Fifty-three percent of the world’s population practices Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, religions that all trace their lineage to the towering, quasi-mythological figure of Abraham. In this reverent biography of the man who invented–or discovered–God, David Klinghoffer disentangles history from myth and uncovers the profound impact of Abraham’s message on his time and on the development of the modern world. The Discovery of God chronicles Abraham’s life from his birth in Mesopotamia through his travels as preacher and missionary throughout the Middle East. Many of the primary sites of Abraham’s life and career still exist, and Klinghoffer describes what they were like in ancient times and how they appear today. The tangible details of the polytheistic culture are re-created, showing how Abraham challenged the most basic beliefs of his contemporaries. He did not set out to establish the Jewish religion, but rather to spread the message of ethical monotheism as it was revealed to him–a powerful message that deepened over time, as did his faith and relationship with God. In contrast to many scholars who, troubled by its contradictions and apparent errors, see the Bible as the work of a series of scribes and editors, Klinghoffer argues that the Bible should be viewed as an esoteric text that an only be comprehended in light of the oral tradition from which it emanated. Combining rigorous scholarship and interpretive ingenuity, he draws on biblical commentary and the Jewish oral tradition as preserved by sages from the Talmudic scholars to Maimonidies to explore and explain the miraculous origins of monotheism. At a time when the world seems to moving toward a renewed confrontation between the three great Abrahamic faiths, The Discovery of God is a potent reminder of the history and beliefs that unite them.
Is morality based on some essential truth or is it defined by society? In this highly original critique of American social mores and popular culture, David Klinghoffer argues that the Ten Commandments are essential to maintaining a morally healthy society. With the meticulousness of a scholar, he begins by excavating the meaning of the Commandments. Drawing on the millennia-old rabbinical work Mechilta, he explains that the Decalogue was written on two tablets to show that when a country neglects the Commandments written on the first tablet—those having to do with the relationship between God and people—the interpersonal relationships described on the second tablet suffer irreparable damage as well. Addressing such timely topics as the controversy over public displays of the Commandments and the battles over intelligent design, Klinghoffer demonstrates that Christians and Jews are united in their opposition to the pagan aspects of our culture. In the tradition of Hebrew prophets like Jeremiah and Isaiah, he describes our failings with humor and compassion but also with anger and disappointment. An unusual, incisive perspective on the role of religion in society, Shattered Tablets is sure to spark debate. In the end Klinghoffer argues that by shrugging off the Bible as a guide and turning toward secularism, America has created a crude, cruel, and dishonest national life.
Discusses the importance of observing the Jewish Sabbath as both a practical and spiritual exercise, and provides guidelines for properly incoporating the Sabbath into everyday life.
Why did the Jews reject Jesus? Was he really the son of God? Were the Jews culpable in his death? These ancient questions have been debated for almost two thousand years, most recently with the release of Mel Gibson’s explosive The Passion of the Christ. The controversy was never merely academic. The legal status and security of Jews—often their very lives—depended on the answer. In WHY THE JEWS REJECTED JESUS, David Klinghoffer reveals that the Jews since ancient times accepted not only the historical existence of Jesus but the role of certain Jews in bringing about his crucifixion and death. But he also argues that they had every reason to be skeptical of claims for his divinity. For one thing, Palestine under Roman occupation had numerous charismatic would-be messiahs, so Jesus would not have been unique, nor was his following the largest of its kind. For another, the biblical prophecies about the coming of the Messiah were never fulfilled by Jesus, including an ingathering of exiles, the rise of a Davidic king who would defeat Israel’s enemies, the building of a new Temple, and recognition of God by the gentiles. Above all, the Jews understood their biblically commanded way of life, from which Jesus’s followers sought to “free” them, as precious, immutable, and eternal. Jews have long been blamed for Jesus’s death and stigmatized for rejecting him. But Jesus lived and died a relatively obscure figure at the margins of Jewish society. Indeed, it is difficult to argue that “the Jews” of his day rejected Jesus at all, since most Jews had never heard of him. The figure they really rejected, often violently, was Paul, who convinced the Jerusalem church led by Jesus’s brother to jettison the observance of Jewish law. Paul thus founded a new religion. If not for him, Christianity would likely have remained a Jewish movement, and the course of history itself would have been changed. Had the Jews accepted Jesus, Klinghoffer speculates, Christianity would not have conquered Europe, and there would be no Western civilization as we know it. WHY THE JEWS REJECTED JESUS tells the story of this long, acrimonious, and occasionally deadly debate between Christians and Jews. It is thoroughly engaging, lucidly written, and in many ways highly original. Though written from a Jewish point of view, it is also profoundly respectful of Christian sensibilities. Coming at a time when Christians and Jews are in some ways moving closer than ever before, this thoughtful and provocative book represents a genuine effort to heal the ancient rift between these two great faith traditions.
From How Would God Vote? “The Bible commands a style of politics that in the American context could only be described as deeply conservative. Is, then, the politics of God theocratic? “A strong case could be made for theocracy, American-style, if the word were defined not in the conventional way but according to its root meaning. Democracy signifies the rule of the demos, the people. Strictly speaking, theocracy means the rule not of churches or priests but of theos, God. It won’t do to deny that many conservatives, even while unambiguously affirming the traditional American separation of church and state, would add more theos to the democratic mix than is currently the case. I choose not to call myself a theocrat because I know how eager liberal secularists would be to twist the word against me. Dishonestly they would make it appear that I wish to impose a literal biblical theocracy, that I would dumbly imitate word for word the political structure of king, priesthood, and religious high court that existed in biblical antiquity. “Yet, in a subtler sense, are we not all theocrats now?” This startlingly original investigation into the controversies dividing America provides a clear and convincing affirmation of the relevance of the Bible to contemporary politics. With liberals and conservatives alike claiming the authority of the Bible as support for their views on social and moral issues, the need to understand what the Bible actually says has never been more pressing. In How Would God Vote?, journalist and scholar David Klinghoffer illuminates the worldview set forth in the Scriptures and argues that, with some exceptions, the God of the Bible would overwhelmingly support traditionally conservative principles and policies. Klinghoffer considers the ethical and moral heart of contemporary political debates—questions like immigration, gay marriage, abortion, care for the poor, war and peace, censorship, privacy, the place of religion in schools and the community, and much more. There is a pattern here. It’s for a very good reason that conservatives line up as they do, predictably, on a range of issue; as do liberals. The two competing political philosophies derive from radically different ways of looking at the world: one in consonance with the Bible, the other very much not. Klinghoffer, however, is no stereotypical Republican. Controversially, he argues that the Bible would have us emphasize domestic policy, the classic pre-9/11 culture war issues, over a hyped-up “World War IV” against “Islamofascism.” The Bible has a foreign policy, he shows, and it is not neoconservative. He demonstrates support in the Scriptures for a welcoming attitude toward immigrants, for gun control, and for affirmative action. The Bible, Klinghoffer shows, is no mere list of dos and don’ts but a fully coherent and practically relevant portrait of moral reality, compelling and deep enough to guide not only our private but our public lives. Even if we as individuals fail its private tests, that’s no reason to reject its public lessons. To anyone who takes God seriously, every election poses a radical question: Will we vote with Him, or against Him? The Bible is an unapologetically political book, Klinghoffer explains, and an extremely conservative one. Some political views offend God, and those views are mostly liberal. In short, the Bible commands you to be a conservative. Stimulating and provocative, How Would God Vote? is an important contribution to pre-election debates and to setting the path the nation will follow in the future under a new president.
This book collects essays published in journals including Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and elsewhere. It centers on three profound mysteries: the existence of the human mind; the existence and diversity of living creatures; and the existence of matter. How they did they come into being? The author, Dr. David Berlinski, is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and formerly a fellow at the Institut des Hautes tudes Scientifiques in France. His other books include The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, Newton's Gift, and A Tour of the Calculus.
His historic career as an aviator made Charles Lindbergh one of the most famous men of the twentieth century, the subject of best-selling biographies and a hit movie, as well as the inspiration for a dance step—the Lindy Hop—that he himself was too shy to try. But for all the attention lavished on Lindbergh, one story has remained untold until now: his macabre scientific collaboration with Dr. Alexis Carrel. This oddest of couples—one a brilliant Nobel Prize-winning surgeon turned social engineer, the other a failed dirt farmer turned hero of the skies—joined forces in 1930 driven by a shared and secret dream: to conquer death and attain immortality. Part Frankenstein, part The Professor and the Madman, and all true, The Immortalists is the remarkable story of how two men of prodigious achievement and equally large character flaws challenged nature's oldest rule, with consequences—personal, professional, and political—that neither man anticipated.
I was expatriated by a man with an axe. The man and the axe were alike visionary and unreal, though it needed a very considerable effort of the will to hold them at mental arm's length. I had work on hand which imperatively demanded to be finished, and I was so broken down by a long course of labour that it was a matter of actual difficulty with me when I sat down at my desk of a morning to lay hold of the thread of last night's work, and to recall the personages who had moved through my manuscript pages for the past three or four months. The day's work always began with a fog, which at first looked impenetrable, but would brighten little by little until I could see my ideal friends moving in it, and could recognise their familiar lineaments. Then the fog would disperse altogether, and a certain indescribable, exultant, feverish brightness would succeed it, and in this feverish brightness my ideal friends would move and talk as it were of their own volition.
Zinnophobia offers an extended defense of the work of radical historian Howard Zinn, author of the bestselling A People's History of the United States, against his many critics. It includes a discussion of the attempt to ban Zinn's book from Indiana classrooms; a brief summary of Zinn's life and work; an analysis of Zinn's theorizing about bias and objectivity in history; and a detailed response to twenty-five of Zinn's most hostile critics, many of whom are (or were) eminent historians. 'A major contribution to bringing Zinn’s great contributions to even broader public attention, and exposing features of intellectual and political culture that are of no little interest.' Noam Chomsky
Bringing a towering, controversial figure to life, this landmark work by preeminent historian David Cannadine offers the first biography of Andrew Mellon, the American colossus who bestrode the worlds of industry, government, and philanthropy as no one had ever quite done before.
David and Alfred Smart were the Chicago-based founders of Esquire magazine, launched in 1933. One of the first men's fashion magazines, Esquire was also distinguished by the high quality of its literary and editorial features: the first issue included pieces by Ernest Hemingway and Jon Dos Passos, and Dashiell Hammett. The Smart brothers' other ventures included Coronet Films, the nation's leading producer of educational and training films during the Cold War era—many of which are now cult favorites. This fully illustrated biography chronicles their lives and innovations in the film and magazine publishing business.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.