NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes a “smashing...fascinating” novel (The New York Times Book Review) that conjures all the American obsessions of the 1980s: sex, greed, envy, real estate, and the American dream. In her subversively funny and genuinely moving new novel, Jane Smiley nails down several American preoccupations with the expertise of a master carpenter. Forthright, likable Joe Stratford is the kind of local businessman everybody trusts, for good reason. But it’s 1982, and even in Joe’s small town, values are in upheaval: not just property values, either. Enter Marcus Burns, a would-be master of the universe whose years with the IRS have taught him which rules are meant to be broken. Before long he and Joe are new best friends—and partners in an investment venture so complex that no one may ever understand it. Add to this Joe’s roller coaster affair with his mentor’s married daughter. The result is as suspenseful and entertaining as any of Jane Smiley’s fiction.

Determined to convict two Goth teens who brutally murdered a family in rural Tennessee, prosecutor Joe Dillard risks everything when he discovers that there was someone else involved in the killings--a woman named Natasha whom the teens refuse to implicate, fearing for their lives. Original.

Religion can be both inspiring and distressing. And many critiques of it are simultaneously compelling and dubious. Shay examines atheist arguments with a refreshing modern eye in this comprehensive look at our most fundamental questions about faith and reason. Prominent atheists claim the Bible is a racist text. Yet Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. read it daily. Then again, so did many ardent segregationists. Some atheists claim religion serves to oppress the masses. Yet the classic text of the French Revolution, What is the Third Estate?, was written by a priest. On the other hand, the revolutionaries ended up banning religion. What do we make of religion’s confusing role in history? And what of religion’s relationship to science? Some scientists claim that we have no free will. Others argue that advances in neurobiology and physics disprove determinism. As for whispering to the universe, an absurd habit say the skeptics. Yet prayer is a transformative practice for millions. This book explores the most common atheist critiques of the Bible and religion, incorporating Jewish, Christian, and Muslim voices. The result is a fresh, modern re-evaluation of religion and of atheism.

Many Christians today feel overwhelmed as they try to live faithfully in a culture that seems increasingly hostile to their beliefs. Politics, marriage, sexuality, religious freedom--with an ever-growing list of contentious issues, believers find it harder than ever to hold on to their convictions while treating their friends, neighbors, coworkers, and even family members who disagree with respect and compassion. This isn't just a problem that affects individual Christians; if left unaddressed, the growing gap between the faithful and society's tolerance for public faith will have lasting consequences for the church in America. Now the bestselling authors of unChristian turn their data-driven insights toward the thorny question of how Christians talk with people they know and love about the most toxic issues of our day. They help today's disciples understand what they believe and why, and how to keep believing it without being judgmental and defensive. Readers will discover the most significant trends that offer both obstacles and opportunities to God's people, and how not only to challenge culture but to create and renew it for the common good. Perhaps most importantly, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons invite fellow Christians to understand the heart behind opposing views and show them how to be loving, life-giving friends despite profound differences. This will be the go-to book for young adult and older believers who don't want to hide from culture but to engage and restore it.

Wikipedia is famously an encyclopedia "anyone can edit," and Reagle examines Wikipedia's openness and several challenges to it: technical features that limit vandalism to articles; private actions to mitigate potential legal problems; and Wikipedia's own internal bureaucratization. He explores Wikipedia's process of consensus (reviewing a dispute over naming articles on television shows) and examines the way leadership and authority work in an open content community.

The century that followed the fall of Granada at the end of 1491 and the subsequent consolidation of Christian power over the Iberian Peninsula was marked by the introduction of anti-Arabic legislation and the development of hostile cultural norms affecting Arabic speakers. Yet as Spanish institutions of power first restricted and then eliminated Arabic language use, marginalizing Arabic-speaking communities, officially sanctioned translation to and from Arabic played an increasingly crucial role in brokering the administration of the growing Spanish empire and its overseas territories. The move on the peninsula from a regime of legal pluralism to one of religious and legal orthodoxy created new needs and institutions for Arabic translation, which simultaneously reflected, subverted, and ultimately reaffirmed the normative anti-Arabic language politics. In Good Faith examines the administrative functions and practices of the individual translators who walked the knife's edge, as the task of the Arabic-Spanish translator became both more perilous and more coveted during a volatile historical period. Despite the myriad personal and political risks run by Arabic speakers, Claire M. Gilbert argues that Arabic translation was at the core of early modern Spanish culture and society and that translators played pivotal roles in the administrative, institutional, and ideological development of Spain and its relationships, both domestic and international. Using materials from state, local, and religious archives, Gilbert develops the notion of "fiduciary translation" and uses it to paint a vivid picture of the techniques by which translators attempted to demonstrate their expertise and trustworthiness—thereby to help protect themselves, their families, and even their communities from the Inquisition and other authorities. By emphasizing the practices and networks of the individual translators themselves, Gilbert's social history of Arabic translation deepens our understanding of religious minorities, international relations, and statecraft in early modern Spain.

A riveting new historical fiction novel, In All Good Faith continues the story of May Marshall, the captivating protagonist introduced in Taylor’s acclaimed 2020 debut, Etiquette for Runaways. In the summer of 1932, Americans are coming to realize that the financial crash of 1929 was only the beginning of hard times. May Marshall has returned from Paris to settle at her family home in rural Keswick, Virginia. She struggles to keep her family farm and market afloat through the economic downturn. May finds herself juggling her marriage with a tempting opportunity to revamp the family business to adapt to changing times. In a cold-water West End Boston tenement the fractured Sykes family scrapes by on an itinerant mechanic’s wages and home sewing. Having recently lost her mother, sixteen-year-old Dorrit Sykes questions the religious doctrine she was raised in. Dorrit is reclusive, held back by the anxiety attacks that have plagued her since childhood. Attempting to understand what limits her, she seeks inspiration in Nancy Drew mysteries and finds solace at the Boston Public Library, writing fairy stories for children. The library holds answers to both Dorrit’s exploration of faith and her quest to understand and manage her anxiety. When Dorrit accompanies her father to Washington, DC, in the summer of 1932 to camp out and march with twenty thousand veterans intending to petition President Hoover for early payment of war bonuses, she begins an odyssey that will both traumatize and strengthen her. Along the way she redefines her faith, learning both self-sufficiency and how to accept help. Dorrit’s and May’s lives intersect, and their fates will intertwine in ways that neither could have imagined or expected. Set against a backdrop of true historical events, In All Good Faith tells a story of two women’s unlikely success during the Great Depression.

In many legal systems around the world, whether civilian or common law, the doctrine of good faith is recognised as one of the general principles of contract law. By contrast, English law has taken a different approach, relying on a number of specific doctrines aimed at securing fair dealing but eschewing any general principle of good faith in contract. In the light of recent good faith provisions - such as those found in the EC Directives on Commercial Agents and on Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts, as well as in the Lando Commission's 'Principles of European Contract Law' and the UNIDROIT 'Principles of International Commercial Contracts' - it is open to debate whether the English law of contract can, or indeed should, maintain its traditional approach.The purpose of the essays in this collection is to inform such a debate in two principal ways: first, by drawing out the competing conceptions (and concomitant credentials) of the idea of good faith in contract; and, secondly, by exploring the role of good faith in different contexts - for example, in the context of both consumer and commercial contracting, but also in the context of specific fields of contract law (such as insurance and financial services), particular patterns of doctrinal response to bad faith and unfair dealing and the various traditions of legal reasoning found around the world.The essays represent a significant international engagement with a question that is by no means of interest only to English lawyers. For, the perspectives presented by the European, Nordic, Israeli, North American, South African and Australian contributors to this book serve to illuminate our understanding of the idea of good faith whether our concern is with our own local legal system or, beyond that, with the elaboration of principles of contract law for regional or global application.

Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance uncovers from history the fascinating and strange story of Spanish explorer Francisco Noguerol de Ulloa. in 1556, accompanied by his second wife, Francisco returned to his home in Spain after a profitable twenty-year sojourn in the new world of Peru. However, unlike most other rich conquistadores who returned to the land of their birth, Francisco was not allowed to settle into a life of leisure. Instead, he was charged with bigamy and illegal shipment of silver, was arrested and imprisoned. Francisco's first wife (thought long dead) had filed suit in Spain against her renegade husband. So begins the labyrinthine legal tale and engrossing drama of an explorer and his two wives, skillfully reconstructed through the expert and original archival research of Alexandra Parma Cook and Noble David Cook. Drawing on the remarkable records from the trial, the narrative of Francisco's adventures provides a window into daily life in sixteenth-century Spain, as well as the mentalité and experience of conquest and settlement of the New World. Told from the point of view of the conquerors, Francisco's story reveals not only the lives of the middle class and minor nobility but also much about those at the lower rungs of the social order and relations between the sexes. In the tradition of Carlo Ginzberg's The Cheese and the Worms and Natalie Zemon Davis' The Return of Martin Guerre, Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance illuminates an historical period--the world of sixteenth-century Spain and Peru--through the wonderful and unusual story of one man and his two wives.

This book provides fair and acceptable solutions to hardship issues in long-term relational supply contracts. This book uses an approach to strike a balance between the traditional approach underlying classical contract law which emphasises the almost absolute prevalence of the principle of pacta sunt servanda and a flexible approach that is based on the principle of clausula rebus sic stantibus. This book argues for an emerging principle of pacta sunt servanda bona fide on the basis of the relational contract theory. Additionally, this book demonstrates how good faith can serve as a foundation for imposing a duty to renegotiate on the parties. The aim of this book is rather to propose how relational contract theory can be applied to the analysis of specific legal rules in general. Lastly, this boos highlights how the duty to renegotiate and the power to adapt a contract can be further developed upon the occurrence of hardship, based on good faith and the relational nature and characteristics of a long-term relational supply contract. This book explores and enriches the existing research on relational contract theory concentrates primarily on its application in domestic contract laws, particularly in the regulation of long-term contracts in American contract law. As an outcome this book provides a more feasible and satisfactory approach for courts or arbitral tribunals to undertake when facing hardship issues in international contract disputes. Overall, hardship themes, long-term relational supply contracts and good faith are examined extensively.