In 'Lost Conversations with Abraham Lincoln,' Gordon Shepherd transports readers back to the formative years of one of America's most iconic figures. This thought-provoking volume consists of five compelling historical fiction stories that revolve around plausible lost conversations during selected moments in the life of Abraham Lincoln, spanning from 1831 to 1861, just before his ascendancy to the White House on the eve of the Civil War. Shepherd skillfully weaves a tapestry of narratives...

America the Beautiful in Dark Times begins and ends with reflections on the fundamental ideals of American democracy expressed by the nation's sixteenth president in a dark time of civil war. In between these affirmations, Gordon Shepherd depicts the dangerous threats of present-day Trumpism to democratic norms and the capitulation of the Republican Party in the service of Trump's authoritarian vendetta to regain the White House after falsely refusing to concede his defeat in the 2020 elec...

In Life Moves On, Gordon Shepherd offers a compelling collection of memoir stories drawn from his adult life in Arkansas as an academic sociologist with a deep affection for the state and its people. The Arkansans he encounters reflect and transcend regional stereotypes, revealing a complex and often surprising cultural landscape. His stories span unscripted religious fervor in a northern Arkansas county, the legacy of the 1919 Elaine Massacre in the Arkansas Mississippi Delta region of th...

In his new book, Gordon M. Shepherd expands on the startling discovery that the brain creates the taste of wine. This approach to understanding wine's sensory experience draws on findings in neuroscience, biomechanics, human physiology, and traditional enology. Shepherd shows, just as he did in Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters, that creating the taste of wine engages more of the brain than does any other human behavior. He clearly illustrates the sc...

Grounded in direct, systematic observation by neutral observers, Talking with the Children of God is a unique study of the radical religious movement now known as The Family International. The book draws on extraordinarily candid interviews with the group's leaders and administrative staff. In revealing new information about the organization's history, beliefs, and use of prophecy, Gordon Shepherd and Gary Shepherd offer a highly detailed case study that is both an antidote to sen...

In Binding Earth and Heaven, Gary Shepherd and Gordon Shepherd use early nineteenth-century Mormonism as a case study to examine questions about how new religious movements may, as rare exceptions, survive and even eventually become successful in spite of intense opposition. Initial scorn and contempt for Mormonism—the fledgling creation of the young Joseph Smith—quickly elevated to mob violence as both Smith’s innovative teachings and converted followers proliferated, resulting i...

How did Jo Ann Barnett—a Methodist girl born and raised in Hueytown, Alabama, during the Great Depression and World War II—come to be Jan Shipps, a renowned non-Mormon historian and scholar of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? In Jan Shipps: A Social and Intellectual Portrait, authors Gordon Shepherd and Gary Shepherd tell the story of how Shipps not only became an important and trusted authority in a field that was predominantly made up of Mormon men, but also the ...

This book consists of over 40 memoir vignettes that capture significant learning experiences of identical twin brothers—Gary and Gordon Shepherd—as they grow up in Mormon Salt Lake City during the 1950s and 1960s. Their stories in the first part of the book feature shared adventures with a wide range of friends, family, and adult models who shape the brothers' appreciation for basic American ideals of democracy, equality, diversity, cooperation, and tolerance—especially as taught and model...

This ebook contains chapters 1 though 9.The inexorable movement toward gender equality in the modern world has taken root in the consciousness of many Latter-day Saints and has publicly emerged as a major concern for the LDS Church. Spearheaded by a new generation of internet-savvy feminists, equality issues in Mormonism attained high public visibility in 2013 through online profiles posted by the Ordain Women organization and its plea to Church authorities to pray about an expande...

This is a collection of stories for sports fans and lovers of historical fiction. The stories feature different sports idols from the twentieth century, like Babe Ruth, Jim Thorpe, Jack Dempsey, and Mickey Mantle. Others showcased in these stories - Smoky Joe Wood, Tony Lazzeri, Pancho Gonzáles, and Larry Doby - are no longer household names, but continue to be esteemed by aficionados of their sports and eras of play. Some of the book's erstwhile stars - John Meyers, Charles Bender, George...

The neuron doctrine, first formulated in 1891, states that the brain is constructed of individual neurons, organized into functioning circuits that mediate behavior. It is the fundamental principal that underlies all of neuroscience and clinical neurology. Foundations of the Neuron Doctrine gives an authoritative account of how this theory was the product of an explosion of histological studies and vigorous debates near the end of the nineteenth century by an extraordinary group ...

For modern scientists, history often starts with last week's journals and is regarded as largely a quaint interest compared with the advances of today. However, this book makes the case that, measured by major advances, the greatest decade in the history of brain studies was mid-twentieth century, especially the 1950s. The first to focus on worldwide contributions in this period, the book ranges through dozens of astonishing discoveries at all levels of the brain, from DNA (Watson and Cric...