Dr. Michael Allen and Gilbert D. Allen come from extreme poverty. Their parents battled drug addiction. Their siblings were homeless and displaced at various points during their childhood. Gilbert is five years younger than Michael-and the youngest. Gilbert was living between multiple places when Michael went to college. Michael had just finished football practice and a team dinner when he received a call from his brother Gilbert in the fall. Gilbert said there was a void he was feeling. It was a hard conversation for Michael; his brother was sobbing. Michael's college football team was having a magical championship season winning but his baby brother was hurting.Ultimately Michael consoled his brother, connected to his brother. Still, it got worse. Michael decided to go get his brother and take him with him to college. Gilbert finished high school while Michael was in college. Gilbert was reading at the fourth-grade level as a sophomore in high school. They had to navigate his readiness (in the northwestern part of Indiana at a majority white school). There was segregation within the community. Very few people thought Gilbert would finish high school-now he has his master's degree in social work and is working on a doctorate in counseling, community care, and trauma. Gilbert works as a social work supervisor; Michael has a doctorate in educational leadership and is an elementary school principal. This book is about bonds-especially their bond as brothers, and the importance of mentors, related or not. This book is a glimpse into the collective political correctness eroding genuine connections. It also is much about love, fond dreams, and what it means to give back to marginalized people. Their goals are to encourage people to believe and hope.They give insight, perspective, and share their journey within these pages. "It would be disrespectful to the journey if we don't give back," Michael said. "We have lessons to give back to humanity." The voices of Gilbert and Michael make it clear society is ill-equipped. It's a beautiful struggle. Diversity is good. They hope you'll read this-and participate by reaching out to someone.

Beneath the modern city of Philadelphia lie countless clues to its history and the lives of residents long forgotten. This intriguing book explores eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Philadelphia through the findings of archaeological excavations, sharing with readers the excitement of digging into the past and reconstructing the lives of earlier inhabitants of the city.Urban archaeologist Rebecca Yamin describes the major excavations that have been undertaken since 1992 as part of the redevelopment of Independence Mall and surrounding areas, explaining how archaeologists gather and use raw data to learn more about the ordinary people whose lives were never recorded in history books. Focusing primarily on these unknown citizens-an accountant in the first Treasury Department, a coachmaker whose clients were politicians doing business at the State House, an African American founder of St. Thomas’s African Episcopal Church, and others-Yamin presents a colorful portrait of old Philadelphia. She also discusses political aspects of archaeology today-who supports particular projects and why, and what has been lost to bulldozers and heedlessness. Digging in the City of Brotherly Love tells the exhilarating story of doing archaeology in the real world and using its findings to understand the past.

Every once in a while, someone special comes into our lives for a very short moment in time and touches our hearts. I think of my brother as my special person. He came into my life for a short while and touched it in ways I will never forget. Brotherly Love is a true story about the memories my brother and I createduntil something happened that changed my life forever.

In the City of Brotherly Love, a car skids off the ice and ignites a chain of events that changes everything for eight-year-old Peter Flood. Peter’s father is a powerful man, a union boss with mob connections, but all the power in the world is useless to a grieving son. Raised by his uncle, Peter tries to distance himself from the casual brutality of the family business, gravitating instead toward a small South Philly gym. Peter’s cousin Michael—his “brother”—moves in another direction: into small-time intimidation and the trappings of a union prince. Neither, however, can outrun the logic of violence as they’re dragged into a world of bad blood and a chilling cycle of betrayal and retribution. Praise for Brotherly Love “A first-rate novel and a masterly evocation of that undercivilized and unfree America . . . The grace and confidence of [Pete Dexter’s] prose conveys absolute authenticity.”—The New York Times Book Review “Enviably artful work—carefully wrought, canny in its insights, sly in its presentation, sneaky in its revelations.”—Chicago Tribune “Extraordinarily poignant . . . Brotherly Love is all bulletproof prose and flinty-eyed bravissimo. . . . But the quieter, sadder aspects of the novel are its strongest points.”—The Boston Globe “Tautly and often exquisitely written.”—Los Angeles Times

"Brother Love: Murder, Money, and a Messiah details the incredible rise and fall of Yahweh Ben Yahweh (born Hulon Mitchell, Jr.) and his Nation of Yahweh. In a section of town rotten with drugs and violence and torn apart by riots, this self-proclaimed messiah captivated thousands of black men and women who hungered for a leader. Under his rule they seemed able to bring order and discipline to a place where there had been none, and Yahweh Ben Yahweh was hailed as a savior of the ghetto by Miami's power elite. But the hope that the black messiah brought ended in turbulence and death. Yahweh Ben Yahweh's story reveals much about modern American opportunism and hypocrisy, violence and religious fanaticism, and the search for identity and solidarity in the midst of our ongoing racial malaise."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Acclaimed singer-songwriter Rhett Miller teams up with Caldecott Medalist and bestselling artist Dan Santat in a riotous collection of irreverent poems for modern families. In the tradition of Shel Silverstein, these poems bring a fresh new twist to the classic dilemmas of childhood as well as a perceptive eye to the foibles of modern family life. Full of clever wordplay and bright visual gags--and toilet humor to spare--these twenty-three rhyming poems make for an ideal read-aloud experience. Taking on the subjects of a bullying baseball coach and annoying little brothers with equally sly humor, renowned lyricist Rhett Miller's clever verses will have the whole family cackling.

Brotherly love can hurt ... and that's just the way they like it Rex is a man who knows how to do things in secret. He transfers prisoners all around the country and moves them into the underground sub-basement he and his buddies use as a sex dungeon in the basement of a police station. No one but his buddies knows about the sub-basement, or the things they do down in the damp, dark cells to the prisoners. No one hears the screams of the caged and strung out men who beg to be relieved of the tension that is constantly building between their legs. For them there is never any permanent release, and Rex makes sure of it. Forrest finds out he is being transferred to another prison. No one has told him where he’s going or how long he’s going to be in the back of the van. He travels for days with a hood over his head and his hands cuffed behind him, and it isn’t until he’s brought two stories below ground that he finds out who brought him here. His friend Rex. Forrest hasn’t seen Rex in ten years. They were close friends all while they grew up. So close that most people thought they were brothers. Twins, even. When Forrest sees Rex for the first time in years he knows how angry Rex will be. Especially after what Forrest did to him. Forrest can see by the look in Rex’s eyes he’s about to be punished like he’s never been punished in his life, and that’s exactly where he wants to be. Brotherly Love: A Dark M/M Romance was previously published under a different title by X Collins, and has been extensively rewritten and edited. This version is a dark romance with themes of BDSM, humiliation, and punishment.

Published eight years after the first volume in Documents of Brotherly Love, this second volume continues to refine the narrative of " Dutch Aid to Swiss Anabaptists." In contrast to the first volume's scope, spreading across seven decades following 1635, the correspondence of the present volume dates from only a two year span, 1710-1711. Readers now gain further access to materials archived ( primarily in Amsterdam) beginning in the seventeenth century. Though most were carefully inventoried in the late nineteenth century, and microfilmed (poorly) in the twentieth, they were only selectively consulted and quoted by historians. The international story unfolding through this epistolary conversation was thus only partial represented in either scholarly or popular history. The unusual strength of the Christian bond powering this episode of "Brotherly Love" is evident beyond its north-south dynamics, in its eastward reach to Swiss-deriving Mennonite Communities south of Heidelberg, or westward to Germantown in Pennsylvania, from which a nascent Mennonite community looked to both Dutch and Palatine leaders for advice. Readers can thus newly trace the arc of brotherly aid from an insecure Bernese haystack to donated land in the Netherlands in 1711 or a home carved from the woods of Pennsylvania in 1718.

In the vein of Erin Brockovich, The Departed, and T. J. English's Savage City comes Busted, the shocking true story of the biggest police corruption scandal in Philadelphia history, a tale of drugs, power, and abuse involving a rogue narcotics squad, a confidential informant, and two veteran journalists whose reporting drove a full-scale FBI probe, rocked the City of Brotherly Love, and earned a Pulitzer Prize . In 2003, Benny Martinez became a Confidential Informant for a member of the Philadelphia Police Department's narcotics squad, helping arrest nearly 200 drug and gun dealers over seven years. But that success masked a dark and dangerous reality: the cops were as corrupt as the criminals they targeted. In addition to fabricating busts, the squad systematically looted mom-and-pop stores, terrorizing hardworking immigrant owners. One squad member also sexually assaulted three women during raids. Frightened for his life, Martinez turned to Philadelphia Daily News reporters Wendy Ruderman and Barbara Laker. Busted chronicles how these two journalists—both middle-class working mothers—formed an unlikely bond with a convicted street dealer to uncover the secrets of ruthless kingpins and dirty cops. Professionals in an industry shrinking from severe financial cutbacks, Ruderman and Laker had few resources—besides their own grit and tenacity—to break a dangerous, complex story that would expose the rotten underbelly of a modern American city and earn them a Pulitzer Prize. A page-turning thriller based on superb reportage, illustrated with eight pages of photos, Busted is modern true crime at its finest.

Friendship, an acquired relationship primarily based on choice rather than birth, lay at the heart of Enlightenment preoccupations with sociability and the formation of the private sphere. In Brotherly Love, Kenneth Loiselle argues that Freemasonry is an ideal arena in which to explore the changing nature of male friendship in Enlightenment France. Freemasonry was the largest and most diverse voluntary organization in the decades before the French Revolution. At least fifty thousand Frenchmen joined lodges, the memberships of which ranged across the social spectrum from skilled artisans to the highest ranks of the nobility. Loiselle argues that men were attracted to Freemasonry because it enabled them to cultivate enduring friendships that were egalitarian and grounded in emotion.Drawing on scores of archives, including private letters, rituals, the minutes of lodge meetings, and the speeches of many Freemasons, Loiselle reveals the thought processes of the visionaries who founded this movement, the ways in which its members maintained friendships both within and beyond the lodge, and the seemingly paradoxical place women occupied within this friendship community. Masonic friendship endured into the tumultuous revolutionary era, although the revolutionary leadership suppressed most of the lodges by 1794. Loiselle not only examines the place of friendship in eighteenth-century society and culture but also contributes to the history of emotions and masculinity, and the essential debate over the relationship between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.