"'A covenantal vision of life, with mitzvah (divine commandment) as the central organizing principle in the relationship between Jews and God, liberates the intellect and the moral will. I seek to show that a tradition mediated by the Sinai covenant can encourage the development of a human being who is not afraid to assume responsibility for the ongoing drama of Jewish history. Passive resignation is seen not to be an essential trait of one whose relationship to God is mediated by the hearing of mitzvot ." --from the Introduction This interpretation of Jewish teaching will appeal to all people seeking to understand the relationship between the idea of divine demand and the human response, between religious tradition and modernity. Hartman shows that a life lived in Jewish tradition need not be passive, insulated, or self-effacing, but can be lived in the modern pluralistic world with passion, tolerance, and spontaneity. The Judaic tradition is often seen as being more concerned with uncritical obedience to law than with individual freedom and responsibility. In A Living Covenant, Hartman challenges this approach by revealing a Judaism grounded in a covenant--a relational framework--informed by the metaphor of marital love rather than that of parent-child dependency. This view of life places the individual firmly within community. Hartman shows that the Judaic tradition need not be understood in terms of human passivity and resignation, but rather as a vehicle by which human individuality and freedom can be expressed within a relational matrix.

In this original study, noted scholar and theologian David Hartman discusses the relation between Maimonides’ halakhic writings and The Guide of the Perplexed—the connection is much closer than is generally supposed. Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest demonstrates that Maimonides’ total philosophic endeavor was an attempt to show how the free search for truth, established through the study of logic, physics, and metaphysics, can live harmoniously with a way of life defined by the normative traditions of Judaism.

When peace talks between Palestinian and Israeli leaders collapsed at Camp David in 2000, a conflict as bloody as any that had ever occurred between the two peoples began. Now David Horovitz—editor of "'The Jerusalem Report—explores the quotidian and profound effects this conflict and its attendant terrorism have had on the lives of ordinary men, women and children. Horovitz describes the “grim lottery” of life in Israel since 2000. He makes clear that far from becoming blasé or desensitized, its citizens respond with deepening horror every time the front pages are disfigured by the rows of passport portraits presenting the faces of the newly dead. He takes us to the funeral of a murdered Israeli, where the presence of security personnel underlines that nowhere is safe. He describes how his wife must tell their children to close their eyes when they pass a just-exploded bus on the way to school, so that the images of carnage won’t haunt them. He talks with government officials on both sides of the conflict, with relatives of murdered victims, with Palestinian refugees, and with his own friends and family, letting us sense what it feels like to live with the constant threat and the horrific frequency of shootings and suicide bombings. Examining the motives behind the violence, he blames mistaken policies and actions on the Israeli as well as the Palestinian side, and details the suffering of Palestinians deprived of basic freedoms under strict Israeli controls .But at the root of this conflict, he argues, is terrorism and Yasser Arafat’s deliberate use of it after spurning a genuine opportunity for peace at Camp David, and then misleading his people, and much of the world, about what was on offer there. He describes how the world’s press has too often allowed prejudgment to replace fair-minded reporting. And finally, Horovitz makes us see the vast depth and extent of the mistrust between Israelis and Palestinians and the enormous challenges that underlie new attempts at peacemaking.Human and harrowing—and yet projecting an unexpected optimism—Still Life with Bombers affords us a remarkably balanced and insightful understanding of a seemingly intractable conflict.

"Mortality and Faith is the second half of an autobiography of David Horowitz whose first installment, Radical Son, was published more than twenty years ago. It completes the account of his life from where the first book left off to his seventy-eighth year."--Amazon.com.

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"Ruling Ideas" is the ninth and final volume of The Black Book of the American Left , a collection of David Horowitz's conservative writings over the last 30 years. The previous eight volumes of this magisterial work have explored the battlegrounds—the university, racial relations, popular culture, etc.—where the left attempts to “radically transform” America. “Ruling Ideas” is a summary look at the ideas in the bone marrow of the left, the ideas that give it momentum and make its war against America a forever war.

This book examines the popular bases of Communist influence in Italy, focusing on the struggle between the Catholic Church and the Communist Party for the allegiance of the Italian people. The author details the ways in which the citizens resolve the central paradox of Italy, which lies in its beings the home both of the Vatican and of the largest Communist party of any non-Communist nation. He discusses the local structure of the Party, including its many allied organisations and the nature of participation in Party affairs, and stresses its role in local social life. In this study, Professor Kertzer draws upon the experiences and observations of a year spent in a working-class quarter of Bologna, the capital of Italian Communism. While the national Communist Party calls for conciliation with the Church, there is an ancient tradition of anti-clericalism in this area. Moreover, the official Church position excludes the possibility of people being both Catholic and Communist. The implications of this situation for local-level tactics of Church and Party, and how people divide their allegiances between the competing claims, form the primary theme of the book.

Dave Isay--StoryCorps's founder and the editor of the project's bestselling collection, "Listening Is an Act of Love"--Presents a celebration of American mothers. Selecting StoryCorps's most revelatory stories on the subject, "Mom" looks across a diversity of experience--from the Bronx to the rural South and beyond--to present an entirely original portrait of motherhood.

This new second edition is filled with the latest, most accurate wombhood information, including comforting answers to hundreds of questions, such as • “My mother just took a sip of white wine. Am I going to end up looking like some Chernobyl baby now?” • “So far Mommy is spending most of her pregnancy in a state of stress, anxiety, and depression. Which one should she focus on?” • “I’m kicking as hard as I can, but Mom says it feels like ‘butterflies fluttering.’ Am I doing something wrong?” • “Why do my parents blast Mozart at me every night right when I’m trying to sleep?!?” • “To the nearest hundred, how many people should Mommy invite to my birth?”

An American journalist discusses life in modern Russia and shares the viewpoints of common citizens about their government, the U.S., and the quality of life in the Soviet Union

An in-depth look at scientific fraud Fraud in science is not as easy to identify as one might think. When accusations of scientific misconduct occur, truth can often be elusive, and the cause of a scientist's ethical misstep isn't always clear. On Fact and Fraud looks at actual cases in which fraud was committed or alleged, explaining what constitutes scientific misconduct and what doesn't, and providing readers with the ethical foundations needed to discern and avoid fraud wherever it may arise. In David Goodstein's varied experience—as a physicist and educator, and as vice provost at Caltech, a job in which he was responsible for investigating all allegations of scientific misconduct—a deceptively simple question has come up time and again: what constitutes fraud in science? Here, Goodstein takes us on a tour of real controversies from the front lines of science and helps readers determine for themselves whether or not fraud occurred. Cases include, among others, those of Robert A. Millikan, whose historic measurement of the electron's charge has been maligned by accusations of fraud; Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons and their "discovery" of cold fusion; Victor Ninov and the supposed discovery of element 118; Jan Hendrik Schön from Bell Labs and his work in semiconductors; and J. Georg Bednorz and Karl Müller's discovery of high-temperature superconductivity, a seemingly impossible accomplishment that turned out to be real. On Fact and Fraud provides a user's guide to identifying, avoiding, and preventing fraud in science, along the way offering valuable insights into how modern science is practiced.

On the world's first commodities exchange in 1659, fortunes are won and lost in an instant. Miguel Lienzo, a sharp-witted trader in Amsterdam's close-knit community of Portugese Jews, knows this only too well. Once among the city's most envied merchants, Miguel has lost everything in a sudden shift in the sugar markets. Now impoverished and humiliated, Miguel must find a way to restore his wealth and reputation. Miguel enters into a partnership with a seductive Dutchwoman who offers him one last chance at success - a daring plot to corner the market of an astonishing new commodity called coffee.

From the acclaimed author of The Whiskey Rebels and A Conspiracy of Paper comes a superb new historical thriller set in the splendor and squalor of eighteenth-century London. In Benjamin Weaver, David Liss has created one of fiction's most enthralling characters. The year is 1722. Ruffian for hire, ex-boxer, and master of disguise, Weaver finds himself caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse, pitted against Jerome Cobb, a wealthy and mysterious schemer who needs Weaver's strength and guile for his own treacherous plans. Weaver is blackmailed into stealing documents from England's most heavily guarded estate, the headquarters of the ruthless British East India Company, but the theft of corporate secrets is only the first move in a daring conspiracy within the eighteenth century's most powerful corporation. To save his friends and family from Cobb's reach, Weaver must infiltrate the Company, navigate its warring factions, and uncover a secret plot of corporate rivals, foreign spies, and government operatives. With millions of pounds and the security of the nation at stake, Weaver will find himself in a labyrinth of hidden agendas, daring enemies, and unexpected allies. With the explosive action and scrupulous period research that are David Liss's trademarks, The Devil's Company, depicting the birth of the modern corporation, is the most impressive achievement yet from an author who continues to set ever higher standards for historical suspense.

Ed and his friends accidentally sign up for a playwriting contest, a dangerous activity for someone who possesses the Silver Center, and what they write is pretty strange, but when it comes to actually performing the play, Ed's magic coin lends new m

A selection of twelve stories about aliens, a community pool filled with bullies, a surprising start to the Fourth of July fireworks, and other peculiar things, with comic-book style illustrations.

"William Furman, an African-American and career criminal, shot and killed a white homeowner during a 1967 burglary in Savannah, Georgia. In short order he was arrested, put on trial, convicted by a nearly all-white jury, and sentenced to death. Furman's attorney, aided by the NAACP, doggedly appealed the verdict all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which voided Furman's sentence in a highly contentious 5-4 vote. That decision overturned Georgia's capital punishment statute, and by implication all other state death penalty laws, for violating the Eighth amendment's prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment." Furman, thus, effectively halted capital punishment in the United States. But the reprieve was only temporary, for the decision did not rule the death penalty per se to be unconstitutional; rather it struck down the laws that currently governed its application, leaving the states free to devise new ones that the Court might find acceptable. And that is exactly what happened. Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Oshinsky's compact and insightful study of the case showcases his talent for clarifying the complex and often confusing legal issues that surround a subject as controversial as capital punishment."--Back cover.

In the streets of an ordinary Italian town, the people go about their everyday lives. In an old apartment block above them, a young man pores over photographs and plans, dedicated to his life's most important project. Day by day, in his imagination, he is rehearsing for his greatest performance. Yet when his moment comes, nothing could have prepared him for what happens...