In this multi-generational tale of a family's unshakeable faith, the author tells his parents' courageous story--as a priest and a former nun who wed--and deftly weaves how their decision has affected his own spiritual journey. of photos.
For fans of Lauren Groff, Maggie O’Farrell, and Emma Donoghue, a devastating novel of love, intrigue, and community in a time of sickness that remade the world Fourteenth-century Europe. The Black Death has killed half the known world, andin an isolated convent, a small group of nuns spends their days in work, austerity, and devotion, chanting the Liturgy of the Hours. But their community is threatened. Rumors of heresy and a scandalous Book of Ursula, based on the teachings of the charismatic former abbess and founder of the order, have prompted the male church hierarchy to launch an investigation. The priest assigned to minister to the nuns, Father Francis, who is wracked by guilt for an unspeakable crime committed during the lawless plague years, was no friend of Ursula and can't be counted on to defend the order. Disrespect and rebellion infect some novices, and the youngest among them pines for the bishop’s chief inquisitor. And Mother John, the convent’s aging spiritual leader, fears she’s losing her mind after experiencing a vision that brings back her own rebellious past. As events unfold over the course of a single day, a blizzard that has swept across Europe will break over the convent, endangering the women there and testing their faith. In this astonishing novel, the author of the award-winning Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter explores the territory between faith and freedom, and how the horrific events of history shape individual lives.
The life and times of a uniquely American testament In his retirement, Thomas Jefferson edited the New Testament with a penknife and glue, removing all mention of miracles and other supernatural events. Inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment, Jefferson hoped to reconcile Christian tradition with reason by presenting Jesus of Nazareth as a great moral teacher—not a divine one. Peter Manseau tells the story of the Jefferson Bible, exploring how each new generation has reimagined the book in its own image as readers grapple with both the legacy of the man who made it and the place of religion in American life. Completed in 1820 and rediscovered by chance in the late nineteenth century after being lost for decades, Jefferson's cut-and-paste scripture has meant different things to different people. Some have held it up as evidence that America is a Christian nation founded on the lessons of the Gospels. Others see it as proof of the Founders' intent to root out the stubborn influence of faith. Manseau explains Jefferson's personal religion and philosophy, shedding light on the influences and ideas that inspired him to radically revise the Gospels. He situates the creation of the Jefferson Bible within the broader search for the historical Jesus, and examines the book's role in American religious disputes over the interpretation of scripture. Manseau describes the intrigue surrounding the loss and rediscovery of the Jefferson Bible, and traces its remarkable reception history from its first planned printing in 1904 for members of Congress to its persistent power to provoke and enlighten us today.
Itsik Malpesh was born the son of a goose-plucking factory manager during the Russian pogroms - his life saved on the night it began by the young daughter of a kosher slaughterer. Or so he believes… Exiled during the war, Itsik eventually finds himself in New York, working as a typesetter and writing poetry to his muse, the butcher's daughter, whom he is sure he will never see again. But it is here in New York that Itsik is unexpectedly reunited with his greatest love - and, later, his greatest enemy - with results both serendipitous and tragic. His story is recounted in his memoirs thanks to the most unlikely of translators - a twenty-one-year-old Boston Catholic college student who, in meeting Itsik, has embarked upon a great lie that will define his future and the most extraordinary friendship he'll ever know.
A story of faith and fraud in post–Civil War America, told through the lens of a photographer who claimed he could capture images of the dead. In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized America’s imagination. A “spirit photographer,” William Mumler took portrait photographs that featured the ghostly presence of a lost loved one alongside the living subject. Mumler was a sensation: The affluent and influential came calling, including Mary Todd Lincoln, who arrived at his studio in disguise amidst rumors of séances in the White House. Peter Manseau brilliantly captures a nation wracked with grief and hungry for proof of the existence of ghosts and for contact with their dead husbands and sons. It took a circus-like trial of Mumler on fraud charges, starring P. T. Barnum for the prosecution, to expose a fault line of doubt and manipulation. And even then, the judge sided with the defense, suggesting no one would ever solve the mystery of his spirit photography. This forgotten puzzle offers a vivid snapshot of America at a crossroads in its history, a nation in thrall to new technology while clinging desperately to belief. An NPR Best Book of 2017 “A rare work of historical nonfiction that is both studious and just plain entertaining.”—Publishers Weekly, Top Ten Books of 2017 “An exceptional story.”—Errol Morris, New York Times Book Review “Manseau has become the foremost chronicler of the deep American desire to believe in the weird, the strange, and the oddly wonderful.”—Jeff Sharlet, New York Times–bestselling author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
A groundbreaking new look at the story of America At 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. One Nation, Under Gods shows how much more there is to the history we tell ourselves, right back to the country's earliest days. Dazzling in its scope and sweep, it is an American history unlike any you've read.
A fascinating, intelligent, and sometimes funny tour of the human relics at the root of the world’s major religions By examining relics—the bits and pieces of long-dead saints at the heart of nearly all religious traditions—Peter Manseau delivers a book about life, and about faith and how it is sustained. The result of wide travel and the author’s own deep curiosity, filled with true tales of the living and dubious legends of the dead, Rag and Bone tells of a California seeker who ended up in a Jerusalem convent because of a nun’s disembodied hand; a French forensics expert who travels on the metro with the rib of a saint; two young brothers who collect tickets at a Syrian mosque, studying English beside a hair from the Prophet Muhammad’s beard; and many other stories, myths, and peculiar histories. With these, and an array of other digits, limbs, and bones, Manseau provides a respectful, witty, informed, inquisitive, thoughtful, and fascinating look into the "primordial strangeness that is at the heart of belief," and the place where the abstractions of faith meet the realities of physical objects, of rags and bones.
Did you know that fatal gun mishaps have been so common in America that for centuries, newspapers carried regular columns reporting on “melancholy accidents”? It came as a surprising discovery when, while conducting research that involved reading colonial-era newspapers, acclaimed writer Peter Manseau stumbled upon one report after another of “melancholy accidents”—instances of local people accidentally discharging firearms to disastrous results. Usually, they were brief items, with the concision of dark poetry—hunting accidents, neighbor shooting neighbor, father shooting son. Dark as they were, they were also often bizarre and fascinating—such as the case of one farmer who, trying out his new musket, shot it at his barn, hitting a door hinge that split the musket ball in two, with each half ricochetting off to hit a different, distant person, each of whom was a doctor. In Melancholy Accidents, Manseau collects and annotates a wide-ranging assortment of these woebegone and oddly intimate reports, with numerous illustrations, photos, and visuals from original period newspapers. It makes for a wholly unique contribution to the ongoing consideration of—and the recent heated discussion about—the historic place of firearms in American society.
Objects of Devotion: Religion in Early America tells the story of religion in the United States through the material culture of diverse spiritual pursuits in the nation's colonial period and the early republic. The beautiful, full-color companion volume to a Smithsonian National Museum of American History exhibition, the book explores the wide range of religious traditions vying for adherents, acceptance, and a prominent place in the public square from the 1630s to the 1840s. The original thirteen states were home to approximately three thousand churches and more than a dozen Christian denominations, including Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Congregationalists, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Quakers. A variety of other faiths also could be found, including Judaism, Islam, traditional African practices, and Native American beliefs. As a result, America became known throughout the world as a place where, in theory, if not always in practice, all are free to believe and worship as they choose. The featured objects include an 1814 Revere and Sons church bell from Salem, the Jefferson Bible, wampum beads, a 1654 Torah scroll brought to the New World, the only known religious text written by an enslaved African Muslim, and other revelatory artifacts. Together these treasures illustrate how religious ideas have shaped the country and how the treatment and practice of religion have changed over time. Objects of Devotion emphasizes how religion can be understood through the objects, both rare and everyday, around which Americans of every generation have organized their communities and built this nation.
If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." The ninth-century sage Lin Chi gave this advice to one of his monks, admonishing him that this Buddha would only be a reflection of his unexamined beliefs and desires. Peter Manseau and Jeff Sharlet took Lin Chi's advice to heart and set out on a car trip around America, looking for Buddhas along the road and the people who meet them: prophets in G-strings dancing to pay the rent, storm chasers hunting for meaning in devastating tornados, gangbangers inking God on their bodies as protection from bullets, cross-dressing terrorist angels looking for a place to sing. Along the way Manseau and Sharlet began to wonder what the traditional scripture they encountered everywhere -- in motels, on billboards, up and down the radio dial -- would look like remade for today's world. To find out, they called upon some of today's most intriguing writers to recast books of the Bible by taking them apart, blowing them up with ink and paper. Rick Moody recasts Jonah as a modern-day gay Jewish man living in Queens. A.L. Kennedy meditates on the absurdity of Genesis. In Samuel, April Reynolds visits a man of tremendous vision in Harlem. Peter Trachtenberg unravels the Gordian logic of Job by way of the Borscht Belt. Haven Kimmel dives into Revelation and comes out in a swoon. Woven through these divine books are Manseau and Sharlet's dispatches from the road, their Psalms of the people. What emerges from this work of calling is not an attack on any religion, but a many-colored, positively riveting look at the facets of true belief. Together these curious minds tell the strange, funny, sad, and true story of religion in America for the spiritual seeker in all of us: A Heretic's Bible.
An illustrated history of how scientific study and religious thought have influenced each other throughout the history of the United States. Discovery and Revelation explores the evolving relationship between religion, science, and technology in America through the centuries as humans strive to understand the world and their place in it. With at least 40 significant and rarely seen artifacts from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, the book highlights the way religious and scientific ideas have influenced each other and informed cultural change. Religious tradition has often adapted in response to scientific discoveries, while scientists have been motivated to undertake research both because of faith and in opposition to it. Delving deep into this intersection, Discovery and Revelation examines how these two approaches to understanding the world have changed the landscape of American society. It explores scientific advancements through artifacts like: Benjamin Franklin's lightning rod: sparked debate about the relationship between weather and God. Charles Darwin's "Tree of Life" sketch: represented his theory of evolution, which some objected to as being atheistic while others thought it reflected the intent of a Creator. John Thomas Scopes portrait: photograph taken ahead of his time on trial for teaching evolution against Tennessee law forbidding denial of the Biblical account of man's origin. Apollo 8's live television script: the crew caused controversy for reading from the Bible for their Christmas Eve broadcast. Discovery and Revelation is a testament to the fascinating and multifaceted nature of faith and knowledge and how they've shaped our nation.
A story of faith and fraud in post–Civil War America, told through the lens of a photographer who claimed he could capture images of the dead. In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized America’s imagination. A “spirit photographer,” William Mumler took portrait photographs that featured the ghostly presence of a lost loved one alongside the living subject. Mumler was a sensation: The affluent and influential came calling, including Mary Todd Lincoln, who arrived at his studio in disguise amidst rumors of séances in the White House. Peter Manseau brilliantly captures a nation wracked with grief and hungry for proof of the existence of ghosts and for contact with their dead husbands and sons. It took a circus-like trial of Mumler on fraud charges, starring P. T. Barnum for the prosecution, to expose a fault line of doubt and manipulation. And even then, the judge sided with the defense, suggesting no one would ever solve the mystery of his spirit photography. This forgotten puzzle offers a vivid snapshot of America at a crossroads in its history, a nation in thrall to new technology while clinging desperately to belief. An NPR Best Book of 2017 “A rare work of historical nonfiction that is both studious and just plain entertaining.”—Publishers Weekly, Top Ten Books of 2017 “An exceptional story.”—Errol Morris, New York Times Book Review “Manseau has become the foremost chronicler of the deep American desire to believe in the weird, the strange, and the oddly wonderful.”—Jeff Sharlet, New York Times–bestselling author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
In this multi-generational tale of a family's unshakeable faith, the author tells his parents' courageous story--as a priest and a former nun who wed--and deftly weaves how their decision has affected his own spiritual journey. of photos.
Itsik Malpesh was born the son of a goose-plucking factory manager during the Russian pogroms - his life saved on the night it began by the young daughter of a kosher slaughterer. Or so he believes… Exiled during the war, Itsik eventually finds himself in New York, working as a typesetter and writing poetry to his muse, the butcher's daughter, whom he is sure he will never see again. But it is here in New York that Itsik is unexpectedly reunited with his greatest love - and, later, his greatest enemy - with results both serendipitous and tragic. His story is recounted in his memoirs thanks to the most unlikely of translators - a twenty-one-year-old Boston Catholic college student who, in meeting Itsik, has embarked upon a great lie that will define his future and the most extraordinary friendship he'll ever know.
A groundbreaking new look at the story of America At 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. One Nation, Under Gods shows how much more there is to the history we tell ourselves, right back to the country's earliest days. Dazzling in its scope and sweep, it is an American history unlike any you've read.
Presenting new theoretical and practical insights and models grounded in descriptive case studies, Innovation in Small Construction Firms promotes the benefits of innovation within and between small and medium sized (SMEs) construction firms.
From healthcare to workplace conduct, the federal government is taking on ever more responsibility for managing our lives. At the same time, Americans have never been more disaffected with Washington, seeing it as an intrusive, incompetent, wasteful giant. The most alarming consequence of ineffective policies, in addition to unrealized social goals, is the growing threat to the government's democratic legitimacy. Understanding why government fails so often--and how it might become more effective--is an urgent responsibility of citizenship. In this book, lawyer and political scientist Peter Schuck provides a wide range of examples and an enormous body of evidence to explain why so many domestic policies go awry--and how to right the foundering ship of state.Schuck argues that Washington's failures are due not to episodic problems or partisan bickering, but rather to deep structural flaws that undermine every administration, Democratic and Republican. These recurrent weaknesses include unrealistic goals, perverse incentives, poor and distorted information, systemic irrationality, rigidity and lack of credibility, a mediocre bureaucracy, powerful and inescapable markets, and the inherent limits of law. To counteract each of these problems, Schuck proposes numerous achievable reforms, from avoiding moral hazard in student loan, mortgage, and other subsidy programs, to empowering consumers of public services, simplifying programs and testing them for cost-effectiveness, and increasing the use of "big data." The book also examines successful policies--including the G.I. Bill, the Voting Rights Act, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and airline deregulation--to highlight the factors that made them work.An urgent call for reform, Why Government Fails So Often is essential reading for anyone curious about why government is in such disrepute and how it can do better"--
Whether it is birthdays, wedding anniversaries, Thanksgiving dinners or New Year’s celebrations, we humans demonstrate a peculiar compulsion to celebrate the continuing cycle of the recurrent calendar dates that mark our lives. Public events of the same type evoke an even more pronounced response. The Anniversary Compulsion focuses on Canada’s Centennial celebrations in 1967 as an example of how a classic mega-anniversary can be successfully organized and staged. With wit and wisdom, Peter Aykroyd describes how many of the key elements of Centennial year will undoubtedly be present in the staging of what is bound to be an unprecedented worldwide celebratory outburst – the advent of the 21st century, the Third Millennium.
Why do some book covers instantly grab your attention, while others never get a second glance? Fusing word and image, as well as design thinking and literary criticism, this captivating investigation goes behind the scenes of the cover design process to answer this question and more. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW As the outward face of the text, the book cover makes an all-important first impression. The Look of the Book examines art at the edges of literature through notable covers and the stories behind them, galleries of the many different jackets of bestselling books, an overview of book cover trends throughout history, and insights from dozens of literary and design luminaries. Co-authored by celebrated designer and creative director Peter Mendelsund and scholar David Alworth, this fascinating collaboration, featuring hundreds of covers, challenges our notions of what a book cover can and should be.
For the 4th edition of Trauma Biomechanics all existing chapters referring to traffic and sports have been revised and updated. New scientific knowledge and changes in legal defaults (such as norms and standards of crash tests) have been integrated. Additionally one chapter has been added where biomechanical aspects of injuries affected by high energies are communicated in a new way. The mechanical basics for ballistics and explosions are described and the respective impacts on human bodies are discussed. The new edition with the additional chapter therefore is addressed to a broader audience than the previous one.
Many students develop misinformed opinions about the American electoral process. Conventional Wisdom and American Elections: Exploding Myths and Misconceptions debunks some of the more common misunderstandings that have arisen about the electoral process in the past few decades. This book engages students in elections and politics and teaches them to evaluate information like a political scientist. The third edition looks forward to the 2016 election with new, more contemporary myths addressed and a new chapter on voter fraud and identification.
Now in paperback. A journey through the attempts artists, scientists, and tinkerers have made to imagine and communicate with the otherworldly using various technologies, from cameras to radiowaves. Strange Frequencies takes readers on an extraordinary narrative and historical journey to discover how people have used technology in an effort to search for our own immortality. Bebergal builds his own ghostly gadgets to reach the other side, too, and follows the path of famous inventors, engineers, seekers, and seers who attempted to answer life's ultimate mysteries. He finds that not only are technological innovations potent metaphors keeping our spiritual explorations alive, but literal tools through which to experiment the boundaries of the physical world and our own psyches. Peter takes the reader alongside as he explores: the legend of the golem and the strange history of automata; a photographer who is trying to capture the physical manifestation of spirits; a homemaker who has recorded voicemails from the dead; a stage magician who combines magic and technology to alter his audience's consciousness; and more.
Actins are a highly conserved family of proteins found in virtually all eukaryotic cells. They have prolific roles in cell motility - from the contraction of striated muscle to the movement of organelles within cells, and are known to interact with a diverse number of proteins families from myosins to gelsolins. This up-to-date edition gives a comprehensive account of actin sequence, mutation and structure as well as providing insight into ligand-binding sites and drug and toxin binding. Illustrated throughout, this modern text also contains an extensive bibliography for the interested reader.
For fans of Lauren Groff, Maggie O’Farrell, and Emma Donoghue, a devastating novel of love, intrigue, and community in a time of sickness that remade the world Fourteenth-century Europe. The Black Death has killed half the known world, andin an isolated convent, a small group of nuns spends their days in work, austerity, and devotion, chanting the Liturgy of the Hours. But their community is threatened. Rumors of heresy and a scandalous Book of Ursula, based on the teachings of the charismatic former abbess and founder of the order, have prompted the male church hierarchy to launch an investigation. The priest assigned to minister to the nuns, Father Francis, who is wracked by guilt for an unspeakable crime committed during the lawless plague years, was no friend of Ursula and can't be counted on to defend the order. Disrespect and rebellion infect some novices, and the youngest among them pines for the bishop’s chief inquisitor. And Mother John, the convent’s aging spiritual leader, fears she’s losing her mind after experiencing a vision that brings back her own rebellious past. As events unfold over the course of a single day, a blizzard that has swept across Europe will break over the convent, endangering the women there and testing their faith. In this astonishing novel, the author of the award-winning Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter explores the territory between faith and freedom, and how the horrific events of history shape individual lives.
The stranger (survenant) represents an important theme in Quebec literature of the second half of the twentieth century. This book analyses the role of the survenant in five major novels dating from 1945 to 1992 and shows how the theme is constantly reworked and revitalised by the authors selected. The arrival of a survenant in a community brings to the surface the conflicts and tensions which had been latent. The consequences can be tragic for all concerned. At the least the community is changed forever. This is the first study of the way in which different Quebecois authors treat the survenant and should be of interest to all students of Quebec literature and culture.
This book provides a framework for governing policy implementation by various stakeholders during the delivery of infrastructure projects. This framework relies on the tenets of the Viable Systems Model (VSM), a systems cybernetic model that enjoys a high level of acceptance in organizational analysis. The book presents a step-by-step guide for the multi-level governance of implementation during project delivery. Although the book focuses on the context of local content development policy and construction projects (infrastructure), it is presented in a manner that allows it to be adapted to other policies and sectors. The book includes a step-by-step methodology for assessing policy implementation in project or policy delivery systems. In addition, it shares insights into the probable challenges faced by the actors within the delivery system in achieving optimal implementation performance. Critical success factors are also highlighted, and illustrative diagrams of the framework are provided to facilitate understanding. The book is logically structured and presented in a straightforward manner. Also, the transposition of the VSM from a conventional organizational context to a multi-organizational context will appeal to readers with a background in systems thinking, monitoring or evaluation.
This book critiques the connection between Western society and madness, scrutinizing if and how societal insanity affects the cause, construction, and consequence of madness. Looking beyond the affected individual to their social, political, economic, ecological, and cultural context, this book examines whether society itself, and its institutions, divisions, practices, and values, is mad. That society’s insanity is relevant to the sanity and insanity of its citizens has been argued by Fromm in The Sane Society, but also by a host of sociologists, social thinkers, epidemiologists and biologists. This book builds on classic texts such as Foucault’s History of Madness, Scull’s Marxist-oriented works and more recent publications which have arisen from a range of socio-political and patient-orientated movements. Chapters in this book draw on biology, psychology, sociological and anthropological thinking that argues that where madness is concerned, society matters. Providing an extended case study of how the sociological imagination should operate in a contemporary setting, this book draws on genetics, neuroscience, cognitive science, radical psychology, and evolutionary psychology/psychiatry. It is an important read for students and scholars of sociology, anthropology, social policy, criminology, health, and mental health.
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