Welcome to Thorneside. If you’re a new arrival, the place may look like just another sleepy town nestled among the rolling hills of Lindisfarne County. But spend some time here, meet the people, and you’ll soon see much more. Meet a church choirmaster who has been scanning obituaries for over twenty years, searching for one particular name. Meet a former big-city paramedic who now drives a hearse for the local funeral home so he doesn’t have to worry about killing his passengers. Meet a my...

Black Lives Matter, like its predecessor movements, embodies flesh and blood through local organizing, national and global protests, hunger strikes, and numerous acts of civil disobedience. Chants like “All night! All day! We’re gonna fight for Freddie Gray!” and “No justice, no fear! Sandra Bland is marching here!” give voice simultaneously to the rage, truth, hope, and insurgency that sustain BLM. While BLM has generously welcomed a broad group of individuals whom religious institutions ...

Intended for high school and undergraduate students, this work provides an engaging overview of the abolitionist movement that allows readers to consider history more directly through more than 20 primary source documents.The Abolitionist Movement: Documents Decoded collects primary sources pertaining to various aspects of the American anti-slavery movement in the 18th and 19th centuries and presents these firsthand sources alongside accessibly written, ex...

In this unique and exhilarating autobiography, Allan Jones – Canada’s first blind diplomat – vividly describes how an untreatable eye disease slowly decimated his visual world, most challengingly during his postings in Tokyo and New Delhi, and how he discovered and took to heart the revelatory Indian philosophy that changed his life.Advaita Vedanta, the most iconoclastic and liberating of the classical Indian philosophies, profoundly altered the author’s experience of self and worl...

"A wise, humane and beautifully written book." —Bret Stephens, Wall Street JournalFrom the best-selling author of Benjamin Franklin comes this remarkable work that will help redefine our notion of American heroism. Americans have long been obsessed with their heroes, but the men and women dramatically portrayed here are not celebrated for the typical banal reasons contained in Founding Fathers hagiography. Effortlessly challenging those who persis...

"The author of seven previous history books draws a portrait of the hardships and mysteries that were a part of the early settlers' everyday lives" ( CoastalMags.com).The New World was full of unusual occurrences and strange trials for the early colonists of New England. Devastating plagues, violent conflicts with Native Americans, and freak weather ravaged whole communities. When settlers saw an array of colors dancing through the night sky, they thought ...

Mary Eberstadt, “one of the most acute and creative social observers of our time,” (Francis Fukuyama) shines a much-needed spotlight on a disturbing trend in American society: discrimination against traditional religious belief and believers, who are being aggressively pushed out of public life by the concerted efforts of militant secularists.In It’s Dangerous to Believe, Mary Eberstadt documents how people of faith—especially Christians who adhere to traditional religious beliefs—...

"An invaluable resource to students, scholars, and general readers alike."—Amazon.comThis colleciton assembles more than forty speeches, lectures, and essays critical to the abolitionist crusade, featuring writing by William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Lydia Maria Child, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-sp...

A collection of speeches and essays from the acclaimed Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, and orator hailed as "Black Moses."A selection of Marcus Garvey's addresses and writings, The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey was originally compiled by his widow, Amy Jacques Garvey, to keep track of her husband's opinions and sayings over his career. However, in 1923, she decided to publish the collection and give the public the opportunity ...

Winner of a 2022 Foreword INDIES Award Gold MedalHow do we overcome polarization in American society? How do we advocate for justice when one side won't listen to the other and cycles of outrage escalate?These questions have been pressing for years, but the emergence of a vocal, virulent Christian nationalism have made it even more urgent that we find a way forward.In three brief, incisive chapters Pamela Cooper-White uncovers the troubling extent o...

Since the first African American denomination was established in Philadelphia in 1818, churches have gone beyond their role as spiritual guides in African American communities and have served as civic institutions, spaces for education, and sites for the cultivation of individuality and identities in the face of limited or non-existent freedom. In this Very Short Introduction, Eddie S. Glaude Jr. explores the history and circumstances of African American religion through three exa...

To the dismay of religious leaders, study after study has shown a steady decline in affiliation and identification with traditional religions in America. By 2014, more than twenty percent of adults identified as unaffiliated--up more than seven percent just since 2007. Even more startling, more than thirty percent of those under the age of thirty now identify as "Nones"--answering "none" when queried about their religious affiliation. Is America losing its religion? Or, as more and more Am...