Deepens & refreshes our view of early Christianity while casting a disturbing light on the evolution of the attitudes passed down to us.AcknowledgmentsThe Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-3Introduction "The Kingdom of God is at hand" Christians against the Roman orderGnostic improvisations on Genesis The "Paradise of Virginity" regained The politics of paradise The nature of nature EpilogueNotesIndex

    If that wasn’t bad enough, he’s trapped inside a military base, surrounded by thousands of hungry zombies. Armed only with a battle suit and a smart-ass A.I. named Slade, Nick sets off across a post-apocalyptic America where he discovers a group of hot warrior women who are only too eager to “assist” him in battling the dead, and reaching a hidden government vault that may hold the secret to reversing the plague that ended the world. WARNING: I’m not a huge fan of fades to black, so would it surprise you to learn that this book’s intended for those over the age of 18 who like over-the-top action, zombie craziness, hot warrior women, cool snarky characters, and lots of haremy (yes, that’s a real word) adult situations? Probably not, so if you like those things, and I’m guessing you do, suck it up, strap in, and get ready for Pox Americana, Book 1.

    

    I know tomorrow.” This inscription in Tutankhamun’s tomb summarizes The Fifth Beginning. Here, archaeologist Robert L. Kelly explains how the study of our cultural past can predict the future of humanity.   In an eminently readable style, Kelly identifies four key pivot points in the six-million-year history of human development: the emergence of technology, culture, agriculture, and the state. In each example, the author examines the long-term processes that resulted in a definitive, no-turning-back change for the organization of society. Kelly then looks ahead, giving us evidence for what he calls a fifth beginning, one that started about AD 1500. Some might call it “globalization,” but the author places it in its larger context: a five-thousand-year arms race, capitalism’s global reach, and the cultural effects of a worldwide communication network.   Kelly predicts that the emergent phenomena of this fifth beginning will include the end of war as a viable way to resolve disputes, the end of capitalism as we know it, the widespread shift toward world citizenship, and the rise of forms of cooperation that will end the near-sacred status of nation-states. It’s the end of life as we have known it. However, the author is cautiously optimistic: he dwells not on the coming chaos, but on humanity’s great potential.

    But can straight white guys experience the same easy sexual fluidity, or would kissing a guy just mean that they are really gay? Not Gay thrusts deep into a world where straight guy-on-guy action is not a myth but a reality: there’s fraternity and military hazing rituals, where new recruits are made to grab each other’s penises and stick fingers up their fellow members’ anuses; online personal ads, where straight men seek other straight men to masturbate with; and, last but not least, the long and clandestine history of straight men frequenting public restrooms for sexual encounters with other men. For Jane Ward, these sexual practices reveal a unique social space where straight white men can—and do—have sex with other straight white men; in fact, she argues, to do so reaffirms rather than challenges their gender and racial identity.Ward illustrates that sex between straight white men allows them to leverage whiteness and masculinity to authenticate their heterosexuality in the context of sex with men. By understanding their same-sex sexual practice as meaningless, accidental, or even necessary, straight white men can perform homosexual contact in heterosexual ways. These sex acts are not slippages into a queer way of being or expressions of a desired but unarticulated gay identity. Instead, Ward argues, they reveal the fluidity and complexity that characterizes all human sexual desire. In the end, Ward’s analysis offers a new way to think about heterosexuality—not as the opposite or absence of homosexuality, but as its own unique mode of engaging in homosexual sex, a mode characterized by pretense, dis-identification and racial and heterosexual privilege. Daring, insightful, and brimming with wit, Not Gay is a fascinating new take on the complexities of heterosexuality in the modern era.

    It chronicles every stage of Foucault’s personal and professional odyssey, from his early interest in dreams to his final preoccupation with sexuality and the nature of personal identity.

    Embraced by millions of fans, it has also attracted a chorus of critics, who have denounced it as a corrupter of youth—even blamed it for tragedies like the murders at Columbine. Deena Weinstein argues that these fears stem from a deep misunderstanding of the energetic, rebellious culture of metal, which she analyzes, explains, and defends. She interprets all aspects of the metal world—the music and its makers, its fans, its dress code, its lyrics—and in the process unravels the myths, misconceptions, and truths about an irreverent subculture that has endured and evolved for twenty years.

    Of course, no one has to believe the TV shows, the magazines and adverts, and many don't. But how has it come to this? Did the desires of twentieth-century women's liberation achieve their fulfilment in the shopper's paradise of 'naughty' self-pampering, playboy bunny pendants and bikini waxes? That the height of supposed female emancipation coincides so perfectly with consumerism is a miserable index of a politically desolate time. Much contemporary feminism, particularly in its American formulation, doesn't seem too concerned about this coincidence. This short book is partly an attack on the apparent abdication of any systematic political thought on the part of today's positive, up-beat feminists. It suggests alternative ways of thinking about transformations in work, sexuality and culture that, while seemingly far-fetched in the current ideological climate, may provide more serious material for future feminism.

    Economics, finance, business & management

    Focusing on the dynamics of narcissism in interpersonal relations, Shaw describes the relational system of what he terms the 'traumatizing narcissist' as a system of subjugation - the objectification of one person in a relationship as the means of enforcing the dominance of the subjectivity of the other.Daniel Shaw illustrates the workings of this relational system of subjugation in a variety of contexts: theorizing traumatic narcissism as an intergenerationally transmitted relational/developmental trauma; and exploring the clinician's experience working with the adult children of traumatizing narcissists. He explores the relationship of cult leaders and their followers, and examines how traumatic narcissism has lingered vestigially in some aspects of the psychoanalytic profession.Bringing together theories of trauma and attachment, intersubjectivity and complementarity, and the rich clinical sensibility of the Relational Psychoanalysis tradition, Shaw demonstrates how narcissism can best be understood not merely as character, but as the result of the specific trauma of subjugation, in which one person is required to become the object for a significant other who demands hegemonic subjectivity. Traumatic Narcissism presents therapeutic clinical opportunities not only for psychoanalysts of different schools, but for all mental health professionals working with a wide variety of modalities. Although primarily intended for the professional psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, this is also a book that therapy patients and lay readers will find highly readable and illuminating.

    Yet in both the developing world and in postindustrial cities of the West, sexual commerce has continued to flourish, diversifying along technological, spatial, and social lines. In this deeply engaging and theoretically provocative study, Elizabeth Bernstein examines the social features that undergird the expansion and diversification of commercialized sex, demonstrating the ways that postindustrial economic and cultural formations have spawned rapid and unforeseen changes in the forms, meanings, and spatial organization of sexual labor.Drawing upon dynamic and innovative research with sex workers, their clients, and state actors, Bernstein argues that in cities such as San Francisco, Stockholm, and Amstersdam, the nature of what is purchased in commercial sexual encounters is also new. Rather than the expedient exchange of cash for sexual relations, what sex workers are increasingly paid to offer their clients is an erotic experience premised upon the performance of authentic interpersonal connection. As such, contemporary sex markets are emblematic of a cultural moment in which the boundaries between intimacy and commerce—and between public life and private—have been radically redrawn. Not simply a compelling exploration of the changing landscape of sex-work, Temporarily Yours ultimately lays bare the intimate intersections of political economy, desire, and culture.

    Several of the data display strategies from previous editions are now presented in re-envisioned and reorganized formats to enhance reader accessibility and comprehension. The Third Edition's presentation of the fundamentals of research design and data management is followed by five distinct methods of analysis: exploring, describing, ordering, explaining, and predicting. Miles and Huberman′s original research studies are profiled and accompanied with new examples from Salda�a′s recent qualitative work. The book′s most celebrated chapter, Drawing and Verifying Conclusions, is retained and revised, and the chapter on report writing has been greatly expanded, and is now called Writing About Qualitative Research. Comprehensive and authoritative, Qualitative Data Analysis has been elegantly revised for a new generation of qualitative researchers.

    For these parents, the question of how their children should be taught about sex cuts far deeper than politics, religion, or even friendship."The drama of this book comes from watching the exceptionally thoughtful Luker try to figure [sex education] out" (Judith Shulevitz, New York Times Book Review). In doing so, Luker also traces the origins of sex education from the turn-of-the-century hygienist movement to the marriage-obsessed 1950s and the sexual and gender upheavals of the 1960s. Her unexpected conclusions make it impossible to look at the intersections of the private and the political in the same way.

    His groundbreaking work explores India's sexual fantasies and ideals, the "unlit stage of desire where so much of our inner theater takes place."Kakar's sources are primarily textual, celebrating the primacy of the story in Indian life. He practices a cultural psychology that distills the psyches of individuals from the literary products and social institutions of Indian culture. These include examples of lurid contemporary Hindi novels; folktales; Sanskrit, Tamil, and Hindi proverbs; hits of the Indian cinema; Gandhi's autobiography; interviews with women from the slums of Delhi; and case studies from his own psychoanalytic practice. His attentive readings of these varied narratives from a vivid portrait of sexual fantasies and realities, reflecting the universality of sexuality as well as cultural nuances specific to India.Moving from genre to genre, Kakar offers a brilliant reading of verses from the Laws of Manu, the original source of Hindu religious laws, to uncover their psychological foundations—male terror of the female sexual appetite that shields itself by idealizing women's maternal role. Kakar also examines the psychosexual history of Gandhi at length, though his near-lifelong celibacy makes him an atypical subject. Gandhi's story is universal, Kakar says, because "we all wage war on our wants."In India's lore and tradition, complex symbols abound—snakes that take the shape of sensual women or handsome men, celibates sleep with naked women, gods rape their daughters, and a goddess fries a king in oil. With the analyst's "third ear," Kakar listens, decodes, and translates the psychological longings that find expression in Indian sexual relations.

    The term “recognition” shapes debates over Indigenous cultural distinctiveness, Indigenous rights to land and self-government, and Indigenous peoples’ right to benefit from the development of their lands and resources.In a work of critically engaged political theory, Glen Sean Coulthard challenges recognition as a method of organizing difference and identity in liberal politics, questioning the assumption that contemporary difference and past histories of destructive colonialism between the state and Indigenous peoples can be reconciled through a process of acknowledgment. Beyond this, Coulthard examines an alternative politics—one that seeks to revalue, reconstruct, and redeploy Indigenous cultural practices based on self-recognition rather than on seeking appreciation from the very agents of colonialism.Coulthard demonstrates how a “place-based” modification of Karl Marx’s theory of “primitive accumulation” throws light on Indigenous–state relations in settler-colonial contexts and how Frantz Fanon’s critique of colonial recognition shows that this relationship reproduces itself over time. This framework strengthens his exploration of the ways that the politics of recognition has come to serve the interests of settler-colonial power.In addressing the core tenets of Indigenous resistance movements, like Red Power and Idle No More, Coulthard offers fresh insights into the politics of active decolonization.