In 1863, a French senator arrived in Jerusalem hoping to unearth relics dating to biblical times. Digging deep underground, he discovered an ancient grave that, he claimed, belonged to an Old Testament queen. News of his find ricocheted around the world, evoking awe and envy alike, and inspiring others to explore Jerusalem's storied past. In the century and a half since the Frenchman broke ground, Jerusalem has drawn a global cast of fortune seekers and missionaries, archaeologists and zealots, all of them eager to extract the biblical past from beneath the city's streets and shrines. Their efforts have had profound effects, not only on our understanding of Jerusalem's history, but on its hotly disputed present. The quest to retrieve ancient Jewish heritage has sparked bloody riots and thwarted international peace agreements.
Doubleday
|
9780385546850
|
Hardcover
Talking God
By Gutting, Gary
Through interviews with twelve distinguished philosophers -- including atheists, agnostics, and believers -- Talking God works toward a philosophical understanding and evaluation of religion. Along the way, Gary Gutting and his interviewees challenge many common assumptions about religious beliefs.As tensions simmer, and often explode, between the secular and the religious forces in modern life, the big questions about human belief press ever more urgently. Where does belief, or its lack, originate? How can we understand and appreciate religious traditions different from our own? Featuring conversations with twelve skeptics, atheists, agnostics, and believers -- including Alvin Plantinga, Philip Kitcher, Michael Ruse, and John Caputo -- Talking God offers new perspectives on religion, including the challenge to believers from evolution, cutting-edge physics and cosmology; arguments both for and against atheism; and meditations on the value of secular humanism and faith in the modern world. Experts offer insights on Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, as well as Judaism and Christianity. Topical and illuminating, Talking God gives readers a deeper understanding of faith today and how philosophers understand it.From Talking God:"[Some say] Buddhism is not a religion because Buddhists dont believe in a supreme being. This simply ignores the fact that many religions are not theistic in this sense. Chess is a game, despite the fact that it is not played with a ball, after all." -- Jay Garfield, from chapter 10, "Buddhism: Religion Without Divinity""Why think that the creator was all-knowing and omnipotent? -- Maybe the creator was a student god, and only got a B minus on this project?" -- Louise Antony, from chapter 2, "A Case for Atheism""There are a large number -- maybe a couple of dozen -- of pretty good theistic arguments. None is conclusive, but each, or at any rate the whole bunch taken together, is about as strong as philosophical arguments ordinarily get." -- Alvin Plantinga, from chapter 1, "A Case for Theism""If you cease to believe in a particular religious creed, like Calvinism or Catholicism, you have changed your mind and adopted a new position -- But if you lose faith, -- everything is lost. You have lost your faith in life, lost hope in the future, lost heart, and you cannot go on." -- John Caputo, from chapter 3, "Religion and Deconstruction"
W.W. Norton & Company
|
9780393352818
|
Paperback
Who Is Wellness For?
By Roisin, Fariha
The multi-disciplinary artist and author of Like a Bird and How to Cure a Ghost explores the commodification and appropriation of wellness through the lens of social justice, providing resources to help anyone participate in self-care, regardless of race, identity, socioeconomic status or able-bodiedness.Growing up in Australia, Fariha Róisín, a Bangladeshi Muslim, struggled to fit in. In attempts to assimilate, she distanced herself from her South Asian heritage and identity. Years later, living in the United States, she realized that the customs, practices, and even food of her native culture that had once made her different - everything from ashwagandha to prayer - were now being homogenized and marketed for good health, often at a premium by white people to white people.
Harper Wave
|
9780063077089
|
Hardcover
One Nation, Under Gods
By Manseau, Peter
A groundbreaking new look at the story of AmericaAt the heart of the nation's spiritual history are audacious and often violent scenes. But the Puritans and the shining city on the hill give us just one way to understand the United States. Rather than recite American history from a Christian vantage point, Peter Manseau proves that what really happened is worth a close, fresh look. Thomas Jefferson himself collected books on all religions and required that the brand new Library of Congress take his books, since Americans needed to consider the "twenty gods or no god" he famously noted were revered by his neighbors. Looking at the Americans who believed in these gods, Manseau fills in America's story of itself, from the persecuted "witches" at Salem and who they really were, to the persecuted Buddhists in WWII California, from spirituality and cults in the '60s to the recent presidential election where both candidates were for the first time non-traditional Christians.
Little, Brown and Company
|
9780316100038
|
Hardcover
Europe Against the Jews, 1880-1945
By Aly, Götz
From the award-winning historian of the Holocaust, Europe Against the Jews, 1880-1945 is the first book to move beyond Germany's singular crime to the collaboration of Europe as a whole.The Holocaust was perpetrated by the Germans, but it would not have been possible without the assistance of thousands of helpers in other countries: state officials, police, and civilians who eagerly supported the genocide. If we are to fully understand how and why the Holocaust happened, Gotz Aly argues in this groundbreaking study, we must examine its prehistory throughout Europe. We must look at countries as far-flung as Romania and France, Russia and Greece, where, decades before the Nazis came to power, a deadly combination of envy, competition, nationalism, and social upheaval fueled a surge of anti-Semitism, creating the preconditions for the deportations and murder to come.
Metropolitan Books
|
9781250170170
|
Hardcover
Be Your Own Astrologer
By Watters, Joanna
Lift astrology out of the sun-sign columns, interpret your birth chart, and discover the true meaning of the stars and planets, and their influence on your personality.Most people know their sun sign and the broad character traits that go with it: Leos are leaders, Scorpios are secretive, and Cancerians are sensitive. However, there is much more to astrology than this broad brushstroke approach, and in Be Your Own Astrologer, bestselling astrologer and tarot reader Joanna Watters gives you the tools you need to gain a deeper understanding of your sign and insights into hidden aspects of your personality. Joanna goes beyond the sun signs to look at the importance and influence of every planet's position in your birth chart. She will guide you, step by step, on your personal astrological journey and you will soon be able to interpret your own natal chart.
CICO Books
|
9781782496557
|
Hardcover
Almost Everything
By Lamott, Anne
From the bestselling author of Hallelujah Anyway, Bird by Bird, and Help, Thanks, Wow, comes a new book about the place hope holds in our lives."I am stockpiling antibiotics for the Apocalypse, even as I await the blossoming of paperwhites on the windowsill in the kitchen," Anne Lamott admits at the beginning of Almost Everything. Despair and uncertainty surround us: in the news, in our families, and in ourselves. But even when life is at its bleakest--when we are, as she puts it, "doomed, stunned, exhausted, and over-caffeinated"--the seeds of rejuvenation are at hand. "All truth is paradox," Lamott writes, "and this turns out to be a reason for hope. If you arrive at a place in life that is miserable, it will change." That is the time when we must pledge not to give up but "to do what Wendell Berry wrote: 'Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.'" In this profound and funny book, Lamott calls for each of us to rediscover the nuggets of hope and wisdom that are buried within us that can make life sweeter than we ever imagined. Divided into short chapters that explore life's essential truths, Almost Everything pinpoints these moments of insight as it shines an encouraging light forward. Candid and caring, insightful and sometimes hilarious, Almost Everything is the book we need and that only Anne Lamott can write.
Riverhead Books
|
9780525537441
|
Hardcover
Psychotherapy East & West
By Watts, Alan
Before he became a counterculture hero, Alan Watts was known as an incisive scholar of Eastern and Western psychology and philosophy. In this 1961 classic, Watts demonstrates his deep understanding of both Western psychotherapy and the Eastern spiritual philosophies of Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta, and Yoga. He examined the problem of humans in a seemingly hostile universe in ways that questioned the social norms and illusions that bind and constrict modern humans. Marking a groundbreaking synthesis, Watts asserted that the powerful insights of Freud and Jung, which had, indeed, brought psychiatry close to the edge of liberation, could, if melded with the hitherto secret wisdom of the Eastern traditions, free people from their battles with the self. When psychotherapy merely helps us adjust to social norms, Watts argued, it falls short of true liberation, while Eastern philosophy seeks our natural relation to the cosmos.
New World Library
|
9781608684564
|
Print book
Encounters with Jesus
By Keller, Timothy
In Encounters With Jesus, New York Times bestselling author and renowned pastor Timothy Keller shows how people were changed when they met Jesus personally—and how we can be changed today through our own encounter with him. What is my purpose in life? What is a good life? Why is there so much wrong with our world? What can I do to help make it right? These are some of the big questions that everyone must answer. And any lasting change in our lives will start with a change to one or more of our answers to these questions. Jesus changed the life of every person he met in the Gospels, through powerful experiences and words that led them to unexpected and transforming answers to their big questions. These conversations can still address our questions and doubts today.
Dutton; First Edition edition
|
9780525954354
|
Hardcover
The Last Ships from Hamburg
By Ujifusa, Steven
A propulsive human drama that chronicles the mass exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe to America in the early years of the twentieth century, and the men who made it possible.Over thirty years, from 1890 to 1921, 2.5 million Jews, fleeing discrimination and violence in their homelands of Eastern Europe, arrived in the United States. Many sailed on steamships from Hamburg.This mass exodus was facilitated by three businessmen whose involvement in the Jewish-American narrative has been largely forgotten: Jacob Schiff, the managing partner of the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Company, who used his immense wealth to help Jews to leave Europe; Albert Ballin, managing director of the Hamburg-American Line, who created a transportation network of trains and steamships to carry them across continents and an ocean; and J.
Under Jerusalem
By Lawler, Andrew
In 1863, a French senator arrived in Jerusalem hoping to unearth relics dating to biblical times. Digging deep underground, he discovered an ancient grave that, he claimed, belonged to an Old Testament queen. News of his find ricocheted around the world, evoking awe and envy alike, and inspiring others to explore Jerusalem's storied past. In the century and a half since the Frenchman broke ground, Jerusalem has drawn a global cast of fortune seekers and missionaries, archaeologists and zealots, all of them eager to extract the biblical past from beneath the city's streets and shrines. Their efforts have had profound effects, not only on our understanding of Jerusalem's history, but on its hotly disputed present. The quest to retrieve ancient Jewish heritage has sparked bloody riots and thwarted international peace agreements.
Talking God
By Gutting, Gary
Through interviews with twelve distinguished philosophers -- including atheists, agnostics, and believers -- Talking God works toward a philosophical understanding and evaluation of religion. Along the way, Gary Gutting and his interviewees challenge many common assumptions about religious beliefs.As tensions simmer, and often explode, between the secular and the religious forces in modern life, the big questions about human belief press ever more urgently. Where does belief, or its lack, originate? How can we understand and appreciate religious traditions different from our own? Featuring conversations with twelve skeptics, atheists, agnostics, and believers -- including Alvin Plantinga, Philip Kitcher, Michael Ruse, and John Caputo -- Talking God offers new perspectives on religion, including the challenge to believers from evolution, cutting-edge physics and cosmology; arguments both for and against atheism; and meditations on the value of secular humanism and faith in the modern world. Experts offer insights on Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, as well as Judaism and Christianity. Topical and illuminating, Talking God gives readers a deeper understanding of faith today and how philosophers understand it.From Talking God:"[Some say] Buddhism is not a religion because Buddhists dont believe in a supreme being. This simply ignores the fact that many religions are not theistic in this sense. Chess is a game, despite the fact that it is not played with a ball, after all." -- Jay Garfield, from chapter 10, "Buddhism: Religion Without Divinity""Why think that the creator was all-knowing and omnipotent? -- Maybe the creator was a student god, and only got a B minus on this project?" -- Louise Antony, from chapter 2, "A Case for Atheism""There are a large number -- maybe a couple of dozen -- of pretty good theistic arguments. None is conclusive, but each, or at any rate the whole bunch taken together, is about as strong as philosophical arguments ordinarily get." -- Alvin Plantinga, from chapter 1, "A Case for Theism""If you cease to believe in a particular religious creed, like Calvinism or Catholicism, you have changed your mind and adopted a new position -- But if you lose faith, -- everything is lost. You have lost your faith in life, lost hope in the future, lost heart, and you cannot go on." -- John Caputo, from chapter 3, "Religion and Deconstruction"
Who Is Wellness For?
By Roisin, Fariha
The multi-disciplinary artist and author of Like a Bird and How to Cure a Ghost explores the commodification and appropriation of wellness through the lens of social justice, providing resources to help anyone participate in self-care, regardless of race, identity, socioeconomic status or able-bodiedness.Growing up in Australia, Fariha Róisín, a Bangladeshi Muslim, struggled to fit in. In attempts to assimilate, she distanced herself from her South Asian heritage and identity. Years later, living in the United States, she realized that the customs, practices, and even food of her native culture that had once made her different - everything from ashwagandha to prayer - were now being homogenized and marketed for good health, often at a premium by white people to white people.
One Nation, Under Gods
By Manseau, Peter
A groundbreaking new look at the story of AmericaAt the heart of the nation's spiritual history are audacious and often violent scenes. But the Puritans and the shining city on the hill give us just one way to understand the United States. Rather than recite American history from a Christian vantage point, Peter Manseau proves that what really happened is worth a close, fresh look. Thomas Jefferson himself collected books on all religions and required that the brand new Library of Congress take his books, since Americans needed to consider the "twenty gods or no god" he famously noted were revered by his neighbors. Looking at the Americans who believed in these gods, Manseau fills in America's story of itself, from the persecuted "witches" at Salem and who they really were, to the persecuted Buddhists in WWII California, from spirituality and cults in the '60s to the recent presidential election where both candidates were for the first time non-traditional Christians.
Europe Against the Jews, 1880-1945
By Aly, Götz
From the award-winning historian of the Holocaust, Europe Against the Jews, 1880-1945 is the first book to move beyond Germany's singular crime to the collaboration of Europe as a whole.The Holocaust was perpetrated by the Germans, but it would not have been possible without the assistance of thousands of helpers in other countries: state officials, police, and civilians who eagerly supported the genocide. If we are to fully understand how and why the Holocaust happened, Gotz Aly argues in this groundbreaking study, we must examine its prehistory throughout Europe. We must look at countries as far-flung as Romania and France, Russia and Greece, where, decades before the Nazis came to power, a deadly combination of envy, competition, nationalism, and social upheaval fueled a surge of anti-Semitism, creating the preconditions for the deportations and murder to come.
Be Your Own Astrologer
By Watters, Joanna
Lift astrology out of the sun-sign columns, interpret your birth chart, and discover the true meaning of the stars and planets, and their influence on your personality.Most people know their sun sign and the broad character traits that go with it: Leos are leaders, Scorpios are secretive, and Cancerians are sensitive. However, there is much more to astrology than this broad brushstroke approach, and in Be Your Own Astrologer, bestselling astrologer and tarot reader Joanna Watters gives you the tools you need to gain a deeper understanding of your sign and insights into hidden aspects of your personality. Joanna goes beyond the sun signs to look at the importance and influence of every planet's position in your birth chart. She will guide you, step by step, on your personal astrological journey and you will soon be able to interpret your own natal chart.
Almost Everything
By Lamott, Anne
From the bestselling author of Hallelujah Anyway, Bird by Bird, and Help, Thanks, Wow, comes a new book about the place hope holds in our lives."I am stockpiling antibiotics for the Apocalypse, even as I await the blossoming of paperwhites on the windowsill in the kitchen," Anne Lamott admits at the beginning of Almost Everything. Despair and uncertainty surround us: in the news, in our families, and in ourselves. But even when life is at its bleakest--when we are, as she puts it, "doomed, stunned, exhausted, and over-caffeinated"--the seeds of rejuvenation are at hand. "All truth is paradox," Lamott writes, "and this turns out to be a reason for hope. If you arrive at a place in life that is miserable, it will change." That is the time when we must pledge not to give up but "to do what Wendell Berry wrote: 'Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.'" In this profound and funny book, Lamott calls for each of us to rediscover the nuggets of hope and wisdom that are buried within us that can make life sweeter than we ever imagined. Divided into short chapters that explore life's essential truths, Almost Everything pinpoints these moments of insight as it shines an encouraging light forward. Candid and caring, insightful and sometimes hilarious, Almost Everything is the book we need and that only Anne Lamott can write.
Psychotherapy East & West
By Watts, Alan
Before he became a counterculture hero, Alan Watts was known as an incisive scholar of Eastern and Western psychology and philosophy. In this 1961 classic, Watts demonstrates his deep understanding of both Western psychotherapy and the Eastern spiritual philosophies of Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta, and Yoga. He examined the problem of humans in a seemingly hostile universe in ways that questioned the social norms and illusions that bind and constrict modern humans. Marking a groundbreaking synthesis, Watts asserted that the powerful insights of Freud and Jung, which had, indeed, brought psychiatry close to the edge of liberation, could, if melded with the hitherto secret wisdom of the Eastern traditions, free people from their battles with the self. When psychotherapy merely helps us adjust to social norms, Watts argued, it falls short of true liberation, while Eastern philosophy seeks our natural relation to the cosmos.
Encounters with Jesus
By Keller, Timothy
In Encounters With Jesus, New York Times bestselling author and renowned pastor Timothy Keller shows how people were changed when they met Jesus personally—and how we can be changed today through our own encounter with him. What is my purpose in life? What is a good life? Why is there so much wrong with our world? What can I do to help make it right? These are some of the big questions that everyone must answer. And any lasting change in our lives will start with a change to one or more of our answers to these questions. Jesus changed the life of every person he met in the Gospels, through powerful experiences and words that led them to unexpected and transforming answers to their big questions. These conversations can still address our questions and doubts today.
The Last Ships from Hamburg
By Ujifusa, Steven
A propulsive human drama that chronicles the mass exodus of Jews from Eastern Europe to America in the early years of the twentieth century, and the men who made it possible.Over thirty years, from 1890 to 1921, 2.5 million Jews, fleeing discrimination and violence in their homelands of Eastern Europe, arrived in the United States. Many sailed on steamships from Hamburg.This mass exodus was facilitated by three businessmen whose involvement in the Jewish-American narrative has been largely forgotten: Jacob Schiff, the managing partner of the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Company, who used his immense wealth to help Jews to leave Europe; Albert Ballin, managing director of the Hamburg-American Line, who created a transportation network of trains and steamships to carry them across continents and an ocean; and J.