Could the Gospel that we commonly proclaim in the US be labeled, Made in America? Have Americanisms and cultural insertions unknowingly slipped into our message? Can the Cultural Fence encountered when we attempt to minister cross-culturally serve as a filter to help purify our Gospel presentation and return it to the powerful, supra-cultural Gospel of which the Apostle Paul was not ashamed? The answer to these and many other questions make Playing Both Sides of the Fence required reading for all who care to proclaim the Good News to the World.
Ten years after their home was almost torn apart by infidelity, Mona and Shawn Black are just getting back to normal . . . or so it seems. Both Shawn and Mona are still keeping secrets from each other and their immediate family. Back to his old tricks, James Parks exits prison older but not wiser, and his bitter rage seeks revenge. He again manipulates the lives of the Black family with knowledge of secrets that they hold locked away. He uses any and everyone in his path to get his payback; that is, until he stumbles onto someone who offers him something he vowed to do away with forever: love. Will Mona and Shawn learn that it is best not to keep secrets and just let the chips fall where they may? Will James bury the hatchet to try his hand at love once again? Is there still hope for these wayward souls, or will they be swallowed up by their lies and secrets once again? Secrets, lies, deception, murder, lust, and revenge rule the pages of this sophisticated drama. Let's see what happens when the gates of their lives swing wide open once again.
One of The Hollywood Reporter’s 100 Greatest Film Books of All Time • A National Book Critics Circle finalist • One of People's top 10 books of 2021 • An instant New York Times bestseller • Named a best book of the year by NPR and Time A magnificent biography of one of the most protean creative forces in American entertainment history, a life of dazzling highs and vertiginous plunges—some of the worst largely unknown until now—by the acclaimed author of Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came Back Mike Nichols burst onto the scene as a wunderkind: while still in his twenties, he was half of a hit improv duo with Elaine May that was the talk of the country. Next he directed four consecutive hit plays, won back-to-back Tonys, ushered in a new era of Hollywood moviemaking with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and followed it with The Graduate, which won him an Oscar and became the third-highest-grossing movie ever. At thirty-five, he lived in a three-story Central Park West penthouse, drove a Rolls-Royce, collected Arabian horses, and counted Jacqueline Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Leonard Bernstein, and Richard Avedon as friends. Where he arrived is even more astonishing given where he had begun: born Igor Peschkowsky to a Jewish couple in Berlin in 1931, he was sent along with his younger brother to America on a ship in 1939. The young immigrant boy caught very few breaks. He was bullied and ostracized--an allergic reaction had rendered him permanently hairless--and his father died when he was just twelve, leaving his mother alone and overwhelmed. The gulf between these two sets of facts explains a great deal about Nichols's transformation from lonely outsider to the center of more than one cultural universe--the acute powers of observation that first made him famous; the nourishment he drew from his creative partnerships, most enduringly with May; his unquenchable drive; his hunger for security and status; and the depressions and self-medications that brought him to terrible lows. It would take decades for him to come to grips with his demons. In an incomparable portrait that follows Nichols from Berlin to New York to Chicago to Hollywood, Mark Harris explores, with brilliantly vivid detail and insight, the life, work, struggle, and passion of an artist and man in constant motion. Among the 250 people Harris interviewed: Elaine May, Meryl Streep, Stephen Sondheim, Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Tom Hanks, Candice Bergen, Emma Thompson, Annette Bening, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Lorne Michaels, and Gloria Steinem. Mark Harris gives an intimate and evenhanded accounting of success and failure alike; the portrait is not always flattering, but its ultimate impact is to present the full story of one of the most richly interesting, complicated, and consequential figures the worlds of theater and motion pictures have ever seen. It is a triumph of the biographer's art.
Not just the United States, but the entire world, remembers that fateful November day back in 2018 when Al Qaeda terrorists held the entire nation hostage in exchange for the public disclosure of an anti-terrorist bio-weapon that may not have even existed. In that darkest hour, salvation came not from the United States government, but from fantasy government, a cabinet of independent thinkers and gamers from Naperville, Illinois, led by insurance adjustor and President Jay Weise. Now, thanks to the tireless efforts of crusading vagabond journalist, former White House press secretary, and part-time Radio Shack employee Jerome Bartels, here for the first time is the true story of the Stockdale Hostage Crisis from the people who lived it.
Using his years of experience as a patrol officer and police detective, Paloma reveals a behind-the-scenes look at the dark humor and aggravations of being a uniformed police officer.
A strong...tale of operatic moral corrosion.-Kirkus Reviews on Gods & Gangsters Faith Newkirk has it all-a loving husband, beautiful daughter, and a thriving luxury shoe boutique in Washington D.C. Yet a part of her feels as though she's a stranger in her own life and that she's living a lie. When Faith gets kidnapped by a group of goons while walking to her car, she is forced, brutally to remember who she is-and it’s not the suburban wife and mother she’s been pretending to be, but Achilleía, the daughter of one of the most ruthless killers and drug dealers in New York City, who went missing and was presumed dead years prior. As the memories begin to flood back in, she remembers why she ran from her past and why, if she wants to stay alive, she has to keep running from the men she thought loved her who want her dead...
Translocality, Entrepreneurship and Middle Class Across Eurasia is a comprehensive, multi-sited ethnography about the unfolding of capitalism across Eurasia and the advent of a new middle class since the late Soviet era. Based on extensive fieldwork, the book follows three generations of ethnic Kyrgyz in three distinct eras and sites: The early bazaar traders of Novosibirsk (Russia), the post-2000 middlemen operating in Guangzhou (China) and the ‘new entrepreneurs’ who have emerged at home in Kyrgyzstan around 2015. The book advocates translocality as an innovative concept to better understand the dialectic of mobility and emplacement in contemporary livelihoods and value chains that transgress not only political borders, but also less tangible socio-cultural boundaries. Through this lens, the chapters forcefully demonstrate how ways of business-making align or conflict with notions of ethnic belonging, diaspora, sociability or gender, in and in-between various locations. Proposing the imaginary of commercial journeys, the book documents the aspirations, adjustments and struggles of an emergent middle class, whose neoliberal subjectivity is inspired by a flexible entrepreneurial spirit of ‘Kyrgyzness’, and who navigate in a market environment that recently has been shifting towards more actor diversification, service orientation and rule-based formalization. This book will be of interest particularly to scholars in the fields of (economic) anthropology, post-socialist studies, migration, mobility and area studies with a focus on Central Asia and Eurasia.
In this authoritative, in-depth account, military author and historian James F. Dunnigan uncovers the fascinating evolution of the world's deadliest warriors, from skilled prehistoric hunters, through Stoss Truppen', British SAS, Russia's Spetnaz, the Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrols of the Vietnam War, antiterrorism commandos, SWAT teams, and the commando wars of Afghanistan and Iraq. With brilliant analysis and gripping descriptions, Dunnigan explores the minds, methods and decisive battles of elite forces. This inside look shows the way warfare has changed forever.'
Malefactors is defined as “those who commit an offense against the law”, or more simply put, “one who does ill toward another”. This collection of short stories from Jim Wilsky is chock full of them. Tales that are all different, yet all the same. The locales and characters range from rural to urban. Office buildings, swamps, wealthy estates and corn fields are some of the places. The people range from folks with money to flat broke, from those who have a lot on the line to those who have nothing to lose, old and young alike. There are stone cold killers to good guys and those in between. Those walking on that shaky bridge, that thin tightrope that connects good and evil. The stories all share the same common ingredients though. Plots that are brutal, chaotic, desperate, vengeful and violent. These pages paint the rage and burning fire that dwells within almost everyone but only surface and re-erupt in some. From guns, to knives, to swords and bare hands, this collection will push all the right buttons for crime fiction readers. These specially selected stories touch every base. So, buckle up and read on.
