What is it that permits us to see others as 'evil'? This book argues that it's our epistemological framework, which also resituates our own moral compass and reframes our moral world such that we can justify performing violent deeds, which we would readily demonize in others, as the heroics of eradicating evil. When conflict is understood positively as the confrontation of differences, an unavoidable and indeed desirable consequence of the rich tapestry of earthly life, then a discussion can open as to how to navigate the countless confrontations of difference in the most skillful way. Through this lens, violence comes into view as the least skillful means of responding to, and working with, difference, since violence tends to 'rebound' and leaves both victims and perpetrators worse off—shameful and vengeful. Philosopher Wendy C. Hamblet argues that the radically polarized and oversimplified worldview that sorts the phenomena of the world into 'good guys' and 'evil others' is a framework as old as human community itself, and one that undermines people's own moral infrastructure, permitting them to take up the very acts that they would readily demonize as 'evil' in others. One's own violent responses to the human condition come to be reframed from unskillful and undesirable actions to valiant heroic reactions. In short, those who see 'evil' in others are far more likely to do 'evil,' resorting to the least skillful means for navigating difference—violence. In theory, violence is demonized as 'evil' in popular and criminological discourse and calls forth 'rebounding' like responses in the form of acts of vengeance in individuals and punitive responses in state institutions. However, punishment is itself defined as an 'evil' inflicted by a legitimate authority upon a wrongdoer in compensation for a wrong done. This leads to the conundrum that the state, as much as the vigilante, must necessarily undermine its own legitimacy by taking up the very acts that it deems as evil in its enemies and punishes in its deviant citizens. By reframing conflict positively, Hamblet introduces a new way of thinking about difference that allows the reader to appreciate (rather than tolerate) difference as a desirable feature of a multicultural, multi-religioned, multi-gendered world. This resituates the discussion of conflict such that conflict response styles can be viewed as more and less skillful means of navigating impasses in a world of differences.

The first collection of short stories released by Thomas Porky McDonald, Paradise Oval spans the worlds of baseball, mass transit and a number of other venues that the otherwise rambling poet has drifted through. Brought to life in three distinct sections, the characters that roam through the pages of McDonald's sometimes longing narratives seem connected only in their divergent quests for faith and loyalties. In "A Subtle Reunion", a young man faces up pensively with his whispering past, while tales like "Always Identities", "Equidistant" and "Paradise Oval" each trek the terrain of where one might have been and how that might shape where we choose to go in the future. In addition, the caustic sportscaster Chauncey McGee and the genuine observer Riley O'Reilly are memorable characters that McDonald summonses to give you pause for thought, while also bringing a grin to the face or a sigh to the heart. On each occasion, different aspects of baseball and/or the ballpark are cited to stress a point. A half dozen tales explore some of the intricacies of a large metropolitan transit system, drawn from almost two decades of experience in that most public sector. Internal stories, such as "When We Musketeered", "Tales of Odie" and "Three Months in a Blender" are nonetheless balanced with the roads that we all might encounter, beyond the workplace. "A Moment in Malverne", set in the smallest of towns, questions the meanings of life and death, and the fact-based "Two Words of Christmas " gives a positive spin on relations among all men and women. A collage of life tales closes the volume, with such diverse characters as the mysterious former high school buddy Mo Oh and the sly and calculating thief Frankie Jingo leading the way. Along the way, "A Stop Far Away" and "A Seat of Honor" recall McDonald's childhood vibrantly. The manic "Beyond the Forbidden Zone" offers up a most amusing take on the world just around the one that defined the writer's New York City upbringing. Throughout, Paradise Oval takes the reader to places they may not have been, but may well choose to return to again and again.

To Believe or Not to Believe is written with the hope that those who read it will be blessed in some way. Whether they be a Christian or non-Christian, that they will have questions answered or confirmations to their faith. For those of you who are believers, my prayer for you is that it strengthens your commitment to Jesus Christ. For those of you who are seeking truth, my prayer for you is that it gives you reason to believe in the existence of God and that you will commit your life to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of your life. Time is of the essence, don't put it off until another time. What is between the covers of this book is my commitment to help you to believe. In His Service,

"When social power is conceived in Foucauldian terms, it is notoriously difficult to grapple with what it means to think affirmatively about ethical-political action. Drawing upon the unlikely combination of Hannah Arendt and the early 17th-century Quaker movement, Orlie articulates a fascinating approach to this problem. Without forgetting for a moment our enmeshment in power, she nevertheless shows how better appreciating our spiritual capacity for 'natality' can engender a distinctive sense of responsibility and freedom." Stephen K. White, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University"A thoughtful and erudite meditation on our ethical and political possibilities in the time after Truth." Wendy Brown, University of California, Santa Cruz"Living Ethically, Acting Politically confronts our ordinary complicities in the operations of social power with the possibility of doing otherwise. Refusing the legislative imaginary of sovereignty, Melissa A. Orlie draws innovatively on Arendt, Foucault, and early modern Quakers to rescue the 'can' from the jaws of the 'ought' not to escape obligations but to recollect their generation in the contingencies and equivocalities of social practices. At once evocative and provoking, this work opens new terrain at the borderlines of politics and ethics." Kirstie M. McClure, author of Judging Rights: Lockean Politics and the Limits of Consent"

Explores the role of the mind in creating erotic experience on the early modern stageAdvances a new critical methodology that credits the role of cognition in the experience of erotic desire, and pleasure itselfExplores the philosophical underpinnings of erotic metaphors, drawing from ancient, early modern, and contemporary thinkers such as Aristotle, Giordano Bruno, Gaston Bachelard, Emmanuel Levinas, Kenneth Burke, George Lakoff, and Mark TurnerIlluminates the dramatic vitality of philosophical and contemplative erotic speechProvides the first full-length study that pairs John Lyly's and William Shakespeare's drama, uncovering new forms of intimacy in their playsTo 'conceive' desire is to acknowledge the generative potential of the erotic imagination, its capacity to impart form and make meaning out of the most elusive experiences. Drawing from cognitive theories about the metaphorical nature of thought, Gillian Knoll traces the contours of three conceptual metaphors - motion, space and creativity - that shape desire in plays by John Lyly and William Shakespeare. Metaphors, she argues, do more than narrate or express eros; they constitute erotic experience for Lyly's and Shakespeare's characters.