The book explores the antisemitic potential of Matthew's Gospel in the Christian New Testament. It begins with a detailed discussion of the occasion of the text, before discussing key questions (Matthew's fulfilment theology, and the use of polemic in the text). Three crucial texts are examined in detail. The book discusses the reverberations of the "blood cry," arguing the deicide-focused interpretation of Matthew 27:25 is foundational to subsequent blood libels, which are also discussed. The final chapters explore how to preach from Matthew's Gospel with Jewish people in mind, including offering sample sermons to stimulate the reader's thinking about how they might teach from a controversial Matthean text in a way that denies the possibility of perpetuating Christian antisemitism. It will be of interest to students and scholars in religion and faith, Christianity, and interfaith studies.

Near the end of World War II and after, a small-town Nebraska youth, Jimmy Kugler, drew more than a hundred double-sided sheets of comic strip stories. Over half of these six-panel tales retold the Pacific War as fought by "Frogs" and "Toads," humanoid creatures brutally committed to a kill-or-be-killed struggle. The history of American youth depends primarily on adult reminiscences of their own childhoods, adult testimony to the lives of youth around them, or surmises based on at best a few creative artifacts. The survival then of such a large collection of adolescent comic strips from America's small-town Midwest is remarkable. Michael Kugler reproduces the never-before-published comics of his father's adolescent imagination as a microhistory of American youth in that formative era. Also included in Into the Jungle! A Boy's Comic Strip History of World War II are the likely comic book models for these stories and inspiration from news coverage in newspapers, radio, movies, and newsreels. Kugler emphasizes how US propaganda intended to inspire patriotic support for the war gave this young artist a license for his imagined violence. In a context of progressive American educational reform, these violent comic stories, often in settings modeled on the artist's small Nebraska town, suggests a form of adolescent rebellion against moral conventions consistent with comic art's reputation for "outsider" or countercultural expressions. Kugler also argues that these comics provide evidence for the transition in American taste from war stories to the horror comics of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Kugler's thorough analysis of his father's adolescent art explains how a small-town boy from the plains distilled the popular culture of his day for an imagined war he could fight on his audacious, even shocking terms.

An ethical solution to the current health, ecological and financial problems we face is to mobilize our responsibility by overcoming our duality with the environment. It calls for changes in attitudes and behaviors that are not self-evident and can be facilitated by specific learning. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBI) are increasingly used in professional settings, particularly in therapy, because their effectiveness in terms of change is increasingly supported by scientific evidence. This book presents a detailed program aimed at developing an ethics of responsibility known as Mindfulness- or MeditationBased Ethics of Responsibility (MBER). It combines theoretical explanations, exercises and secular meditations to propose (rather than impose) ethical guidelines, accompanying participants in identifying their own ethical values, acting in accordance with them, while weakening their dual functionings.

Globalization and industrialization have caused serious changes to the food and services markets, which have led to an increase in the consumption of fast food in the daily diet. Annually, the number of fast-food restaurants increases and volumes of the industrial production of fast-food products grow. The systematic consumption of fast food has many risks, such as developing alimentary diseases and serious chronic illnesses. This increasing consumption is a critical problem as younger generations are primary consumers of fast food. Global Production and Consumption of Fast Food and Instant Concentrates compares healthy and fast foods, considers an ecological-hygienic assessment of the impact of fast food on the body in observations of people and in experiments in vivo, and discusses key questions of the interrelation of food and health. Covering topics such as nutrition and food culture, it is ideal for food industry professionals, scientists, medical professionals, researchers, academicians, practitioners, instructors, and students.