Appearances can be deceptive… As a stranger, Flynn had just one imperfection: an overriding obsession with secrecy. Danielle was intrigued—dangerously sexy, Flynn had awakened more than her journalistic curiosity. She sensed a story; she also sensed trouble. The problem was, the more involved she got, the less convinced Danielle was that she was chasing the story and not Flynn! Was she falling for a man who didn't even trust her with his last name?
On a flight home from London to New York, Sandy Kingsolving strikes up a conversation with a stranger who will change his life forever. Proposing to perfect Hitchcock's plan from Strangers on a Train and thereby solve Sandy's marital problems, the stranger offers him a glistening new future as well as an unstoppable nightmare. National ads/media.
In Imperfect Strangers, Salim Yaqub argues that the 1970s were a pivotal decade for U.S.-Arab relations, whether at the upper levels of diplomacy, in street-level interactions, or in the realm of the imagination. In those years, Americans and Arabs came to know each other as never before. With Western Europe’s imperial legacy fading in the Middle East, American commerce and investment spread throughout the Arab world. The United States strengthened its strategic ties to some Arab states, even as it drew closer to Israel. Maneuvering Moscow to the sidelines, Washington placed itself at the center of Arab-Israeli diplomacy. Meanwhile, the rise of international terrorism, the Arab oil embargo and related increases in the price of oil, and expanding immigration from the Middle East forced Americans to pay closer attention to the Arab world. Yaqub combines insights from diplomatic, political, cultural, and immigration history to chronicle the activities of a wide array of American and Arab actors—political leaders, diplomats, warriors, activists, scholars, businesspeople, novelists, and others. He shows that growing interdependence raised hopes for a broad political accommodation between the two societies. Yet a series of disruptions in the second half of the decade thwarted such prospects. Arabs recoiled from a U.S.-brokered peace process that fortified Israel’s occupation of Arab land. Americans grew increasingly resentful of Arab oil pressures, attitudes dovetailing with broader anti-Muslim sentiments aroused by the Iranian hostage crisis. At the same time, elements of the U.S. intelligentsia became more respectful of Arab perspectives as a newly assertive Arab American community emerged into political life. These patterns left a contradictory legacy of estrangement and accommodation that continued in later decades and remains with us today.
An urgent manifesto and a dramatic memoir of awakening, this is the story of revolutionary love. Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize • “In a world stricken with fear and turmoil, Valarie Kaur shows us how to summon our deepest wisdom.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love How do we love in a time of rage? How do we fix a broken world while not breaking ourselves? Valarie Kaur—renowned Sikh activist, filmmaker, and civil rights lawyer—describes revolutionary love as the call of our time, a radical, joyful practice that extends in three directions: to others, to our opponents, and to ourselves. It enjoins us to see no stranger but instead look at others and say: You are part of me I do not yet know. Starting from that place of wonder, the world begins to change: It is a practice that can transform a relationship, a community, a culture, even a nation. Kaur takes readers through her own riveting journey—as a brown girl growing up in California farmland finding her place in the world; as a young adult galvanized by the murders of Sikhs after 9/11; as a law student fighting injustices in American prisons and on Guantánamo Bay; as an activist working with communities recovering from xenophobic attacks; and as a woman trying to heal from her own experiences with police violence and sexual assault. Drawing from the wisdom of sages, scientists, and activists, Kaur reclaims love as an active, public, and revolutionary force that creates new possibilities for ourselves, our communities, and our world. See No Stranger helps us imagine new ways of being with each other—and with ourselves—so that together we can begin to build the world we want to see.
Six years ago, businessman Nick Cominsky encountered Jesus the old-fashioned way-in a face-to-face meeting. And the Christian life seemed a breeze . . . for a while. But now, having done everything he knows to grow spiritually, he wonders where his closeness with Jesus has gone. Burned out and hopeless, Nick wails his complaints to God during a late-night interstate trip. Then suddenly he runs out of gas-and finds Jesus along the roadside carrying a gas can.
The search for the cause of a devastating fire that has left Crowchurch in mourning leads Clive and the others deep into the forest where they meet a new ally combating an alien threat at her door.
Lately, I have been re-acquainting myself with the writings of Rich Alapack through his latest books -- Loves Pivotal Relationships, Sorrows Profiles, and White Hot True Blue. These reminded me of the lucid beauty of Alapacks writing style and of the deep and penetrating insights that he shares with his reader. I recognize myself and others in the vignettes these books provide, and have been incorporating his texts into my recent graduate classes. Alapacks writings mark a return to the original form in which phenomenologists used to communicate with their readers: via straightforward reflection; drawing upon a lifetime of experience; speaking in simple, descriptive language; and capturing the essence of human experience by mastering the art of speaking truthfully and authentically. It takes a certain kind of free-courageousness to engage in such writing today, in an intellectual climate where demands for methodological rigor (in the form of operationalism run amok) have compromised manuscripts submitted for review, in favor of half-hearted statements of methodological orthodoxy followed by statements of findings that amount to little more than summaries of raw data. What Alapack has achieved in his recent writings, and especially in his latest venture, The Splendor of Seeing and the Magic of Touch, is a truth-speaking both from the authors heart and from his lifetime of authentic dialogue with the interlocutors he has found along his own lifes journey. The gift that he gives to his reader is the gift of inviting us to join him on his own path to enlightenment. Scott D Churchill, PhD Professor and Graduate Program Director University of Dallas Editor-in-Chief, The Humanistic Psychologist This book is heart-warming, joyful, and insightfully brilliant. This authors newest publication, once again, represents a heart-felt and dedicated effort to researching human phenomena from the laboratory of day-today life. In this lifelong work, the author shares many of his personal experiences, experiences of others, then invites us to share a developmental journey through monumental experiences in our childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. He delves into important developmental topics that are rarely, if ever, discussed in mainstream psychological writing. Dr. Alapack offers reflected insight into these experiences, in a playful yet profound manner, allowing us to gain a deeper understanding of who we are, as perfectly imperfect people. Exploring the dynamics of peekaboo with a young-one, playing tag as a juvenile, sharing the exhilarating and/or bitter-sweet memories of the first kiss, barely coping with or perhaps flaunting a teenage hickey, will have you smiling with fondness, as you are reminded of your own experiences. These personal stories and parables are timeless and ageless. This text should be mandatory reading for both students and researchers in developmental psychology. Parents and Educators will find this book personally enriching, and will ultimately benefit from a more in- depth understanding of themselves and their children. I have seen Dr. Alapacks work grow and expand over the years, and this book is a shining example of an existential phenomenologist par excellence. His dedicated work has had a major and significant impact on my personal and professional life. Paul Watters, B.A., B.Ed., M.Ed. M.Ed., Lambton Kent District School Board, Sarnia, Ontario, Canada
An anthology more than half a century in the making, The Last Dangerous Visions is the third and final installment of the legendary science fiction anthology series. In 1973, celebrated writer and editor Harlan Ellison announced the third and final volume of his unprecedented anthology series, which began with Dangerous Visions and continued with Again Dangerous Visions. But for reasons undisclosed, The Last Dangerous Visions was never completed. Now, six years after Ellison’s passing, science fiction’s most famous unpublished book is here. And with it, the heartbreaking true story of the troubled genius behind it. Provocative and controversial, socially conscious and politically charged, wildly imaginative yet deeply grounded, the thirty-two never-before published stories, essays, and poems in The Last Dangerous Visions stand as a testament to Ellison’s lifelong pursuit of art, representing voices both well-known and entirely new, including David Brin, Max Brooks, Cory Doctorow, Dan Simmons, AE van Vogt, Edward Bryant, and Robert Sheckley, among others. With an introduction and exegesis by J. Michael Straczynski, and a story introduction by Ellison himself, The Last Dangerous Visions is an extraordinary addition to an incredible literary legacy.
