Service Alert
Delay in delivery of Direct to Player materials
You may experience a delay in delivery of Direct to Player materials. All requests for materials will be delivered as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.
You may experience a delay in delivery of Direct to Player materials. All requests for materials will be delivered as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.
Showing 1 - 20 of 32230 items
By Don Watkins, Yaron Brook. 2009
We’ve all heard that the American Dream is vanishing, and that the cause is rising income inequality. The rich are…
getting richer by rigging the system in their favor, leaving the rest of us to struggle just to keep our heads above water. To save the American Dream, we’re told that we need to fight inequality through tax hikes, wealth redistribution schemes, and a far higher minimum wage.But what if that narrative is wrong? What if the real threat to the American Dream isn’t rising income inequality—but an all-out war on success?In Equal is Unfair, a timely and thought-provoking work, Don Watkins and Yaron Brook reveal that almost everything we’ve been taught about inequality is wrong. You’ll discover:• why successful CEOs make so much money—and deserve to• how the minimum wage hurts the very people it claims to help• why middle-class stagnation is a myth• how the little-known history of Sweden reveals the dangers of forced equality• the disturbing philosophy behind Obama’s economic agenda.The critics of inequality are right about one thing: the American Dream is under attack. But instead of fighting to make America a place where anyone can achieve success, they are fighting to tear down those who already have. The real key to making America a freer, fairer, more prosperous nation is to protect and celebrate the pursuit of success—not pull down the high fliers in the name of equality.By Joel M. Hoffman. 2014
The Bible you usually read is not the complete story. Some holy writings were left out for political or theological…
reasons, others simply because of the physical restrictions of ancient bookmaking technology. At times, the compilers of the Bible skipped information that they assumed everyone knew. Some passages were even omitted by accident.In The Bible's Cutting Room Floor, acclaimed author and translator Dr. Joel M. Hoffman gives us the stories and other texts that didn't make it into the Bible even though they offer penetrating insight into the Bible and its teachings.The Book of Genesis tells us about Adam and Eve's time in the Garden of Eden, but not their saga after they get kicked out or the lessons they have for us about good and evil. The Bible introduces us to Abraham, but it doesn't include the troubling story of his early life, which explains how he came to reject idolatry to become the father of monotheism. And while there are only 150 Psalms in today's Bible, there used to be many more.Dr. Hoffman deftly brings these and other ancient scriptural texts to life, exploring how they offer new answers to some of the most fundamental and universal questions people ask about their lives. An impressive blend of history, linguistics, and religious scholarship, The Bible's Cutting Room Floor reveals what's missing from your Bible, who left it out, and why it is so important.By John J. Fialka. 2003
Sisters is the first major history of the pivotal role played by nuns in the building of American society. Nuns…
were the first feminists, argues Fialka. They became the nation's first cadre of independent, professional women. Some nursed, some taught, and many created and managed new charitable organizations, including large hospitals and colleges. In the 1800s nuns moved west with the frontier, often starting the first hospitals and schools in immigrant communities. They provided aid and service in the Chicago fire, cared for orphans and prostitutes in the California Gold Rush and brought professional nursing skills to field hospitals run by both armies in the Civil War. Their work was often done in the face of intimidation from such groups as the Know Nothings and the Ku Klux Klan.In the 1900s they built the nation's largest private school and hospital systems and brought the Catholic Church into the civil rights movement. As their numbers began to decline in the 1970s, many sisters were forced to take professional jobs as lawyers, probation workers, managers and hospital executives because their salaries were needed to support older nuns, many of whom lacked a pension system. Currently there are about 75,000 sisters in America, down from 204,000 in 1968. Their median age is sixty-nine. In Sisters, Fialka reveals the strength of the spiritual capital and the unprecedented reach of the caring institutions that religious women created in America.By Virginia Rounding. 2017
Smithfield, settled on the fringes of Roman London, was once a place of revelry. Jesters and crowds flocked for the…
medieval St Bartholomew's Day celebrations, tournaments were plentiful and it became the location of London's most famous meat market. Yet in Tudor England, Smithfield had another, more sinister use: the public execution of heretics.The Burning Time is a vivid insight into an era in which what was orthodoxy one year might be dangerous heresy the next. The first martyrs were Catholics, who cleaved to Rome in defiance of Henry VIII's break with the papacy. But with the accession of Henry's daughter Mary - soon to be nicknamed 'Bloody Mary' - the charge of heresy was leveled against devout Protestants, who chose to burn rather than recant.At the center of Virginia Rounding's vivid account of this extraordinary period are two very different characters. The first is Richard Rich, Thomas Cromwell's protégé, who, almost uniquely, remained in a position of great power, influence and wealth under three Tudor monarchs, and who helped send many devout men and women to their deaths. The second is John Deane, Rector of St Bartholomew's, who was able, somehow, to navigate the treacherous waters of changing dogma and help others to survive.The Burning Time is their story, but it is also the story of the hundreds of men and women who were put to the fire for their faith.By Francesco De Pascalis, Alan Brener. 2024
Open banking ends the proprietary control of customer information by banks and allows customers to share their banking financial data…
with third parties as a matter of right. It can also permit customers to allow others to remove funds directly from their bank accounts in return for goods and services. All of this is done securely with standardised ‘application programming interfaces’ (APIs). Open banking has developed in different ways and with different objectives across the globe. Open Banking: Global Development and Regulation examines the empowering and enabling regulations that facilitate all of this.This book compares a number of different open banking national strategies. These range from the focus of the UK and EU on enhanced competition to the more collaborative approaches in many East Asian jurisdictions. It also looks at the use of open banking for socio-economic purpose in Brazil and India. Here open banking forms part of a wider government programme to increase financial inclusion coupled with encouraging economic growth.This text will be valuable for fintech companies, policymakers and financial services regulators Its overarching aim is to demonstrate the possibilities and challenges of open banking and how it is changing lives across the world.By Dexter Roberts. 2020
The untold story of how restrictive policies are preventing China from becoming the world’s largest economyDexter Roberts lived in Beijing…
for two decades working as a reporter on economics, business and politics for Bloomberg Businessweek. In The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, Roberts explores the reality behind today’s financially-ascendant China and pulls the curtain back on how the Chinese manufacturing machine is actually powered.He focuses on two places: the village of Binghuacun in the province of Guizhou, one of China’s poorest regions that sends the highest proportion of its youth away to become migrants; and Dongguan, China’s most infamous factory town located in Guangdong, home to both the largest number of migrant workers and the country’s biggest manufacturing base. Within these two towns and the people that move between them, Roberts focuses on the story of the Mo family, former farmers-turned-migrant-workers who are struggling to make a living in a fast-changing country that relegates one-half of its people to second-class status via household registration, land tenure policies and inequality in education and health care systems. In The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, Dexter Roberts brings to life the problems that China and its people face today as they attempt to overcome a divisive system that poses a serious challenge to the country’s future development. In so doing, Roberts paints a boot-on-the-ground cautionary picture of China for a world now held in its financial thrall.Dexter Roberts is an award-winning journalist and a regular commentator on the U.S.-China trade and political relationship. His prior speaking engagements include traditional news media outlets (NPR, Fox News, CNN International) as well as universities and institutes (George Washington University, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Overseas Press Club). He is available for virtual classroom visits to courses that adopt The Myth of Chinese Capitalism. Please contact academic@macmillan.com for more information.Despite the conventional wisdom that affordable housing, either in the form of homeownership or through access to rental units, has…
beneficial effects for households, society, and the economy more broadly, there is a noteworthy lack of empirical studies of housing development and construction companies or building societies that actively work to supply this asset class in the economy. There are several reasons for this condition, including the “thin market” for such business activities. This book offers a case study that includes two Swedish housing development companies that have targeted a market niche for affordable homes that few other companies and market actors are concerned with.One company is part of a major construction company conglomerate which produces prefabricated housing modules to better serve the low-end niche of the housing market. The other company is a municipality-owned housing development company that acts on the basis of market practices and rules but that also on policymakers’ stated ambition to provide affordable homes for the residents in the municipality, the largest municipality in a major Swedish metropolitan area. Taken together, the study of these two companies provides first-hand insights into how the production of affordable homes takes place in a real-world economy.The book is of relevance for a variety of readers, including graduate students, management scholars, policymakers, and management consultants.By Sebastian Bobowski. 2024
This book argues that a resilient region should act reactively and proactively in the face of shocks and disruptions and…
asserts that the institutionalization of regional cooperation may be the answer to development challenges in times of uncertainty and instability.It considers regional, transregional, and subregional cooperation initiatives for building regional resilience and critically examines a broad spectrum of issues, such as international security and trade, economic development, value chains in production, and social welfare. Adopting the concept of resilience allows for a holistic, dynamic, and systematic approach to the studies on the regional process of institutionalization, responsiveness, and adaptability to challenging circumstances. The economic and social indicators of the countries in the region are examined alongside an analysis of the regional institutional architecture.The reader is acquainted with the essence of resilience concerning each category of challenges and the mechanisms of its achievement and strengthening through regional integration. The interdisciplinary character of the book makes it suitable for usage not only by economists but also by lawyers. As such, the book will be helpful to scholars and students of international economics, international security, and policymakers.The problems of inflation, unemployment and economic stagnation are shared by all industrialised countries, but government response to them varies…
from state to state. This book, originally published in 1984, examines the effect of the recession of the 1980s on policy-making and policy content in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden. The author identifies the particular problems that face each country and explains why certain policies were adopted and how recession influenced policy-making. Through comparative analysis, the book shows how each government’s policy-making processes responded to the economic and social pressures created by a crisis in the world economyBy Gerald Arbuckle. 2024
Conspiracy Theorizing explore how should individuals with the Christian faith should react to conspiracy theories, their untruths, and their dangers.…
This book outlines the way that conspiracy theories are the fundamental basis for this stigmatization and scapegoating. It goes further to explain that scapegoating is fostering extreme divisions within in societies and between nations with each side often demonizing the other.This book states how conspiracy theories satisfy people’s needs for certainty, security, and a positive self-image in a world they feel is disintegrating. Uncovering deeper, when the comforting securities of cultures crumble, paranoia makes sense. This book demonstrates that an inability to live with uncertainty and ambiguity draws people to conspiracy theories when they validate their apprehensions. The commentary in this book also validates that since conspiracy theories can never be verified by objective research and truths they are one of the most problematic subjects to expose.This book aims to answer these questions: What are conspiracy theories? Why do they arise, especially in times of cultural upheavals? Are they harmful? What do the Christian Scriptures say about them? Readers that are interested in religion, Christianity and conspiracy theories would enjoy this book.By Aleksei V. Bogoviz, Alexander E. Suglobov, Alexandr N. Maloletko, Olga V. Kaurova, Svetlana V. Lobova. 2021
This book is the very first book-length study devoted to the advances in technological development and systems research in cooperative…
economics. The chapters provide, first of all, a coherent framework for understanding and applying the concepts and approaches of complexity and systems science for the advanced study of cooperative networks and particular cooperative enterprises and communities. Second, the book serves as a unique source of reliable information on the frontier information technologies available for the production, consumer, credit, and agricultural cooperative enterprises, discussing predominant strategies, potential drivers of change, and responses to complex problems. Given the diverse range of backgrounds and advanced research results, researchers, decision-makers, and stakeholders from all fields of cooperative economics in any country of the world will undoubtedly benefit from this book.By Michael Novacek. 2003
Hunting for fossils with a preeminent guide and teacherMichael Novacek, a world-renowned paleontologist who has discovered important fossils on virtually…
every continent, is an authority on patterns of evolution and on the relationships among extinct and extant organisms. Time Traveler is his captivating account of how his boyhood enthusiasm for dinosaurs became a lifelong commitment to vanguard science. He takes us with him as he discovers fossils in his own backyard in Los Angeles, then goes looking for them in the high Andes, the black volcanic mountains of Yemen, and the incredibly rich fossil badlands of the Gobi desert.Wherever Novacek goes he searches for still undiscovered evidence of what life was like on Earth millions of years ago. Along the way he has almost drowned, been stung by deadly scorpions, been held at gunpoint by a renegade army, and nearly choked in raging dust storms. Fieldwork is very demanding in a host of unusual, dramatic, sometimes hilarious ways, and Novacek writes of its alluring perils with affection and discernment. But Time Traveler also makes sense of many complex themes - about dinosaur evolution, continental drift, mass extinctions, new methods for understanding ancient environments, and the evolutionary secrets of DNA in fossil organisms. It is also an enthralling adventure story.By William D. Bishop. 2022
The modern global economy and discipline of economics place mathematical calculation above human concern. However, a re-reading of Boethius’ The…
Consolation of Philosophy can positively highlight the contrast in values and spirit of the early medieval European world with our own scientific age.This book discusses the historical and cultural contexts that influenced Boethius’ writing and explores how Consolation offers a radically different understanding of economic concepts: wealth from inner happiness and virtues, poverty from hoarding outer possessions, self-sufficiency in the greater whole, enlightenment through misfortune, and development as fruition from the Good. These economic considerations resonate with a range of heterodox economic perspectives, such as Ecological and Buddhist Economics. The fundamental revaluations gained through Boethius pose a critique of mainstream neoclassical and neoliberal economics: to consumerism, avarice, growth and technology fetishism, and market rationality. These economic foundations resonate into a time when global crises raise the question of fundamental human priorities, offering alternatives to an ever-expanding industrial market economy designed for profit, and helping to avoid irrevocable socio-ecological disasters. The issues raised and questioned in this book will be of significant interest to readers with concern for pluralist approaches to economics, philosophy, classics, ancient history and theology.By Stanley L. Engerman, Jacob Metzer. 2004
By Edward Engelbrecht. 2014
Tap into the treasures of God's Word with the Lutheran Bible Companion, the first-ever comprehensive guide to the Bible featuring…
commentary that reflects Lutheran theology. Inside Volume 1, readers find new understanding for personal meditation or preaching in the expansive timeline of the Old Testament. Fascinating insights on the Bible's themes provide additional depth: Theological topics and literary features found in each book Significant events, people, and places found in detailed outlines and maps Biblical reflections from Martin Luther and Johann Gerhard Color photography and art illustrating stories, daily life, and landscapes (600+)By Yannick Slade-Caffarel. 2024
Social ontology is the study of the nature and basic structure of social reality. It is a rapidly growing field…
at the intersection of philosophy and social science that has the potential to greatly assist social researchers of all kinds. One of the longest running projects in social ontology has developed over the better part of the last four decades through the work of Tony Lawson and the Cambridge Social Ontology Group. Cambridge social ontology has its origins in an assessment that the widespread explanatory failure of modern mainstream economics, as well as in the social sciences more generally, is due to sustained ontological neglect and the resulting use of research methods that are inappropriate, given the nature of social material. The Cambridge project’s aim has been to rectify this neglect through conducting explicit and sustained inquiry into the nature of social material with a view to elaborating an explanatorily powerful conception of social ontology. The result is social positioning theory. This book is an introduction to the key features of social positioning theory, provides context as to the theory’s development and illustrates how social positioning theory can clarify the natures of phenomena such as gender and the corporation.Cambridge Social Ontology is for social scientists, philosophers and all readers interested in gaining a better understanding of the nature of social phenomena.France was interwar Poland’s main ally, and the biggest source of the country’s foreign investment. The two roles were closely…
connected: Paris used its position in Warsaw to win preferential treatment for its firms, while Polish authorities depended on France to finance their modernization policies and military spending. The relationship’s asymmetric character bred conflict, and in the 1930s dissenting voices compared French actions in Poland to imperialism and colonial expansion. This book untangles the complex mix of economics, policy, and politics in Franco-Polish relations. Based on government and company-level sources, it evaluates the part played by French capital in Poland and discovers the mechanisms ruling French FDI and public loans. Exploring case studies of specific sectors and themes, it asks questions about the modernizing potential of FDI, interwar economic imperialism, the workings of asymmetric investment, and the interactions between investments and politics. Understanding the unequal footing of Warsaw and Paris, it goes beyond imperialistic interpretations, and examines the leeway available to the weaker partner of the relationship. The book contributes to economic history of Central and Eastern Europe, and, more generally, to our understanding of the position of peripheral countries in the interwar global system.Does the current celibate, semi-monastic, and all-male seminary formation contribute to the persistence of clerical sexual abuse in the Roman…
Catholic Church?Applying sociological theories on socialization, total institutions, and social resistance as the primary conceptual framework, and drawing on secondary literature, media reports, the author’s experience, interviews, and Church documents, this book argues that the Catholic Church’s institution of the celibate seminary formation as the only mode of clerical training for Catholic priests has resulted in negative unintended consequences to human formation such as the suspension of normal human socialization in society, psychosexual immaturity, and weak social control against clerical sexual abuse. The author thus contends that celibate training, while suitable for those who do live in religious or monastic communities, is inappropriate for those who are obliged to live alone and work in parishes. As such, an alternative model for diocesan clerical formation is advanced.A fresh look at the aptness – and effects – of celibate formation for diocesan clergy, this volume is the first to relate the persistence of Catholic clerical sexual abuse to celibate seminary formation, exploring the structural links between the two using sociological arguments and proposing an apprenticeship-based model of formation, which has numerous advantages as a form of clerical training. It will therefore appeal to scholars and students of religion, sociology, and theology, as well as those involved with seminary formation.By Bernhard Kittel, Stefan Traub. 2024
This book develops an empirically informed normative theory of need-based justice, summarizing core findings of the DFG research group FOR2104…
“Need-based Justice and Distributive Procedures”. In eleven chapters scholars from the fields of economics, political science, philosophy, psychology, and sociology cover the identification and rationale of needs, the recognition and legitimacy of needs, the dynamics and stability of procedures of distributions according to needs, and the consequences and sustainability of need-based distributions. These four areas are studied from the perspective of two mechanisms of need objectification, the social objectification by the discursive generation of mutual understanding (transparency) and the factual objectification by the transfer of decisions to uninvolved experts (expertise). The volume addresses academics in the fields of justice research, ethics, political theory, social choice and welfare, framing, individual and group decision making, inequality and redistribution, as well as advanced students in the contributing disciplines.Since at least the high point of the civil rights movement, African American Christianity has been widely recognized as a…
potent force for social change. Most attention to the political significance of Black churches, however, focuses on domestic protest and electoral politics. Yet some Black churches take a deep interest in the global issue of Israel and Palestine. Why would African American Christians get involved—and even take sides—in Palestine and Israel, and what does that reveal about the political significance of “the Black Church” today?This book examines African American Christian involvement in Israel and Palestine to show how competing visions of “the Black Church” are changing through transnational political engagement. Considering cases ranging from African American Christian Zionists to Palestinian solidarity activists, Roger Baumann traces how Black religious politics transcend domestic arenas and enter global spaces. These cases, he argues, illuminate how the meaning of the ostensibly singular and unifying category of “the Black Church”—spanning its history, identity, culture, and mission—is deeply contested at every turn. Black Visions of the Holy Land offers new insights into how Black churches understand their political role and social significance; the ways race, religion, and politics both converge and diverge; and why the meaning of overlapping racial and religious identities shifts when moving from national to global contexts.