The American government today supports a financial system based on mortgage lending, and it often bails out the financial institutions making these mortgages. The Dead Pledge reveals the surprising origins of American mortgages and American bailouts in policies dating back to the early twentieth century. Judge Glock shows that the federal government began subsidizing mortgages in order to help lagging sectors of the economy, such as farming and construction. In order to encourage mortgage lending, the government also extended unprecedented assistance to banks. During the Great Depression, the federal government made new mortgage lending and bank bailouts the centerpiece of its recovery program. Both the Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt administrations created semipublic financial institutions, such as Fannie Mae, to provide cheap, tradable mortgages, and they extended guarantees to more banks and financiers. Ultimately, Glock argues, the desire to protect the financial system took precedence over the desire to help lagging parts of the economy, and the government became ever more tied into the financial world. The Dead Pledge recasts twentieth-century economic, financial, and political history and demonstrates why the greatest “safety net” created in this era was the one supporting finance.

Alexandra Robbins wanted to find out if the stereotypes about sorority girls were actually true, so she spent a year with a group of girls in a typical sorority. The sordid behavior of sorority girls exceeded her worst expectations -- drugs, psychological abuse, extreme promiscuity, racism, violence, and rampant eating disorders are just a few of the problems. But even more surprising was the fact that these abuses were inflicted and endured by intelligent, successful, and attractive women. Why is the desire to belong to a sorority so powerful that women are willing to engage in this type of behavior -- especially when the women involved are supposed to be considered 'sisters'? What definition of sisterhood do many women embrace? Pledged combines a sharp-eyed narrative with extensive reporting and the fly-on-the-wall voyeurism of reality shows to provide the answer.

From the pages of history and the personal accounts of those who endured the Battle of Franklin, Tamera Alexander weaves real-life love letters into a story of unlikely romance first kindled amid the shadows of the Civil War. “Beautifully-drawn characters and rich history in With This Pledge work seamlessly to demonstrate that Christ’s love and romantic love can triumph even in our darkest moments.” —Lynn Austin, bestselling author Elizabeth “Lizzie” Clouston’s quietly held principles oppose those of the Southern Cause—but when forty thousand soldiers converge on the fields of Franklin, Tennessee, the war demands an answer. The Carnton home where she is governess is converted into a Confederate field hospital, and Lizzie is called upon to assist the military doctor with surgeries that determine life or death. Faced with the unimaginable, she must summon fortitude, even as she fears for the life of Towny, her fiancé and lifelong friend. As a young soldier lies dying in Lizzie’s arms, she vows to relay his final words to his mother, but knows little more than the boy’s first name. That same night, decorated Mississippi sharpshooter Captain Roland Ward Jones extracts a different promise from Lizzie: that she intervene should the surgeon decide to amputate his leg. Lizzie is nothing if not a woman of her word, earning the soldiers’ respect as she tends to the wounded within Carnton’s walls. None is more admiring than Captain Jones, who doesn’t realize she is pledged to another. But as Lizzie’s heart softens toward the Confederate captain, she discovers that his moral ground is at odds with her own. Now torn between love, principles, and promises made, she struggles to be true to her heart while standing for what she knows is right—no matter the cost. From the pages of history and the personal accounts of those who endured the Battle of Franklin, Tamera Alexander weaves the real-life love letters between Captain Roland Ward Jones and Miss Elizabeth Clouston into a story of unlikely romance first kindled amid the shadows of war. “Alexander’s With This Pledge dusts off the archives and breathes life into the Battle of Franklin: believed to be the most brutal battle in the Civil War. Through Tamera Alexander’s indomitable heroine, Lizzie Clouston, who transforms from governess to nurse out of necessity, we find ourselves contemplating our own inner strength should we also be faced with the unthinkable. Tamera Alexander’s With This Pledge is not only historical fiction at its finest, but its most compelling.” —Jolina Petersheim, bestselling author of How the Light Gets In “Tamera Alexander has once again given readers a beautifully written story full of strong characters and tender romance—all while staying true to the actual history of the people and events she describes. From the horrors of war to the hope of blossoming love, Lizzie and Roland’s story will live in my heart for a very long time.” —Anne Mateer, author of Playing by Heart

Publisher Description

In 1927, Oxford University Press published the first western-language translation of a collection of Tibetan funerary texts (the Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Bardo) under the title The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Since that time, the work has established a powerful hold on the western popular imagination, and is now considered a classic of spiritual literature. Over the years, The Tibetan Book of the Dead has inspired numerous commentaries, an illustrated edition, a play, a video series, and even an opera. Translators, scholars, and popular devotees of the book have claimed to explain its esoteric ideas and reveal its hidden meaning. Few, however, have uttered a word about its history. Bryan J. Cuevas seeks to fill this gap in our knowledge by offering the first comprehensive historical study of the Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Bardo, and by grounding it firmly in the context of Tibetan history and culture. He begins by discussing the many ways the texts have been understood (and misunderstood) by westerners, beginning with its first editor, the Oxford-educated anthropologist Walter Y. Evans-Wentz, and continuing through the present day. The remarkable fame of the book in the west, Cuevas argues, is strikingly disproportionate to how the original Tibetan texts were perceived in their own country. Cuevas tells the story of how The Tibetan Book of the Dead was compiled in Tibet, of the lives of those who preserved and transmitted it, and explores the history of the rituals through which the life of the dead is imagined in Tibetan society. This book provides not only a fascinating look at a popular and enduring spiritual work, but also a much-needed corrective to the proliferation of ahistorical scholarship surrounding The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

In a dystopian kingdom where the classes are separated by the languages they speak, Charlaina "Charlie" Hart has a secret gift that is revealed when she meets a mysterious young man named Max.

AARP Digital Editions offer you practical tips, proven solutions, and expert guidance. Successful people don't sit around waiting for everything to be "100%" right or to be "absolutely sure" they will succeed. They don't need absolute assurance, because they realize life doesn't provide any. To get what they want out of life, they set specific goals and put together a formal plan to achieve those goals, one step at a time. Successful people know that the cost of failure is modest compared to that of inaction. Failure means they are smarter the next time. Inaction means there is no next time-there's only a lifetime of regret. In The Pledge: Your Master Plan for an Abundant Life, author Michael Masterson reveals how to become successful-and not just financially, but in every area of life. The book Offers simple tips to making immediate changes and to establishing long-term goals Details strategies on becoming more productive at the office and defeating depression Explains why simplifying goals into four major ones makes them much easier to achieve The Pledge teaches readers how to start and finish projects they have been dreaming about for years, boost confidence, strengthen skills, build wealth, and enjoy life.

The Egyptians created a world of supernatural forces so vivid, powerful and inescapable that controlling one's destiny within it was a constant preoccupation. In life, supernatural forces manifested themselves through misfortune and illness,and after death were faced for eternity in the Otherworld, along with the divine gods who controlled the universe. The Book of the Dead empowered the reader to overcome the dangers lurking in the Otherworld and to become one with the gods who governed. Barry Kemp selects a number of spells to explore who and what the Egyptians feared and the kind of assistance that the Book offered them, revealing a relationship between the human individual and the divine quite unlike that found in the major faiths of the modern world.

A serial killer terrorizes a small California town in this gripping thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag. California, 1985—Four children and young teacher Anne Navarre make a gruesome discovery: a partially buried female body, her eyes and mouth glued shut. A serial killer is at large, and the very bonds that hold their idyllic town together are about to be tested to the breaking point. Tasked with finding the killer, FBI investigator Vince Leone employs a new and controversial FBI technique called “profiling,” which plunges him into the lives of the four children—and the young teacher whose need to uncover the truth is as intense as his own. But as new victims are found and pressure from the media grows, Vince and Anne find themselves circling the same small group of local suspects, unsure if those who suffer most are the victims themselves—or those close to the killer, blissfully unaware that someone very near to them is a murderous psychopath…

The mysterious and unbearably tense tale of a detective's obsessive pursuit of a child murderer, from one of the post-war era's greatest writers in German.