"What makes this work so exciting is not simply its content . . . but its revolutionary challenge to . . . Western culture's most familiar moral assumptions." — NewsweekJohn Boswell's National Book Award–winning study of the history of attitudes toward homosexuality in the early Christian West was a groundbreaking work that challenged preconceptions about the Church's past relationship to its gay members—among them priests, bishops, and even saints—when it ...

Both highly praised and intensely controversial, this brilliant book produces dramatic evidence that at one time the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches not only sanctioned unions between partners of the same sex, but sanctified them--in ceremonies strikingly similar to heterosexual marriage ceremonies.

Dear Reader:CONGRATULATIONS!You have just picked up the best book ever written, by the greatest person who ever lived, using the finest pen ever made, set down on the world's most luxurious legal pads.And the advice I have to share with you in Trumped: Think Like a Bizillionaire is worth even more than the paper it's printed on. You'll learn the most important ways to get ahead, the best financial advice I've ever received, and the nastiest w...

Get the same survival training that the U.S. military uses for its troops.The U.S. Armed Forces Survival Guide is the only source hikers, campers, explorers or families focused on emergency preparedness will ever need.The U.S. Armed Forces Survial Guide covers everything a modern outdoorsperson needs to know to make it in tough terrain and tense situations, from the psychology of survial and overcoming fear to building a shelter and making it through a natur...

"On a handshake, I've trusted Donald Dell with my life." -Arthur Ashe, U.S. Open championGood negotiators know the rules. Great negotiators know when to break those rules. And then there are the true master dealmakers, like the pioneering sports lawyer Donald Dell. Over the last four decades, he has fought for some of the biggest stars in the world-Michael Jordan, Jimmy Connors, Patrick Ewing, Andy Roddick, Stan Smith, and dozens of others.Dell is tough eno...

Is it possible to compare French presidential politics with village leadership in rural India? Most social scientists are united in thinking such unlikely juxtapositions are not feasible. Boswell, Corbett and Rhodes argue that they are possible. This book explains why and how. It is a call to arms for interpretivists to embrace creatively comparative work. As well as explaining, defending and illustrating the comparative interpretive approach, this book is also an engaging, hands-on guide ...

This book explores why naïve ideals about better policymaking persist even in cynical times, revealing the careful reflection at the heart of what appears to be 'magical thinking' in public policy. Contemporary policy scholarship tends to be cynical about movements to reform policymaking by making it more rational or more democratic. Scholars point to the pathologies and vagaries of realpolitik that render ideals such as evidence-based policymaking, long-term prevention, collaboration, tr...

This book sheds new light on the political battle to define and construct obesity as a policy issue. Through a rich analysis of the debates in Australia and the UK, it develops a nuanced analysis of the competing narratives that actors rely on to make sense of and argue about this issue, and documents how and to what effect they draw on scientific evidence to support their accounts. The real 'war on obesity', it demonstrates, has always been over the meaning and nature of this public healt...

Despite innovation to address ailing trust and rising inequalities, democratic reformers ignore the most common way that disaffected citizens encounter the state: in the frontline implementation of laws, policies, and services. Dominant thinking about democracy seemingly writes off these encounters as technocratic and apolitical, implicitly presenting citizens as 'meek' targets of state action. But ethnographic studies across health, education, planning, policing, and beyond reveal subtle ...

Public policy is often framed as a response to social problems rather than the cause of them. Carol Bacchi’s influential ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be?’ (WPR) approach – first published in her 2009 book, Analysing Policy – addresses this contrast and has become an essential methodology for post-structural analysis of public policy.This edited volume brings together leading international scholars to rethink, extend and reflect on the WPR approach in novel ways, demonstrating...

The Survivor Manual is the real deal--based on techniques taught to the U.S. Armed Forces and tested in actual survival situations over decades, the information in this book could help you beat any weather condition, any circumstance, any odds. This fully illustrated guide will show you how to:--find direction and orienteer--perform first aid--travel over every type of terrain from glaciers to quicksand--identify edible plants--fish and trap

The fabric of democracy is threadbare in many contemporary societies. Connections that are vital to the functioning and integrity of our democratic systems are wearing thin. Citizens are increasingly disconnected — from their elected representatives, from one another in the public sphere, and from complex processes of public policy. In such disconnected times, how can we strengthen and renew our democracies? This book develops the idea of democratic mending as a way of advancing a more con...