An essential work for the newly observant on how to ease into a religious lifestyle and maintain good family relations. This practical halachic guide discusses real-life situations, such as dealing with parental requests that are contrary to Jewish law, attending family ceremonies in non-Orthodox settings, and how to solve kashruth dilemmas.
The fascinating story of how a harsh terrain that resembled modern Antarctica has been transformed gradually into the forests, grasslands, and wetlands we know today.
Stalin's reign of terror in the Soviet Union has been called 'the other Holocaust'. During the Stalin years, it is thought that more innocent men, women and children perished than in Hitler's destruction of the European Jews. Many millions died in Stalin's Gulag of torture prisons and forced-labour camps, yet others survived and were freed after his death in 1953. This book is the story of the survivors. Long kept secret by Soviet repression and censorship, it is now told by renowned author and historian Stephen F. Cohen, who came to know many former Gulag inmates during his frequent trips to Moscow over a period of thirty years. Based on first-hand interviews with the victims themselves and on newly available materials, Cohen provides a powerful narrative of the survivors' post-Gulag saga, from their liberation and return to Soviet society, to their long struggle to salvage what remained of their shattered lives and to obtain justice. Spanning more than fifty years, "The Victims Return" combines individual stories with the fierce political conflicts that raged, both in society and in the Kremlin, over the victims of the terror and the people who had victimized them. This compelling book will be essential reading for anyone interested in Russian history.
‘’In the Western countries, first they are strangers, then they become friends, then they become more than friends, then they become strangers again’’ A Persistent Soul is a story of Sagar and Kimberly who love each other but they understand ‘love’ differently. She is 23, he is 24. She is beautiful and he is an average looking guy. She is British and he is an Indian. They both are students. He is simple, optimistic, enthusiastic and ambitious. She is hard-headed, unyielding, unforgiving and intolerant but both are heartwarming and exhilarating. Accidently they meet, become friends and fall in love. She is a right girl for him and he is a right guy for her but is the 'time' right for both of them? A middle-class Indian boy, who is new to the Western world, does not understand the Western theory of love. He falls in love with a girl and decides to spend the rest of the life with her. Kimberly is an over thinker and wants to take every step slowly. She has secrets which she doesn’t want to tell anyone and he is the one who wants to know everything. The author Manoj Patil takes us through an incredible journey of love and loss with his debut novel 'A Persistent Soul'. The story of the journey of their love is described beautifully provide vivid sketches of beautiful Newcastle town that form the milieu for their romance. Kimberly's complex character and her complicated past, Western life and culture sensitively brought out through the eyes of a middle-class Indian who persists through storms and rough seas to unite with her spirited lover.
“Illuminating” --General James N. Mattis, USMC (ret.) “Written with the skill and precision of a philosophical sniper…” —Matt Furey, author of The Unbeatable Man Since 9/11 and before, American warriors have faced combat in difficult and adverse theaters with dedication, courage, and remarkable inner fortitude. Our nation supports them during their time in the fight, and “thank you for your service” has become a common civilian affirmation. Marine combat veteran David J. Danelo’s message is simple—those who return to peace after war possess a power that must be discovered, honored, and treasured. The Return: A Field Manual for Life After Combat tells how our military and civilian cultures can protect and nurture this potent gift. “Brilliant, moving and accurate.” —Dr. Edward Tick, author of War and the Soul “U.S. Army Green Berets were the first in and the last out of the longest war in American History. The Return is showing them how to come home and find peace.” —Lieutenant Colonel David Scott Mann (U.S. Army, Ret.), Green Beret Foundation
From the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist: a revelatory portrait of religion in China today, its history, the spiritual traditions of its Eastern and Western faiths, and the ways in which it is influencing China's future. Following a century of violent antireligious campaigns, China is now awash with new temples, churches, and mosques as well as cults, sects, and politicians trying to harness religion for their own ends. Driving this explosion of faith is uncertainty over what it means to be Chinese, and how to live an ethical life in a country that discarded traditional morality a century ago and is still searching for new guideposts. Ian Johnson lived for extended periods with underground church members, rural Daoists, and Buddhist pilgrims. He has distilled these experiences into a cycle of festivals, births, deaths, detentions, and struggle a great awakening of faith that is shaping the soul of the world s newest superpower. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout).
A group of friends reunite after one of them has returned from a mysterious two-year disappearance in this edgy and haunting debut. Julie is missing, and no one believes she will ever return—except Elise. Elise knows Julie better than anyone, and feels it in her bones that her best friend is out there and that one day Julie will come back. She’s right. Two years to the day that Julie went missing, she reappears with no memory of where she’s been or what happened to her. Along with Molly and Mae, their two close friends from college, the women decide to reunite at a remote inn. But the second Elise sees Julie, she knows something is wrong—she’s emaciated, with sallow skin and odd appetites. And as the weekend unfurls, it becomes impossible to deny that the Julie who vanished two years ago is not the same Julie who came back. But then who—or what—is she?
Exploring NATO’s post-Cold War determination to support democracy abroad, this book addresses the alliance’s adaptation to the new illiberal backlashes in Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans and Afghanistan after the alleged ‘return of history’. The book engages the question of what has driven NATO to pursue democratisation in face of the significant region-specific challenges and what can explain policy expansion or retrenchment over time. Explaining NATO’s adaptation from the perspective of power dynamics that push for international change and historical experience that informs grand strategy allows wider inferences not only about democratisation as a foreign policy strategy but also about the nature of the transatlantic alliance and its relations with a mostly illiberal environment. Larsen offers a theoretical conception of NATO as a patchwork of one hegemonic and several great power interests that converge or diverge in the formulation of common policy, as opposed to NATO as a community of universal values. This volume will appeal to researchers of transatlantic relations, NATO’s functional and geographical expansion, hegemony and great power politics, democracy promotion, lessons of the past, (Neoclassical) Realism, alliance theory, and the crisis of the liberal world order.