In this lively work, part memoir and part essay, Stan Oakes maps his own intellectual journey against the backdrop of some of the most important developments in Western thought across the last seventy years. Witty, incisive, and candid, Oakes is a keen observer of the points-of-view and language tactics employed to shift the center of so many cultural debates at the forefront of western societies. A must read for anyone looking to understand the currents beneath the surface which inform cu...

A practical and hopeful guide to encourage churches to rediscover their purpose as neighborhood anchors through community partnerships.Thousands of congregations across the country occupy underused property while their communities are struggling with urgent needs, including affordable housing, food insecurity, and childcare costs. Loren Richmond, Jr. proposes a solution: transforming church buildings into centers of community and partnership. Rather than being open...

From the New York Times’s former chief classical music critic, a tribute to one of the great singers of modern times and a national treasure who broke racial barriersThe night before Marian Anderson performed her historic concert at the Lincoln Memorial, she called her manager with grave doubts. What had started as a plan to sing a recital in Washington’s largest concert hall had turned, she feared, into a protest rally after she was barred from appearing ...

He's twelve, he's brilliant, and he's completely on his own.Ranford is the kind of kid you'd walk right past and never notice. Average height, average build, nothing remarkable on the outside. But behind those quiet eyes is a mind that works differently from everyone else's. He finds joy in being wrong, sees danger where others see cuteness, and somehow keeps his two best friends going when life gets heavy. There's Janie, the girl with the too-big ...

BLACK/LINE: THE FIRST FRACTUREFour operators. One extraction. A conspiracy far larger than any of them expected.Daniel, Mike, Sofia, and James are among the best operators in the world—four specialists who have spent years learning how to move as one seamless unit. Daniel is the disciplined leader. Mike is the breacher whose humor masks years of buried grief. Sofia is the signals expert who can see patterns nobody else can. James is the ghost: a reconnaissa...

A collection of HEARTPOUNDING! STOMACH-CHURNING! Short stories unlike anything you've ever read before! These interconnected tales tell the story of a group of friends as they attempt to survive the collapse of American society and beyond. Follow a man during his last hours before he commits a terrible crime! ("Setting Sun"). A girl falls in love with a genius boy-inventor. Now they must run for their lives. ("Icarus") Will a man and woman survive as they are attacked by a pack of ravenous...

In a world where information is power and loyalty is nothing more than a variable, three operatives are sent into the shadows to do the work no one else can—or will—touch.Jon Reed. Elena Vega. Eli Parker.Known by the designation C-SOE-7, they are highly trained, highly controlled, and considered expendable. Their missions are carefully constructed by the Federal Continuity Administration and overseen by the secretive Special Oversight Directorate, where eve...

100 Health Benefits of VIBE LOOP: A Practical Guide to Using a Wearable Band to Build a More Active, Consistent LifestyleYour body is designed to move - and this book is designed to help you move more, one small choice at a time.100 Health Benefits of VIBE LOOP is a practical, easy-to-follow guide built around a simple idea: lasting wellness comes from small, repeatable actions, not extreme routines. Inside, you'll find 100 clearly explained lifest...

Walter Conrad has already lost his father, his family's fortune, and the easy security of boyhood, but he meets hardship with grit, intelligence, and a stubborn sense of honor. Traveling west under the assumed name Gilbert Howard, he is sent to Portville to quietly investigate General Wall, the powerful mining magnate whose dealings may have ruined his family. On the way, Walter's calm dignity is tested by General Wall's smug self-importance and by John Wall, the general's spoiled, overbea...

Most books about supplements try to answer the same question: what should you take?This book asks a better one: how do you decide what belongs in your life in the first place?Walk into any pharmacy and you'll find shelves of vitamins, powders, and capsules promising energy, immunity, longevity, focus, and repair. Some of them help in specific cases. Many don't. Most people end up somewhere in between, taking a few things they're unsure about, skipping othe...

Originally curated by Harvard President Charles W. Eliot as a complete liberal education in fifty volumes, the Harvard Classics gathers philosophy, science, literature, and history into a single indispensable library. Plato's dialogues and Marcus Aurelius's meditations sit alongside Dante's Divine Comedy, Francis Bacon's essays, Charles Darwin's scientific writing, and Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, tracing the foundations of Western thought from ancient Greece to the modern age. Homer...

Most worship leaders learn how to run a set long before anyone helps them carry a calling.DEVELOPED is for the leader who wants more than a good Sunday. It's written for the musician, the vocalist, the volunteer who senses that gifting alone will not sustain them, and that who they are becoming off the stage matters as much as what they lead on it.Anchored in Psalm 78:72, integrity of heart and skillful hands, this book moves through seven focuses that grow a worship leader...