In the wake of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's historic Goodridge decision, a reissue of the bible of the same-sex marriage movementWill same-sex couples destroy "traditional" marriage, soon to be followed by the collapse of all civilization? That charge has been leveled throughout history whenever the marriage rules change. But marriage, as E. J. Graff shows in this lively, fascinating tour through the history of marriage in the West, has always been a social battlegrou...

Just when the clamor over "traditional" marriage couldn’t get any louder, along comes this groundbreaking book to ask, "What tradition?" In Marriage, a History, historian and marriage expert Stephanie Coontz takes readers from the marital intrigues of ancient Babylon to the torments of Victorian lovers to demonstrate how recent the idea of marrying for love is—and how absurd it would have seemed to most of our ancestors. It was when marriage moved into the emotional sphere...

For constitutionalists, regulation of hate speech violates the First Amendment and damages a free society. Waldron rejects this view, and makes the case that hate speech should be regulated as part of a commitment to human dignity and to inclusion and respect for members of vulnerable minorities.

"A genuinely Catholic life should feed the soul as well as the mind; should offer a vision of men and women made whole by the love of God, the knowledge of creation, and the reality of things unseen; should enable us to see the beauty of the world in the light of eternity; and should help us recapture the nobility of the human story and the dignity of the human person. This is the kind of witness that sets fire to the human heart."—Archbishop Charles J. ChaputIn thi...

"A valentine to wives . . . after reading Yalom's history, one thing is clear: marriage is not for the faint-hearted." — USA TodayHow did marriage, considered a religious duty in medieval Europe, become a venue for personal fulfillment in contemporary America? How did the notion of romantic love, a novelty in the Middle Ages, become a prerequisite for marriage today? And, if the original purpose of marriage was procreation, what exactly is...

Witches, Midwives, and Nurses examines how women-led healing was delegitimized to make way for patriarchy, capitalism, and the emerging medical industry.As we watch another agonizing attempt to shift the future of healthcare in the United States, we are reminded of the longevity of this crisis, and how firmly entrenched we are in a system that doesn't work.First published by the Feminist Press in 1973, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses is an e...

In recent years the Catholic Church has gone through turbulent times with the uncovering of horrible abuse--abuse that persisted and which could have been prevented by many within the Church’s own ranks. As a result many positive aspects of what the Catholic Church teaches and practices are now being overlooked, not just by the media, but by people in and out of the pews. This is not only unfortunate, but detrimental to society at large. As Donohue makes plain, the Church’s teachings remai...

American essayist and Harper's contributing editor Garret Keizer offers a brilliant, literate look at our strip-searched, over-shared, viral-videoed existence.Body scans at the airport, candid pics on Facebook, a Twitter account for your stray thoughts, and a surveillance camera on every street corner -- today we have an audience for all of the extraordinary and banal events of our lives. The threshold between privacy and exposure becomes more permeable by the minu...

In a landmark book that's "intriguing [and] provocative" and presents "an original thesis [to explain] this peculiar paradox—we idealize marriage and yet we’re so bad at it” (The New York Times).Andrew J. Cherlin's three decades of study have shown him that marriage in America is a social and political battlefield in a way that it isn’t in other developed countries. Americans marry and divorce more often and have more live-in partners than Europeans, and g...

The clergyman critiques contemporary American life and offers Catholics—and Christians—guidance to living their faith vigorously, with confidence and hope.From the author of Living the Catholic Faith and Render unto Caesar comes a fresh, urgent, and ultimately hopeful treatise on the state of Catholic life and Christian community in the United States. America today is different in kind , not just in degree, from the past. And this new real...

An essential volume of essays commissioned by the American Spectator and edited by the philosopher Roger Scruton, Liberty and Civilization examines the intellectual and spiritual traditions of our belief in individual liberty, from its Judeo Christian origins on through Enlightenment philosophy. As we are confronted by belligerent atheism at home and jihadist Islam abroad, Liberty and Civilization is an invaluable tool for understanding why it is critical that we defend the cultural, relig...

Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, surveys the exciting and history-changing ideas of Pope John Paul II in A Civilization of Love. By popularizing not only John Paul's vision but also that of his successor, Benedict XVI, Anderson hopes to inspire Christians to work toward creating a civilization of love. In such a civilization every person is a child of God. We are all intrinsically valuable. The battle today is between the culture of death (where people are judged b...