The first paperback edition of the master educator's insights from four decades in the classroom. The Discipline of Hope chronicles veteran educator Herb Kohl's love affair with teaching since his first encounter forty years ago, chronicled in his now-classic 36 Children. Beginning with his years in New York public schools and continuing throughout his four decades of working with students from kindergarten through college across the country, Kohl has been an ardent advocate of the notion that every student can learn and every teacher must find creative ways to facilitate that learning. In The Discipline of Hope he distills the major lessons of an attentive lifetime in the classroom.

From the early days of his political career to his time as U.S. vice president, Al Gore has always been concerned with the environment. His work has won such prestigious honors as the Nobel Peace Prize and an Academy Award for his film An Inconvenient Truth. Gore's passion for activism continues today, as he speaks and writes about such issues as global warming and energy use.

Hope Dies Last is Studs Terkel's inspiring new oral history of social action in America. An alternative, more personal history of the ''American century,'' Hope Dies Last forms a legacy of the indefatigable spirit that Studs has always embodied, and an inheritance for those who, by taking a stand, are making concrete the dreams of today. For Terkel, these interviews represent a change that has taken place in the last few years of uncertainty in America. From a doctor who teaches his young students compassion, to the now-retired brigadier general who flew the Enola Gay over Hiroshima, these interviews tell us much about the power of the American dream and the force of individuals who hope for a better world. Terkel's subjects express with grace and warmth their secret hopes and dreams, combining to tell an inspiring story of optimism and persistence that resonates with the eloquence of conviction.

For more than thirty years, The Universe Next Door has set the standard for a clear, readable introduction to worldviews. In this new fifth edition James Sire offers additional student-friendly features to his concise, easily understood introductions to theism, deism, naturalism, Marxism, nihilism, existentialism, Eastern monism, New Age philosophy and postmodernism. Included in this expanded format are a new chapter on Islam and informative sidebars throughout.The book continues to build on Sire's refined definition of worldviews from the fourth edition and includes other updates as well, keeping this standard text fresh and useful. In a world of ever-increasing diversity, The Universe Next Door offers a unique resource for understanding the variety of worldviews that compete with Christianity for the allegiance of minds and hearts. The Universe Next Door has been translated into over a dozen languages and has been used as a text at over one hundred colleges and universities in courses ranging from apologetics and world religions to history and English literature. Sire's Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept provides a useful companion volume for those desiring a more in-depth discussion of the nature of a worldview.

Although there is widespread acknowledgment that the mainstream media is in crisis - a crisis underscored as much by declining authority as declining circulation and viewership - no one has explained its intellectual and moral causes. James Bowman' media critic for The New Criterion' provides a scintillating and fast - paced anatomy of the mainstream media self - generated demise. In Media Madness' Bowman looks behind the headlines to examine mainstream media's governing myths. Writing with acerbic wit' he shows how the mainstream media's embrace of a spurious notion of objectivity combined with its addiction to scandal' moral equivalence' and an unshakable conviction of its own moral superiority have done irreparable damage to the media's public authority and have helped precipitate a worldwide exodus to the blogosphere and other sources of news and comment.

It is the autumn of 1913. Sir Randolph Nettleby has assembled a brilliant array of guests at his Oxfordshire estate for the biggest hunt of the season. An army of gamekeepers, beaters, and servants has rehearsed the intricate age-old ritual, the gentlemen are falling into the prescribed mode of fellowship and sporting rivalry, the ladies intrigued by the latest gossip and fashion. Everything about this splendid weekend would seem a perfect consummation of the pleasures afforded the privileged in Edwardian England.

Doing Environmental Ethics offers a way to face our ecological crisis that draws on environmental science, economic theory, international law, and religious teachings, as well as philosophical arguments. It engages students in constructing ethical presumptions based on our duty (to other persons and species and also to ecosystems), our character...

Over the last three decades the historian Gabriel Kolko has redefined the way we look at modern warfare and its social and political effects. Century of War gives us a masterly synthesis of the effects of war on civilian populations and the political results of these traumatizing experiences in the twentieth century.

Hidden Buddhas may well be Liza Dalby's best work yet; with its fascinating story of characters caught up in a world they themselves don't understand. Besides taking us on a journey through little-known corners of Japan, it offers us an engaging and believable portrait of people driven to do things they may not have imagined.'' - Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha According to Buddhist theology, the world is suffering through a final corrupt era called mapp. As mapp continues, chaos will increase until the center can no longer hold. Then the world will end. In Japan, many believe that Miroku, Buddha of the Future, will appear and bring about a new age of enlightenment. From this ancient notion of doom and rebirth comes a startling new novel by the acclaimed author of Geisha and The Tale of Murasaki. Hundreds of temples in Japan are known to keep mysterious ''hidden buddhas'' secreted away except on rare designated viewing days. These statues are not hidden because they are powerful - their power lies in their being hidden. Are they being protected, or are they protecting the world? In this novel, one Buddhist priest struggles with the dictates of his inherited orthodoxy, while another rebels. An American graduate student begins to suspect the mysterious purpose of the hidden buddhas, just as he falls in love with a beautiful Japanese artist who is haunted by an aborted child. The weaving of karma that brings these two together results in a tech-savvy half-Western, half-Japanese child who text-messages her way through the profane world to enlightenment. Tracing the lives of its characters through the late twentieth century to the present, from Paris to Kyoto to California, Hidden Buddhas turns a cosmopolitan eye on discipline and decadence in religion, fashion, politics, and modern life. Liza Dalby is an anthropologist and writer specializing in Japan. She lives in Berkeley, California.

A personal memoir from the family that inspired the film Extraordinary Measures, starring Brendan Fraser, Harrison Ford, and Keri Russell - a father's story of his determination to save the lives of his two youngest children born with a rare genetic disorder and finding hope, strength, and joy despite extraordinary challenges. When John and Aileen Crowley learned that their two youngest children had a rare and little understood genetic disorder, they didn't hope for miracles: they made them happen. In 1998, 15-month old Megan and 4-month old Patrick were diagnosed with Pompe disease, a rare and fatal neuromuscular disorder that affects only a few thousand children worldwide, usually leaving them with little to no muscle function, enlarged hearts, and severe difficulty breathing. John Crowley was absolutely determined to find a treatment to save his children's lives. At the age of 31, he walked away from the corporate world to help co-found a start-up biotech company, focused exclusively on developing a treatment for Pompe. A truly uplifting and inspiring book that captures this remarkable family's everyday life, this is a memoir about life and love; about coping with adversity; and, most importantly, about what it means to never, never quit.