America is broken. Dissension, anger, and hopelessness, all describe the political feelings of many Americans. Families and friendships are fractured. Our struggles seem to grow worse with each new election as we hear the same old hype: "This is the most important election of our lifetimes." These realities apply to Christians and non-Christians alike. Yet, aren't Christians supposed to offer hope? Sadly, there's little evidence that Christians have the answers for America's strug...

Each society that consumes alcohol has its own unique drinking culture, and each society deals with the drunken products of that culture in particular ways. As Mark D. West shows in Drunk Japan, the distinctive features of Japanese drinking culture and its intoxication-related laws are not simply interesting in and of themselves, but offer a unique window into Japanese society more broadly. Drawing upon close readings of over 5,000 published Japanese court opinions on drunkenness-...

In Lovesick Japan, Mark D. West explores an official vision of love, sex, and marriage in contemporary Japan. A comprehensive body of evidence—2,700 court opinions—describes a society characterized by a presupposed absence of physical and emotional intimacy, affection, and personal connections. In compelling, poignant, and sometimes horrifying court cases, West finds that Japanese judges frequently opine on whether a person is in love, what other emotions a person is feeli...

Lawsuits are rare events in most people's lives. High-stakes cases are even less commonplace. Why is it, then, that scholarship about the Japanese legal system has focused almost exclusively on epic court battles, large-scale social issues, and corporate governance? Mark D. West's Law in Everyday Japan fills a void in our understanding of the relationship between law and social life in Japan by shifting the focus to cases more representative of everyday Japanese life.Compi...

America is broken. Dissension, anger, and hopelessness, all describe the political feelings of many Americans. Families and friendships are fractured. Our struggles seem to grow worse with each new election as we hear the same old hype: "This is the most important election of our lifetimes." These realities apply to Christians and non-Christians alike. Yet, aren't Christians supposed to offer hope? Sadly, there's little evidence that Christians have the answers for America's strug...

Despite domestic constitutional provisions and international treaty promises, Japan has no law against racial discrimination. Consequently, businesses around Japan display “Japanese Only” signs, denying entry to all 'foreigners' on sight. Employers and landlords routinely refuse jobs and apartments to foreign applicants. Japanese police racially profile 'foreign-looking' bystanders for invasive questioning on the street. Legislators, administrators, and pundits portray foreigners as a nati...

In What Money Can't Buy, renowned political philosopher Michael J. Sandel rethinks the role that markets and money should play in our society.Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we put a price on human life to decide how much pollution to allow? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, outsourcing inmates to for-profit prisons, auctioning a...

CAN OPEN EROTICISM between more than two consenting adults be considered natural sexual behaviour? Is it possible to experience sex with other partners while happily ensconced in an emotionally monogamous marriage? Didn't this type of sexual "swinging" disappear with the 1960s and '70s? What are millions of middle-class couples getting up to on the weekend? These are the questions that arose as award-winning investigative journalist Terry Gould embarked upon a journey through a thriving su...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A fascinating explanation for why white America has become fractured and divided in education and class, from the acclaimed author of Human Diversity.“I’ll be shocked if there’s another book that so compellingly describes the most important trends in American society.”—David Brooks, New York Times**In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anyth...

A leading expert on native spirituality and shamanism reveals the four archetypal principles of the Native American medicine wheel and how they can lead us to a higher spirituality and a better world.

As America descends deeper into polarization and paralysis, social psychologist Jonathan Haidthas done the seemingly impossible—he has explained the origins of morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to everyone on the political spectrum.Drawing on twenty-five years of groundbreaking research, Haidt shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intuitions about right and wrong, and why we need the insights of each if we are to flourish as a n...

The world’s second-wealthiest country, Japan once seemed poised to overtake America. But its failure to recover from the economic collapse of the early 1990s was unprecedented, and today it confronts an array of disturbing social trends. Japan has the highest suicide rate and lowest birthrate of all industrialized countries, and a rising incidence of untreated cases of depression. Equally as troubling are the more than one million young men who shut themselves in their rooms, withdrawing f...