A Man of privilege, Carlos gives up everything to learn life lewssons that he later puts to use in the service of God, church, and his fellow man.

A book to show a new phase of compassion and understanding for helping the down and out.

“There are people who break open and make a new, bigger, self. But some of us are ... brittle.” When stress causes an old trauma to surface, Lucy, a longtime community organizer, teacher and anti-poverty activist, loses control of her life. On probation and living on the streets of Halifax’s North End, all she has left is friends. Faithful friends like Judith, her lawyer, who is helping her take back her life. Lucy begins to regularly sneak into Judith’s basement to take refuge from the cold, but Lucy’s presence in the house betrays their friendship, and she uncovers mysteries from Judith’s past. As events draw their lives closer, Lucy and Judith are forced to face the toll taken by their secrets. Each of them must choose between confronting past pain or remaining broken.

For some young men, climbing Everest or sailing solo into polar seas isn’t the biggest risk in the world. Instead it is venturing alone into the deepest urban jungle, where human nature is the dangerous, incomprehensible and sometimes wildly uplifting force that tests not only your ability to survive but also your own humanity. One cold November day, Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall heads out on just such a quest. He packs up a new tent, some clothes, his notebooks and a pen and goes to live in Tent City, twenty-seven lawless acres where the largest hobo town on the continent squats in the scandalized shadow of Canada’s largest city. The rules he sets for himself are simple: no access to money, family or friends, except what he can find from that day on. He’ll do whatever people in Tent City do to get by, be whatever bum, wino, beggar, hustler, criminal, junkie or con man he chooses to be on any given day. When he arrives, he finds a dump full of the castaways of the last millennium, human and otherwise. On the edge of the world, yet somehow smack in the middle of it all, fugitives, drug addicts, prostitutes, dealers and ex-cons have created an anarchic society, where the rules are made up nightly and your life depends on knowing them. Not only does Bishop-Stall manage to survive until the bulldozers come, but against all odds his own heart and spirit slowly mend. An astonishing account of birth, suicide, brawls, binges, tears, crazed laughter, good and bad intentions, fiendish charity and the sudden eloquence and generosity of broken souls, Down to This is Bishop-Stall’s iridescent love song to a lost city like no other.

Grade Level 6.2, Book# 385, Points 7.

An important new volume showcasing a wide range of faith-based responses to one of today’s most pressing social issues, challenging us to expand our ways of understanding. Land of Stark Contrasts brings together the work of social scientists, ethicists, and theologians exploring the profound role of religion in understanding and responding to homelessness and housing insecurity in all corners of the United States—from Seattle, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley to Dallas and San Antonio to Washington, D.C., and Boston. Together, the essays of Land of Stark Contrasts chart intriguing ways forward for future initiatives to address the root causes of homelessness. In this way they are essential reading for practical theologians, congregational leaders, and faith-based nonprofit organizers exploring how to combine spiritual and material care for homeless individuals and other vulnerable populations. Social workers, nonprofit managers, and policy specialists seeking to understand how to partner better with faith-based organizations will also find the chapters in this volume an invaluable resource. Contributors include James V. Spickard, Manuel Mejido Costoya and Margaret Breen, Michael R. Fisher Jr., Laura Stivers, Lauren Valk Lawson, Bruce Granville Miller, Nancy A. Khalil, John A. Coleman, S.J., Jeremy Phillip Brown, Paul Houston Blankenship, María Teresa Dávila, Roberto Mata, and Sathianathan Clarke. Co-published with Seattle University’s Center for Religious Wisdom and World Affairs

The author chronicles his own spiritual journey and describes with honesty the difficult decisions he made along the way. Girzone has attracted a following with his series of novels that imagine Jesus living in the contemporary world. Here, he recounts the long, complicated, and often painful process he went though as he sought to find peace with his beliefs. He writes about hard decisions that set him on unexpected paths and about the immense feelings of loneliness he experienced in making those choices. In thoughtful and thought-provoking reflections he brings to life the years of searching and the deep, critical thinking that gave him the courage to embrace his beliefs, opening a world of excitement and adventure for him.--From publisher description.

Late in the 1970s, Americans began to notice more people sleeping in public places and wandering the streets. By the late 1980s, the homeless were everywhere--a grim reminder of America's social and economic troubles. Renowned social analyst Jencks discusses the causes and extent of this problem and what can be done about it. Line illustrations and tables.

“Bishop-Stall insists that hangovers… [are] worthy of a cure. After years of dogged research around the globe, he finds one — just in time for the holidays.” —Washington Post “[An] irreverent, well-oiled memoir…Bishop-Stall packs his book with humorous and enlightening asides about alcohol.” —The Wall Street Journal One intrepid reporter's quest to learn everything there is to know about hangovers, trying all of the cures he can find and explaining how (and if) they work, all so rest of us don't have to. We've all been there. One minute you're fast asleep, and in the next you're tumbling from dreams of deserts and demons, into semi-consciousness, mouth full of sand, head throbbing. You're hungover. Courageous journalist Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall has gone to the front lines of humanity's age-old fight against hangovers to settle once and for all the best way to get rid of the aftereffects of a night of indulgence (short of not drinking in the first place). Hangovers have plagued human beings for about as long as civilization has existed (and arguably longer), so there has been plenty of time for cures to be concocted. But even in 2018, little is actually known about hangovers, and less still about how to cure them. Cutting through the rumor and the myth, Hungover explores everything from polar bear swims, to saline IV drips, to the age-old hair of the dog, to let us all know which ones actually work. And along the way, Bishop-Stall regales readers with stories from humanity's long and fraught relationship with booze, and shares the advice of everyone from Kingsley Amis to a man in a pub.

In this New York Times Notable Book, the Pulitzer Prize–finalist undertakes his own investigation into the murder of a Guatemalan bishop. Named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post Book World, the Chicago Tribune, the Economist, and the San Francisco Chronicle Two days after releasing a groundbreaking church-sponsored report implicating the military in the murders and disappearances of some two hundred thousand Guatemalan civilians, Bishop Juan Gerardi was bludgeoned to death in his garage. Gerardi was the country’s leading human rights activist, but the Church quickly realized it could not rely on police investigators or the legal system to solve the crime. Instead, Church leaders formed their own investigative team: a group of secular young men who called themselves Los Intocables—the Untouchables. Author Francisco Goldman spoke to witnesses no other reporter was able to reach, observing firsthand some of the most crucial developments in this sensational case. Documenting the Latin American reality of mara youth gangs and organized crime, The Art of Political Murder tells the incredible true story of Los Intocables and their remarkable fight for justice. “Becoming by turns a little bit Columbo, Jason Bourne and Seymour Hersh, Goldman gives us the anatomy of a crime while opening a window to a misunderstood neighboring country that is flirting with anarchy.” —The New York Times Book Review