Rubin Carter and John Artis Had Been Knocked Down... But what prosecutors who built a highly questionable case against the famous middleweight boxer and his teenage acquaintance in the 1966 Lafayette Bar and Grille triple murders in Paterson, New Jersey, did not count on was a young investigator from the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender who was willing to devote his free time, talent and energies to picking apart the case built on "eyewitnesses" who likely saw nothing they had claimed to see and racial prejudice against two African-American defendants. As Fred W. Hogan tracked down the "eyewitnesses" and got them to admit their statements to police were lies, the world began to pay attention to the case, with Bob Dylan writing a famous song about "The Hurricane" and boxing luminaries like Muhammad Ali, "Sugar Ray" Robinson and others holding fund-raisers and speaking out against the injustice done to Carter and Artis. Ultimately, they would be freed, and Carter, Artis and Hogan would make exposing other wrongful convictions a life's work and passion.

From New York Times bestselling author Alex Tresniowski comes a “compelling” (The Guardian) and “riveting” (The New York Times Book Review) true-crime thriller recounting the 1910 murder of ten-year-old Marie Smith, the dawn of modern criminal detection, and the launch of the NAACP. In the tranquil seaside town of Asbury Park, New Jersey, ten-year-old schoolgirl Marie Smith is brutally murdered. Small town officials, unable to find the culprit, call upon the young manager of a New York detective agency for help. It is the detective’s first murder case, and now, the specifics of the investigation and daring sting operation that caught the killer is captured in all its rich detail for the first time. Occurring exactly halfway between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the formal beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in 1954, the brutal murder and its highly-covered investigation sits at the historic intersection of sweeping national forces—religious extremism, class struggle, the infancy of criminal forensics, and America’s Jim Crow racial violence. History and true crime collide in this “compelling and timely” (Vanity Fair) murder mystery featuring characters as complex and colorful as those found in the best psychological thrillers—the unconventional truth-seeking detective Ray Schindler; the sinister pedophile Frank Heidemann; the ambitious Asbury Park Sheriff Clarence Hetrick; the mysterious “sting artist,” Carl Neumeister; the indomitable crusader Ida Wells; and the victim, Marie Smith, who represented all the innocent and vulnerable children living in turn-of-the-century America. “Brisk and cinematic” (The Wall Street Journal), The Rope is an important piece of history that gives a voice to the voiceless and resurrects a long-forgotten true crime story that speaks to the very divisions tearing at the nation’s fabric today.

At the moment, there are two powerful trends developing within evangelicalism: - a pernicious postmodernism that demeans moral and intellectual certainty and presses for accommodation among competing "truths" - a postmodernism that's now "institutionalizing" itself among many of the so-called "emerging churches;" and - a resurgent five point Calvinism that casts itself in opposition to postmodernism and, therefore, appeals to college Christians who are desperately looking for a spiritual and intellectual mooring that will safeguard their beliefs from being swept into a sea of relativism. In short, the one, postmodernism and the relativism it's producing among American intellectuals, has led to the other, a resurgence of five point Calvinism. Calvinism is closely argued, tightly bound, and scrupulously logical. Its logic, however, is its undoing - because it argues Calvinist conclusions from Calvinist premises that don't always line up with the Biblical text. The whole edifice rests on a flawed foundation that a careful exegesis of Romans reveals to anyone who is equipped with a little background in pre-modern thought. _________________________________________ Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum writes: This book is highly recommended to both Dispensational Calvinists and Covenantal Calvinists as well as to Arminians, and also to all of those who do not see themselves in any of these categories for an honest evaluation of what the Book of Romans really says about God's program for salvation and God's program for Israel. Arnold Fruchtenbaum Ariel Ministries Douglas Shearer has recently retired from pastoring the church he helped to found in 1982. He and his wife Sita have been married for 45 years - and together have raised four children - two sons and two daughters: Kendra, Greg, Alan, and Margo. They are all married and raising families of their own - each of them and their spouses dedicated to serving the Lord.