One day, a shepherd, while watching the sheep, saw a bush on fire. To his surprise, the bush didn't burn up. Curious, he drew closer, and there Moses heard the voice of God. He was on holy ground.One week, a father, mother, three children and a nephew went to Disney World, though they saw no bushes ablaze, wonders, lessons, and holy grounds were as abundant as the Florida sun.Read about Moses' call to Egypt alongside a family's vacation to Disney World and learn how to see holy ground all around you, anytime, everywhere, in the promised land, or the family van.

Assesses the layered meanings and persistent global legacy of an American film classic.

In this compelling novel, Michener sweeps readers back through time to the very beginnings of the Jewish faith, thousands of years ago, to experience the entire colorful history of the JewsQfrom the lives of the early Hebrews to the impact of Christianity, the Crusades, and the Spanish Inquisition to present-day Israel and the Middle-East conflict. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

A psychologist who evaluates the fitness of parents when their children have been removed from their custody finds herself reassessing her own mothering when her son falls victim to the opioid crisis. Psychologist and expert witness Dr. Sharon Lamb evaluates parents, particularly in high-stakes cases concerning the termination of parental rights. The conclusions she reaches can mean that some children are returned home from foster homes. Others are freed for adoption. Well-trained, Lamb generally can decide what’s in the best interests of the child. But when her son’s struggle with opioid addiction comes to light, she starts to doubt her right to make judgments about other mothers. As an expert, a professor, and a mother, Lamb gives voice to the near impossible standards demanded by a society prone to blame mothers when anything befalls their children. She describes vividly the plight of individual parents, mothers in particular, struggling with addiction and mental illness and trying to make stable homes for their kids amid the economic and emotional turmoil of their lives—all in the context of the opioid epidemic that has ravaged her home state of Vermont. In her office, during visits with their children, and in the family court, the parents we meet wait anxiously for Lamb’s verdict: Have they turned their lives around under child welfare’s watchful eye? Do they understand their children’s needs? In short, are they good enough? But what is good enough? Lamb turns that question on herself in the midst of her gradual realization of her son’s opioid addiction. Amazed at her own denial, feeling powerless to help him, Lamb confronts the heartache she can bring into the lives of others and her power to tear families apart.

FINALIST FOR THE 2024 GOTHAM BOOK PRIZE The devolution of the Sullivan Institute, from psychoanalytic organization to insular, radical cult. In the middle of the Ozzie and Harriet 1950s, the birth control pill was introduced and a maverick psychoanalytic institute, the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis, opened its doors in New York City. Its founders, Saul Newton and Jane Pearce, wanted to start a revolution, one grounded in ideals of creative expression, sexual liberation, and freedom from the expectations of society, and the revolution, they felt, needed to begin at home. Dismantling the nuclear family—and monogamous marriage—would free people from the repressive forces of their parents. In its first two decades, the movement attracted many brilliant, creative people as patients: the painter Jackson Pollock and a swarm of other abstract expressionist artists, the famed art critic Clement Greenberg, the singer Judy Collins, and the dancer Lucinda Childs. In the 1960s, the group evolved into an urban commune of three or four hundred people, with patients living with other patients, leading creative, polyamorous lives. But by the mid-1970s, under the leadership of Saul Newton, the Institute had devolved from a radical communal experiment into an insular cult, with therapists controlling virtually every aspect of their patients’ lives, from where they lived and the work they did to how often they saw their sexual partners and their children. Although the group was highly secretive during its lifetime and even after its dissolution in 1991, the noted journalist Alexander Stille has succeeded in reconstructing the inner life of a parallel world hidden in plain sight in the middle of Manhattan. Through countless interviews and personal papers, The Sullivanians reveals the nearly unbelievable story of a fallen utopia.

Berkeley, California, was the bellwether of the political, social, and cultural upheaval that made the 1960s a unique period of American history--a time when the top-down methods of a conservative establishment collided head-on with the bottom-up, grass-roots ethos of the civil rights movement and an increasingly well-educated and individualistic middle class. W.J. Rorabaugh, who attended the graduate school of the University of California at Berkeley in the early 1970s, presents a lively and informative account of the events that overtook and changed forever what had once been a quiet, conservative white suburb. The rise of the Free Speech Movement, which gave a voice to disfranchised students; the growth and increasing militance of a black community struggling to end segregation; the emergence of radicalism and the anti-war movement; the blossoming of "hippie" culture, with its scorn for materialism and enthusiasm for experimentation with everything from sex and drugs to Eastern philosophies; the beginnings of modern-day feminism and environmentalism--and how all of these coalesced in the explosive conflict over People's Park--are traced in a meticulously researched and authoritative narrative. At issue was the question of power, and the struggle between the establishment and the powerless led to developments that the advocates of a freer society could scarcely have foreseen: Ronald Reagan, elected governor of California in reaction to the events at Berkeley, and Edwin H. Meese III, who battled against the student movement and People's Park, rose to national power in the 1980s (without, however, gaining any popularity in Berkeley, where Walter Mondale won 83 percent of the vote in 1984). An invaluable account of its time and place, this book anchors the '60s in American history, both before and since that colorful decade.

Brockway exposes Western mythic thought from Paleolithic times to the present. Myth and mythic thinking did not cease with the rise of science and philosophy during the Enlightenment, but continue to flourish in modern times. The author shows how mythic themes continue to occur in both high culture and popular arts.

In his signature style of grand storytelling, James A. Michener transports us back thousands of years to the Holy Land. Through the discoveries of modern archaeologists excavating the site of Tell Makor, Michener vividly re-creates life in an ancient city and traces the profound history of the Jewish people—from the persecution of the early Hebrews, the rise of Christianity, and the Crusades to the founding of Israel and the modern conflict in the Middle East. An epic tale of love, strength, and faith, The Source is a richly written saga that encompasses the history of Western civilization and the great religious and cultural ideas that have shaped our world. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from James A. Michener's Hawaii. Praise for The Source “Fascinating . . . stunning . . . [a] wonderful rampage through history . . . Biblical history, as seen through the eyes of a professor who is puzzled, appalled, delighted, enriched and impoverished by the spectacle of a land where all men are archeologists.”—The New York Times “A sweeping [novel] filled with excitement—pagan ritual, the clash of armies, ancient and modern: the evolving drama of man’s faith.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer “Magnificent . . . a superlative piece of writing both in scope and technique . . . one of the great books of this generation.”—San Francisco Call Bulletin

Agents Lacey Sherlock and Dillon Savich are up against an unstable villain with a very long memory in this FBI Thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter. The explosive action kicks off as treasure-hunting FBI agent Ruth Warnecki is on the trail of stolen Confederate gold hidden in Winkel’s cave in western Virginia. She never expects to find herself chin-deep in a grisly murder that leaves her nearly dead and rocks the town of Maestro. Then, at a stake-out in Maryland, FBI agents Dillon Savich and Dane Carver are nearly killed in a horrific explosion while attempting to rescue kidnap victim, Pinky Womack. They are led to Arlington National Cemetery where they not only find Pinky, but Savich also takes a fateful call on his cell from an old man out to kill both him and Sherlock. The thing is they have no clue why. Pitted against an insane killer and his psychotic teenage girlfriend, Savich and Sherlock find themselves fighting a hate-driven villain with a grudge worth killing for...

On a 2001 trip to the cathedrals of Europe, anthropologist John Rush and his wife entered St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice and encountered a mosaic depicting Jesus surrounded by mushrooms with an Amanita muscaria cap in his hand. Examining the space with new eyes, they discovered images of mushrooms and mind-altering plants all over the Basilica. Intrigued, Dr. Rush spent seven years researching and reflecting on the profound effects hallucinogens had on the founding of all three major Western religions. He concluded that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are political constructions evolving out of the use of not only Amanita muscaria, but a plethora of mind-altering substances.Failed God: Fractured Myth in a Fragile World re-examines the scriptural stories of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as told in the Bible and Qur’an and reveals them as “concocted mythical charters stemming from drug-induced romps with the super-natural.” Rush shows how mind-altering substances played an instrumental role in the birth and development of Western religions and explains how they contributed to reports of “prophetic” experiences, including angry and disturbing messages from the divine. With chapters on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Rush fully addresses the effects of mind-altering substances on each tradition, convincingly discrediting the idea that they stem from actual human interaction with the divine. He also shows how an intoxicated and over-zealous Apostle Paul corrupted Jesus’s simple message of human decency, forming an oppressive religious system based on fear. In a thought-provoking conclusion, Rush asks how we can continue to attribute authority to traditions that were so clearly irrationally founded and incompatible with today’s world.