A window into the mental and cultural worlds of the Stuart period, capturing the existing religious, social and political tensions on the eve of the English Civil War. This book starts with an extraordinary event and document. The event is the trial and execution for infanticide of a puritan minister, John Barker, along with his wife's niece and their maid, in Northampton in 1637; the document,what appears to be a virtual transcript of Barker's last speech on the gallows. His downfall soon became polemical fodder in scribal publications, with Puritans circulating defences of Barker and anti-Calvinists producing a Laudian condemnation of the minister. Scandal and Religious Identity in Early Stuart England uses Barker's crime and fate as a window on the religious world of early modern England. It is based upon an extraordinary deposit of manuscript and printed sources, all produced between 1637 and 1640 by people living in close proximity to one another and all of whom knew one another, either as friends or more often as enemies. Marshalling evidence frompublic polemical sources and from almost entirely private ones - a diary, private letters and a spiritual autobiography - the book is able to examine the same events and persons, and beliefs and practices, from multiple perspectives: the micro and the macro, the personal and the political, and the affective and the doctrinal. Throughout, we meet a range of very different people putting various bodies of religious theory into practice, connecting the most local and particular of events and rivalries to the great issues of the day and responding, in certain cases, to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and the temptations of the devil. This approach enables a whole series of generalisations to be explored: about the relation between politics and religion, devotion and polemic, puritans and their enemies, local and national affairs; between rumour, manuscript and print; and, finally, about gender hierarchyand the social roles of men and women. The result is an extraordinarily detailed and intimate portrait of the religio- political scene in an English county on the eve of civil war. PETER LAKE is Distinguished University Professor of early modern English history at Vanderbilt. He is the author of several studies of English religion, culture and politics in the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods. ISAAC STEPHENS is Assistant Professor of History at Saginaw Valley State University and has published on early modern marriage, religion, and life-writing.

This innovative, self-help book proposes that anger is an omnipresent, albeit unpleasant, part of every person's life, every single day. Our happiness and our success, professional, personal, and physical, is directly dependent on our ability to handle it. Using clinical vignettes as well as familiar examples from the front page and the silver screen, all aspects of anger, from sibling rivalry to mob violence, are analyzed and understood. Constructive pragmatic approaches are suggested for every conceivable frustration or confrontation. The book soothes as it illuminates. With hundreds of footnotes it is an encyclopedic overview of a vital subject.

A microhistory of a never-married English gentlewoman named Elizabeth Isham, this book centres on an extremely rare piece of women's writing - a recently discovered 60,000-word spiritual autobiography held in Princeton's manuscript collections that she penned around 1639. The autobiography is unmatched in providing an inside view of her family relations, her religious beliefs, her reading habits and, most sensationally, the reasons why she chose never to marry despite desires to the contrary held by her male kin, particularly Sir John Isham, her father. Based on the autobiography, combined with extensive research of the Isham family papers now housed at the county record office in Northampton, this book restores our historical memory of Elizabeth and her female relations, expanding our understanding and knowledge about patriarchy, piety and singlehood in early modern England. -- .

The acclaimed approach to helping children with autism, profiled in the award-winning documentary "Autism: The Musical"

This groundbreaking book outlines seven integrated keys for educators and parents to make meaningful connections with children on the autism spectrum. The book is based on the unique approach used by Elaine Hall and Diane Isaacs of The Miracle Project, a musical theater program for children with autism and their peers and siblings. The Miracle Project integrates traditional and creative therapies in an interactive, social dynamic. The book shows how to apply these effective strategies at school and at home to nurture kids' self-expression and social skills.Elaine Hall and The Miracle Project were profiled in the two-time Emmy Award-winning HBO documentary, "Autism: The Musical""Seven Keys" reveals the seven-step program that has proven so successful for children in the Miracle ProjectAfter reading "Seven Keys" teachers and parents will better understand this puzzling disorder and be able to help children with autism draw connections and form more meaningful relationships

"Seven Keys to Unlock Autism" offers readers strategies for creating a personal skill set to make their encounters with autistic children as successful and rewarding as possible.