a uniquely American story of people whose ambition and courage led them to remarkable accomplishments. A tale of uplift (The New York Times Book Review), this is a quintessentially American story, written with David McCullough’s signature narrative energy.
They Were Soldiers
$34.99Add to cartNew York Times bestselling author Joseph Galloway and coauthor Marvin Wolf bring to life the inspirational stories of Vietnam veterans who returned home from the lost war to enrich America’s present and future.
For decades, the soldiers who served in Vietnam were shunned by the American public and ignored by their government. Many were vilified or had their struggles to reintegrate with society magnified by distorted depictions of veterans as dangerous or demented. Even today, Vietnam veterans have not received their due. Until now.
In this groundbreaking new book, veterans Joseph Galloway, New York Times bestselling author of We Were Soldiers Once and Young, and award-winning author Marvin J. Wolf reveal the private lives of those who returned from Vietnam to make astonishing contributions in science, medicine, business, and other arenas, changing America for the better. These profiles are touching and courageous and often startling. They include veterans both known and unknown, including Frederick Wallace (Fred) Smith, founder of FedEx, Marshall Carter who became chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, and Eileen Moore, a former combat nurse and current appellate judge who also serves as a mentor in California’s Combat Veterans Court.
Engrossing, moving, and eye-opening, They Were Soldiers is a magnificent tribute that gives long overdue honor and recognition to the soldiers of this forgotten generation.
Political Religion : How Christianity And Islam Shape The World
$29.95Add to cartIt is hard to deny that both the Christian and the Islamic faith traditions have played a significant role through the centuries in influencing world affairs. In this book Father Felix Korner, SJ, both a Catholic theologian and a student of the Islamic tradition, looks at the specific ways in which these two Abrahamic religions have shaped society and culture. Utilizing seven models to fully denote the nature of the intersection between faith and culture, between religion and world, Father Korner notes that religions see themselves as the divine means of transforming human conditions. But in the case of both Christianity and Islam, at times religion has served as a means of legitimizing violence and misrule. Looking at what he calls the social power of religion, he argues that religion is most fully itself when it is using its influence not to endorse violence or the abuse of power, but when it acknowledges the other. Only when religion uses its power to influence the world in a positive manner, when it engages with modernity in a meaningful dialogue, does religion become political in a meaningful sense, and only then does it shape the world as it is called to do.
Year 1000 : When Explorers Connected The World—and Globalization Began
$30.00Add to cartFrom celebrated Yale professor Valerie Hansen, a groundbreaking work of history showing that bold explorations and daring trade missions connected all of the world’s great societies for the first time at the end of the first millennium.
People often believe that the years immediately prior to AD 1000 were, with just a few exceptions, lacking in any major cultural developments or geopolitical encounters, that the Europeans hadn’t yet reached North America, and that the farthest feat of sea travel was the Vikings’ invasion of Britain. But how, then, to explain the presence of blonde-haired people in Maya temple murals at Chichen Itza, Mexico? Could it be possible that the Vikings had found their way to the Americas during the height of the Maya empire?
Valerie Hansen, an award-winning historian, argues that the year 1000 was the world’s first point of major cultural exchange and exploration. Drawing on nearly thirty years of research, she presents a compelling account of first encounters between disparate societies, which sparked conflict and collaboration eerily reminiscent of our contemporary moment.
For readers of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, The Year 1000 is an intellectually daring, provocative account that will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about how the modern world came to be. It will also hold up a mirror to the hopes and fears we experience today.
Lincoln On The Verge
$35.00Add to cartAs a divided nation plunges into the deepest crisis in its history, Abraham Lincoln boards a train for Washington and his inauguration-an inauguration Southerners have vowed to prevent by any means necessary. Drawing on new research, this account reveals the President-Elect as a work in progress, showing him on the verge of greatness, foiling an assassination attempt, and forging an unbreakable bond with the American people.
On the eve of his 52nd birthday, February 11, 1861, the President-Elect of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, walked onto a train, the first step of his journey to the White House, and his rendezvous with destiny.
But as the train began to carry Lincoln toward Washington, it was far from certain what he would find there. Bankrupt and rudderless, the government was on the verge of collapse. To make matters worse, reliable intelligence confirmed a conspiracy to assassinate him as he passed through Baltimore. It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of the Republic hung in the balance.
How did Lincoln survive this grueling odyssey, to become the president we know from the history books? Lincoln on the Verge tells the story of a leader discovering his own strength, improvising brilliantly, and seeing his country up close during these pivotal thirteen days.
From the moment the Presidential Special left the station, a new Lincoln was on display, speaking constantly, from a moving train, to save the Republic. The journey would draw on all of Lincoln’s mental and physical reserves. But the President-Elect discovered an inner strength, which deepened with the exhausting ordeal of meeting millions of Americans.
Lincoln on the Verge tells the story of America’s greatest president and the obstacles he overcame, well before he could take the oath of office and deliver his inaugural address.
Mexique : A Refugee Story From The Spanish Civil War
$17.99Add to cartOn May 27, 1937, over four hundred children sailed for Morelia, Mexico, fleeing the violence of the Spanish Civil War. Home was no longer safe, and Mexico was welcoming refugees by the thousands. Each child packed a suitcase and boarded the Mexique, expecting to return home in a few months. This was just a short trip, an extra-long summer vacation, they thought. But the war did not end in a few months, and the children stayed, waiting and wondering, in Mexico. When the war finally ended, a dictator-the Fascist Francisco Franco-ruled Spain. Home was even more dangerous than before.
This moving book invites readers onto the Mexique with the children of Morelia, many of whom never returned to Spain during Franco’s almost forty-year regime. Poignant and poetically told, Mexique opens important conversations about hope, resilience, and the lives of displaced people in the past and today.
Hunting The Unabomber
$26.99Add to cartFrom Lis Wiehl, New York Times bestselling author and storyteller extraordinaire (Steve Berry), with New York Times bestselling crime writer Lisa Pulitzer, the definitive, gripping account of the longest pursuit in FBI history: the quest to find and capture the domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski.
On April 3, 1996, a team of FBI agents closed in on an isolated cabin in remote Montana, marking the end of the longest and most expensive investigation in FBI history. The cabin’s lone inhabitant was a former mathematics prodigy and wunderkind professor who had abandoned society decades earlier. Few people knew his name, Theodore Kaczynski, but everyone knew the mayhem and death associated with his nickname: the Unabomber.
For two decades, Kaczynski had masterminded a campaign of random terror, killing and maiming innocent people through bombs sent in untraceable packages. The FBI task force charged with finding the perpetrator of these horrifying crimes grew to 150 people, yet his identity remained a maddening mystery. Then, in 1995, a manifesto from the Unabomber was published in the New York Times and Washington Post, resulting in a cascade of tips–including the one that cracked the case.
With access to new primary sources and exclusive interviews with key law enforcement officials, New York Times bestselling author and former federal prosecutor Lis Wiehl meticulously reconstructs the white-knuckle, tension-filled hunt to identify and capture the mysterious killer. A revelatory, historical thriller of the years-long battle of wits between the FBI and the brilliant-but-criminally insane Kaczynski, Hunting the Unabomber is the spellbinding account of the most complex and captivating manhunt in American history.
Renaissance And Reformation Times Teacher Guide (Teacher’s Guide)
$17.95Add to cartThe Renaissance & Reformation Times Teacher Guide includes teaching notes, answers for the 20 lessons in the Renaissance & Reformation Times Student Guide, a bibliography, a discussion question answer key, 4 tests and a final exam, and a test answer key.
Renaissance And Reformation Times Student Guide (Student/Study Guide)
$17.95Add to cartThe Renaissance & Reformation Times Student Guide contains lessons for the 20 chapters of Renaissance & Reformation Times that each include study notes, words to define, identification questions, comprehension questions, and discussion questions. The student guide also includes teaching notes and a bibliography. Answers can be found in the Renaissance & Reformation Times Teacher Guide.
Renaissance And Reformation Times
$16.95Add to cartThe period of the Renaissance and Reformation is increasingly important for the student of today. Miss Mills recreates this exciting period in history, and once more proves her unique ability to write history which is interesting and at the same time based on sound scholarship. She shows the essential meaning of the Renaissance period, what brought about this great change in thought, and how it affected the outward experience of the peoples of Italy, Germany, Spain, France, and England. Renaissance & Reformation Times includes a preface; 20 chapters covering topics such as the Renaissance in Italy, Early Tudor England, The Age of Discovery, Reformers in Switzerland and France, and more; a conclusion; and a bibliography.
Redemptorists Of Cuenca
$29.99Add to cartDuring the civil war in Spain in the 1930s, all churches were closed against worship. Many of the churches were burned. All altars, religious images and objects of worship were destroyed. Bells, chalices, monstrances, and candelabras were melted down and used for the war. All monasteries and convents were emptied and their buildings repurposed. Priests and religious were detailed, jailed or shot without due process in the thousands.
Redemptorists of Cuenca: Six Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War is a stirring biography of the Redemptorist community at San Felipe Neri in the city of Cuenca, Spain. It recounts the community’s founding, the lead-up of the civil war in the early 1930s, the turbulent last days of the Redemptorists in hiding or in jail, to the murder of six of the twelve members of their community in July and August 1936.
The poignant stories of the six martyrs are brought to life by quotes from their personal journals. The book concludes with the story of their recognition as martyrs and subsequent canonization on October 13, 2013.
Defying The Holocaust
$20.99Add to cartThe stories of ten Christians who, at personal risk, protected and rescued Jews from the Nazis.
During the Second World War, Christians from many nations and denominations stepped forward with courage, ingenuity and determination to protect and rescue Jews from the Holocaust. In doing so they risked their lives, and many died. Some, such as Corrie ten Boom, are celebrated, but most have been ignored. Historian Tim Dowley tells ten stories of these extraordinary women and men.
Introduction The Nazi Holocaust: A Timeline Chapter
1: A Most Unorthodox Nun: Mother Maria of Paris Chapter
2: Pestilent Priests: Revd Hugh Grimes and Revd Frederick Collard, Vienna Chapter
3: The Borders of Heaven: Jane Haining, Budapest Chapter
4: No Hiding Place: Corrie ten Boom, Harlem Chapter
5: Quakers and U-boats: Dr Elisabeth Abegg, Berlin Chapter
6: The Constant Midwife: Stanislawa Leszczynska, Lodz Chapter
7: The Monk on a Bicycle: Dom Bruno Reynders, Brussels Chapter
8: The Vatican Pimpernel: Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, Rome Chapter
9: Committed Swedes: Pastors Erik Perwe and Erik Myrgren, Berlin Chapter
10: An Elusive Missionary: Elsie Tilney, Vittel
Cuba Libre
$16.99Add to cartComo una banda de guerrilleros autoentrenados derroco a un dictador y cambio la historia del mundo. Este libro describe como un grupo de revolucionarios, muchos de ellos jovenes privilegiados recien egresados de la universidad, especializados en literatura y jovenes abogados, se transformaron en guerrilleros de la selva y derrotaron a 50.000 soldados profesionalmente entrenados y equipados para derrocar al dictador Fulgencio Batista, apoyado por Estados Unidos.
Ben And The Emancipation Proclamation
$9.99Add to cartBen, a young slave, uses every chance he gets to teach himself to read, practicing with the words he sees on street signs and in shop windows and even in cast-off newspapers he finds in the gutter.
But after the Civil War breaks out, his master leaves town and Ben finds himself in a slave prison. One night, the prisoners bribe a guard to get their hands on a newspaper, and to the applause of his fellow slaves, Ben reads aloud the momentous news of Mr. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation — surely one of the most remarkable readings of that document ever.
Based on the true story of Benjamin Holmes, Pat Sherman’s stirring text and the memorable illustrations of Coretta Scott King medalist Floyd Cooper pay tribute to the power of freedom — and to the power of the written word.
