On the cover of Potpourri: Arbaugh, Bartholomew, and Engelhardt Family Lore/ is a photograph taken in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on February 22, 1932, including author William C. Arbaugh and his grandparents, Clara and William G. Arbaugh, with Nora Leone and Alonzo Harvey Arbaugh. In this volume celebrating the family history of the Arbaugh, Bartholomew, and Engelhardt families, Arbaugh captures times past. Fueled by the surprise discovery of a neatly tied bundle of letters, the family his...

It is often said that in polite conversation the topics of religion and politics should be avoided but how long can most of us carry an engaging conversation on the weather? One who is concerned about the directions in which this nation is moving must necessarily discuss controversial topics.Have the labels liberal and conservative outlived their usefulness? Is liberalism truly a bad word? What are conservatives trying to conserve? Is it possible to rise above the din of partisan d...

For almost fifty years, through her tireless service to the poor and her courageous witness for peace, Dorothy Day offered an example of the gospel in action. Now the publication of her diaries, previously sealed for twenty-five years after her death, offers a uniquely intimate portrait of her struggles and concerns.Beginning in 1934 and ending in 1980, these diaries reflect her response to the vast changes in America, the Church, and the wider world. Day experienced most of the gr...

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of the National Book Award finalist War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning Chris Hedges challenges the Christian Right’s religious legitimacy and argues that, at its core, it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled nationalism and a hatred for the open society.Twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists first spoke of the United States becoming a Christian nation that would build a ...

The New York Times–bestselling conservative author explains why he believes certain social trends will lead to the downfall of the United States.America is disintegrating. The "one Nation under God, indivisible" of the Pledge of Allegiance is passing away. In a few decades, that America will be gone forever. In its place will arise a country unrecognizable to our parents. This is the thrust of Pat Buchanan's Suicide of a Superpower, his most contro...

The rugged character and indomitable spirit of the early pioneers of Stephen F. Austins Texas colony had their roots in a turbulent, distant past. From the early 1600s, their courageous ancestors had pushed westward, leaving the European shores to carve out a new nation from the wilderness. They fled religious and political oppression in search of a better life in which freedom was of supreme importance. Many came with tales of their former struggles in Londonderry, Ireland during the grea...

A powerful, thought-provoking and always lively examination of how American Christianity has badly lost its way—with most of what goes by the name of Christianity today being one or another type of heresy—by the youngest writer ever appointed as editorial columnist for The New York Times.In a world populated by “pray and grow rich” gospels and Christian cults of self-esteem, Ross Douthat argues that America’s problem isn’t too much religion; nor is it into...

Taffinder Pulleine and Julia Dunn were married in Yorkshire, England, in 1870, and moved to America two years later. They are not the typical immigrants: Julia was privileged and had had a maid her entire life, and Taffinder had just inherited a sizeable amount of money. Craving some excitement, however, they struck out for a faraway land they had heard so much about.After ending up in Kansas, the couple began a life of farming, weathering tornadoes, and dodging hungry sieges of gr...

Thanks to collapsing birthrates, much of Europe is on a path of willed self-extinction. The untold story is that birthrates in Muslim nations are declining faster than anywhere elseâ??at a rate never before documented. Europe, even in its decline, may have the resources to support an aging population, if at a terrible economic and cultural cost. But in the impoverished Islamic world, an aging population means a civilization on the brink of total collapseâ?? something Islamic terrorists kno...

A delightful compendium of insightful, disarming, and sometimes funny reasons why Episcopalians are members of the Church."The Episcopal Church is a secret too well kept, " says compiler Louie Crew. "Many are starved for what we experience daily and too easily take for granted." With these words, Crew invited thousands of people online to participate in creating a list of reasons to be Episcopalian. Portions of that list, and many additional contributions, fill thi...

"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...

Along Pond Creek Road is a look at the families making up the ancestry of Alda Buckley Kennedy. The stories cover the whole of American history: emigration to Williamsburg, a Protestant Rebellion in Maryland, the Revolutionary War, flatboating on the Ohio River and pioneering in log cabins, conflicts with Indians, the War of 1812, the Civil War, Abraham Lincolns wedding, etc. We are blessed to be able to know so much about our ancestors.