Have you ever found yourself contemplating something you wouldn't admit to anyone? Do thoughts sometimes enter your mind that seem to be not your own? Do you want to ignore them? Can you ignore them? No, really, deep down, have you ever wanted something so bad that you would do absolutely anything to get it: As long as nobody saw you do it? Who are you when nobody is looking? Are there forces outside of you, bigger than you are, more powerful, too powerful to ignore? Or are you the master of your own fate? In this coming of age story, Tommy Flack encounters not only his own greed and disillusionment, he also encounters a familiar Princess, a body morphing dog, piranhas, giant first graders, the Gabbernaught, drivable tornadoes, flowing volcanos, falling helicopters, racing horses, Sigmund Freud selling hot dogs, dancing pirates, slavery, his long-lost father, tap shoes, Unicorn Boy, the Freedom Riders, Anne Frank, Adolph Hitler, Abraham Lincoln, and Pablo Neruda on a journey to eliminate or become New Evil. Consider it a game of Devils' Tag. Are you it?

This book introduces the thought of Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) into the discussion about natural law. For many critics, natural law is not natural but a facade behind which lurks the supernatural - that is, revealed religion. While current notions of natural law are based on either Aristotelian/Thomistic principles or on Enlightenment rationalism, the book shows how Vico was the only natural law thinker to draw on the Roman legal tradition, rather than on Greek or Enlightenment philosophy. Specifically, the book addresses how Vico, drawing his inspiration from Roman history, incorporated both rhetoric and religion into a dynamic concept of natural law grounded in what he called the sensus communis: the entire repertoire of values, images, institutions, and even prejudices that a community takes for granted. Vico denied that natural law could ever furnish a definitive answer to moral problems in the social/public sphere. Rather he maintained that such problems had to be debated in the wider arena of the sensus communis. For Vico, as this book argues, natural law principles emerged from these debates; they did not resolve them.

This book introduces the thought of Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) into the discussion about natural law. For many critics, natural law is not natural but a facade behind which lurks the supernatural - that is, revealed religion. While current notions of natural law are based on either Aristotelian/Thomistic principles or on Enlightenment rationalism, the book shows how Vico was the only natural law thinker to draw on the Roman legal tradition, rather than on Greek or Enlightenment philosophy. Specifically, the book addresses how Vico, drawing his inspiration from Roman history, incorporated both rhetoric and religion into a dynamic concept of natural law grounded in what he called the sensus communis: the entire repertoire of values, images, institutions, and even prejudices that a community takes for granted. Vico denied that natural law could ever furnish a definitive answer to moral problems in the social/public sphere. Rather he maintained that such problems had to be debated in the wider arena of the sensus communis. For Vico, as this book argues, natural law principles emerged from these debates; they did not resolve them.

Have you ever found yourself contemplating something you wouldn't admit to anyone? Do thoughts sometimes enter your mind that seem to be not your own? Do you want to ignore them? Can you ignore them? No, really, deep down, have you ever wanted something so bad that you would do absolutely anything to get it: As long as nobody saw you do it? Who are you when nobody is looking? Are there forces outside of you, bigger than you are, more powerful, too powerful to ignore? Or are you the master of your own fate? In this coming of age story, Tommy Flack encounters not only his own greed and disillusionment, he also encounters a familiar Princess, a body morphing dog, piranhas, giant first graders, the Gabbernaught, drivable tornadoes, flowing volcanos, falling helicopters, racing horses, Sigmund Freud selling hot dogs, dancing pirates, slavery, his long-lost father, tap shoes, Unicorn Boy, the Freedom Riders, Anne Frank, Adolph Hitler, Abraham Lincoln, and Pablo Neruda on a journey to eliminate or become New Evil. Consider it a game of Devils' Tag. Are you it?

In 1998, Frank Schaeffer was a bohemian novelist living in "Volvo driving, higher-education worshipping" Massachusetts with two children graduated from top universities. Then his youngest child, straight out of high school, joined the United States Marine Corps. Written in alternating voices by eighteen-year-old John and his father, Frank, Keeping Faith takes readers in riveting fashion through a family's experience of the Marine Corps: from being broken down and built back up on Parris Island (and being the parent of a child undergoing that experience), to the growth of both father and son and their separate reevaluations of what it means to serve. From Frank's realization that among his fellow soccer dads "the very words'boot camp' were pejorative, conjuring up'troubled youths at risk'" ("'But aren't they all terribly southern?' asked one parent") to John's learning that "the Marine next to you is more important than you are," Keeping Faith , a New York Times bestseller , is a fascinating and personal examination of issues of class, duty, and patriotism. The fact that John is currently serving in the Middle East only adds to the impact of this wonderfully written, timely, and moving human interest story.