At the age of five, Tony Huarte receives a prophesy from an erotic gypsy woman a birthmark, he is told, reveals that he has a special gift of quickness. Pilar, the sensuous, spell-casting fortune-teller, is also a world-class flamingo dancer. She takes Tony under her wing and introduces him to 40s jazz music, inspiring his lifetime love of jazz. As early as ten, Tonys elite quickness and determination, spurred on by Pilar and his uncle Pablo, enable him to have early triumphs in the youth boxing tournaments. Set against the 50s - 80s jazz scene, The Quick and The Rest is a 120,000 word fiction novel. It is the chronicle of a young boy of simple emigrant parents who discovers that he is gifted with elite reactions and hand-eye coordination. His profession as a boxer and the aftermath take him and his boyhood football companion Charlie on a wild odyssey through the brutal championship fights, the bright lights of the jazz world, the dangerous contacts with criminals, the adventure of an epic sail, and the encounters with many stunning, but problematic, women. Tonys penchant and magnet for violence outside the ring leave him with a smashed right hand, several dead men and his challenge for the top of the professional boxing world severely, as well as his physical and mental well-being, jeopardized. These violent engagements are, for the most part, the result of his obsession with highly desirable women and the fast living that accompany them.

Most churches in America struggle to have a significant percentage of their adult attendance in small groups. According to recent research done by Lifeway Research, only “33 percent of churchgoers attend classes or groups for adults (such as Sunday school, Bible study, small groups, or Adult Bible Fellowships) four or more times in a typical month. Fourteen percent attend two or three times a month.” Life transformation happens best within the context of community, so if a church is going to be intentional about discipleship they have to develop on-ramps to small groups that reach people on the fringes and beyond. If we continue to offer small groups to the normal church attenders, a majority of the people who show up to church are never reached. Pastors, church staff and small group leaders are trying to figure out how to make small groups work in their church and they don’t know how. Small Groups For The Rest Of Us gives them practical, proven strategies on moving people from the fringes into biblically based communities.

Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.