Best of
Social-Issues

1994

The Vanishing Conscience


John F. MacArthur Jr. - 1994
    With sound biblical truth, this book shows how and why sin must be dealt with if you are to live in a way that pleases God. With clairty and insight, John MacArthur provides you with solutions for attaining a personal holiness that can take you from living a life of blame and denial to one of peace and freedom.Praise for The Vanishing Conscience:". . . a wake-up call and an alarm to jolt the sleeping church. Not all will like it, but all should read it. In this day of morality by majority, self-centered ministry, and twilight-zone theology, a clear word like this is long overdue." --Dr. Adrian Rogers, Pastor, Bellevue Baptist Church". . . a clear and prophetic word that we must hear and heed." --Dr. Joseph M. Stowell, President, Moody Bible Institute"With the clarion call of a prophet, MacArthur points us back to something we have forgotten: the value and importance of a clean conscience." --Greg Laurie, Senior Pastor, Harvest Christian Fellowship

The Invention of the White Race: Racial Oppression and Social Control, Volume 1


Theodore W. Allen - 1994
    Historical debate about the origin of racial slavery has focused on the status of the Negro in seventeenth-century Virginia and Maryland. However, as Theodore W. Allen argues in this magisterial work, what needs to be studied is the transformation of English, Scottish, Irish and other European colonists from their various statuses as servants, tenants, planters or merchants into a single new all-inclusive status: that of whites. This is the key to the paradox of American history, of a democracy resting on race assumptions.Volume One of this two-volume work attempts to escape the “white blind spot” which has distorted consecutive studies of the issue. It does so by looking in the mirror of Irish history for a definition of racial oppression and for an explanation of that phenomenon in terms of social control, free from the absurdities of classification by skin color. Compelling analogies are presented between the history of Anglo-Irish and British rule in Ireland and American White Supremacist oppression of Indians and African-Americans. But the relativity of race is shown in the sea change it entailed, whereby emigrating Irish haters of racial oppression were transformed into White Americans who defended it. The reasons for the differing outcomes of Catholic Emancipation and Negro Emancipation are considered and occasion is made to demonstrate Allen’s distinction between racial and national oppression.

Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi


John Dittmer - 1994
    Gutman Prize and the Gustavus Myers Center for Study of Human Rights Outstanding Book Prize. Publication of this book was supported by a grant from DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana.

Not All of Us Are Saints: A Doctor's Journey with the Poor


David Hilfiker - 1994
    David Hilfiker's award-winning first book, Healing the Wounds, broke the silence surrounding the everyday practice of medicine and established him as a unique figure within the medical profession, "strikingly honest, courageous, and clear-sighted" (Oliver Sacks). In 1983, Dr. Hilfiker took on the greatest challenge of his career: he left his practice in rural Minnesota, moved with his wife and three young children to an inner-city neighborhood in Washington, D.C., and entered the world of poverty medicine. Not All of Us Are Saints vividly depicts what it means for a physician to confront the health problems of ravaged ghetto communities, for a middle-class white man to face the stark contrasts between poverty and privilege, and for a human being to admit his own spiritual limitations. Through dramatic accounts of his own cases, Dr. Hilfiker shows us a medical universe in which doctors are almost as powerless as their patients, where even the most commonplace medical solutions - bed rest, daily dosages, diet - are of little use to people without homes or family or food. This unflinching, deeply moving story is about the painful limits of care and caregivers, but it is also about the limitless rewards of faith and compassion - a moving testament to what is possible here and now.

Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness


Betty Jean Lifton - 1994
    She breaks new ground as she traces the adopted child's lifelong struggle to form an authentic sense of self. And she shows how both the symbolic and the literal search for roots becomes a crucial part of the journey toward wholeness.

Blood on the Doorposts: An Advanced Course in Spiritual Warfare


William Schnoebelen - 1994
    Bill and Sharon Schnoebelen were deeply involved in Satanism, but Jesus Christ set them free. Through their personal experiences, the Schnoebelens learned a great deal about how to be freed from demonic bondages. Since finding Christ as their Saviour, the Schnoebelens have helped many other Christians be liberated from Satan's control. Although these people had often sought freedom for years and had enlisted the help of clergy and friends, they were unable to gain victory in their life. But after putting into practice the Biblical principles the Schnoebelen's suggested, victory was finally achieved. Now, these same Biblical principles have been incorporated into this practical book. You can have victory in your Christian life. You can be victorious over drug abuse, cults, resentment, unforgiveness, depression, anger and more. This book will show you how.

Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue


Eugene Richards - 1994
    With a chilling and informative afterword by Dr. Stephen W. Nicholas, who works as a pediatric AIDS physician in Harlem, "Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue" reveals how first steps toward solutions to overcome the drug trade have actually contributed to public denial and further isolation of the trapped communities. "Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue" is a history of our times, a compelling, terrifying document that will educate us and promote dialogue, a first step toward affecting change.

9 Highland Road: Sane Living for the Mentally Ill


Michael Winerip - 1994
    Fred Grasso, a schizophrenic, had lived in a filthy single-room occupancy hotel. At 9 Highland Road they and their housemates were given a decent alternative to lives in institutions or in the streets. It was a place in which some even found the chance to get better.This perfectly observed and passionately imagined book takes us inside one of the supervised group homes that, in an age of shrinking state budgets and psychotropic drugs, have emerged as the backbone of America's mental health system. As it follows the progress and setbacks of residents, their families, and counselors and notes the embittered resistance their presence initially aroused in the neighborhood, 9 Highland Road succeeds in opening the locked world of mental illness. It does so with an empathy and insight that will change forever the way we understand and act in relation to that world.

Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, D.C.


Harry S. Jaffe - 1994
    Jaffe and Sherwood reveal the shocking inside story of a city polarized by race, class, poverty, and power.

The Dust of Death: The Sixties Counterculture and How It Changed America Forever


Os Guinness - 1994
    Shows how the Sixties counterculture changed America and its view of Christianity forever, and explores various ways for believers to influence our world today.

Eggbert, the Slightly Cracked Egg


Tom Ross - 1994
    Eventually he realizes that cracks are everywhere and reminds us all that our flaws are perfectly natural.

Bus Ride To Justice


Fred D. Gray - 1994
    He returned to his hometown in 1954 and became one of two black lawyers in the city. He was, he writes, determined to destroy everything segregated that I could find. He did not have to wait long. When Gray's friend Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955 for violating the segregated seating ordinance on a Montgomery bus, 26-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr., was chosen to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and 24-year-old Fred Gray became his--and the movement's--lawyer. Gray's legal victory in the federal courts ended the boycott 381 days later. Over the four decades since, Gray has won scores of civil rights cases in education, voting rights, transportation, health, and other areas. He represented the Freedom Riders, the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers, the victims of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and many more. Bus Ride to Justice is the exciting story of a courageous life in the courtrooms of America and in the pulpits of churches where Fred Gray began as a child preacher and continues today, and of a strong human being filled with love and admiration for his fellow man.

I Am an American: A True Story of Japanese Internment


Jerry Stanley - 1994
    Young Shi Nomura was among the 120,000 American citizens who lost everything when he was sent by the U.S. government to Manzanar, an interment camp in the California desert, simply because he was of Japanese ancestry. "In clear and fascinating prose, Stanley has set forth the compelling story of one of America's darkest times--the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.  His meticulously researched volume is accompanied by numerous, fine period black-and-white photographs...This eloquent account of the disastrous results of racial prejudice stands as a reminder to us in today's pluralistic society." --School Library Journal (starred)

This Thing of Darkness: A Sociology of the Enemy


James A. Aho - 1994
    In the course of his wide-ranging observations, interviews, and sometimes dangerous investigations into the persistence of right-wing extremism in the Unites States, he has come to recognize a seemingly universal need of social groups to identify 'the enemy', that which is held responsible for the bad things in life.In This Thing of Darkness Aho attempts to understand the making and breaking of domestic and foreign enemies in general. He considers enemies as social products rather than as psychological phenomena, and focuses on how enemies are perceived or constructed in the minds of a group or society at large.

Quest for the Grail


Richard Rohr - 1994
    Using the mythological investigationsof Joseph Campbell and Robert Moore,Richard Rohr brings alive the ancientlegends of knights and the search forKing Arthur’s grail, and shows how theycan serve as models for a journey of thepsyche and spirit.

Women and the Priesthood


Alice von Hildebrand - 1994