To truly know God, this must become our life’s driving desire as well… our Soul Obsession. And when we fall obediently in step with God, we’ll see Him perform miracles through us to rescue people and give them new life.In his powerful new book, internationally known author Nicky Cruz shares powerful personal stories of faithful obedience, even in the midst of difficult circumstances–including the amazing story of his mother’s deathbed conversion and healing. You, too, can move past doubts, understand both the natural and supernatural worlds, and develop a faith that can move any mountain, no matter how high or wide or difficult.“Do we truly understand the power we have at our fingertips? Do we grasp the significance of the message that we bring to a lost world? Do we comprehend how easily evil can be beaten and revoked by simply opening ourselves up to the moving of the Holy Spirit among us? Do we know what God is capable of doing among us?“If you want to change the world, begin by letting God change you. By letting the passion of Jesus become your passion. By letting the Holy Spirit be your only guide and mentor, every step, every minute of the day. By allowing God to set your heart on fire with a Soul Obsession!”–Nicky Cruz

    

    A growing number of scholars and political activists have invoked the term to describe a variety of changing economic, political, cultural, ideological, and environmental processes that are alleged to have accelerated in the last few decades. Rather than forcing such a complex social phenomenon into a single conceptual framework, Manfred Steger presents globalization in plain, readable English as a multifaceted process encompassing global, regional, and local aspects of social life. In addition to explaining the various dimensions of globalization, the author explores whether globalization should be considered a good or bad thing--a question that has been hotly debated in classrooms, boardrooms, and on the streets.

    How did that happen? What caused the cold war in the first place, and why did it last as long as it did?The distinguished historian Melvyn P. Leffler homes in on four crucial episodes when American and Soviet leaders considered modulating, avoiding, or ending hostilities and asks why they failed: Stalin and Truman devising new policies after 1945; Malenkov and Eisenhower exploring the chance for peace after Stalin’s death in 1953; Kennedy, Khrushchev, and LBJ trying to reduce tensions after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962; and Brezhnev and Carter aiming to sustain détente after the Helsinki Conference of 1975. All these leaders glimpsed possibilities for peace, yet they allowed ideologies, political pressures, the expectations of allies and clients, the dynamics of the international system, and their own fearful memories to trap them in a cycle of hostility that seemed to have no end.Leffler’s important book illuminates how Reagan, Bush, and, above all, Gorbachev finally extricated themselves from the policies and mind-sets that had imprisoned their predecessors, and were able to reconfigure Soviet-American relations after decades of confrontation.

    "Encyclopaedic knowledge has never, before or since, gone hand in hand with a logic so masculine or with speculation so profound," says H. W. C. Davis in his introduction. Students, teachers, and scholars will welcome this inexpensive new edition of the Benjamin Jowett translation, as will all readers interested in Greek thought, political theory, and depictions of the ideal state.

    Never before have so many people, in so many developing countries, made so much progress. Most people believe the opposite: that with a few exceptions like China and India, the majority of developing countries are hopelessly mired in deep poverty, led by inept dictators, and living with pervasive famine, widespread disease, constant violence, and little hope for change. But a major transformation is underway—and has been for two decades now. Since the early 1990s more than 700 million people have been lifted out of extreme poverty, six million fewer children die every year from disease, tens of millions more girls are in school, millions more people have access to clean water, and democracy—often fragile and imperfect—has become the norm in developing countries around the world. The Great Surge tells the remarkable story of this unprecedented economic, social, and political transformation. It shows how the end of the Cold War, the development of new technologies, globalization, courageous local leadership, and in some cases, good fortune, have combined to dramatically improve the fate of hundreds of millions of people in poor countries around the world. Most importantly, The Great Surge reveals how we can fight the changing tides of climate change, resource demand, economic and political mismanagement, and demographic pressures to accelerate the political, economic, and social development that has been helping the poorest of the poor around the world.

    Jones and George are dedicated to the challenge of "Making It Real" for students. The authors present management in a way that makes its relevance obvious even to students who might lack exposure to a "real-life" management context. This is accomplished thru a diverse set of examples, and the unique, and most popular feature of the text, the "Manager as a Person" Chapter 2. This chapter discusses managers as real people with their own personalities, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and problems and this theme is carried thru the remaining chapters. This text also discusses the importance of management competencies--the specific set of skills, abilities, and experiences that gives one manager the ability to perform at a higher level than another in a specific context. The themes of diversity, ethics, globalization, and information technology are integrated throughout.

    Debt sucks. Period. And that includes student loan debt. No matter what you believed—or were told—when you took out your loans, you need to get serious about getting rid of your debt fast, because it’s costing you more than you know. That’s why bestselling author Anthony ONeal wrote this motivating 64-page Quick Read—to show you why you need to dump your debt fast and how to do it.If you have student loan debt and have never heard of Ramsey Solutions or the 7 Baby Steps, this 64-page Quick Read is for you. Anthony will walk you step-by-step through Baby Steps 1 and 2 to show you how to dump your debt forever. You’ll learn:The ugly truth about how debt hurts youThe importance of an emergency fund and how to budget (Baby Step 1)The power of the debt snowball (Baby Step 2)Exactly what to do to pay off your student loans fasterHow to control your money so it doesn’t control youYou’ll also hear stories from real people about how they paid off their debt fastYou don’t need relief from your debt, you need to get mad at it. Because the truth is, when you get mad enough, you can pay off your loans faster than you ever thought possible—and take control of your money, and your life, for good! Don’t let anything stand in the way of your future. This plan has helped millions get out of debt and you’re next. You can do this!(Ramsey Press)

    The finger-on-the-button tension that had defined a generation was over, and it seemed that peace was at hand. The next twelve years rolled by in a haze of self-congratulation— what some now call a "holiday from history. "When that complacency shattered on September 11, 2001, setting the U.S. on a new and contentious path, confused Americans asked themselves: How did we get here?In America Between The Wars, Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier examine how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Wall on 11/9 and the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11 shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today. Reflecting the authors' deep expertise and broad access to key players across the political spectrum, this book tells the story of a generation of leaders grappling with a moment of dramatic transformation—changing how we should think about the recent past, and uncovering important lessons for the future.

    This is completely contrary to the Founding Fathers’ original vision of America; it was designed by them to be a secular democratic republic built on evidence-based Enlightenment values, emphatically not religious faith.Indeed, the Founders purposefully intended that a high, strong “wall of separation” keep church and state apart in the new nation, while allowing individual religious freedom untrammeled by government—and vice versa. But Christians with theocratic dreams keep trying to breach the wall. Through their efforts, God is now in evidence everywhere in the country—on our money, in our schools, even in high-level-government officials’ speeches. Freedom of — and from — religion is the American promise to all its people whatever their belief—or disbelief. This is how the Founding Fathers wanted it to be, not the undemocratic theocracy zealous evangelicals are trying to force on American society.

    The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book.Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition - justice as fairness - and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. "Each person," writes Rawls, "possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls's theory is as powerful today as it was when first published.

    Figuring that the first step to solving a problem is understanding it, he journeys north into the war zone, interviewing terrorists, generals, and heroin dealers along the way.He discovers an island of beauty and abundance ground down by three decades of war. As he travels north through Colombo, Kandy, and the damaged city of Jaffna, Meadows gives his riveting take on the war. Known for child conscription and drawn-out torture methods, he explains, the Tamil Tigers also invented suicide bombing and were the first to lace together terrorists and financiers into international networks of militant uprising.In Sri Lanka, Meadows discovers a deep view into an ancient culture. Along the way, he learns to trap an elephant, weave rope from coconut husks, and cast out devils, and he actually has tea with a few terrorists. This is the inspiring story of his journey and an enlightening meditation on the interconnectedness of globalization, the media, and modern terrorism.

    This seemingly small phenomenon symbolizes a significant social change that Robert Putnam has identified in this brilliant volume, which The Economist hailed as "a prodigious achievement."Drawing on vast new data that reveal Americans' changing behavior, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from one another and how social structures--whether they be PTA, church, or political parties--have disintegrated. Until the publication of this groundbreaking work, no one had so deftly diagnosed the harm that these broken bonds have wreaked on our physical and civic health, nor had anyone exalted their fundamental power in creating a society that is happy, healthy, and safe.Like defining works from the past, such as The Lonely Crowd and The Affluent Society, and like the works of C. Wright Mills and Betty Friedan, Putnam's Bowling Alone has identified a central crisis at the heart of our society and suggests what we can do.

    Leithart (PhD, University of Cambridge) is senior fellow of theology and literature at New St. Andrews College and pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in Moscow, Idaho. He is the author of numerous books, including A House for My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament, Against Christianity, and 1 & 2 Kings in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible. He is also a contributing editor for Touchstone.

    Created in the wake of the greatest tragedy to occur on U.S. soil, the Department of Homeland Security was handed a sweeping mandate: make America safer. It would encompass intelligence and law enforcement agencies, oversee natural disasters, commercial aviation, border security and ICE, cybersecurity, and terrorism, among others. From 2009-2013, Janet Napolitano ran DHS and oversaw 22 federal agencies with 230,000 employees. In How Safe Are We?, Napolitano pulls no punches, reckoning with the critics who call it Frankenstein's Monster of government run amok, and taking a hard look at the challenges we'll be facing in the future. But ultimately, she argues that the huge, multifaceted department is vital to our nation's security. An agency that's part terrorism prevention, part intelligence agency, part law enforcement, public safety, disaster recovery make for an odd combination the protocol-driven, tradition-bound Washington D.C. culture. But, she says, it has made us more safe, secure, and resilient. Napolitano not only answers the titular question, but grapples with how these security efforts have changed our country and society. Where are the failures that leave us vulnerable and what has our 1 trillion dollar investment yielded over the last 15 years? And why haven't we had another massive terrorist attack in the U.S. since September 11th, 2001? In our current political climate, where Donald Trump has politicized nearly every aspect of the department, Napolitano's clarifying, bold vision is needed now more than ever.