The Great Depression and the New Deal. For generations, the collective American consciousness has believed that the former ruined the country and the latter saved it. Endless praise has been heaped upon President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for masterfully reining in the Depression’s destructive effects and propping up thecountry on his New Deal platform. In fact, FDR has achieved mythical status in American history and is considered to be, along with Washington, Jefferson, and Lincol...

If you are like most people you're not sure what Postmodernism is. And if this were like most books on the subject it probably wouldn't tell you.Besides what a few grumpy critics claim Postmodernism is not a bunch of meaningless intellectual mind games. On the contrary it is a reaction to the most profound spiritual and philosophical crisis of our time – the failure of the Enlightenment.Jim Powell takes the position that Postmodernism is a series of "maps" that help people find their way t...

Deconstruction is so labyrinthine (and rumored to be fatal) that it's become the monster that murdered philosophy. When Jacques Derrida the father of deconstruction uses buzz-words such as "phallogocentrism" and "transcendental signified" humanities students and aspiring philosophers may get weak in the knees.Following up on the success of Derrida For Beginners Jim Powell's Deconstruction For Beginners is an irreverent romp through deconstructive domains. Though Powell offers lucid explana...

In 1966 Jacques Derrida gave a lecture at Johns Hopkins University that cast the entire history of Western Philosophy into doubt. The following year Derrida published three brilliant but mystifying books that convinced the pollsters that he was the most important philosopher of the late 20th Century. Unfortunately nobody was sure whether the intellectual movement that he spawned – Deconstruction – advanced philosophy or murdered it.The truth? – Derrida is one of those annoying geniuses you...

The spiritual rewards and intellectual challenges of Eastern Philosophy are revealed in this visually stunning book illustrated by Joe Lee and with 19th Century engravings.Eastern Philosophy is not an intellectual pursuit but one that involves one's entire being. Much of it is so deeply entwined with the non-intellectual art of meditation that the two are impossible to separate. In this accessible survey of the major philosophies of India China Tibet and Japan Jim Powell draws upon his kno...

The fateful blunder that radically altered the course of the twentieth century—and led to some of the most murderous dictators in historyPresident Woodrow Wilson famously rallied the United States to enter World War I by saying the nation had a duty to make “the world safe for democracy.” But as historian Jim Powell demonstrates in this shocking reappraisal, Wilson actually made a horrible blunder by committing the United States to fight. Far from making the world ...

Every church has a unique culture that serves as the soil where its ministry occurs. A church’s culture is the somewhat nebulous and complex blend of norms, beliefs, attitudes, traditions, and practices that define the congregation. The culture establishes the environment that often predetermines the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of God’s Word within that body of believers. It influences a congregation’s potential impact more than techniques, programs, orpragmatic changes.

Today, thousands of years after her birth, in lands remote from her native island of Lesbos and in languages that did not exist when she wrote her poetry in Aeolic Greek, Sappho remains an important name among lovers of poetry and poets alike,. Celebrated throughout antiquity as the supreme Greek poet of love and of the personal lyric, noted especially for her limpid fusion of formal poise, lucid insight, and incandescent passion, today her poetry is also prized for its uniquely vivid part...

For thousands of years, slavery went unchallenged in principle. Then in a single century, slavery was abolished and more than seven million slaves were freed. Greatest Emancipation tells this amazing story, focusing on Haiti, the British Caribbean, the United States, Cuba and Brazil, which accounted for the vast majority of slaves in the west. Jim Powell offers some surprising insights and shows that while the abolition of slavery was essential to any free society, it wasn't the s...

"The Sapphic impression of emotion poured out in unpremeditated speech is the product of sophisticated art. Such poetry confronts the translator with a formidable challenge.... Jim Powell is fully aware of the dangers, and speaks of the 'fluidity, ease, grace, and melodic variety' of Sappho's measures. Powell has tried to reproduce the effect. The resulting book is a brilliant success. Powell has shored her fragments against [Sappho's] ruins to give us a garland in which the flowers, thoug...

What Hath TR Wrought?“I don’t think that any harm comes from the concentration of power in one man’s hands.” —Theodore RooseveltThe notion that Theodore Roosevelt was one of America’s greatest presidents is literally carved in stone—right up there on Mount Rushmore. But as historian Jim Powell shows in the refreshingly original Bully Boy, Roosevelt’s toothy grin, outsized personality, colossal energy, and fascinating life story have obscured what he actually did as...

Of humankind’s great achievements over the past 2,000 years, one towers above all the rest: the arduous, painstaking process of wresting liberty from tyranny’s iron fist. The Triumph of Liberty chronicles this inspiring story through sixty-five biographical portraits. From the millions of men and women whose struggles and successes have made freedom possible, Jim Powell has chosen a few talented, courageous individuals whose lives illustrate the triumphing will of the human spirit...