More than 2 million Americans marry every year, each couple determined to live together happily ever after. Tragically, half of all first marriages fail, and subsequent attempts are even more likely to end in divorce. David Yount knows that lasting wedlock requires more than romantic love. Success depends on a couple's commitment and compatibility of heart and mind to survive the inevitable trials of facing life together. Drawing on decades as a counselor and his own experience as a husband and parent, Yount puts readers on the path to build joyful, loving, and committed relationships. Yount offers no-nonsense advice on a wide range of issues, including financial budgeting, maintaining health, dealing with in-laws, parenting, sharing responsibilities, establishing common values, and recovering from divorce. He includes questions designed to stimulate reflection and discussion on key issues, such as compromise, religious beliefs, equality in marriage, and more-some surprising. Marriage is the great adventure into the unknown. Making a Success of Marriage is a user's guide to that adventure.

Be Strong and Courageous is the sequel to David Yount's Book-of-the-Month bestseller Growing in Faith. The popular syndicated columnist reassures believers and skeptics of all ages that having faith makes sense. He shows how faith dignifies humanity, giving fulfillment, and heals the world. As a parent writing letters to encourage and inspire his growing daughters, Yount shows how Christians can face life's challenges with faith, hope, love, and confidence. Be Strong and Courageous shows how we can pass on our rich tradition of faith in a way that is revitalizing to inspire a new generation.

The former chairman of the College of Preachers offers counsel to people who pray alone on the effectiveness of prayer, confidence in God, effective prayer techniques, and prayer's application to adversity. This effective guide to prayer sheds light on the nature of our conversations with God and offers techniques that facilitate an openness and confidence during prayer. Although based on mainstream Christian theology, the book includes 100 prayers taken from all religious traditions.

American society is no longer defined by marriage. Today, an increasing majority of American households are headed by single men and women. Even those Americans who do marry spend at least half of their adult lives alone. Living on one's own presents unique challenges depending on one's age, health, and circumstances. So the script for successful single living calls for different strategies for young adults, the recently divorced, single parents, and those widowed or experiencing single life in later adulthood. Here, Dr. Yount considers each group's special needs and challenges and offers a guide for leading a productive, rewarding, and fulfilling single life. Single living, he contends, requires some core abilities: overcoming loneliness, reaching out to others, developing faith in oneself and self-respect, keeping up with daily activities, and maintaining good health, security, and a sense of humor. This book helps readers learn to celebrate their single status and to find contentment and peace while living on their own.

These days, if you are unmarried and pining for romance, you are in a small minority. Until recently, most Americans considered single life to be a temporary situation during which one would simply wait for a soul mate to come along. Those who remained unwed were pitied as bachelors and spinsters. No longer These days, most single men and women find autonomy in negotiating their way through life by relying on their own resources, with marriage remaining one option, but not an imperative. Even those who do marry are getting married later, and those who divorce or are widowed often choose to stay single. With this trend toward singlehood increasing, affirming the single life and making a success of it becomes all the more important. Yount offers advice for creating a gratifying and happy single life at any stage, and provides insight into those things that can contribute to a satisfying single lifestyle. He pinpoints areas that often get ignored by singles, and proposes solutions to some of the pitfalls that can lead to loneliness or unhappiness. Leading a fulfilling single life is not only possible, it can in fact be rewarding in itself, and Yount shows readers how to lead productive and creative lives as modern singles.

There are some 20,000 utopian communities in present-day America. Most of them keep a low profile, welcoming new members without advertising for them. Nearly all are hidden from view -- in rural America, in city slums, behind monastery walls. A majority of them are motivated by religious faith and seek to approximate heaven on earth. Some are startlingly successful. Utopian communities share a belief in the essential goodness of human nature and the possibility of personal perfection. The glue that binds them is not coercion, but commitment. Most are radically egalitarian. Their members are persuaded that their individual interests coincide with the values of the group, which stands in the place of God. The earliest Christians embraced a communal life of mutual caring, prompting pagans of the time to marvel, "See how they love one another." Contemporary spiritual communities in America enjoy the same motivation. For a disconnected society obsessed with unfettered freedom and acquisitiveness, they demonstrate the power of fellowship and sharing over individual isolation and narrow self-interest. These are their stories. From the outset, settlers freed from the cynicism of the Old World welcomed the opportunity that beckoned in the New. The Puritans conceived of Massachusetts as the biblical City on a Hill. The Quakers made Pennsylvania a Holy Experiment. Like the Israelites before them, the Mormons trekked through a desert to create an empire of the spirit. Even failed utopias offer lessons. The Shakers are remembered today for their furniture, tools, and songs, but in their time they attracted thousands to a devout life of simple abundance in community. It was only because they werecelibate that their numbers decreased. By contrast, the Amish still thrive because their birth rate is three times the national average. Today there are 660 Amish congregations across 20 states -- 14,000 of the simple farmers in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania alone. Most of the communes that flourished in the counter-culture of the 1960s and 70s failed for lack of resources and rules. But some, motivated by spirituality rather than anarchy, have become models of self-sustaining modern Edens. Here, Yount describes the history and place of several utopian communities in America, offering a glimpse into their lives, beliefs, and the ideas that sustain them.