A rich narrative recounting the life story of award-winning African American historian and novelist Allen B. Ballard, Breaching Jericho's Walls takes its readers on an exciting journey from a segregated Philadelphia community in the 1930s to mid-century Paris, Moscow, Cambridge, and Manhattan. The author reflects on his own pioneering role as he expands his horizons, as one of the first African American students at Ohio's Kenyon College, studying abroad in France and sharing a café table with Richard Wright and James Baldwin, serving in the military in the American South and attending graduate school at Harvard University. Becoming one of the nation's first black Russian specialists, Ballard studies in post-Stalinist Russia for a year, where, among other adventures, he spends a month with Michael Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, on a Soviet farm. Though he tells his own personal story within Breaching Jericho's Walls, Ballard also portrays the experiences of those northern African-Americans whose generations bridged the gap from the legacy of slavery to the breakdown of the segregated system in the 1950s and 1960s while revealing the crucial role that individuals like civil rights leader Paul Robeson, Olympic athletes Jesse Owens and Long John Woodruff, and scholar Alain Locke played in inspiring the hopes of an oppressed and downtrodden race. A memoir filled with entertaining anecdotes and insightful reflection, Breaching Jericho's Walls offers Ballard's compelling personal story and reveals how, brick by brick, African Americans built the road that led to the election of President Obama in 2008.

"In approaching the study of one of the books of Scripture it must be of considerable help to the student if he can ascertain what is its main design and what is its outstanding topic. As pointed out in the pages in our Introduction to Exodus each book in the Bible has a prominent and dominant theme which, as such, is peculiar to itself, around which everything is made to center and of which all the details are but the amplification. What that leading subject may be, we should make it our business to prayerfully and diligently ascertain. This can best be discovered by reading and re-reading the book under review, noting carefully any particular feature or expression which occurs frequently in it-such as "under the sun" in Ecclesiastes or "the righteousness of God" in Romans. "The book of Joshua records one of the most interesting and important portions of Israel's history. It treats of the period of their estatement as a nation, of which Genesis was prophetic and the rest of the Pentateuch immediately preparatory. The books of Moses would be imperfect without this one: as it is the capstone of them, so it is the foundation of those which follow. Omit Joshua and there is a gap left in the sacred history which nothing could supply. Without it what proceeds would be incomprehensible and what follows unexplained. The sacred writer was directed to fill that gap by narrating the conquest and apportionment of the Promised Land. Thus this book may be contemplated from two distinct but closely related standpoints: first as the end of Israel's trials and wanderings in the wilderness, and second as the beginning of their new life in the land. It is that twofold viewpoint which supplies the clue to its spiritual interpretation, as it alone solves the problem which so many have found puzzling in this book." Arthur Walkington Pink was an English Christian evangelist and Biblical scholar known for his staunchly Calvinist and Puritan-like teachings. Though born to Christian parents, prior to conversion he migrated into a Theosophical society (an occult gnostic group popular in England during that time), and quickly rose in prominence within their ranks. His conversion came from his father's patient admonitions from Scripture. It was the verse, Proverbs 14:12, 'there is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death, ' which particularly struck his heart and compelled him to renounce Theosophy and follow Jesus.

This is the story of Operation Jericho, the spectacular prison break staged by an elite group of British, Australian and New Zealand bomber pilots, who flew a daring low-level mission to blow holes in the walls of Amiens jail and free French Resistance prisoners under the sentence of death during World War II. With D-Day looming, early 1944 was a time of massive intelligence activity across northern France, and many résistants were being captured and imprisoned by the Germans. Among the jails full of French agents was Amiens, where hundreds awaited likely execution for their activities. To repay their debt of honour, MI6 requested an air raid with a seemingly impossible brief: to simultaneously blow holes in the prison walls, free as many men and women as possible while minimizing casualties, and kill German guards in their quarters. The crews would have to fly their bomb-run at an altitude of just 20ft. Despite the huge difficulties, the RAF decided that the low-level specialists of No. 140 Wing had a chance of success. With the aid of first-hand accounts, explanatory 3D diagrams and dramatic original artwork, the eminent historian Robert Lyman explains how one of the most difficult and spectacular air raids of World War II was pulled off, and debunks some of the myths over why the raid was ordered in the first place.

It is a place both mythic and all too real, a place thought to be the site of one of our oldest human settlements and known to be a center of ancient cultures and annihilating conflicts. It sits at the bottom of a malarial valley, the lowest place on the surfact of the earth--"the overheated, earthen basement of the world," as Robert Ruby describes it. And yet, long before the world's modern religions began scrapping over its bones, Jericho was home to waves of colonization and floods of destruction. Fought over by the succeeding epochs of ancestors, the place we call Jericho is as old as the first remnants dated at 9,000 B.C.--and as current as the daily headlines. In this unorthodox biography of the first eleven thousand years in the life of a legend, Robert Ruby takes us back through time to those early settlements, then forward to the often crude but ultimately successful latter-day attempts to locate Jericho, to unearth and map and catalog its history. Beginning with the geography of place, he weaves together his own intimate knowledge of modern-day Jericho with stories of the lives and work of those explorers and archaeologists of the past whose courage often bordered on madness and whose dedication sometimes seemed the purest kind of human folly. Soldiers, scholars, engineers, adventurers--dilettantes and professionals alike, they were all dreamers drawn to this parched and dusty spot where so much of human history took place. Matching biblical accounts to araeological evidence, sifting myth from science, phantoms from reality, Robert Ruby teases out the complex strata of the past, helping us to make sense of what exists today. With the flair of a novelist and the enthusiasm of an amateur archaeologist, he offers a tale that is part detection, part epic adventure. Above all, he gives us a work of great literary panache: witty, fact-filled, and uterly, subversively compelling.

Giants and Prophets. Princes and Prostitutes. A place where blood is currency and only the violent survive. Fear is a luxury you can not afford … in Jericho! When Zalmon, son of the former Prince of Judah, and his best friend, Othniel, are secretly chosen to spy out the formidable city of Jericho, the two find the task far more treacherous than they could ever imagine. Accidentally thrown together with the captivating temple priestess, Rahab, the two must escape monstrous giants, a bloodthirsty people and a violent king with the help of their beautiful new companion, in exchange for the promise to protect her and her family. But unforeseen problems threaten their oath and Rahab is left at the mercy of the vengeful king. Will glory, honor, or love be enough in the end--or will ancient forces, locked in battle, destroy them all? ​ Exhilarating action and a steamy adventure, this ancient story is retold in a stunning new way.

"Old as the hills," "see eye to eye," "raising Cain" -- this collection of insights and anecdotes about how ancient scripture still shapes the things we say today is a great conversation piece and a fun testament to the Bible's lasting influence.

The Bible is the most widely read book in the world. It brings guidance and comfort to those who read it. A great many people believe in every word of the Bible. Yet, there are modern scholars who have dismissed parts of the Bible as a myth or simply a moral tale. They believe that the violent conquest of Canaan never happened, though it is described so vividly in the Book of Joshua and the following Books of the Bible. That the tribes of Israel settled peacefully in Canaan. They cannot reconcile a violent conquest with the date at which they believe that the Israelites entered the Promised Land. And so, they have dismissed parts of the Bible as being mere myth because it is inconvenient. I believe they have lost their way in interpreting the Bible. I have searched through the archaeological record and matched what I have found with the events described in the Bible. My book puts forward a plausible theory of how this pivotal battle unfolded. See if you agree with me. The Battle of Jericho, truth or myth.

Throughout history there has always been one thing that has influenced the way people lived and how they interacted: religion. Not only has religion been a source of peace and prosperity, it has also been the cause of many wars, murders and destruction. We begin with Joshua’s wars in 1500 BC when he led the Hebrews to their Promised Land, leaving a trail of carnage behind them. We continue our journey through time to the Zealot riots in Jerusalem, the Crusaders and the Inquisition, finally reaching the stories of cult murders and suicides in the last century. Throughout our journey we will attempt to find answers to the many questions that surround such incidents. How can an ordinary person or group of people be manipulated to such an extent that they willingly murder another life or take their own? What drives the leaders of such movements to turn their followers into war machines or killers? Is religion in itself to blame or are the culprits the interpreters of religious doctrines? Will society ever reach a point where religion is a personal belief or will it always remain a tool that is used to gain wealth and power? And lastly, when will it end? The author, who was abused as a child by the notorious sex cult, The Children of God aka The Family International reveals all in Cults: The Bloodstained History of Organised Religion.