He analyzes the spiritual, moral, and political collapse of the Western world and concludes that "the decadence of our time has all the faces of mortal peril."A cultural identity crisis, he writes, is at the root of the problems facing Western societies. "The West no longer knows who it is, because it no longer knows and does not want to know who made it, who established it, as it was and as it is. Many countries today ignore their own history. This self-suffocation naturally leads to a decadence that opens the path to new, barbaric civilizations."While making clear the gravity of the present situation, the cardinal demonstrates that it is possible to avoid the hell of a world without God, a world without hope. He calls for a renewal of devotion to Christ through prayer and the practice of virtue.

    In a bold challenge to received historiography and social theory he turns on its head the world according to Marx, Weber, and other theorists, including Polanyi, Rostow, Braudel, and Wallerstein. Frank explains the Rise of the West in world economic and demographic terms that relate it in a single historical sweep to the decline of the East around 1800. European states, he says, used the silver extracted from the American colonies to buy entry into an expanding Asian market that already flourished in the global economy. Resorting to import substitution and export promotion in the world market, they became Newly Industrializing Economies and tipped the global economic balance to the West. That is precisely what East Asia is doing today, Frank points out, to recover its traditional dominance. As a result, the "center" of the world economy is once again moving to the "Middle Kingdom" of China. Anyone interested in Asia, in world systems and world economic and social history, in international relations, and in comparative area studies, will have to take into account Frank's exciting reassessment of our global economic past and future.

    Jim Wallis argues that America's separation of church and state does not require banishing moral and religious values from the public square. God's Politics offers a vision for how to convert spiritual values into real social change and has started a grassroots movement to hold our political leaders accountable by incorporating our deepest convictions about war, poverty, racism, abortion, capital punishment, and other moral issues into our nation's public life. Who can change the political wind? Only we can.

    Anchored in the life of Christ as presented in the Gospels, it explores the entirety of Jesus life who he is, what he is really like, what he taught, what he did for our salvation, and what this means for us as Catholics today.This study shows, in a simple way, how Jesus, the Incarnate God, is both fully divine and fully human his intimacy with the Father, his revelation of the heart of the Father, and his extraordinary influence on his disciples, his followers, and even his enemies.Most importantly, this encounter with Christ will inspire and empower you to center your entire life in him as you come to know and love him in an ever-deeper and more intimate way.

    Including interviews with military top brass, from commanding officers to General Petreaus himself, this book reveals the disturbing chasm between official rhetoric and the situation on the ground.Informed by more than 300 hours of firsthand frontline footage with the U.S. Marines, documentary filmmaker Anderson (HBO's "The Battle for Marjah") provides a gripping account of the Afghanistan war in Helmand province.

    Learn about President Kagame, who strives to make Rwanda the first middle-income country in Africa, in a single generation. In this adventurous tale, learn about Kagame's early fascination with Che Guevara and James Bond, his years as an intelligence agent, his training in Cuba and the United States, the way he built his secret rebel army, his bloody rebellion, and his outsized ambitions for Rwanda.

    Timothy M. Gallagher. In Spiritual Consolation, Fr. Gallagher introduces us to the teachings of Ignatius of Loyola through the use of real-life examples and principles from Ignatius's Second Rules for discernment. Fr. Gallagher, author of The Discernment of Spirits and The Examen Prayer, shows how all of us, especially those with busy religious lives, can learn to listen to and follow God's leading.

    The Age of Reason represents the results of years of study and reflection by Thomas Paine on the place of religion in society.Paine wrote: "Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst; every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in; but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity."The cool rationale of Paine's The Age of Reason influenced religious thinking throughout the world; and its pervasieve influence continues to the present day.

    The problem with these libraries is that they contain books that are generally written by professionals for their peers. Where the Hell Is God? combines the best of the professional's insights with the author's own experience and insights to speculate on how believers can make sense of their Christian faith when experiencing tragedy and suffering. Starting with a very personal story of the author's sister being left a quadriplegic from a car accident twenty years ago, Where the Hell Is God? gently leads the reader through some "take-home" messages that are sane, sound, and practical. Among these messages are: God does not directly send pain, suffering, and disease. God does not punish us; God does not send accidents to teach us things, though we can learn from them; and God does not will earthquakes, floods, droughts, or other natural disasters. This concise, accessible, and experience-based book will help people who are suffering as well as those who minister to them and their families.

    Discourse seems futile when we are no longer a people with shared principles or even a shared understanding of reality. What seems obvious to one person is patently absurd to the next.    This collapse of meaning is not accidental. It has been plotted and documented for decades, and now presents in its current form as Woke ideology.   Awake, Not Woke unmasks this ideology by examining its history, major players, premises, and tactics, showing us that “Wokeness” at its core is an ideology of rupture. Indeed, it is an ideology with fundamentalist and even cult-like characteristics that is on a collision course with Christianity.   With a wit and clarity that both exposes the absurd and mourns the brokenness of our culture,  Noelle Mering provides answers to such questions as:      Why does tolerance seem to only go in one direction?How does the ideology create enemies, eroding friendship across the sexes and races?Why is violence the natural end of Woke ideology?Why are the Woke considered blameless?Why have politics become all-absorbing?Why is the corruption of children a logical outgrowth of Woke principles?How is the movement fundamentally a rejection of the Logos?  This is a spiritual battle, and it is not accidental. The architects of revolution have long known that the transformation of the West had to come by way of destabilizing the social, familial, and religious pieties of a citizenry.   But there is a road to restoration, and it begins with identifying and understanding the operating principles of the Woke movement. While the revolution is a counterfeit religion resulting in alienation and division, the One True Faith brings restoration. It is this restoration -- of the person, the family, and the Faith -- for which we all hunger and is the most fitting avenue toward a more harmonious and whole society

    Events, anecdotes and personalities drive its narrative to illustrate the cocktail of hostility, nationalism and nostalgia that defines every facet of the relationship. It looks at the main events through the eyes and words of actual players and contemporary observers to illustrates how, both in India and in Pakistan, these past events are seen through radically different prisms, how history keeps resurfacing and has a resonance that cannot be avoided to this day. Apart from political, military and security issues, The People Next Door evokes other perspectives: divided families, peacemakers, war mongers, contrarian thinkers, intellectual and cultural associations, unwavering friendships, the footprint of Bollywood, cricket and literature: all of which are intrinsic parts of this most tangled of relationships.

    But as Edward Feser shows in The Last Superstition, there is not, and never has been, any war between science and religion at all. There has instead been a conflict between two entirely philosophical worldviews: the classical "teleological" vision of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, on which purpose or goal-directedness is as inherent a feature of the material world as mass or electric charge; and the modern "mechanical" vision of Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, according to which physical reality is comprised of nothing more than purposeless, meaningless particles in motion." "This modern "mechanical" view of nature has never been proved, and its hold over the contemporary intelligentsia owes more to rhetorical sleight-of-hand and political expediency than to rational argument. For as Feser demonstrates, the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the traditional natural-law conception of morality are rationally unavoidable given the classical "teleological" philosophical world-view. Hence modern secularism crucially depends on the false insinuation that the "mechanical" philosophy has somehow been established by science." Moving beyond what he regards as the pointless and point-missing dispute between "Intelligent Design" advocates and Darwinians, Feser holds that the key to understanding the follies of the "New Atheism" lies not in quibbles over the evolutionary origins of this or that biological organ, but in a rethinking of thephilosophical presuppositions of scientific method itself back to first principles. In particular, it involves a recovery of the forgotten truths of classical philosophy. When this is accomplished, religion can be seen to be grounded firmly in reason, not blind faith. And despite its moral and intellectual pretensions, the "New Atheism" is exposed as resting on very old errors, together with an appalling degree of intellectual dishonesty, philosophical shallowness, and historical, theological, and scientific ignorance.

    Brief and compelling, Prosperity & Violence is certain to be an excellent supplement in any comparative politics course.

    To compensate, they join the ranks of ideological tribes spawned by identity politics and react with frenzy against any perceived threat to their group. As identitarians track and expose the ideologically impure, other citizens face the consequences of their rancor: a litany of “isms” run amok across all levels of cultural life; the free marketplace of ideas muted by agendas shouted through megaphones; and a spirit of general goodwill warped into a state of perpetual outrage.  How did we get here? Why have we divided against one another so bitterly? In Primal Screams, acclaimed cultural critic Mary Eberstadt presents the most provocative and original theory to come along in recent years. The rise of identity politics, she argues, is a direct result of the fallout of the sexual revolution, especially the collapse and shrinkage of the family.  As Eberstadt illustrates, humans from time immemorial have forged their identities within the structure of kinship. The extended family, in a real sense, is the first tribe and first teacher. But with its unprecedented decline across a variety of measures, generations of people have been set adrift and can no longer answer the question Who am I? with reference to primordial ties. Desperate for solidarity and connection, they claim membership in politicized groups whose displays of frantic irrationalism amount to primal screams for familial and communal loss.Written in her impeccable style and with empathy rarely encountered in today’s divisive discourse, Eberstadt’s theory holds immense explanatory power that no serious citizen can afford to ignore. The book concludes with three incisive essays by Rod Dreher, Mark Lilla, and Peter Thiel, each sharing their perspective on the author’s formidable argument.

    Donald Calloway, MIC, deftly shares his personal insights on topics including Divine Mercy, the Eucharist, the papacy, the Church, confession, prayer, the cross, masculinity, and femininity. The Blessed Virgin Mary is the central thread weaving a tapestry throughout with quotes about Our Lady from saints, blessed, and popes. Certain to become a "tour de force" Marian book for the Year of Faith!