What is the foundation of good preaching? How should preachers prepare themselves to faithfully and effectively address the church. These are the kinds of questions Robert Farrar Capon tackles with freshness and frankness in Foolishness of Preaching.

Should Christians be for or against the free market? For or against globalization? How are we to live in a world of scarcity? William Cavanaugh uses Christian resources to incisively address basic economic matters — the free market, consumer culture, globalization, and scarcity — arguing that we should not just accept these as givens but should instead change the terms of the debate.

Among other things, Cavanaugh discusses how God, in the Eucharist, forms us to consume and be consumed rightly. Examining pathologies of desire in contemporary "free market" economies, Being Consumed puts forth a positive and inspiring vision of how the body of Christ can engage in economic alternatives. At every turn, Cavanaugh illustrates his theological analysis with concrete examples of Christian economic practices.

A lively, captivating investigation into the infrastructure that makes society possible
In our daily lives, we’re surrounded by wires, pipes, utility poles, cell phone towers, and a myriad of other infrastructure that facilitate almost everything we do. Even though these systems are essential, when was the last time you gave them much thought? Not only is infrastructure shrouded in mystery, much of it is woefully out of date—bridges are falling, public transportation is overcrowded, and most roads haven’t been updated since the 1950s. In On the Grid, Scott Huler sets out to understand all of the systems that shape our society—from transportation, water, and garbage to the Internet coming through our cable lines.
He begins his entertaining, fascinating journey at his house in Raleigh, North Carolina, and travels everywhere from the inside of a storm water pipe to the sewers of ancient Rome. Each chapter follows one element of infrastructure back to its source. Huler visits power plants, watches new asphalt pavement being laid, and traces a drop of water backward from his faucet to the Gulf of Mexico. He reaches out to guides along the way, both the workers who operate these systems and the people who plan them.
A mesmerizing and hilarious narrative, On the Grid is filled with amazing insights, interviews, and stories that bring an overlooked but indispensable subject to life. You’ll never look at your day the same way again.
Scott Huler is the author of six books including Defining the Wind and No-Man’s Lands. Widely published in newspapers nationwide, he has also won awards for his work on NPR. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. In our daily lives, we’re surrounded by wires, pipes, utility poles, cell phone towers, and a myriad of other infrastructure that facilitate almost everything we do. Even though these systems are essential, many Americans don't give them much thought. Not only is infrastructure shrouded in mystery, much of it is woefully out of date—bridges are falling, public transportation is overcrowded, and most roads haven’t been updated since the 1950s. In On the Grid, Scott Huler sets out to understand all of the systems that shape our society—from transportation, water, and garbage to the Internet coming through our cable lines.
Huler begins his journey at his house in Raleigh, North Carolina, and travels everywhere from the inside of a storm water pipe to the sewers of ancient Rome. Each chapter follows one element of infrastructure back to its source. Huler visits power plants, watches new asphalt pavement being laid, and traces a drop of water backward from his faucet to the Gulf of Mexico. He reaches out to guides along the way, both the workers who operate these systems and the people who plan them.
On the Grid is filled with insights, interviews, and stories that bring an overlooked but indispensable subject to life. "The first and most important step to living a sustainable life is understanding where you are and what is going on to keep you fed, worked and watered while being there. Scott Huler's fascinating account of his trips through the mesmerizingly crafted infrastructure that sustains our modern American lives gets us toward an understanding of a system that ought to be celebrated. Rather than make you try to get off the grid, On the Grid makes you want to cherish it, and maybe even pay for it, and you understand that to go off it is probably not possible at all."—Robert Sullivan, author of The Thoreau You Don't Know

Praise for Defining the Wind   "[An] enchanting stroll through maritime and science history . . . [Huler is] a charming guide."—The New York Times Book Review

"Huler writes with self-deprecating wit, and . . . he captures the Beaufort scale’s 'open-hearted intellectual decency.'" —The New Yorker

"[A] reminder of why we read science books. . . . Read Huler and you’ll pay more attention to the air moving through your backyard, fluttering leaves, rattling windows . . . compelling, powerful."—The Boston Globe

An explanation of how the economy works discusses how trade wars could be avoided, what a leveraged buyout is, how communist economies make the transition to capitalism, what puts and calls are, what the EC is, and more.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "From Beirut to Jerusalem" offers a brilliant investigation of globalization, the most significant socioeconomic trend in the world today, and how it is affecting everything we do—economically, politically, and culturally—abroad and at home.

Immensely intelligible, thought-provoking guide by Nobel prize-winner considers such topics as the distinction between appearance and reality, the existence and nature of matter, idealism, inductive logic, intuitive knowledge, many other subjects. For students and general readers, there is no finer introduction to philosophy than this informative, affordable and highly readable edition that is "concise, free from technical terms, and perfectly clear to the general reader with no prior knowledge of the subject."—The Booklist of the American Library Association.

Mastering these skills spells the difference between "A.B.D." and "Ph.D." -refuting the magnum opus myth -coping with the dissertation as obsession (magnificent or otherwise) -the fine art of selecting a topic -writing the dissertation with publication in mind -when to stand your ground and when to prudently retreat if the committee's conception of your thesis differs substantially from your own -dealing with obstructive committee members, and keeping the fences mended -how to reconsider "negative" findings as useful data -reviewing your progress, and getting out of the "dissertation dumps" -defending your paper successfully-distinguishing between mere formalities and a serious substantive challenge -exploiting the career potential of your dissertation -and much, much more

Long before there were creative-writing workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says Francine Prose.

In Reading Like a Writer, Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters. She reads the work of the very best writers&#8212Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Chekhov&#8212and discovers why their work has endured. She takes pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot's Middlemarch. She looks to John Le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue, to Flannery O'Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail, and to James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield for clever examples of how to employ gesture to create character. She cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which literature is crafted.

Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.