Given unprecedented insider access, author Allen D. Hertzke charts the rise of the new faith-based movement for global human rights and tells the compelling story of the personalities and forces, clashes and compromises, strategies and protests that shape it. In doing so, Hertzke shows that by raising issues_such as global religious persecution, Sudanese atrocities, North Korean gulags, and sex trafficking_the movement is impacting foreign policy around the world.
This sweeping novel set in the province of Texas is “a powerful depiction of the rough realities of frontier life [and] the vicious influence of racism” (The New York Times). Finalist for the Reading the West Book Award for Fiction In 1827, Duncan Lammons, a disgraced young man from Kentucky, sets out to join the American army in the province of Texas, hoping that here he may live—and love—as he pleases. That same year, Cecelia, a young slave in Virginia, runs away for the first time. Soon infamous for her escape attempts, Cecelia continues to drift through the reality of slavery—until she encounters frontiersman Sam Fisk, who rescues her from a slave auction in New Orleans. In spite of her mistrust, Cecelia senses an opportunity for freedom, and travels with Sam to Texas, where he has a homestead. In this new territory, where the law is an instrument for the cruel and the wealthy, they begin an unlikely life together, unaware that their fates are intertwined with those of Sam’s former army mates, including Duncan Lammons, a friend—and others who harbor dangerous dreams of their own. This “swift and skillful Western” takes its place among the great stories that recount the country’s fight for freedom—one that makes us want to keep on with the struggle (The Wall Street Journal). “Gwyn creates an overwhelmingly visceral and emotionally rich narrative amid Texas’s complex path to statehood . . . This is a masterpiece of western fiction in the tradition of Cormac McCarthy and James Carlos Blake.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “It’s always a pleasure to discover another superb writer who had not been on my radar . . . many scenes pulse with tension, tenderness or both.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
Every generation faces unique challenges. The first-century Church had Caesar’s lions and the Colosseum. And, while it might seem like an unlikely comparison, the challenge of living with popular culture may well be as serious as persecution was for the saints of old. Today we witness the tremendous power of pop culture to set the pace and priorities of our lives. We simply cannot afford to be indifferent about culture’s influence—nor can we escape it, glibly condemn it, or Christianize it. Cultural expert Ken Myers helps us to engage pop culture from a historical and experiential perspective so that we can live in it with wisdom and discernment.
A timely reissue of Fox Butterfield’s masterpiece, All God’s Children, a searing examination of the caustic cumulative effect of racism and violence over 5 generations of black Americans. Willie Bosket is a brilliant, violent man who began his criminal career at age five; his slaying of two subway riders at fifteen led to the passage of the first law in the nation allowing teenagers to be tried as adults. Butterfield traces the Bosket family back to their days as South Carolina slaves and documents how Willie is the culmination of generations of neglect, cruelty, discrimination and brutality directed at black Americans. From the terrifying scourge of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction to the brutal streets of 1970s New York, this is an unforgettable examination of the painful roots of violence and racism in America.
From Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former Christian Scientist Caroline Fraser comes the first unvarnished account of one of America's most controversial and little-understood religious movements. Millions of Americans – from Lady Astor to Ginger Rogers to Watergate conspirator H. R. Haldeman – have been touched by the Church of Christ, Scientist. Founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879, Christian Science was based on a belief that intense contemplation of the perfection of God can heal all ills – an extreme expression of the American faith in self-reliance. In this unflinching investigation, Caroline Fraser, herself raised in a Scientist household, shows how the Church transformed itself from a small, eccentric sect into a politically powerful and socially respectable religion, and explores the human cost of Christian Science's remarkable rise. Fraser examines the strange life and psychology of Mary Baker Eddy, who lived in dread of a kind of witchcraft she called Malicious Animal Magnetism. She takes us into the closed world of Eddy's followers, who refuse to acknowledge the existence of illness and death and reject modern medicine, even at the cost of their children's lives. She reveals just how Christian Science managed to gain extraordinary legal and Congressional sanction for its dubious practices and tracks its enormous influence on new-age beliefs and other modern healing cults. A passionate exposé of zealotry, God's Perfect Child tells one of the most dramatic and little-known stories in American religious history.
Any caretaker of children will appreciate these concise, thoughtful, easy-to-explain answers to some of the most important questions children will ever ask.i
In 1962 the poet, musician, and performer Maya Angelou claimed another piece of her identity by moving to Ghana, joining a community of "Revolutionist Returnees" inspired by the promise of pan-Africanism. All God's Children Need Walking Shoes is her lyrical and acutely perceptive exploration of what it means to be an African American on the mother continent, where color no longer matters but where American-ness keeps asserting itself in ways both puzzling and heartbreaking. As it builds on the personal narrative of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Gather Together in My Name, this book confirms Maya Angelou’s stature as one of the most gifted autobiographers of our time.
