Ranking Faiths: Religious Stratification in America discusses how religion shapes access to power, privilege, and prestige in the U.S., both historically and today. James D. Davidson and Ralph E. Pyle dispel the idea that the U.S. was founded on the principle of religious equality for all, documenting how religion has been a factor in the allocation of power from the colonial period through the present. From the time of the earliest settlements in America through today, the book demonstrat...

A collection of articles by sociologist James D. Davidson, Ph.D., on issues facing Catholics in the United States. The book looks at the state of Catholicism in America past, present, and future, and at the average American Catholic from economical, political, social, and cultural standpoints. Part II of the book examines opportunities and challenges facing contemporary Catholics, including clergy issues and parish education. The final section is devoted to current beliefs and practices of...

This biography of John Jervis, who became Admiral Lord Vincent, makes compelling reading. It throws an oblique light on Nelsons personality. St Vincent, who was born twenty-three years before Nelson, and survived for eighteen years after Trafalgar, fundamentally influenced the younger mans career despite the two men being diametrically different characters. Yet without him, Nelsons genius might have been submerged by professional jealousy or emotional fragility.It was St Vincents strategy ...

How much do American Catholics still identify with the Catholic Church? Do they agree with the Church's teachings, and how often do they participate in its sacraments? What do they think it takes to be a good Catholic? What do they consider to be the Church's core teachings? How do they believe issues of faith and morals should be decided: by the hierarchy, the laity, or some combination of the two? How are they coping with the priest shortage, and what do they believe the Church should do...

Could Superman sue if someone exposed his identity as Clark Kent? Is a life sentence for an immortal like Apocalypse “cruel and unusual punishment?” Is X-ray vision a violation of search and seizure laws? Is the Joker legally insane? And who foots the bill when a hero destroys a skyscraper or two while defending Metropolis?Fear not, gentle listener! The answers to these questions and a multitude more are contained inside this audiobook.Lawyers by day and comic book enthusia...

The crime fiction canopy's a broad one, with room to give shelter to writing of all sorts, as editor Lawrence Block shows with At Home in the Dark: "Some of these stories have one or both feet planted in another genre. James Reasoner's story is a period western, Joe Lansdale's is bleakly dystopian, and Joe Hill's novelette slithers through a little doorway into another world. "And now that I've singled out those three, I suppose I should go ahead and list the rest of the gang: N. ...

Under his rule, nobody is safePrince Julian Davaros is heir to the throne of the Lamdera Islands. He's gorgeous, rich, famous . . . and just happens to be a serial killer. His family and bodyguard know his murderous proclivities, but to everyone else, he's simply the heir apparent, loved by many. In reality, Julian can't stand most people, he doesn't have relationships, and if he's alone with you it usually means you're his next victim. However, once Wynn Carter catches hi...

In 1932, Charles Lindbergh sat in the Flemington New Jersey courtroom in the First Lindbergh Kidnapping trial. Most people are familiar with Charles Lindbergh vs. Bruno Richard Hauptmann in the famous 1935 “Trial of the Century.” But very few people know that there was another trial that preceded the Hauptmann trial. In the summer of 1932, John Hughes Curtis, a well-known pillar of society in Norfolk, Virginia was approached and asked to serve as an intermediary between the gang who said t...

A brilliantly entertaining and innovative history of the ancient Athenians’ consuming passions for food, wine and sex.Sex, shopping and fish-madness, Athenian style.This fascinating book reveals that the ancient Athenians were supreme hedonists. Their society was driven by an insatiable lust for culinary delights – especially fish – fine wine and pleasures of the flesh. Indeed, great fortunes were squandered and politicians’ careers ruined through ritual drinking at the sym...

"Davidson's concern is with ancient appetites: food, drink and sex in classical Athens . . . [He] presents a superior class of hedonist." —Peter Parsons, London Review of BooksThe lifestyle of the classical Greeks often seems disappointingly modest when compared to those of other legendary civilizations. Where are the marble floors, the pillared halls, the gilden rooms? Even the Athenians, the richest and most powerful of the Greeks, were said by one contem...

Stochastic Limit Theory, published in 1994, has become a standard reference in its field. Now reissued in a new edition, offering updated and improved results and an extended range of topics, Davidson surveys asymptotic (large-sample) distribution theory with applications to econometrics, with particular emphasis on the problems of time dependence and heterogeneity. The book is designed to be useful on two levels. First, as a textbook and reference work, giving definitions of the ...

Asymptotics for Fractional Processes develops an approach to the large-sample analysis of fractional partial-sum processes, featuring long memory increments. Long memory in a time series, equivalently called strong dependence, is usually defined to mean that the autocovariance sequence is non-summable. The processes studied have a linear moving average representation with a single parameter, denoted d, to measure the degree of long-run persistence. Long memory means that ...