Spirituality for the Rest of Us: A Down-to-Earth Guide to Knowing God


Larry Osborne - 2009
    Takes the blinders off and opens your eyes to some strange and unique ways God works.”-Stephen Arterburn“This book will speak to everyong who has ever felt ‘left out’ spiritually. Larry’s insights cut through the commonly accepted, guilt-induced world of religion as he caputures the raw essence of New Testament relationship.” -Craig Groeschel

The Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can Be Resolved


Alan M. Dershowitz - 2005
    From the division of Jerusalem and Israeli counterterrorism measures to the security fence and the Iranian nuclear threat, his analyses are clear-headed, well-argued, and sure to be controversial. According to Dershowitz, achieving a lasting peace will require more than tough-minded negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. In academia, Europe, the UN, and the Arab world, Israel-bashing and anti-Semitism have reached new heights, despite the recent Israeli-Palestinian movement toward peace. Surveying this outpouring of vilification, Dershowitz deconstructs the smear tactics used by Israel-haters and shows how this kind of anti-Israel McCarthyism is aimed at scuttling any real chance of peace.

My Life Among the Serial Killers: Inside the Minds of the World's Most Notorious Murderers


Helen Morrison - 2004
    Helen Morrison has profiled more than eighty serial killers around the world. What she learned about them will shatter every assumption you've ever had about the most notorious criminals known to man.Judging by appearances, Dr. Helen Morrison has an ordinary life in the suburbs of a major city. She has a physician husband, two children, and a thriving psychiatric clinic. But her life is much more than that. She is one of the country's leading experts on serial killers, and has spent as many as four hundred hours alone in a room with depraved murderers, digging deep into killers' psyches in ways no profiler before ever has.In My Life Among the Serial Killers, Dr. Morrison relates how she profiled the Mad Biter, Richard Otto Macek, who chewed on his victims' body parts, stalked Dr. Morrison, then believed she was his wife. She did the last interview with Ed Gein, who was the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. John Wayne Gacy, the clown-obsessed killer of young men, sent her crazed Christmas cards and gave her his paintings as presents. Then there was Atlanta child killer Wayne Williams; rapist turned murderer Bobby Joe Long; England's Fred and Rosemary West, who killed girls and women in their "House of Horrors"; and Brazil's deadliest killer of children, Marcelo Costa de Andrade.Dr. Morrison has received hundreds of letters from killers, read their diaries and journals, evaluated crime scenes, testified at their trials, and studied photos of the gruesome carnage. She has interviewed the families of the victims -- and the spouses and parents of the killers -- to gain a deeper understanding of the killer's environment and the public persona he adopts. She has also studied serial killers throughout history and shows how this is not a recent phenomenon with psychological autopsies of the fifteenth-century French war hero Gilles de Rais, the sixteenth-century Hungarian Countess Bathory, H. H. Holmes of the late ninteenth century, and Albert Fish of the Roaring Twenties.Through it all, Dr. Morrison has been on a mission to discover the reasons why serial killers are compelled to murder, how they choose their victims, and what we can do to prevent their crimes in the future. Her provocative conclusions will stun you.

The Summer of France


Paulita Kincer - 2012
    As she realizes she may be too late to pull her family together, her husband Grayson pressures her to find another job so they can pay the increasing bills. Relief comes with a phone call from Fia’s great Uncle Martin who runs a bed and breakfast in Provence. Uncle Martin wants Fia to venture to France to run the B&B so he and his wife Lucie can travel. He doesn’t tell Fia about the secret he hid in the house when he married Lucie after fighting in World War II, and he doesn’t mention the people who are tapping his phone and following him, hoping to find the secret. After much cajoling, Fia whisks her family to France and is stunned when Uncle Martin and Aunt Lucie leave the same day for a Greek cruise. She’s thrown into the minutiae of a running the B&B without the benefit of speaking the language. Her dreams of family bonding time fade as her teenagers make French friends. Kasie joins a local swim team, riding off to practice on the back of a scooter each morning, hips tucked next to the 18-year-old French boy who teaches her to smoke brown cigarettes and drink red wine. West accompanies a pouty French teenager around the city, playing his guitar in the town squares to earn spending money. Fia’s husband Grayson begins touring the countryside with a pretty French woman, and Fia resists the distractions of Christophe, a handsome French man. Why the whirlwind of French welcome, Fia wonders after she comes home from a day at the beach in Nice to find someone has ransacked the B&B. Fia parses Uncle Martin’s obscure phone calls, trying to figure out this WW II hero’s secret. Can she assuage Uncle Martin’s World War II guilt and build the family she’s always dreamed of?

The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players in Baseball History


Jayson Stark - 2007
    But how about Alex Rodriguez, Jeter's teammate, former American League MVP, and probable future Hall of Famer? Many would argue he's even better than Jeter. And what about Jeter's seemingly unassailable status as one of the greatest Yankees of all time? Such discussions highlight one of the great joys of being a baseball fan: arguing over who's really great and who falls just short, who doesn't get the respect he deserves and who gets too much. In other words, who's overrated and who's underrated. In The Stark Truth, baseball analyst, writer, and researcher Jayson Stark of ESPN considers the entire history of professional baseball and picks the most overblown and underappreciated players in the history of the game. His results, based on extensive research using both traditional and more modern methods of evaluating baseball players and performance, are provocative, entertaining, and go a long way toward settling many of baseball's most persistent debates. No book can hope to settle every baseball argument, but The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players in Baseball History takes one of baseball's most enduring debates and provides some compelling and stunning clarity.

Hey, Cowgirl, Need a Ride?


Baxter Black - 2005
    When Teddie Arizona, woman of mystery, crawls out of the wreckage of her plane and into their lives with a $5,000,000 secret, things start to get interesting.When T.A.’s “husband,” F. Rank Pantaker, dispatches his henchmen to retrieve the money—and the girl—Lick and Al find themselves trying to outrun the bad guys and protect a damsel in distress. Is T.A. out to cheat her cheatin’ husband, or is she really just trying to stop an illegal scheme cooked up by F. Rank and the infamous Ponce de Crayon, Vegas’s most glamorous tiger tamer? Is she playing Lick—or is it love? Will Al Bean’s cockeyed plan, an able assist from Cody, Lick’s cowboy sidekick, a brigade of old-time rodeo reunioneers, and twenty miles of duct tape be enough to stop F. Rank’s nefarious schemes, reform a career party girl, and change the hearts and minds of ten of the world’s most thrill-seeking billionaires? Can Cody keep Lick from climbing onto raging bull Kamikaze’s back one more time? Can true love triumph over shoot-outs at the not-so-okay corral and close encounters with white tigers? Hey, this is Baxter Black—what do you think? With its colorful cast of characters, rip-roaring humor, and inventive language, this caper will have you riding high long after it gallops to a thunderously satisfying conclusion.

Hitter: The Life and Turmoils of Ted Williams


Ed Linn - 1993
    But the tag that really fits is Hitter. “A riveting retrospective” (Baseball americanca). Index; career statistics; photographs.

One Day University Presents: Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness


One Day University - 2010
    He is also the Head Teaching Fellow for the most popular course at Harvard, “Positive Psychology,” which is taken by more than 1,000 students per semester and led by Professor Tal Ben-Shahar.  Shawn received his B.A. in English from Harvard and a Master’s from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist Ethics. Part of his interest in positive psychology stems from a troubling fact: studies have shown that many of Harvard’s undergraduates suffer from depression at some point in their college careers. One Day University is a unique educational experience  that brings intellectuals together to learn from top rated professors at Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia and other prestigious universities. Chosen for their excellent teaching abilities as rated by their students, these great thinkers represent a wide variety of academic disciplines and share their knowledge in 60 minute, highly entertaining lectures. Offering the ability to learn the highlights of academic thought in world affairs, politics, history, science, art, and more; One Day University is a way to truly enjoy the thrill of learning without the pressures of tests and the high price tag of college tuition. Once reserved only for students who could attend the lectures in New York and other major cities, One Day University courses are now available to everyone from the comfort of their own homes in Kindle format.

Faraway Child


Amy Maida Wadsworth - 2005
    But now Jen's life seems to be crumbling around her. Her husband Adam is suddenly without a job, her sister is moving far away, and people increasingly describe her two-year-old daughter as a difficult child. This is not the way Jen dreamed parenthood would be, especially with her youngest daughter.In the middle of each night, Kaye wakes up screaming. Human interactions and parental guidance have little meaning for her. Jen makes jokes about Kaye's public behavior to push away the pain. Marie, her four-year-old daughter, wants to know, "Why won't Kaye play with me?" Then Jen's new visiting teacher asks if Kaye is autistic. In Faraway Child, Amy Maida Wadsworth shares her most personal novel to date with a story about a family who faces shattered expectations, and then learns to reach out to family, ward members, and to God.

Do Not Deny Me


Jean Thompson - 2009
     • Award-winning storyteller gaining popularity: Jean Thompson’s short fiction has been honored by the National endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation; Who Do You Love: Stories was a National Book Award finalist for fiction and was promoted by David Sedaris during his own lecture tour; and Throw Like a Girl: Stories was a New York Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. The collection is also in its sixth printing, as Thompson’s longstanding critical acclaim crosses over into a popular following. Do Not Deny Me is perfectly positioned to gain an even wider audience. • Do Not Deny Me: Here is a title that demands—and commands—attention in and of itself. Yet Thompson’s latest collection is no literary dare, delivering as it does twelve dazzling new stories that together offer, with wit, humor, and razor-sharp perception, a fictional primer on how Americans live day to day. In Thompson’s writing, The New York Times Book Review has noted, “some of the biggest satisfactions happen line by line, thanks to Thompson’s effortless ability to tip her prose into the universal.” Thompson succeeds as “one of our most astute diagnosticians of contemporary experience” (The Boston Globe).

Adventures of Mottel the Cantor's Son


Sholom Aleichem - 1961
    Nothing daunts him. His spirit soars above the cruelties, the world has not grown any gentler since this book was written. Sholom Aleichem's wit and humanity enrich any age and any language."--"New York Times.

Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk


Rebecca Godfrey - 2005
    Highlighting along the way the deeply entrenched social tensions that provoked the murder, Under the Bridge is more than a true-crime book -- it is an unforgettable wake-up call.

The Story of the Jews: A 4,000-Year Adventure--A Graphic History Book


Stan Mack - 1998
    The first "graphic history book" of its kind, The Story of the Jews celebrates the major characters and events that have shaped the Jewish people and culture, illustrating what it means to be Jewish. You will visit all the major Jewish happenings from biblical times to the twenty-first century--from Abraham and Sarah on the banks of the Euphrates to the Diaspora, intermarriage, and the State of Israel. Moses receiving the Ten Commandments, The triumph of King David, The creation of the Talmud, The rise of Christianity and Islam, The Crusades, The Inquisition, The Enlightenment, Life in the new Babylon (the United States), The birth of the state of Israel, And--of course--the world's first "Oy!"

Textile


Orly Castel-Bloom - 2006
    While Mandy's husband Irad, a self-proclaimed genius, is off in America researching new innovations in flak jackets, and her son Dael, a sniper for the Israeli Army, returns to war, Mandy schedules yet another cosmetic surgery. This time she's getting new shoulder blades. But when the surgery goes awry, her rebellious daughter Lirit must take over the family business--and the family may never be the same.From the acclaimed author of Dolly City, Textile details the gradual disintegration of a family strained by distance and the corrosive effects of consumerism and militarism."With understated flair and stoic wit, Castel-Bloom uses the Gruber family to explore the themes of globalization, materialism, superficiality, and longevity, anchoring her story in a neighborhood and attempting to 'connect all this beauty and luxury to some kind of posterity beyond [the family's] grasp.'" --Publishers Weekly"Internationally acclaimed Castel-Bloom--whose Dolly City is listed by UNESCO's Collection of Representative Works--deftly weaves a web of intertwining character studies, each rich with detail and nuance. Against the backdrop of war and unrest, the strivings of a woman for independence gain international depth." --Kirkus

Ben-Gurion: A Political Life


Shimon Peres - 2011
    Although the state that Ben-Gurion would lead through war and peace had not yet declared its precarious independence, the “Old Man,” as he was called even then, was already a mythic figure. Peres, who came of age in the cabinets of Ben-Gurion, is uniquely placed to evoke this figure of stirring contradictions—a prophetic visionary and a canny pragmatist who early grasped the necessity of compromise for national survival. Ben-Gurion supported the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, though it meant surrendering a two-thousand-year-old dream of Jewish settlement in the entire land of Israel. He granted the Orthodox their first exemptions from military service despite his own deep secular commitments, and he reached out to Germany in the aftermath of the Holocaust, knowing that Israel would need as many strong alliances as possible within the European community. A protégé of Ben-Gurion and himself a legendary figure on the international political stage, Shimon Peres brings to his account of Ben-Gurion’s life and towering achievements the profound insight of a statesman who shares Ben-Gurion’s dream of a modern, democratic Jewish nation-state that lives in peace and security alongside its Arab neighbors. In Ben-Gurion, Peres sees a neglected model of leadership that Israel and the world desperately need in the twenty-first century.