This study re-examines the twentieth-century novel as a form shaped by its problematic, often scandalous relation to the public sphere. Discussing ten texts against the challenges of their milieus, it considers twentieth-century fiction as a tradition of transgression, perennially caught between license and licentiousness, erudition and sedition.

If architecture is a design-centred discipline which proceeds by suggesting propositional constructions then, Zambelli argues, archaeology also designs, but in the form of reconstructions. He proposes that whilst practitioners of architecture and archaeology generally purport to practice in future-facing and past-facing-modes respectively, elements of these disciplines also resemble one another. Zambelli speculates that whilst some of these resemblances have remained explicit and revealed, others have become occluded with time, but that all such resemblances share homological similarities of interconnected disciplinary origin making available in the scandalous space between them a logically underpinned, visually analogical form of practice.

* A rich and detailed examination of the historical and theological dimensions of the Cross

This book is not a commentary, an exegetical study, or a work of systematic theology. It is a conversation. Let's sit down together, read Ephesians, strain our minds and our imaginations, and have a good chat. If you want all your difficult textual questions answered, there are many good commentaries on the shelf. This book is here to help you ask some new questions--and not just about this ancient letter, but about God, your life, and the purpose of the entire universe. Paul's letter to the Ephesians is a work of timeless theological genius which brilliantly addresses many of the enduring questions about human life. It presents a scintillating vision of the glory of God and the meaning of Christian faith. It also brings an urgent and revitalizing message to the church in our time: in Christ, God has enacted a plan for the world which is most surprising in the face of its conventional rationalities and religious common sense. God has invited us to be inhabitants of this redemptive drama through faith, and insofar as we do so, we are a scandalous people.

We live in scandalous times. Every day some new controversy demands our attention, our emotional investment, and, ultimately, our judgment. Many of these routine transgressions will be understood in 'revelatory' terms, as peeling back the multiple layers of artifice and spin to reveal an underlying, and oftentimes disturbing, 'truth'. Otherswill be recognized as calculated marketing exercises that simply present the strategic face of contemporary capitalism. Yet these 'ordinary' scandals can themselves be seen to be largely derivative of another, altogether more fundamental-and fundamentally rare-form of disruption. Such is the real scandal that accompanies instances of authentic creation. Building on the philosophy of Alain Badiou, Scandalous Times not only argues the case for such 'real scandal', but also shows how it is today being abrogated and substituted through the increasing production of novel forms of state-sanctioned controversy. From Duchamp to Donald Trump, Scandalous Times explores the ways in which areas from art and advertising to politics and social media have come to actively contribute to this 'static' fabrication of controversy, all the while arguing for the need to rethink creativity as a radical exception to the state, and not its proxy.

Before Britain had a prime minister – and before they invented America – the dictator Oliver Cromwell urged the artist Lely to paint him ‘warts and all’. This book deals with some of the ‘all’, but is mostly about the warts, the moral blemishes that have dogged the leaders of two of the greatest countries on earth for 300 years. Scandalously, there are still no qualifications necessary for the job of prime minister or president, two of the most important positions in the world. And that lack of ability shows itself in spades throughout these pages. Robert Walpole knew that ‘every man has his price’ and bought people accordingly. Viscount Goderich broke down in tears, begging the king to fire him. George Washington, the revered saint of American creation, blew with the wind and owned slaves. Abraham Lincoln was prepared to send African Americans back to Africa to save the Union. William Gladstone popped out from Downing street to ‘save’ prostitutes. David Lloyd George gave people titles for money. Warren Harding had a string of mistresses, as did John Kennedy. And all this happened before Donald Trump! Thank God the fourth estate was there, the free press watching every move of politicians. Who was watching them, of course, is another story. If you thought – and prayed – that the occupants of No. 10 and the White House were honorable, competent people, you’re in for a bit of a shock.

There's a murderer on the loose—but that doesn't stop the girls of St. Etheldreda's from attempting to hide the death of their headmistress in this rollicking farce. The students of St. Etheldreda's School for Girls face a bothersome dilemma. Their irascible headmistress, Mrs. Plackett, and her surly brother, Mr. Godding, have been most inconveniently poisoned at Sunday dinner. Now the school will almost certainly be closed and the girls sent home—unless these seven very proper young ladies can hide the murders and convince their neighbors that nothing is wrong. Julie Berry's The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place is a smart, hilarious Victorian romp, full of outrageous plot twists, mistaken identities, and mysterious happenings.

Cinematic Places is a guide to 25 essential cinematic destinations around the world, spanning different decades, directors and movie genres.

From the author of Europe Central, winner of the National Book Award, a journalistic tour de force along the Mexican-American border – a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award For generations of migrant workers, Imperial Country has held the promise of paradise and the reality of hell. It sprawls across a stirring accidental sea, across the deserts, date groves and labor camps of Southeastern California, right across the border into Mexico. In this eye-opening book, William T. Vollmann takes us deep into the heart of this haunted region, exploring polluted rivers and guarded factories and talking with everyone from Mexican migrant workers to border patrolmen. Teeming with patterns, facts, stories, people and hope, this is an epic study of an emblematic region.

Tidy categories may suit the media, but people are more complex up close. News outlets, historians, and sociologists can (and do) tell us all about the statistics, but they don’t (and can’t) tell us about what it’s really like in a given place—how the squish of creek water between your toes or the crunch of autumn leaves on a city sidewalk shape your sense of normal and good and right. To understand that—to understand the people in the places—we need stories. We need to listen, get to know the nuance of people, and have empathy for their way of seeing things. Brandon O’Brien is, in many ways, a man torn between places. Raised in the rural South, educated in the suburbs, and now living and doing ministry in Manhattan, he’s seen these places, and their complexity, up close. With the knack of a natural storyteller, he shares what he learned about himself, faith, and the people who make up America on his own journey through it.