"In Between Two Ages, Van Wishard has provided us with a masterful synthesis of the main currents of history, ranging over the centuries with an experts eye to identify the key trends in economics, technology and culture that have led us to this place in time. By itself, this would be an important contribution to our understanding. But the true significance of Between Two Ages lies in his placing this analysis within a profoundly moral and ethical framework. Van Wishard has not simply diagnosed the reasons for our spiritual malaise. He has also suggested how each of us can overcome this malaise and find a larger purpose or meaning to our lives. From the foreword by Dr. Mitchell B. Reiss Dean of International Affairs College of William & Mary Introduction Despite the stratospheric heights of the Dow in recent years, the allure of prosperity and the astounding possibilities opening up for human fulfillment, the next three decades could be the most decisive 30-year period in the history of mankind. Thus you and I are living in the midst of perhaps the most uncertain period America has ever known -- more difficult than World War II, the Depression or even the Civil War. With these earlier crises, an immediately identifiable, focused emergency existed, an emergency people could see and mobilize to combat. But the crisis today is of a different character and order. For America is at the vortex of a global cyclone of change so vast and deep that it is uprooting established institutions, altering centuries-old relationships, changing underlying mores and attitudes, and now, so the experts tell us, even threatening the continued existence of the human species. It is not simply change at the margins; it is change at the very core of life. Culture-smashing change. Identity-shattering change. Soul-crushing change. Prior generations faced change within a context of stable institutions that functioned more or less effectively. Earlier generations had a more stableif less comfortableframework, as well as more clearly defined reference points. Our era doesnt have such guides, for all of Americas institutions, from government to family, from business to religion, are in upheaval. The past century has seen civilized life increasingly ripped from its moorings. The immutable certainties that anchored our ancestors no longer seem to hold in a world where the tectonic plates of life are clashing, where human antagonisms obliterate tens of thousands of people in Africa, Bosnia or Chechnya in a matter of a few days or weeks, where a stray bullet ends the life of an elderly lady quietly walking home from church in Washington, D.C. In so many ways, a life that has lost its essential meaning has cut giant swaths across humanity. Clearly, we have been standing at a unique historical dividing line -- the end of the modern era, as well as the Industrial Age, the end of the colonial period, the end of the Atlantic-based economic, political and military global hegemony, the end of Americas culture being drawn primarily from European sources, the end of the masculine patriarchal/hierarchical epoch, and as Joseph Campbell suggests, the end of the Christian eon. Obviously, one era doesnt stop and a new one start in a week. Yearseven decades or generationsof overlap take place. The sense of an age ending and something new emerging was evident during the earliest years of the 20th century. In 1913, Harvard philosopher George Santayana noted: "The civilization characteristic of Christendom has not yet disappeared, yet another civilization has begun to take its place." In 1928, at the height of the "Roaring Twenties," historian Will Durant wrote, "Human conduct and belief are now undergoing transformations profounder and more disturbing than any since the appearance of wealth and philosophy put an end to the tradition

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR NPR • Time Magazine • The Washington Post • Entertainment Weekly • The Boston Globe A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK From one of our most accomplished and widely admired historians—a revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin's youngest sister, Jane, whose obscurity and poverty were matched only by her brother’s fame and wealth but who, like him, was a passionate reader, a gifted writer, and an astonishingly shrewd political commentator. Making use of an astonishing cache of little-studied material, including documents, objects, and portraits only just discovered, Jill Lepore brings Jane Franklin to life in a way that illuminates not only this one extraordinary woman but an entire world.

Eminent scholar Zbigniew Brzezinski's New York Times bestselling blueprint for American foreign policy strategy in the twenty-first century The world today faces a crisis of power, caused by the dramatic shift in its center of gravity from the West to the East, by the dynamic political awakening of people worldwide, and by the deterioration of America's performance both domestically and internationally. As a result, America's position as a world superpower is far from secure. In Strategic Vision, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski argues that America can and should be actively engaged in navigating this period of crisis and provides a strategic blueprint for America to revitalize its global status and promote a peaceful twenty-first century. As Brzezinski eloquently shows, without an America that is economically vital, socially appealing, responsibly powerful, and capable of sustaining an intelligent foreign engagement, the geopolitical prospects for the West could become increasingly grave.

Klein argues that adult success is often established in the developmental preschool years. She shares advice for parents on how to promote such success-driving positive attributes as resilience, self-regulation, and empathy.

Three of today's foremost church historians have succeeded in producing an invaluable introdution to church history that focuses on the influence of the church on culture and the impact of society on the church. A unique study that affirms that church history is not exclusively European or American--but is truly a global story--with global significance.

Named a Best Book of 2020 by The Telegraph, The Times, and BBC History Magazine An illuminating guide to the scientific and technological achievements of the Middle Ages through the life of a crusading astronomer-monk. "Falk’s bubbling curiosity and strong sense of storytelling always swept me along. By the end, The Light Ages didn’t just broaden my conception of science; even as I scrolled away on my Kindle, it felt like I was sitting alongside Westwyk at St. Albans abbey, leafing through dusty manuscripts by candlelight." —Alex Orlando, Discover Soaring Gothic cathedrals, violent crusades, the Black Death: these are the dramatic forces that shaped the medieval era. But the so-called Dark Ages also gave us the first universities, eyeglasses, and mechanical clocks. As medieval thinkers sought to understand the world around them, from the passing of the seasons to the stars in the sky, they came to develop a vibrant scientific culture. In The Light Ages, Cambridge science historian Seb Falk takes us on a tour of medieval science through the eyes of one fourteenth-century monk, John of Westwyk. Born in a rural manor, educated in England’s grandest monastery, and then exiled to a clifftop priory, Westwyk was an intrepid crusader, inventor, and astrologer. From multiplying Roman numerals to navigating by the stars, curing disease, and telling time with an ancient astrolabe, we learn emerging science alongside Westwyk and travel with him through the length and breadth of England and beyond its shores. On our way, we encounter a remarkable cast of characters: the clock-building English abbot with leprosy, the French craftsman-turned-spy, and the Persian polymath who founded the world’s most advanced observatory. The Light Ages offers a gripping story of the struggles and successes of an ordinary man in a precarious world and conjures a vivid picture of medieval life as we have never seen it before. An enlightening history that argues that these times weren’t so dark after all, The Light Ages shows how medieval ideas continue to color how we see the world today.

A major American intellectual and “one of the right’s most gifted and astute journalists” (The New York Times Book Review) makes the historical case that the reforms of the 1960s, reforms intended to make the nation more just and humane, left many Americans feeling alienated, despised, misled—and ready to put an adventurer in the White House. Christopher Caldwell has spent years studying the liberal uprising of the 1960s and its unforeseen consequences and his conclusion is this: even the reforms that Americans love best have come with costs that are staggeringly high—in wealth, freedom, and social stability—and that have been spread unevenly among classes and generations. Caldwell reveals the real political turning points of the past half-century, taking you on a roller-coaster ride through Playboy magazine, affirmative action, CB radio, leveraged buyouts, iPhones, Oxycotin, Black Lives Matter, and internet cookies. In doing so, he shows that attempts to redress the injustices of the past have left Americans living under two different ideas of what it means to play by the rules. Essential, timely, hard to put down, The Age of Entitlement “is an eloquent and bracing book, full of insight” (New York magazine) about how the reforms of the past fifty years gave the country two incompatible political systems—and drove it toward conflict.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is one of the world's most perceptive and original analysts of global development. In this major new work he presents a compelling and practical framework for how global citizens can use a holistic way forward to address the seemingly intractable worldwide problems of persistent extreme poverty, environmental degradation, and political-economic injustice: sustainable development. Sachs offers readers, students, activists, environmentalists, and policy makers the tools, metrics, and practical pathways they need to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. Far more than a rhetorical exercise, this book is designed to inform, inspire, and spur action. Based on Sachs's twelve years as director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, his thirteen years advising the United Nations secretary-general on the Millennium Development Goals, and his recent presentation of these ideas in a popular online course, The Age of Sustainable Development is a landmark publication and clarion call for all who care about our planet and global justice.

WE ARE ON THE WRONG TRACK Seventy percent of Americans (and counting) think so. The real wage of a US worker today is less than it was 40 years ago-but there are four times as many multimillionaires. As inequality grows, the politics become more poisonous. Every year, more and more Americans go on shooting sprees, killing strangers and passers-by-and now, increasingly, representatives of the state. Troubling trends of this kind are endlessly discussed by public intellectuals and social scientists. But mostly, they talk about only a small slice of the overall problem. After all, how on earth can yet another murderous rampage have anything to do with polarization in Congress? And is there really a connection between too many multimillionaires and government gridlock? Historical analysis shows that long spells of equitable prosperity and internal peace are succeeded by protracted periods of inequity, increasing misery, and political instability. These crisis periods-"Ages of Discord"-have recurred in societies throughout history. Modern Americans may be disconcerted to learn that the US right now has much in common with the Antebellum 1850s and, more surprisingly, with ancien regime France on the eve of the French Revolution. Can it really be true that there is nothing new about our troubled time, and that similar ages arise periodically for similar underlying reasons? Ages of Discord marshals Structural-Demograpic Theory and detailed historical data to show that this is, indeed, the case. The book takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride through American history, from the Era of Good Feelings of the 1820s to our first Age of Discord, which culminated in the American Civil War, to post-WW2 prosperity and, finally, to our present, second Age of Discord."