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Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > Religious & spiritual
In Meant To Be, Rabbi Marvin Hier recounts the events of his dazzling life: the miraculous birth and growth of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Moriah Films, and the Museums of Tolerance; the hunt for the Nazi Angel of Death, Josef Mengele; encounters with renowned Jewish sages Rabbi Aharon Kotler, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein and the Gerrer Rebbe; his friendship with Jordan's King Hussein; his meetings with every American president from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama; and his relationships with Hollywood stars such as Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Billy Crystal, Tom Cruise, Marlon Brando and Michael Douglas.
With classic Jewish humor, Rabbi Hier reflects on interplay of instinct, chutzpah and serendipity that have enabled his remarkable achievements, revealing that all that happens is, in fact, "meant to be".
Yvonne Orji has never shied away from being unapologetically
herself, and that includes being outspoken about her faith. Known
for interpreting Biblical stories and metaphors to fit current
times, her humorous and accessible approach to faith leaves even
non-believers inspired and wanting more.The way Yvonne sees it, God
is a Sovereign Prankster, punking folks long before Ashton Kutcher
made it cool. When she meditates on her own life--complete with
unforeseen blessings and unanticipated roadblocks--she realises
it's one big testimony to how God tricked her into living out her
wildest dreams. And she wants us to join in on getting bamboozled.
This is not a Self-Help book--it's a Get Yours book! In Bamboozled
by Jesus, a frank and fresh advice book, Orji takes readers on a
journey through twenty-five life lessons, gleaned from her own
experiences and her favourite source of inspiration: the Bible. But
this ain't your mama's Bible study. Yvonne infuses wit and heart in
sharing pointers like why the way up is sometimes down, and how
fear is synonymous to food poisoning. Her joyful, confident
approach to God will inspire everyone to catapult themselves out of
the mundane and into the magnificent. With bold authenticity and
practical relatability, Orji is exactly the kind of cultural leader
we need in these chaotic times. And her journey through being
Bamboozled by Jesus paints a powerful picture of what it means to
say "yes" to a life you never could've imagined--if it wasn't your
own.
"You are out of your minds!" That was the reaction of many when
they heard. Klaus and Martina John were planning to build a modern
hospital for the Peruvian Indios - without any capital, income, or
loans. But the resulting story of Diospi Suyana has become a
thriller full of miracles and examples of divine providence. Since
its inauguration in 2007, the adventure has continued as Diospi
Suyana has regularly faced danger, corruption, and seemingly
insurmountable obstacles. And yet it continues to grow. The
Hospital of Hope has been the subject of 500+ media reports around
the world. The unexpected twists and turns in its history has
fascinated millions.
Sex. In a world overwhelmingly obsessed with it, why is the church
so silent about it? While our secular culture twists, perverts,
cheapens, and idolizes sex, there are gaping holes in the church's
guidance of young people. The result is generations of sexually
illiterate people drowning in the repercussions of overwhelming sin
struggles. Enough is enough, says Mo Isom. With raw vulnerability
and a bold spirit, she shares her own sexual testimony, opening up
the conversation about misguided rule-following, virginity,
temptation, porn, promiscuity, false sex-pectations, sex in
marriage, and more and calling readers back to God's original
design for sex--a way to worship and glorify him. This book is for
the young person tangled up in an addiction to pornography, for the
girlfriend feeling pressured to go further, for the "good girl" who
followed the rules and saved herself for marriage and then was
confused and disappointed, for the married couple who use sex as a
bargaining tool, for every person who casually watches sex play out
in TV and movies and wonders why they're dissatisfied with the real
thing, and for every confused or hurting person in-between. Sex was
God's idea. It's time we invited him back into the bedroom.
On April 16, 1947, the French vessel SS Grandcamp, carrying
ammonium nitrate fertilizer, exploded in the port of Texas City,
just north of Galveston, Texas. Nearly 600 people died instantly
and property damage reached catastrophic proportions. The Texas
City disaster remains, to date, the worst industrial accident in
U.S. history. Among those killed was William Roach, a Roman
Catholic priest known affectionately as Father Bill. Sitting on a
Keg of Dynamite, by historian John Neal Phillips, tells the
remarkable story of Father Bill's life and premature death against
the backdrop of the rapid growth-and near destruction-of an
American industrial city. Through extensive archival research and
oral interviews, Phillips pieces together previously unknown
details of Father Bill's story to present a well-rounded portrait
of the man who is today revered as a hero. Born in Philadelphia,
Roach attended seminary in Arkansas before he went on to serve as
parish priest for St. Mary of the Miraculous Medal in Texas City.
Restless, energetic, and beloved for his humor, tolerance, and
empathy, Father Bill was an outspoken advocate for poor and
working-class citizens, fair wages, and workplace safety. One
evening, as Phillips vividly recounts, Roach sat on the church
steps, looking out at the strange orange-yellow light created by
hydrocarbon gas flares emerging from nearby oil refineries. "I feel
like I'm sitting on a keg of dynamite," he told parishioners who
were passing by. His premonition proved prophetic. When a fire
erupted onboard the Grandcamp, Father Bill hurried to the docks to
lend assistance. It was then that the ship detonated. There is
still much to be learned from the Texas City disaster-and from the
legacy of Father Bill, an early crusader for social justice in
America. Descendants of the disaster victims received financial
reparations, and yet, as Phillips cautions, safety and
environmental regulations barely exist in Texas today, particularly
when it comes to the petrochemical industry. Sitting on a Keg of
Dynamite serves as a cautionary tale for Texans-and all
Americans-as environmental accidents continue to threaten our
safety.
Pentecostalism was born at the turn of the twentieth century in a
"tumble-down shack" in a rundown semi-industrial area of Los
Angeles composed of a tombstone shop, saloons, livery stables and
railroad freight yards. One hundred years later Pentecostalism has
not only proven to be the most dynamic representative of Christian
faith in the past century, but a transnational religious phenomenon
as well. In a global context Pentecostalism has attained a
membership of 500 million growing at the rate of 20 million new
members a year. Aimee Semple McPherson, born on a Canadian farm,
was Pentecostalism's first celebrity, its "female Billy Sunday".
Arriving in Southern California with her mother, two children and
$100.00 in 1920, "Sister Aimee", as she was fondly known, quickly
achieved the height of her fame. In 1926, by age 35, "Sister Aimee"
would pastor "America's largest 'class A' church", perhaps becoming
the country's first mega church pastor. In Los Angeles she quickly
became a folk hero and civic institution. Hollywood discovered her
when she brilliantly united the sacred with the profane. Anthony
Quinn would play in the Temple band and Aimee would baptize Marilyn
Monroe, council Jean Harlow and become friends with Charlie
Chaplain, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Based on the
biographer's first time access to internal church documents and
cooperation of Aimee's family and friends, this major biography
offers a sympathetic appraisal of her rise to fame, revivals in
major cities and influence on American religion and culture in the
Jazz Age. The biographer takes the reader behind the scenes of
Aimee's fame to the early days of her harsh apprenticeship in
revival tents, failed marriages and poverty. Barfoot recreates the
career of this "called" and driven woman through oral history,
church documents and by a creative use of new source material.
Written with warmth and often as dramatic as Aimee, herself, the
author successfully captures not only what made Aimee famous but
also what transformed Pentecostalism from its meager Azusa Street
mission beginnings into a transnational, global religion.
This is the tale of a devastating pandemic, of lives cut painfully
short - it's also a love story. Derek, a distinguished designer,
and J, a pioneering entrepreneur and creator of Heaven, the iconic
gay dance club, met and fell in love more than 40 years ago. In the
early 1980s their friends began to get sick and die - AIDS had
arrived in their lives. When they got tested, J received what was
then a death sentence: he was HIV Positive. While the onset of AIDS
strengthened stigma and fear globally, they confronted their crisis
with courage, humour and an indomitable resolve to survive. J's
battle lasted six long years. Turning to spiritual reflection,
yoga, nature - and always to love - Derek describes a
transformation of the spirit, how compassion and empathy rose
phoenix-like from the flames of sickness and death, and how he and
J founded the charity Aids Ark, which has helped to save more than
1,000 HIV Positive lives. This is a story of joy and triumph, of
facing universal challenges, of the great rewards that come from
giving back. Derek speaks for a generation who lived through a
global health crisis that many at the time refused even to
acknowledge. His is a powerful story chronicling this extraordinary
era.
Louis IX of France reigned as king from 1226 to 1270 and was
widely considered an exemplary Christian ruler, renowned for his
piety, justice, and charity toward the poor. After his death on
crusade, he was proclaimed a saint in 1297, and today Saint Louis
is regarded as one of the central figures of early French history
and the High Middle Ages. In The Sanctity of Louis IX, Larry F.
Field offers the first English-language translations of two of the
earliest and most important accounts of the king s life: one
composed by Geoffrey of Beaulieu, the king s long-time Dominican
confessor, and the other by William of Chartres, a secular clerk in
Louis s household who eventually joined the Dominican Order
himself. Written shortly after Louis s death, these accounts are
rich with details and firsthand observations absent from other
works, most notably Jean of Joinville s well-known narrative
The introduction by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Sean L. Field
provides background information on Louis IX and his two
biographers, analysis of the historical context of the 1270s, and a
thematic introduction to the texts. An appendix traces their
manuscript and early printing histories. The Sanctity of Louis IX
also features translations of Boniface VIII s bull canonizing Louis
and of three shorter letters associated with the earliest push for
his canonization. It also contains the most detailed analysis of
these texts, their authors, and their manuscript traditions
currently available."
The first complete and annotated English translation of Maimon's
delightfully entertaining memoir Solomon Maimon's autobiography has
delighted readers for more than two hundred years, from Goethe and
George Eliot to Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt. Here is the
first complete and annotated English edition of this enduring and
lively work. Born into a down-on-its-luck provincial Jewish family
in 1753, Maimon distinguished himself as a prodigy in learning.
After a series of picaresque misadventures, he reached Berlin,
where he became part of the city's famed Jewish Enlightenment and
achieved the philosophical education he so desperately wanted. This
edition restores text cut from the abridged 1888 translation by J.
Clark Murray-for long the only available English edition-and
includes an introduction and notes by Yitzhak Melamed and Abraham
Socher that give invaluable insights into Maimon's extraordinary
life.
'A lyrical, fascinating, important book. More than just a family
story, it is an essay on belonging, denying, pretending,
self-deception and, at least for the main characters, survival.'
Literary Review 'Simon May's remarkable How to Be a Refugee is a
memoir of family secrets with a ruminative twist, one that's more
interested in what we keep from ourselves than the ones we conceal
from others.' Irish Times The most familiar fate of Jews living in
Hitler's Germany is either emigration or deportation to
concentration camps. But there was another, much rarer, side to
Jewish life at that time: denial of your origin to the point where
you manage to erase almost all consciousness of it. You refuse to
believe that you are Jewish. How to Be a Refugee is Simon May's
gripping account of how three sisters - his mother and his two
aunts - grappled with what they felt to be a lethal heritage. Their
very different trajectories included conversion to Catholicism,
marriage into the German aristocracy, securing 'Aryan' status with
high-ranking help from inside Hitler's regime, and engagement to a
card-carrying Nazi. Even after his mother fled to London from Nazi
Germany and Hitler had been defeated, her instinct for
self-concealment didn't abate. Following the early death of his
father, also a German Jewish refugee, May was raised a Catholic and
forbidden to identify as Jewish or German or British. In the face
of these banned inheritances, May embarks on a quest to uncover the
lives of the three sisters as well as the secrets of a grandfather
he never knew. His haunting story forcefully illuminates questions
of belonging and home - questions that continue to press in on us
today.
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