How old is the universe? How far away are the galaxies and how fast are they travelling away from us? What do the atoms in our bodies, our very existence, tell us about the history of the universe? Are we in a special place in the universe? What is dark matter and why do astronomers think it pervades the universe? How heavy is the vacuum? How do galaxies form? Michael Rowan-Robinson answers these questions and encapsulates all that modern astronomy has learnt about the universe around nine...

Drawing on exciting discoveries of the last forty years, Night Vision explores how infrared astronomy, an essential tool for modern astrophysics and cosmology, helps astronomers reveal our Universe's most fascinating phenomena – from the birth of stars in dense clouds of gas to black holes and distant colliding galaxies and the traffic of interstellar dust from the formation of our Solar System. While surveying the progress in infrared observation, astronomer Michael Rowan-Robinson introdu...

A chilling account of Hugo Chávez's shadow war on the United StatesThe American government has shrugged off South American politics for nearly forty years. In the meantime, our neighbor to the south has grown into an unprecedented threat. Hugo Chávez, the current president of Venezuela and a self-proclaimed enemy of the United States, commands what even Osama bin Laden only dreams of -- but few Americans see him as a true danger to this country. This book argues th...

Bluebeard is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault. The tale tells the story of a violent nobleman in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of one wife to avoid the fate of her predecessors.

Bluebeard is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault. The tale tells the story of a violent nobleman in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of one wife to avoid the fate of her predecessors. "Once upon a time there was a man who had fine houses, both in town and country, a deal of silver and gold plate, carved furniture, and coaches gilded all over. But unhappily this man had a blue beard, which made him so ugly and so ter...

The half millennium between the creation of the English nation in around 550 and the Norman Conquest in 1066 was a formative one. This groundbreaking series rediscovers the Anglo-Saxons through vivid portraits of thirty incredible men and women, as told by their contemporary admirers.Nobel prize-winner Seamus Heaney discusses the Beowulf bard; former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams focuses on St Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury; Michael Wood celebrates Penda, t...

This book considers what it means to die.Trew achieves this through the prism of two significant twentieth century thinkers: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Christos Yannaras. In doing so, he continues an esteemed tradition of works considering the theology and philosophy of death, including Karl Rahner's On the Theology of Death and Martin Heidegger's Being and Time. However, Trew is also breaking new ground: this is the first English language book to co...

At the turn of the twenty-first century, typical households were equipped with a landline telephone, a desktop computer connected to a dial-up modem, and a shared television set. Television, radio and newspapers were the dominant mass media. Today, homes are now network hubs for all manner of digital technologies, from mobile devices littering lounge rooms to Bluetooth toothbrushes in bathrooms--and tomorrow, these too will be replaced with objects once inconceivable. Tracing the origins o...

Prayer: Christian and Muslim Perspectives is a rich collection of essays, scriptural texts, and personal reflections featuring leading scholars analyzing the meaning and function of prayer within their traditions. Drawn from the 2011 Building Bridges seminar in Doha, Qatar, the essays in this volume explore the devotional practices of each tradition and how these practices are taught and learned. Relevant texts are included, with commentary, as are personal reflections on prayer b...

The Spring 2021 Issue. Ploughshares is an award-winning journal of new writing. Since 1971, Ploughshares has discovered and cultivated the freshest voices in contemporary American literature, and remains prescient in the digital age by providing readers with thoughtful and entertaining literature in a variety of formats. Find out why the New York Times named Ploughshares “the Triton among minnows.”As guest-editor Laura van den Berg writes in her introduction, “At its core, literatu...

Discover the joy of permaculture gardening and farming and start your journey to sustainable, eco-friendly living with this comprehensive guidebook on permaculture! You may have heard of the news or experienced it in real-time, but there’s a global crisis concerning the state of our planet. Concerned, you thought of sustainable ways to help nature recover, but your efforts end up in vain. The good news is, there is a method to help mother nature regain its balance, and you don’t need to be...

Communicating the Word is a record of the 2008 Building Bridges seminar, an annual dialogue between leading Christian and Muslim scholars convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Featuring the insights of internationally known Christian and Muslim scholars, the essays collected here focus attention on key scriptural texts but also engage with both classical and contemporary Islamic and Christian thought. Issues addressed include, among others, the different ways in which Christia...