A teen discovers a gun in the trunk of his car. A spider exposes a weakness a son has never seen. A young woman reaches a breaking point with her partner while traveling in Egypt. A serial philanderer uses the personal tragedy of September 11th to his advantage. In these stories and more, the author of He Who Shall Remain Shameless takes readers down paths punctuated by the mistakes of parents and children, teachers and students, spouses and significant others--imperfect people driven by love, yearning, violence, dysfunction, memory, misfortune and, ultimately, hope. Spanning three decades, the end of the 20th century through the early 2020s, The Fallible is a collection brimming with the unexpected.

"Many physicians think they need to be infallible to be successful, but no one is immune from mental illness."

Thomas Gilovich offers a wise and readable guide to the fallacy of the obvious in everyday life. When can we trust what we believe—that "teams and players have winning streaks," that "flattery works," or that "the more people who agree, the more likely they are to be right"—and when are such beliefs suspect? Thomas Gilovich offers a guide to the fallacy of the obvious in everyday life. Illustrating his points with examples, and supporting them with the latest research findings, he documents the cognitive, social, and motivational processes that distort our thoughts, beliefs, judgments and decisions. In a rapidly changing world, the biases and stereotypes that help us process an overload of complex information inevitably distort what we would like to believe is reality. Awareness of our propensity to make these systematic errors, Gilovich argues, is the first step to more effective analysis and action.

Can an outrageously immoral man or a scandalous woman teach morality or lead people to virtue? Does personal fallibility devalue one's words and deeds? Is it possible to separate the private from the public, to segregate individual failing from official function? Chaucer addressed these perennial issues through two problematic authority figures, the Pardoner and the Wife of Bath. The Pardoner dares to assume official roles to which he has no legal claim and for which he is quite unsuited. We are faced with the shocking consequences of the belief, standard for the time, that immorality is not necessarily a bar to effective ministry. Even more subversively, the Wife of Bath, who represents one of the most despised stereotypes in medieval literature, the sexually rapacious widow, dispenses wisdom of the highest order. This innovative book places these "fallible authors" within the full intellectual context that gave them meaning. Alastair Minnis magisterially examines the impact of Aristotelian thought on preaching theory, the controversial practice of granting indulgences, religious and medical categorizations of deviant bodies, theological attempts to rationalize sex within marriage, Wycliffite doctrine that made authority dependent on individual grace and raised the specter of Donatism, and heretical speculation concerning the possibility of female teachers. Chaucer's Pardoner and Wife of Bath are revealed as interconnected aspects of a single radical experiment wherein the relationship between objective authority and subjective fallibility is confronted as never before.

After the loss of his father at the age of four, Gary develops a full reliance on his mother. She is cunning and resilient, but hopelessly devoted to the same destructive family members responsible for the failure of her marriage. Husbandless and pregnant with her third child, Gary's mom manages to take her small stopgap family from living in a car in a beach parking lot to a boarding house where she meets the man who will be the father of her next two children. Evictions and cut utilities force move after move from neighboring towns to different states. As the growing family relocates, neglect and abuse from relatives and family friends shadow the children's lives. The chaotic existence, including the presence of an uncle and step-father in and out of prison and an alcoholic uncle who will not leave, awaken Gary to the realization that his family is not like other families. He begins to question his mother's decisions and disappointment transitions to anger, but a bond remains between Gary and his mom. Even during the worst times, she surprises with a fiercely protective love, like when Gary is forced to come out as gay at the age of fourteen. In spite of the unhinged way of living, the family is close. Gary and his younger brothers and sisters have no real friends but each other, and, in spite of her faults, they know their mother loves them deeply. Nothing prepares them for the moment she is taken away.

A humorous adventure from the author of The Complete Compleat Enchanter. He looks like a cross between a dragon and a catfish, and he can bend iron bars with a flick of his hand. In fact, Zdim, the mild-mannered demon, is a scholar of philosophy and logic. So when he's drafted for a year's servitude on the mortal plane, Zdim is certain a mistake has been made. Previoulsy published by Del Rey.

“This book merits every American’s serious consideration” (Vice President Joe Biden): from the Secretary of Education under President Obama, an exposé of the status quo that helps maintain a broken system at the expense of our kids’ education, and threatens our nation’s future. “Education runs on lies. That’s probably not what you’d expect from a former Secretary of Education, but it’s the truth.” So opens Arne Duncan’s How Schools Work, although the title could just as easily be How American Schools Work for Some, Not for Others, and Only Now and Then for Kids. Drawing on nearly three decades in education—from his mother’s after-school program on Chicago’s South Side to his tenure as Secretary of Education in Washington, DC—How Schools Work follows Arne (as he insists you call him) as he takes on challenges at every turn: gangbangers in Chicago housing projects, parents who call him racist, teachers who insist they can’t help poor kids, unions that refuse to modernize, Tea Partiers who call him an autocrat, affluent white progressive moms who hate yearly tests, and even the NRA, which once labeled Arne the “most extreme anti-gun member of President Obama’s Cabinet.” Going to a child’s funeral every couple of weeks, as he did when he worked in Chicago, will do that to a person. How Schools Work exposes the lies that have caused American kids to fall behind their international peers, from early childhood all the way to college graduation rates. But it also identifies what really does make a school work. “As insightful as it is inspiring” (Washington Book Review), How Schools Work will embolden parents, teachers, voters, and even students to demand more of our public schools. If America is going to be great, then we can accept nothing less.

A Fallible Church is a welcome reminder that moments of great crisis are often the most creative, however difficult they might be to live through. It shows that the communion is full of life, creativity and generosity of spirit, telling the neglected story of the enriching diocese-to-diocese partnerships that exist between England and Africa, where most Anglicans now live. It also re-awakens a sense of history. It shows that, serious and painful though they may be, there is nothing fundamentally new or different about the current conflicts within Anglicanism. The leading Anglicans from different backgrounds and traditions brought together here by Kenneth Stevenson believe that, though our generation will make its own mistakes, like past and future generations, God continues to use the Anglican communion, fallible like all of humanity, for the furtherance of his kingdom. A Fallible Church points us towards a patient and humble, but faithful future. The contributors are Mark Chapman, Norman Doe, John Gladwin, Graham James, James Jones, Terry Louden, David Stancliffe and the editor, Kenneth Stevenson.