Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst and attempt to obey the Bible as literally as possible for one full year. He vows to follow the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multiply. To love his neighbor. But also to obey the hundreds of less publicized rules: to avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibers; to play a ten-string harp; to stone adulterers.The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal and will make you see history's most influential book with new eyes.Jacobs's quest transforms his life even more radically than the year spent reading the entire "Encyclopedia Britannica" for "The Know-It-All." His beard grows so unruly that he is regularly mistaken for a member of ZZ Top. He immerses himself in prayer, tends sheep in the Israeli desert, battles idolatry, and tells the absolute truth in all situations - much to his wife's chagrin.Throughout the book, Jacobs also embeds himself in a cross-section of communities that take the Bible literally. He tours a Kentucky-based creationist museum and sings hymns with Pennsylvania Amish. He dances with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and does Scripture study with Jehovah's Witnesses. He discovers ancient biblical wisdom of startling relevance. And he wrestles with seemingly archaic rules that baffle the twenty-first-century brain.Jacobs's extraordinary undertaking yields unexpected epiphanies and challenges. A book that will charm readers both secular and religious, "The Year of Living Biblically" is part Cliff Notes to the Bible, part memoir, and part look into worlds unimaginable. Thou shalt not be able to put it down.

     Caligula was one of the first rulers of the Roman Empire, and yet numbers among the most famous. His family history is mired in political scandals, tragedy, and murderous plots to forward the agendas of shadowy cabals that sought to oppose the nation in its early infancy. The full story of his life begins long before his birth, and his legacy continues long after his sensational murder at the hands of those closest to him. Inside you will read about... ✓ The Rise of the Roman Empire ✓ The Julio-Claudian Dynasty ✓ Caligula’s Rise to Power ✓ An Emperor Driven Mad ✓ An Emperor Becomes a God ✓ The Assassination of the Emperor And much more! A true product of his time, Caligula’s rich and colorful story is sure to draw you in until the very end.

    The boy was beckoning me to join him on a voyage through the harrowing straits of memory. He was gambling that if we survived the passage, we might discover an ocean where the past would become the wind at our back rather than a driving gale to the nose of our boat. This book is the record of that voyage."When he was sixteen years old, Ian Morgan Cron was told about his father's clandestine work with the CIA. This astonishing revelation, coupled with his father's dark struggles with chronic alcoholism and depression, upended the world of a boy struggling to become a man. Decades later, as he faces his own personal demons, Ian realizes the only way to find peace is to voyage back through a painful childhood marked by extremes--privilege and poverty, violence and tenderness, truth and deceit--that he's spent years trying to escape.In this surprisingly funny and forgiving memoir, Ian reminds us that no matter how different the pieces may be, in the end we are all cut from the same cloth, stitched by faith into an exquisite quilt of grace.

    He was the world's wisest and wealthiest king. And yet, tragically, he threw it all away for the love of money, the pleasures of sex, and the powers of an earthly kingdom.In studying the life of Solomon, we see both the true greatness and the tragic failure of our own humanity--from godly devotion to self-serving excess. Even in the midst of our best intentions, we are all prone to succumb to the same temptations of money, sex, and power. And if Solomon's incredible wisdom could not prevent him from such tragic mistakes, then how are we to triumph over the same temptations?Philip Graham Ryken shows us how, by the grace of God, to prevent those downfalls and to seek God's glory amid earthly temptations through this rich, Christ-centered study of the life of Solomon.

    And He did. But first He took her through a trial so debilitating it almost destroyed what little faith she had. He let her go deaf.Like so many Christians, Diane thought she’d signed up for the “wonderful plan for your life” and deafness certainly didn’t fit her idea of a wonderful life for a pastor’s wife and young mother. Using vivid parallels between her deafness and every woman’s struggle to hear God, this book reveals how Diane learned to listen to God, finding intimacy with her Savior and the deep soul satisfaction she—and every reader—longs for.