Black churches in America have long been recognized as the most independent, stable, and dominant institutions in black communities. In The Black Church in the African American Experience, based on a ten-year study, is the largest nongovernmental study of urban and rural churches ever undertaken and the first major field study on the subject since the 1930s.Drawing on interviews with more than 1,800 black clergy in both urban and rural settings, combined with a comprehensiv...

A classic work on religion and the racial problems of modern america -now brought up to date.Since the early days of the Republic, Americans' exuberant, unchastened idealism, their commitment to the notion of a perfect society in the New World, has clashed with the reality of ugly American society, and religious groups have all too often accommodated themselves to these injustices.In Race, Religion, and the Continuing American Dilemma, C. Eric Lincoln reevaluates wha...

Nineteen acclaimed writers reflect on the Alabama landscapes, memories, and experiences that shaped their voices.In The Remembered Gate, nationally prominent fiction writers, essayists, and poets recall how their formative years in Alabama shaped them as people and as writers. The essays range in tone from the pained and sorrowful to the wistful and playful, in class from the privileged to the poverty-stricken, in geography from the rural to the u...

In the Name of Elijah Muhammad tells the story of the Nation of Islam—its rise in northern inner-city ghettos during the Great Depression through its decline following the death of Elijah Muhammad in 1975 to its rejuvenation under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan. Mattias Gardell sets this story within the context of African American social history, the legacy of black nationalism, and the long but hidden Islamic presence in North America. He presents with insight and balance a d...

The Avenue in C. Eric Lincoln’s fictional town is the principal residential street of the black community in Clayton City, a prototypical southern town languishing between the two world wars. Unpaved and marked by ditches full of frogs, snakes, and empty whiskey bottles on one side of town, it is the same street, though with a different name, that originates downtown. Only when it reaches the black section of Clayton City do the paving stop and the trash-filled ditches begin. On one side, ...

In Coming through the Fire, prominent scholar and writer C. Eric Lincoln addresses the most important issue of our time with insights forged by a lifetime of confronting racial oppression in America. Born in a small rural town in northern Alabama, raised by his grandparents, Lincoln portrays in rich detail the nuances of racial conflict and control that characterized the community of Athens, personal experiences which would lead him to dedicate his life to illuminating issues of r...

Bound for the Promised Land is the first extensive examination of the impact on the American religious landscape of the Great Migration—the movement from South to North and from country to city by hundreds of thousands of African Americans following World War I. In focusing on this phenomenon’s religious and cultural implications, Milton C. Sernett breaks with traditional patterns of historiography that analyze the migration in terms of socioeconomic considerations.Drawing ...

"Vintage Follett… This is his most ambitious novel and it succeeds admirably." -USA TodayEllis, the American. Jean-Pierre, the Frenchman. They were two men on opposite sides of the Cold War, with a woman torn between them. Together, they formed a triangle of passion and deception, racing from terrorist bombs in Paris to the violence and intrigue of Afghanistan-to the moment of truth and deadly decision for all of them….

Black churches in America have long been recognized as the most independent, stable, and dominant institutions in black communities. The Black Church in the African American Experience, based on a ten-year study, is the largest nongovernmental study of urban and rural churches ever undertaken and the first major field study on the subject since the 1930s.Drawing on interviews with more than 1,800 black clergy in both urban and rural settings, combined with a comprehensive ...

When two of his American employees were held hostage in a heavily guarded prison fortress in Iran, one man took matters into his own hands: American businessman H. Ross Perot. His team consisted of a group of volunteers from the executive ranks of his corporation, hand-picked and trained by a retired Green Beret officer. To free the imprisoned Americans, they would face incalculable odds on a mission that only true heroes would have dared.…“Superb…Ken Follett’s fans may be reluctan...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A young FBI agent fights to stop a catastrophic plot that threatens the Earth itself in this scorching novel hailed as “the model of how a thriller ought to be written” (Los Angeles Times) from the award-winning author of The Pillars of the Earth.“The Hammer of Eden will nail readers to their seats.”—PeopleThe FBI doesn’t believe it. The Governor wants the problem to d...

A PLACE CALLED FREEDOM begins in the infernal coal mines of the Jamisson family, in the Scottish highlands, where twenty-one-year-old Mack McAsh spends most of his waking hours. Bound to his employer for life, Mack burns with an insatiable desire to escape.He finds an unlikely ally in Lizzie Hallim, the beautiful, willful young aristocratic woman who yearns for independence in a male-dominated society.Mack's hunger for freedom brings him into conflict again...