Sohrab Ahmari was a teenager living under the Iranian ayatollahs when he decided that there is no God. Nearly two decades later, he would be received into the Roman Catholic Church. In From Fire, by Water, he recounts this unlikely passage, from the strident Marxism and atheism of a youth misspent on both sides of the Atlantic to a moral and spiritual awakening prompted by the Mass. At once a young intellectual’s finely crafted self-portrait and a life story at the intersection of the great ideas and events of our time, the book marks the debut of a compelling new Catholic voice.
When Robert Haddick wrote Fire on the Water, first published in 2014, most policy experts and the public underestimated the threat China’s military modernization posed to the U.S. strategic position in the Indo-Pacific region. Today, the rapid Chinese military buildup has many policy experts wondering whether the United States and its allies can maintain conventional military deterrence in the region, and the topic is central to defense planning in the United States. In this new edition, Haddick argues that the United States and its allies can sustain conventional deterrence in the face of China's military buildup. However, doing so will require U.S. policymakers and planners to overcome institutional and cultural barriers to reforms necessary to implement a new strategy for the region. Fire on the Water, Second Edition also presents the sources of conflict in Asia and explains why America's best option is to maintain its active forward presence in the region. Haddick relates the history of America's military presence in the Indo-Pacific and shows why that presence is now vulnerable. The author details China's military modernization program, how it is shrewdly exploiting the military-technical revolution, and why it now poses a grave threat to U.S. and allied interests. He considers the U.S. responses to China's military modernization over the past decade and discusses why these responses fall short of a convincing competitive strategy. Detailing a new approach for sustaining conventional deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region, the author discusses the principles of strategy as they apply to the problems the United States faces in the region. He explains the critical role of aerospace power in the region and argues that the United States should urgently refashion its aerospace concepts if it is to deter aggression, focusing on Taiwan, the most difficult case. Haddick illustrates how the military-technical revolution has drastically changed the potential of naval forces in the Indo-Pacific region and why U.S. policymakers and planners need to adjust their expectations and planning for naval forces. Finally, he elucidates lessons U.S. policymakers can apply from past great-power competitions, examines long-term trends affecting the current competition, summarizes a new U.S. strategic approach to the region, describes how U.S. policymakers can overcome institutional barriers that stand in the way of a better strategy, and explains why U.S. policymakers and the public should have confidence about sustaining deterrence and peace in the region over the long term.
A novel based on a true tale of heroism and invention in the tunnels beneath Lake Erie in 1916 This original graphic novel imagines the lives of blue-collar workers involved in the real-life Lake Erie tunnel disaster of 1916 in Cleveland. Author Scott MacGregor and illustrator Gary Dumm tell the intersecting stories of a brilliant African American inventor, Ben Beltran (based on the real-life Garrett Morgan, Sr.), desperate immigrants tunneling beneath Lake Erie, and corrupt overseers who risk countless lives for profit. As historical fiction, Fire on the Water sheds light not only on one of America’s earliest man-made ecological disasters but also on racism and the economic disparity between classes in the Midwest at the turn of the century.
An in-depth and up-close look at the ONE energy principle you need to know to take care of your health simply and naturally. What is the one thing you should know to have a lifetime of abundant health? Just as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west due to Earth’s rotation, there are natural laws your body follows. One law, discerned by traditional Asian medicine, can decide the health of your body, mind, and spirit. Water Up Fire Down by New York Times bestselling author Ilchi Lee reveals this golden rule of health. Know it, feel it, and use it in your daily life to: -- Manage your stress -- Balance your emotions -- Maintain your focus -- See situations clearly -- Maximize your immunity -- Have abundant energy and passion -- Sleep soundly How can one rule affect all this? Because it is an essential principle of energy circulation in the body. No matter what physical or mental issues you may have, if you apply the Water Up, Fire Down energy principle in your daily life, you can make progress toward clearing them up. Ilchi Lee gives you proven mind-body exercises and lifestyle recommendations so you can apply this energy principle to your body and your life. These simple yet effective exercises are shown with full-color illustrations so you can easily do them on your own right away.
Why did Rebbe Nachman's followers never choose another rebbe? How has the Breslov Movement survived and flourished for over 180 years without a dynasty of rebbes? To find the answer, meet Reb Noson -- Rabbi Noson Sternhartz (1780-1844), Rebbe Nachman's closest disciple, who devoted his life to bringing the Rebbe's message of faith, hope and joy out into the world. A young rabbinic scholar, and astute businessman as well, what made Reb Noson feel his life was empty and futile? What drove him to persevere in the face of familial opposition in order to follow Rebbe Nachman? What powered him to singlehandedly print the Rebbe's books and fire a new generation of chassidim in the face of relentless persecution, a gruesome assassination attempt, and a campaign to have him sent to Siberia? This thoroughly-researched biography will keep you absorbed for hours as you relive Reb Noson's life with him step by step. Includes full background information, appendices, maps and indices. Also available in Hebrew.
Paddy Quinn, "the boy who ate rattlesnakes" and lost a hand to a cannon blast during the Mexican War, returns as a famous Civil War correspondent and battlefield sketch artist, in James Alexander Thom's new novel, Fire in the Water. Thom is a prize-winning historical novelist, and author of the New York Times bestseller Follow the River. The central action in Fire in the Water is the tragic explosion and burning of the paddlewheel steamboat SULTANA near Memphis in the last days of the Civil War, killing some 1,800 homebound Yankee survivors of the hellish Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp in Geor¬gia. But the undercurrent of the novel is the national mourning for assas¬sinated President Lincoln, whose corpse was en route on his funeral train to Springfield, Illinois at the time of the disaster. War correspon¬dent Quinn, newly wed in New Orleans, is on board the SULTANA with his bride, assigned to report and illustrate Lincoln's funeral and burial for Harper's Weekly. When Quinn and an Indiana-born prison survivor he's interviewing are blown overboard into the cold, flooded Mississippi by the mid¬night boiler explosion, it is their grit and resourcefulness, but mostly their vow to get to Lincoln's funeral, that keep them alive as hundreds perish around them in the flame-lit night.
A wide sweeping yet intimate historical fiction account of Jewish resistance during the Spanish Inquisition and the lead up to Columbus’ voyage to the New World As political turmoil rages, a chancellor to the king must hide his romance with a Jewish woman as well as his own Jewish ancestry in order to survive Luis de Santángel, chancellor to the court and longtime friend of the lusty King Ferdinand, has had enough of the Spanish Inquisition. As the power of Inquisitor General Tomás de Torquemada grows, so does the brutality of the Spanish church and the suspicion and paranoia it inspires. When a dear friend’s demise brings the violence close to home, Santángel is enraged and takes retribution into his own hands. But he is from a family of conversos, and his Jewish heritage makes him an easy target. As Santángel witnesses the horrific persecution of his loved ones, he begins slowly to reconnect with the Jewish faith his family left behind. Feeding his curiosity about his past is his growing love for Judith Migdal, a clever and beautiful Jewish woman navigating the mounting tensions in Granada. While he struggles to decide what his reputation is worth and what he can sacrifice, one man offers him a chance he thought he’d lost…the chance to hope for a better world. Christopher Columbus has plans to discover a route to paradise, and only Luis de Santángel can help him. Within the dramatic story lies a subtle, insightful examination of the crisis of faith at the heart of the Spanish Inquisition. Irresolvable conflict rages within the conversos in By Fire, By Water, torn between the religion they left behind and the conversion meant to ensure their safety. In this story of love, God, faith, and torture, fifteenth-century Spain comes to dazzling, engrossing life.
Only in the glaring light of hindsight does pediatric surgeon Kate Murphy understand that she was groomed for the path she’s taken. Raised by a widowed dad and a misshapen, sometimes comical trio of parental surrogates from Murphy’s Pub, her father’s Irish bar in San Francisco, Kate has never understood how protected she is—but when she learns that her well-meaning family has hidden bitter truths about her mother’s mental illness and death, the rest of her family history unravels. Kate is still recovering from her family’s deception when she becomes involved with Jake Bloom—a charming artist different than anyone she’s ever known. When she experiences his sculptures on Ocean Beach, she is forever changed; in the months that follow, Jake reveals beauty Kate has never noticed, and exposes her to spontaneity, sensuality, and love deeper than she’d imagined it could be. Only Mary K—Kate’s hard-edged best friend who doesn’t miss a thing and names bull when she sees it—is immune to Jake’s charms. She sees the potential for danger in Jake, and, of course, she says so. Caught between her newfound passion and her friendship, Kate dismisses her friend’s warnings. Ultimately, it isn’t until she is in too deep, with a daughter on the way, that Kate understands what Mary K feared on her behalf. Fire & Water is a story of navigating the treacherous territory of passionate love, friendship, and family devotion—and of how love is always a matter of life and death.
A Sámi woman studying Alaska fish populations sees our past and future through their present signs of stress and her ancestral knowledge. A teenager faces a permanent drought in Australia and her own sexual desire. An unemployed man in Wisconsin marvels as a motley parade of animals makes his trailer their portal to a world untrammeled by humans. Featuring short fiction from authors around the globe, Fire & Water: Stories from the Anthropocene takes readers on a rare journey through the physical and emotional landscape of the climate crisis--not in the future, but today. By turns frightening, confusing, and even amusing, these stories remind us how complex, and beautiful, it is to be human in these unprecedented times.
Comedy and tragedy collide in stories of family life in Soviet Russia and the complexities of the immigrant experience “We can’t stop turning the pages of this book.” —Ilya Kaminsky, New York Times Book Review From the moment of its founding, the USSR was reviled and admired, demonized and idealized. Many Jews saw the new society ushered in by the Russian Revolution as their salvation from shtetl life with its deprivations and deadly pogroms. But Soviet Russia was rife with antisemitism, and a Jewish boy growing up in Leningrad learned early, harsh, and enduring lessons. Unsparing and poignant, Mikhail Iossel’s twenty stories of Soviet childhood and adulthood, dissidence and subsequent immigration, are filled with wit and humor even as they describe the daily absurdities of a fickle and often perilous reality.
