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Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM, the Cult That Bound My Life
By Sarah Edmondson. 2019
As seen in the HBO docuseries THE VOW: The shocking and subversive memoir of a 12-year-NXIVM-member-turned-whistleblower, and her inspiring true…
story of abuse, escape, and redemption."'Master, would you brand me? It would be an honor.' From the second I climb onto the table, acutely aware that I am lying in the sweat of my sisters, I will have blocked that out. Lying there completely naked, I am at my most vulnerable but determined to prove my strength. I try to keep my legs closed as my body wills itself to protect my most private area. . . . I tell myself: I am a warrior. I birthed a human. I can handle pain. But nothing could have ever prepared me for the feel of this fire on my skin."Scarred is Sarah Edmondson's compelling memoir of her recruitment into the NXIVM cult, the 12 years she spent within the organization (during which she enrolled over 2,000 members and entered DOS—NXIVM's "secret sisterhood"), her breaking point, and her harrowing fight to get out, to expose Keith Raniere and the leadership, to help others, and to heal. Complete with personal photographs, Scarred is also an eye-opening story about abuses of power, female trust and friendship, and how sometimes the search to be "better" can override everything else.• In the tradition of Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman, Escape by Carolyn Jessop, and Troublemaker by Leah Remini• This tell-all follows Sarah from the moment she takes her first NXIVM seminar, to the invitation she accepts from her best friend, Lauren Salzman, into DOS, to her journey toward become a key witness in the federal case against its founders• Evokes questions about friendship, ethics, good and evil, making it a brilliant selection for book clubsAudio edition read by the author.Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy
By Damien Lewis. 2022
The New Yorker, Best Books of 2022 Vanity Fair, Best Books of 2022 Booklist, Best Books of 2022 Singer. Actress.…
Beauty. Spy. During WWII, Josephine Baker, the world's richest and most glamorous entertainer, was an Allied spy in Occupied France. Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music-hall diva renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality; she was the highest-paid female performer in Europe. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all &“negroes and Jews.&” Yet instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. Overnight, she went from performer to Resistance spy. In Agent Josephine, bestselling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little-known history of the famous singer&’s life. During the war years, as a member of the French Nurse paratroopers—a cover for her spying work—Baker participated in numerous clandestine activities and emerged as a formidable spy. In turn, she was a hero of the three countries in whose name she served—the US, France, and Britain. Drawing on a plethora of new historical material and rigorous research, including previously undisclosed letters and journals, Lewis upends the conventional story of Josephine Baker, explaining why she fully deserves her unique place in the French Panthéon.Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle And The Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor
By James M. Scott. 2015
Finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in History "Like Lauren Hillebrand's Unbroken…Target Tokyo brings to life an indelible era." —Ben…
Cosgrove, The Daily Beast On April 18, 1942, sixteen U.S. Army bombers under the command of daredevil pilot Jimmy Doolittle lifted off from the deck of the USS Hornet on a one-way mission to pummel Japan’s factories, refineries, and dockyards in retaliation for their attack on Pearl Harbor. The raid buoyed America’s morale, and prompted an ill-fated Japanese attempt to seize Midway that turned the tide of the war. But it came at a horrific cost: an estimated 250,000 Chinese died in retaliation by the Japanese. Deeply researched and brilliantly written, Target Tokyo has been hailed as the definitive account of one of America’s most daring military operations.Rampage: Macarthur, Yamashita, And The Battle Of Manila
By James M. Scott. 2018
“Illuminating.… An eloquent testament to a doomed city and its people.” —The Wall Street Journal In early 1945, General Douglas MacArthur prepared…
to reclaim Manila, America’s Pearl of the Orient, which had been seized by the Japanese in 1942. Convinced the Japanese would abandon the city, he planned a victory parade down Dewey Boulevard—but the enemy had other plans. The Japanese were determined to fight to the death. The battle to liberate Manila resulted in the catastrophic destruction of the city and a rampage by Japanese forces that brutalized the civilian population, resulting in a massacre as horrific as the Rape of Nanking. Drawing from war-crimes testimony, after-action reports, and survivor interviews, Rampage recounts one of the most heartbreaking chapters of Pacific War history.Religion and Humour: An Introduction (Engaging with Religion)
By David Feltmate. 2024
This timely and lively introduction to exploring the intersection of religion and humour evaluates existing scholarship and methodologies within the…
field, arguing for a culturally critical approach to the study.Hinged on a qualitative sociological framework, this book asks questions about the construction, presentation, and purpose of humour in religious contexts. It is broken down by theoretical approach, with chapters covering: a “comparative religions” approach; a theological approach; how social sciences offer us useful tools for research; and a review of existing theoretical models. As the first volume to introduce the field of religion and humour, this engaging book is essential reading for students approaching the topic for the first time, and for anyone with an interest in related fields such as religion and popular culture and humour studies.Weathering the Reformation explores the role of the Little Ice Age in early modern Christian culture and considers climate as…
a contributing factor in the Protestant Reform. The book focuses on religious narratives from Strasbourg between 1509 and 1541, pivotal years during which the European cultural concept of nature splintered along confessional differences. Together with case studies from antagonistic religious communities, Linnéa Rowlatt draws on annual weather reports for a period during which the climate became less hospitable to human endeavours. Social uunrest and the cultural upheaval of Reform are examined in relation to deteriorating climactic conditions characteristic of the Spörer Minimum. This book will be of particular interest to scholars of religious history and climate history.Naval Science 3: Naval Knowledge, Leadership, And Nautical Skills For The Njrotc Student
By Richard R. Hobbs. 2018
Former special assistant to President Trump, New York Times bestselling author, and evangelical Christian Cliff Sims shares the lessons he learned on…
faith, politics, and the Christian witness while working in the halls of power. American life today is consumed by politics. Even our churches are tearing themselves apart over political candidates, cultural flashpoints, and debates about whether certain pastors are vessels for the Holy Spirit or an unholy political agenda. So how should Christians approach our lives in this time of strife and division? How should we engage in politics and respond when we find that our beliefs are at odds with the culture? And how do we keep our focus on eternity when the present attractions of the world are there in front of us at every turn? Cliff Sims, the son of a Baptist minister and man of deep Christian faith, has walked the halls of power, serving as a Special Assistant to President Trump and Deputy Director of National Intelligence. While working at the highest levels of the American government, he experienced firsthand the cutthroat world of power politics, an environment that can test the character of any follower of Jesus, and he wrestled continually with how to live out his faith. In this book, Cliff shares hard-earned wisdom from his time serving in government, giving Christians lessons on how to live faithfully and with integrity. Recounting stories from the West Wing, Air Force One, and top secret bunkers, Sims offers practical advice and biblical insight on how to let the light of Christ shine in our dark world, regardless of our politics. The Darkness Has Not Overcome is a must-read for every Christian who has found themselves exasperated by politics, fearful about the future, or discouraged by the times in which we live.The Jhanas: A Practical Guide to Deep Meditative States
By Shaila Catherine. 2024
Experience new levels of joy, calm, and clarity with this revised and enhanced edition of the bestselling Focused and Fearless.The…
Pali word jhana literally means &“to meditate.&” It also refers to a traditional series of states of absorption, each deeper than the last, in which the mind is undistracted by sensation, thoughts, or moods. Shaila Catherine&’s friendly, wise approach, blended with contemporary examples and pragmatic "how to" instructions that anyone can try, will show meditators (and non-meditators) how to attain these extraordinary states with relative ease. But jhana practice is about much more than just meditation or concentration; it offers a complete path toward bliss, fearlessness, and true awakening. From the introduction: Jhanas are states of happiness that can radically transform the heart, reshape the mind, imbue consciousness with enduring joy and ease, and provide an inner resource of tranquility that surpasses any conceivable sensory pleasure. Jhanas are states of deep rest, healing rejuvenation, and profound comfort that create a stable platform for transformative insight. In this approach to jhana, we use the calming aspects of concentration to support the investigative aspects of insight meditation. The fruit of concentration is freedom of heart and mind. This new edition of the meditation classic clarifies crucial points and offers twenty-one additional exercises, making this a great book for both those new to jhana practice and those looking to deepen their practice.This book offers an analysis of naval constabulary operations, in particular Australian fisheries patrols, and challenges the widely accepted Anglo-American…
school of maritime thought.In the Indo-Pacific, fisheries and the activities of fishing boats are of increasing strategic importance in Australia’s region – Australia’s Four Oceans. Issues of overfishing, population growth and climate change are placing growing pressure on fish as a resource, and in doing so are making fisheries more significant, and significant on a strategic as opposed to simply an economic or environmental level. When, combined with the growing use of fishing vessels as para-naval forces, it is clear that the activities of fishing vessels, whether fishing or not fishing, are matters of considerable strategic relevance. This book illuminates contemporary seapower challenges, explains and defines maritime security and examines and refines existing theory to advance a set of new or refined concepts to help frame the on-water activities of constabulary operations -- reducing the possibility of on-water miscalculation between states.This book will be of much interest to students and scholars of naval studies and sea power, maritime strategy, maritime security and International Relations.Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World
By Eric Jay Dolin. 2024
The true story of five castaways abandoned on the Falkland Islands during the War of 1812—a tale of treachery, shipwreck,…
isolation, and the desperate struggle for survival. In Left for Dead, Eric Jay Dolin—“one of today’s finest writers about ships and the sea” (American Heritage)—tells the true story of a wild and fateful encounter between an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig, and a British warship in the Falkland archipelago during the War of 1812. Fraught with misunderstandings and mistrust, the incident left three British sailors and two Americans, including the captain of the sealer, Charles H. Barnard, abandoned in the barren, windswept, and inhospitable Falklands for a year and a half. With deft narrative skill and unequaled knowledge of the very pith of the seafaring life, Dolin describes in vivid and harrowing detail the increasingly desperate existence of the castaways during their eighteen-month ordeal—an all-too-common fate in the Great Age of Sail. A tale of intriguing complexity, with surprising twists and turns throughout—involving greed, lying, bullying, a hostile takeover, stellar leadership, ingenuity, severe privation, endurance, banishment, the great value of a dog, the birth of a baby, a perilous thousand-mile open-ocean journey in a seventeen-foot boat, an improbable rescue mission, and legal battles over a dubious and disgraceful wartime prize—Left for Dead shows individuals in wartime under great duress acting both nobly and atrociously, and offers a unique perspective on a pivotal era in American maritime history.The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation
By Victor Davis Hanson. 2024
In this &“gripping account of catastrophic defeat&” (Barry Strauss), a New York Times–bestselling historian charts how and why some societies…
chose to utterly destroy their foes, and warns that similar wars of obliteration are possible in our time &“In The End of Everything, Hanson tells compelling and harrowing stories of how civilizations perished. He helps us consider contemporary affairs in light of that history, think about the unthinkable, and recognize the urgency of trying to prevent our own demise.&” — H. R. McMaster, author of Battlegrounds War can settle disputes, topple tyrants, and bend the trajectory of civilization—sometimes to the breaking point. From Troy to Hiroshima, moments when war has ended in utter annihilation have reverberated through the centuries, signaling the end of political systems, cultures, and epochs. Though much has changed over the millennia, human nature remains the same. Modern societies are not immune from the horror of a war of extinction. In The End of Everything, military historian Victor Davis Hanson narrates a series of sieges and sackings that span the age of antiquity to the conquest of the New World to show how societies descend into barbarism and obliteration. In the stories of Thebes, Carthage, Constantinople, and Tenochtitlan, he depicts war&’s drama, violence, and folly. Highlighting the naivete that plagued the vanquished and the wrath that justified mass slaughter, Hanson delivers a sobering call to contemporary readers to heed the lessons of obliteration lest we blunder into catastrophe once again.The Routledge Handbook of Megachurches (Routledge Handbooks in Religion)
By Afe Adogame, Chad M. Bauman, Damaris Parsitau, Jeaney Yip. 2024
The Routledge Handbook of Megachurches provides a survey of global megachurch phenomena, with an international slate of authors introducing existing…
and emerging research on a wide variety of relevant topics.Over the past decade, the field of megachurch studies has matured and become global in its scope and orientation. The Handbook offers 33 chapters by top scholars in the field, focusing in particular on: The location, demographic nature, and transnational connections of megachurches. Megachurch worship, hermeneutics, and theology (in theory and practice). Megachurch institutional dynamics. The various ways that megachurches have both influenced and been influenced by their social contexts in terms of class, age, gender, sexuality, and pop culture. The Handbook's interdisciplinary orientation makes it essential reading for sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, media specialists, pop culture observers, business strategists, leadership consultants, marketing analysts, scholars of religion, and Christian historians, theologians, and missiologists. Experienced scholars of megachurches will gain valuable insight into aspects of megachurch research beyond their own specializations. Scholars new to the field will find the chapters useful as signposts for where to begin their own academic exploration. Christian pastors and laypeople will learn more about this increasingly prominent and influential form of their faith.Nothing Sacred
By Stathis Gourgouris. 2024
Nothing Sacred makes a bold call for reconceptualizing the projects of humanism and democracy as creative sources of emancipatory meaning,…
from the immediate political sphere to the farthest reaches of planetary ways of living.Restaging Aristotle’s classic notion of the “political animal” in broad historical and geographical frames, Stathis Gourgouris explores the autopoietic capacities of human-being in society, while developing new frameworks of anticolonial humanism and radical democracy as the only worthy adversaries of neoliberal capitalism.This reconfigured anthropological horizon enables us to imagine new ways of living by learning to pursue a radical politics of autonomy and a planetary vision that upholds life-affirming coexistence and equal sharing against the fetishism of hierarchy and servitude, money and technologic, sovereignty and endless growth.Written with daring, erudition, and anarchic contestation, this book seeks the political through a poetic perspective. Nothing Sacred rejects niche thinking in the academy and engages a vast domain of reflections on the problem of human-being in today’s dismal world.The War In-Between: Indexing a Visual Culture of Survival
By Wendy Kozol. 2024
Explores the ambiguities and contradictions that disrupt the assumed boundaries of battle zonesAgainst the fabric of suffering that unfolds around…
more spectacular injuries and deaths, The War In-Between studies visual depictions of banal, routine, or inscrutable aspects of militarized violence. Spaces of the in-between are both broader and much less visible than battlefields, even though struggles for survival arise out of the same conditions of structural violence. Visual artifacts including photographs, video, data visualizations, fabric art, and craft projects provide different vantage points on the quotidian impacts of militarism, whether it is the banality of everyday violence for non-combatants or the daily struggles of soldiers living with physical and emotional trauma.Three interrelated concepts frame the book’s attempt to “stay” in the moment of looking at visual cultures of survival. First, the concept of the war in-between captures those interstitial spaces of war where violence and survival persist side-by-side. Second, this book expands the concept of indexicality to consider how images of the in-between rely on a range of indexical traces to produce alternative visualities about survival and endurance. Third, the book introduces an asymptotic analysis to explore the value in getting close to the diverse experiences that comprise the war in-between, even if the horizon line of experience is always just out of reach.Exploring the capaciousness of survival reveals that there is more to feel and engage in war images than just mangled bodies, collapsing buildings, and industrialized death. The War In-Between, Kozol argues, offers not a better truth about war but an accounting of visualities that arise at the otherwise unthinkable junction of conflict and survival.Celtic Druidry: Rituals, Techniques, and Magical Practices
By Ellen Evert Hopman. 2024
• Explains how to make and use the essential tools of a Celtic Druid and how to create Druid rituals…
for seasonal rites, blessings, and other sacred observances • Details Druidic magical techniques and divination practices, as well as plant spells for performing magic with herbs • Explores the Gods and Goddesses of the Celtic pantheon, Druidic cosmology, and the Druidic festivals that occur throughout the year In this authentic handbook for the Celtic Druid path, Ellen Evert Hopman shares lessons, rituals, and magical techniques drawn from the ancient wisdom teachings of the Celts as well as a modern Druid Order created by the leading minds of 20th-century Celtic Reconstructionism. Hopman begins by exploring what we know about the original ancient Druids, citing Druid-contemporary sources such as Caesar and Diodorus Siculus as well as transcriptions of Druid oral teachings. She explains the basic tools and clothing of a Celtic Druid, including instructions for making the essential tools of the craft, such a Crane Bag, the Serpent Staff, and the Apple Branch, the tool used to open a Druid rite. She explores meditation techniques based on ancient texts and discusses the Gods and Goddesses of the Celtic pantheon, Druidic cosmology, and the Druidic festivals that occur throughout the turning of the year. She shares hymns to the Moon and the Sun as well as invocations for connecting with specific deities and elements. She also outlines the basics of Druidic liturgy, enabling you to create Druid rituals for seasonal rites, baby blessings, house blessings, hand-fastings, funerals, and other sacred observances. Detailing Druidic magical techniques, Hopman shares charms and incantations for abundance, protection, and healing as well as plant spells for performing magic with herbs. She discusses many forms of Druidic divination, including interpreting omens and divining with the ancient Irish alphabet, Ogham. Exploring the special connection between humans and Nature, a core component of Druidic practice, the author explains how to bond with Nature and the sacred land as well as examining the connection between Druids and trees. Revealing how to become a modern Druid, this concise yet detailed guide presents everything you need to know to start your journey on the Druidic path.Weaning: What to Feed, When to Feed, and How to Feed Your Baby
By Annabel Karmel. 2024
From the world's leading expert and bestselling author on baby and children's food and nutrition Annabel Karmel, comes the ultimate…
guide to starting children on solids.With basic but crucial details, such as types of spoons, portion size, and best feeding time, to larger issues, such as when to begin and allergy advice, Weaning provides all the fundamentals parents need and includes thirty new healthy, delicious recipes with twenty simple puree recipes to get started.You can find emotional freedom. Learn to see through the haze of conflicted feelings and move forward in your life…
with confidence. Licensed therapist and bestselling author Dr. Alison Cook guides you through a groundbreaking 3-step process to find the freedom you crave.When you're tangled up inside, it's hard to find clarity. Yet so many of us guilt-trip or gaslight ourselves instead of working our way through complicated feelings….I should be a good friend, even though I feel hurt by past betrayals.I should be content, even though I feel lonely or unfulfilled.I should just have faith, even though I feel discouraged by unanswered prayers. This jumbled-up knot is a cry for gentle care and patient attention, but most of us haven't been given the tools required to unravel it.I Shouldn't Feel This Way is your guide out of the chaos and into the calm and clarity you need to face life's challenges. Drawing from over twenty years of research and clinical practice, Dr. Alison Cook guides you through a groundbreaking 3-step process that has helped tens of thousands of people find emotional freedom and surprisingly simple breakthroughs. Dr. Alison shows you how to:identify guilt and know what to do with it,trade feeling stuck in your head for clarity,move from comfortable numbing to courageous conversations, andmake decisions that break cycles of defeat. Change starts when you finally stop beating yourself up for the way that you feel. I Shouldn't Feel This Way is your pathway to emotional freedom. It is time to finally work through your complicated feelings so you can start living with the clarity and confidence you crave.Where is jerusalem? (Where Is?)
By Ellen Morgan. 2024
Learn all about Jerusalem—a sacred city in the Middle East that has existed for over five thousand years. From the…
#1 New York Times Best-Selling Who Was? series comes Where Is?, a series that tells the stories of world-famous landmarks and natural wonders. In 2005, a group of construction workers in Jerusalem made an incredible discovery. Underneath the parking lot they were digging up lay an ancient city that was built in the tenth century! Three years later, gold coins from an even earlier century were found at the site. The city of Jerusalem is like a layer cake of history—more than five thousand years of complicated history—all of which author Ellen Morgan explains clearly and objectively in this audiobookAlbert Ball VC: The Fighter Pilot Hero of World War I
By Colin Pengelly. 2010
An action-packed military biography of a British fighter pilot and his rise through ranks during World War I. World War…
I pilot Albert Ball&’s invincible courage and determination made him a legend not only in Britain but also amongst his enemies, to whom the sight of his lone Nieuport Scout brought fear. Ball enlisted in the British army in 1914 with the 2/7th Battalion (Robin Hoods) of the Sherwood Foresters, Notts, and Derby Regiment. By October, 1914, he had reached the rank of Sergeant and then became Second-Lieutenant to his own battalion in the same month. In June, 1915, he trained as a pilot in Hendon. Then in October, he obtained Royal Aero Club Certificate and was transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. He further trained at Norwich and Upavon, being awarded the pilot&’s brevet in January, 1916. In May, he opened his score, shooting down an Albatros C-type over Beaumont. Days later he shot down two LVG C-types, while flying his Nieuport 5173. Captain Albert Ball made his final flight on May 7, 1917, when he flew as part of an eleven-strong hunting patrol into action against Jagdstaffel 11, led by Lothar Von Richthofen. Albert was pursuing the Albatros Scout of Lothar, who crash-landed, wounded. Then many witnessed Albert dive out of a cloud and crash. He died minutes later in the arms of a French girl, Madame Cecille Deloffre. Ball rose from obscurity to the top rank of contemporary fighter pilots in only 15 months. In that period, he had been awarded the MC, DSO, and two Bars, and was credited with at least 44 victories.