The book 'Value Crisis' analyses how a lack of basic moral education starting in the family, with adequate parental responsibility, has led to a world where violence and social evils affect peace and harmony. The family as a cell of the society is the nursery for values that can sustain a development that is in harmony with nature, and where the spirit of trust and sharing is primordial. Modern development has stressed too much on materialist living where greed and exploitation have led to multiple crises. The book highlights how universal values can be brought back in our lives.

The family is the nucleus around which society is built. Now more than ever, Christian values and teachings concerning the family are being challenged. The Church's voice of Truth has become harder to hear amidst all the noise. This collection of documents and addresses assembles the most recent expressions of the eternal Truths of the Church regarding the family and human life. Together, they comprise a comprehensive reference work and a source of inspiration and growth, providing insight into the role of the Christian family in the world, as well as rich teaching about the inherent dignity of human life.

In the United States, African American and Italian cultures have been intertwined for more than a hundred years. From as early as nineteenth-century African American opera star Thomas Bowers—“The Colored Mario”—all the way to hip-hop entrepreneur Puff Daddy dubbing himself “the Black Sinatra,” the affinity between black and Italian cultures runs deep and wide. Once you start looking, you’ll find these connections everywhere. Sinatra croons bel canto over the limousine swing of the Count Basie band. Snoop Dogg deftly tosses off the line “I’m Lucky Luciano ’bout to sing soprano.” Like the Brooklyn pizzeria and candy store in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever, or the basketball sidelines where Italian American coaches Rick Pitino and John Calipari mix it up with their African American players, black/Italian connections are a thing to behold—and to investigate. In Flavor and Soul, John Gennari spotlights this affinity, calling it “the edge”—now smooth, sometimes serrated—between Italian American and African American culture. He argues that the edge is a space of mutual emulation and suspicion, a joyous cultural meeting sometimes darkened by violent collision. Through studies of music and sound, film and media, sports and foodways, Gennari shows how an Afro-Italian sensibility has nourished and vitalized American culture writ large, even as Italian Americans and African Americans have fought each other for urban space, recognition of overlapping histories of suffering and exclusion, and political and personal rispetto. Thus, Flavor and Soul is a cultural contact zone—a piazza where people express deep feelings of joy and pleasure, wariness and distrust, amity and enmity. And it is only at such cultural edges, Gennari argues, that America can come to truly understand its racial and ethnic dynamics.

Women, Desire, and Power in Italian Cinema offers, for the first time in Italian Cinema criticism, a contextual study of the representation of women in twentieth-century Italian films. Marga Cottino-Jones argues that the ways women are depicted on screen reflects a subconscious "sexual conservatism" typical of an Italian society rooted within a patriarchal ideology. The book then follows the slow but constant process of social awareness in the Italian society through women in film, especially after the 1950s. Comprehensive in scope, this book analyzes the films of internationally known male and female directors, such as Antonioni, Fellini, Rossellini, Visconti, Bertolucci, Benigni, Cavani, Wertmuller, Comencini, and Archibugi. Special consideration is given to the actresses and actors that have become the icons of Italian femininity and masculinity, such as Sofia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Silvana Mangano, Gian Carlo Giannini, Marcello Mastroianni, and Alberto Sordi.

This book explores national and transnational companies' Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities in times and settings in which they are confronted with economic and social challenges and analyzes these situations, ranging from the financial crisis to fourth generation sustainability. Presenting a number of different cases from various parts of Europe, North America and Africa, it showcases how companies respond to the challenges of the development, consultation, implementation, integration, measurement and consolidation of CSR. Further it specifies how these corporations deal with uncertainties over corporate and financial resources, global financial stability and growing evidence for climate change. The book describes CSR adaptation under challenging circumstances and argues for the strategic and operative legitimation of Corporate Social Responsibility in times of crisis.