One Unitarian preacher prefaces his opposition to the invasion of Iraq by insisting that meaningful religion is a process of "ongoing revelation." He pits this essential "liberal" tenet against the closed-canon biblicism of "the Fundamentalists who find in their Holy Book the blueprints for war, who discover in the prejudices of ancient peoples the legitimization of oppression today," and concludes by invoking Ralph Waldo Emerson as his authority on the necessity of continuing revelation. Elsewhere, a conservative evangelical Christian observes the Episcopalian convention that nearly dissolved over the ordination of a homosexual bishop and is disgusted by the "ease with which ... clergy and laity speak of an open canon." We must be, he sarcastically suggests, "all Latter-day Saints now." Why did these two men revert to religious innovations of the antebellum era - Transcendentalism in one case, Mormonism in the other - to frame their understanding of contemporary religious struggles? David Holland argues that the generation from which Emerson and Mormonism emerged might be considered the United States' revelatory moment. From Shakers to Hicksite Quakers, from the obscure African American prophetess Rebecca Jackson to the celebrated theologian Horace Bushnell, people throughout antebellum Americans advocated the idea of an open canon. Holland tells their stories and considers their place within the main currents of American thought. He shows that in the antebellum era, the notion of an open canon appeared to many to be a timely idea, and that this period marked the beginning of a distinctive and persistent engagement with the possibility of continuing revelation. This idea would attain deep significance in the intellectual history of the United States. Sacred Borders deftly analyzes the positions of the most prominent advocates of continuing revelation, and engages the essential issues to which the concept of an open canon was inextricably bound. Holland offers a new perspective of the matter of cultural authority in a democratized society, the tension between subjective truths and communal standards, a rising historical consciousness, the expansion of print capitalism, and the principle of religious freedom.

Working-class Britons played a crucial role in the pioneering settlement and integration of South Asians in imperial Britain. Using a host of new and neglected sources, Imperial Heartland revises the history of early South Asian immigration to Britain, focusing on the northern English city of Sheffield. Rather than viewing immigration through the lens of inevitable conflict, this study takes an alternative approach, situating mixed marriages and inter-racial social networks centrally within the South Asian settlement of modern Britain. Whilst acknowledging the episodic racial conflict of the early inter-war period, David Holland challenges assumptions that insurmountable barriers of race, religion and culture existed between the British working classes and non-white newcomers. Imperial Heartland closely examines the reactions of working-class natives to these young South Asian men and overturns our pre-conceptions that hostility to perceived racial or national difference was an overriding pre-occupation of working-class people during this period. Imperial Heartland therefore offers a fresh and inspiring new perspective on the social and cultural history of modern Britain.

In the heyday of low-budget television and scrappy genre filmmaking, producers who needed a soundtrack for their commercial entertainments could reach for a selection of library music: royalty-free LPs of stock recordings whose contents fit any mood required. Though at the time, the use of such records was mostly a cost-cutting maneuver for productions that couldn't afford to hire their own composer, the industry soon took on its own life: library publishers became major financial successes, and much of the work they released was truly extraordinary. In fact, many of these anonymous or pseudonymous scores-on-demand were crafted by the some of the greatest musical minds of the late 20th century-expert musicians and innovative composers who reveled in the freedoms offered, paradoxically, by this most corporate of fields. Unusual Sounds is a deep dive into a musical universe that has, until now, been accessible only to producers and record collectors; a celebration of this strange industry and an examination of its unique place at the nexus of art and commerce. Featuring original art by Robert Beatty and an introduction by George A. Romero-whose use of library music in Night of the Living Dead changed film history-Unusual Sounds is mandatory reading for anyone interested in this enigmatic field and its hidden but pervasive cultural influence.

This book is for everyone who wants to know how to improve their results in business... Thinking, Being and Doing Different are probably the key defining success factors in business and in life... Being positively differentiated from others takes us out of the crowded "red water" and into the clear, open "blue water" of higher margins, service, and value... So this book of blogs takes you on a journey of ideas, thoughts and metaphors; some will make sense and some will leave you stumped - but I hope you find something you can use and apply to give you that "blue water" experience, create something unique out of nothing and help you on your journey...

An inexplicable trail of clues, scattered across the centuries and over the whole of the English landscape, leads Thomas Zwillinger from his job as a teacher into the pursuit of a dark and secret treasure. Against the stunning backdrop of some of England's least-known cathedral cities, this unwilling adventurer begins to unearth a mystery buried deep in our history, and kept hidden by the early Church elders. Who wants to hide the truth from him? Who has set these clues in the first place? And is there someone else who knows how close he is to unravelling one of the greatest mysteries the world has known? Might you, the reader, be holding the key to the whole mystery? With sumptuous illustrations by the author, this is a story whose landscapes and cityscapes visually come to life

Cheesecakes are usually heavy and rich. There are those who cannot take the fat or the high sugar content. Hence, this book. It comes to the rescue of those who want the taste without the calories.