In this message, the author draws on his life-long ministerial experience to convey the realities of where we are on our journey through this life to where it is we are going. The book reflects the treasure of shared knowledge and reveals what the author terms the unconscious unreality, which draws people away from the conscious realities that would otherwise enrich their lives. It is directed to all God's people, both Christians and non-Christians. These spiritual messages come at a time when the world is set on a course that is causing much consternation and answers many perplexing problems facing individuals. The author takes church leaders to task for allowing much of what is changing the face of a civil society. This book is not for idle curiosity. Each chapter is at times sad, at times joyful, and at times soul-searching. There is strong emphasis on the lure of easy borrowing and sensationalism, one of the plagues of modern times that mask the face of lasting values, diminishing the hunger for the spiritual life, and depleting the soul of contentment. This book offers a clear and unshakeable understanding of the truth of God and clarifies scriptural text about the end times-it speaks about you.

Drawing on his legendary firearms knowledge and combat experience, U.S. Navy SEAL and #1 bestselling author of American Sniper Chris Kyle dramatically chronicles the story of America--from the Revolution to the present--through the lens of ten iconic guns and the remarkable heroes who used them to shape history: the American long rifle, Spencer repeater, Colt .45 revolver, Winchester 1873 rifle, Springfield M1903 rifle, M1911 pistol, Thompson submachine gun, M1 Garand, .38 Special police revolver, and the M16 rifle platform Kyle himself used. American Gun is a sweeping epic of bravery, adventure, invention, and sacrifice.

Featuring a foreword and afterword by Taya Kyle and illustrated with more than 100 photographs, this new paperback edition features a bonus chapter, "The Eleventh Gun," on shotguns, derringers, and the Browning M2 machine gun.

Over the last forty years a once-dominant interpretation of the French revolution has fallen to pieces. Elaborated by generations of distinguished left-wing French historians, this classic version was gradually undermined by the piecemeal criticisms of English-speaking scholars. Many of their doubts, and the controversies which they provoked, appeared in articles scattered over a wide range of learned journals and conference proceedings. This collection brings together the more important contributions of one of the leading British participants in these debates. Some of the essays explore the motivations and achievements of the old monarchy's aristocratic opponents. Others probe the development of venality of offices, one of the old regime's most distinctive institutions. A wide range of revolutionary reforms, their motivations and results, are also examined, and some of the achievements of a generation of revisionism in this field are reviewed. An introduction sets them in the context of the debates to which they contributed, and demonstrates their continued relevance to our understanding of eighteenth-century France.

Maximilien Robespierre is one of the greatest figures of European history but is at the same time one of the most reviled and revered. The essays in this volume seek to explain these contradictory views of Robespierre. They provide a balanced and up-to-date account of Robespierre's life and work by looking in turn at his ideology and vision of the Revolution, his role in the political life of Revolutionary France, and finally at representations of Robespierre in the history, drama and fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

According to a professional association of 67,000 pediatricians, "the lifelong success of children is based on their ability to be creative and to apply the lessons learned from playing." But play-including physical activity, the arts, and even free play-is being eliminated in our society and schools and despite huge financial investment these education policies have not improved learning. In Let the Children Play, the authors, both fathers of school-age children, tell how switching countries - Pasi Sahlberg brought his Finnish family to the United States, while William Doyle brought his American family to Finland - shocked them into writing this book. With research breakthroughs and case histories from Finland, China, Singapore, Scotland, New York, Texas, and around the world, the authors reveal how intellectual and physical play is the ultimate engine of transforming education - the key to giving our children the well-being, happiness, and skills they need to thrive in the 21st century, including curiosity, creativity, teamwork, problem-solving, communication, and empathy. Written for parents, educators, and policymakers, this book reveals a striking vision of an inspiring future of our children's education-and how to make it happen.

This survey of European history covers a period of one and a half centuries which witnessed the beginnings of the contemporary world. In his account of the economic, social, intellectual, and governmental structure and development of pre-revolutionary Europe, the author stresses throughout the importance of economic and social trends, and places emphasis on the analysis of the structure of society as well as the narration of events. He shows how the contradictions of the old order contributed to a crisis which affected several of the major states in the late eighteenth century, when the growth of governmental power led to a series of clashes between governments and governing classes. Out of these conflicts, particularly in France, arose a revolutionary crisis. The nature of this crisis, and the impact of the change it produced, are examined in detail in the final section of the book. For this second edition, Professor Doyle has revised the text of the book, and comprehensively updated the Bibliography.

The counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s remains a highly controversial and divisive topic in our society; virtually the only thing that anyone can agree on is its enormous impact on American life. Critics on the right complain of the shattering of cherished social norms, while those on the left take many movements to task for not going far enough and selling out.
Amidst the recent flourishing of Sixties scholarship, Imagine Nation is the first collection to focus solely on the counterculture. Its fourteen provocative essays seek to unearth the complexity and rediscover the society-changing power of significant movements and figures. The fascinating constellation of topics covered include feminism, psychedelic drug experimentation, guerrilla theatre, the New Left, Jimi Hendrix, communal living, underground comics, and avant-garde film. As a whole, Imagine Nation offers exciting new interpretations of how the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s irrevocably changed American society.

Since its first publication to mark the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989, this Oxford History has established itself as the Revolution's most authoritative and comprehensive one-volume history in English, and has recently been translated into Chinese. Running from the accession of Louis XVI in 1774, it traces the history of France through revolution, terror, and counter-revolution to the final triumph of Napoleon in 1802. It also analyses the impact of events in France upon the rest of Europe and the world beyond. The study shows how a movement which began with optimism and general enthusiasm soon became a tragedy, not only for the ruling orders, but also for the millions of ordinary people whose lives were disrupted by religious upheaval, economic chaos, and civil and international war. Now in its third edition, this volume has been fully updated in the light of current research, and includes an appendix surveying the past and present historiography of the revolutionary period.

In ancien regime France almost all posts of public responsibility had to be bought or inherited. Rather than tax their richer subjects directly, French kings preferred to sell them privileged public offices, which further payments allowed them to sell or bequeath at will. By the eighteenth century there were 70,000 venal offices, comprising the entire judiciary, most of the legal profession, officers in the army, and a wide range of other professions - from financiers handling the king's revenues down to auctioneers and even wigmakers. Though now yielding diminishing returns to the king, offices were more in demand than ever for the privileges and prestige, profit and power, that they conferred; and although it was widely accepted that selling public authority was undesirable, nobody imagined that those who had invested in offices could ever be bought out. The Revolution brought an unexpected opportunity to do so, but the legacy of venality has marked French institutions down to our day. William Doyle, one of the foremost historians of early modern Europe, has written the first comprehensive history of the last century of venality. He traces the evolution and dissolution of a system which was fundamental to the workings of state and society in France for over three centuries.

In The Oxford Handbook of the Old Regime, an international team of 30 contributors surveys and presents current thinking about the world of pre-revolutionary France and Europe.
The idea of the Old Regime (ancien regime) was invented by the French revolutionaries to define what they hoped to destroy and replace. But it was not a precise definition, and although historians have found it conceptually useful, there is wide disagreement about what the Old Regime's main features were, how they worked, how old they were, how far they stretched, how dynamic or inert they were, and how far the revolutionaries succeeded in their ambitions to eradicate them.
In this wide-ranging and authoritative collection, old and newer areas of research into the Old Regime are presented and assessed, and there has been no attempt to impose any sort of consensus. The result shows what a lively field of historical enquiry the Old Regime remains, and points the way towards a range of promising new directions for thinking and writing about the intriguing complex of historical problems which it continues to pose.

Two centuries after the French Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre is still regarded as its towering figure. Perceived by some as the champion, indeed the incarnation, of the Revolution's purest and noblest ideals, among others he will always be remembered as the reasoned advocate of the Terror, the defender of mass killing during the Revolution's darkest and most tragic phase. This volume comprises essays by an array of international scholars and examines Robespierre's life and work from three main perspectives: his ideology and vision of the Revolution, his role in the period's tumultous politics, culminating in his year on the Committee of Public Safety in 1793-94, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century representations of the Incorruptible - by historians, dramatists and writers of fiction. This book illuminates many facets of Robespierre's career, thought and reputation, and provides a balanced and up-to-date appraisal of one of the great figures of European history.

In the space of less than twenty years, Napoleon turned Europe upside down. Rising from obscure origins to supreme power by a mixture of luck, audacity and military genius, he was able to harness the energies released by the French Revolution to resolve the internal problems which it had created, before turning his restless ambition to remodeling the political structure of the whole continent in a series of brilliant military victories. He was never able to finally subdue all his foreign enemies, and in the end they came together to bring him down; but by then it was impossible to restore what he had destroyed, or, in France, to destroy much of what he had created. The memory of his epic exploits, carefully refashioned during his last years in exile, haunted Europe for over a century, while the more distant effects of his career changed the whole destiny of the Americas and of the world.

What would happen if you built one of the world's most advanced societies inside a forest-and strove to make women full partners in power? After living for twenty-five years in New York, Naomi Moriyama moved with her husband and co-author William Doyle and their seven-year-old child to the vast forest of Finland's Karelia, a mysterious region on the Russian border that helped inspire J.R. R. Tolkien's Middle Earth fantasies. She entered a life-altering zone of tranquility, peace, and beauty, the spiritual heart of the nation ranked as the happiest nation on Earth, with among the world's most empowered women. Finland is also the country with cleanest air and water and the best schools, a country where motherhood and fatherhood are championed by law, childhood is revered, schoolchildren are required to play outdoors multiple times a day, and trains contain mini-libraries and mini-playgrounds for children to enjoy. It was here in the Karelian forest that Naomi found a culinary symphony of succulent wild edibles, herbs, berries, mushrooms and fish, all freshly plucked from the moss-carpeted forest and sparkling clear streams. She also found something that changed her life-a tribe of invincible women who became her soul-sisters. As an idyllic summer and fall gave way to a sub-Arctic winter of mind-bending darkness and cold, Naomi faced her fears and her future. Over the course of six unforgettable months with her family and her new "sisters", she found her life transformed, and discovered the power that lay within her all along. Then she tried to leave. But she kept coming back. Come, take a journey deep into Europe's most distant, magical wilderness, and join the sisterhood of the enchanted forest.

One of the most lively of France's younger historians, Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret argues in this pioneering essay that the traditional picture of the pre-revolutionary French nobility as a caste of intransigent reactionaries and parasites is a fabrication of revolutionary propaganda. Using a whole range of new research and calculations, he argues that the nobility represented all that was most vigorous and forward-looking in eighteenth-century French society. Constantly renewing itself by recruiting the richest members of the middle classes or marrying their daughters, the nobility was in the forefront of French economic and intellectual life, and until 1789 was at the head of the movement for reform of the old regime state. In an afterword specially written for the English edition, the author explains how the revolutionaries came to turn against a group that had done more than any other to bring about the Revolution.

The French Revolution is a time of history made familiar from Dickens, Baroness Orczy, and Tolstoy, as well as the legends of let them eat cake, and tricolours. Beginning in 1789, this period of extreme political and social unrest saw the end of the French monarchy, the death of an extraordinary number of people beneath the guillotine's blade during the Terror, and the rise of Napoleon, as well as far reaching consequences still with us today, such as the enduring ideology of human rights, and decimalization. In this Very Short Introduction, William Doyle introduces the French old regime and considers how and why it collapsed. Retelling the unfolding events of the revolution, he analyses why the revolutionaries quarrelled with the king, the church and the rest of Europe, why this produced Terror, and finally how it accomplished rule by a general. Doyle also discusses how and why the revolution destroyed the age-old cultural, institutional, and social structures in France and beyond. In this new edition, Doyle includes new sections highlighting the main developments in the field since the first edition, before exploring the legacy of the revolution in the form of rationality in public affairs and responsible government. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s remains a highly controversial and divisive topic in our society; virtually the only thing that anyone can agree on is its enormous impact on American life. Critics on the right complain of the shattering of cherished social norms, while those on the left take many movements to task for not going far enough and selling out.
Amidst the recent flourishing of Sixties scholarship, Imagine Nation is the first collection to focus solely on the counterculture. Its fourteen provocative essays seek to unearth the complexity and rediscover the society-changing power of significant movements and figures. The fascinating constellation of topics covered include feminism, psychedelic drug experimentation, guerrilla theatre, the New Left, Jimi Hendrix, communal living, underground comics, and avant-garde film. As a whole, Imagine Nation offers exciting new interpretations of how the counterculture of. the 1960s and 1970s irrevocably changed American society.

In The Oxford Handbook of the Ancien Regime, an international team of thirty contributors survey and present current thinking about the world of pre-revolutionary France and Europe. The idea of the Ancien Regime was invented by the French revolutionaries to define what they hoped to destroy and replace. But it was not a precise definition, and although historians have found it conceptually useful, there is wide disagreement about what the Ancien Regime's main features were, how they worked, how old they were, how far they stretched, how dynamic or inert they were, and how far the revolutionaries succeeded in their ambitions to eradicate them. In this wide-ranging and authoritative collection, old and newer areas of research into the Ancien Regime are presented and assessed, and there has been no attempt to impose any sort of consensus. The result shows what a lively field of historical enquiry the Ancien Regime remains, and points the way towards a range of promising new directions for thinking and writing about the intriguing complex of historical problems which it continues to pose.

The years between the Fronde and the French Revolution were the longest period of calm in French history. For much of it, France dominated the international scene in Europe and made efforts to achieve a comparable role in the wider world. Meanwhile, French cultural achievements set standards imitated everywhere. This volume, bringing together an international team of contributors, surveys the full variety of the period on its own terms rather than as a mere prelude to later revolutionary upheavals.

Chris Kyle--fallen hero and #1 New York Times bestselling author of American Sniper--reveals how ten legendary guns forever changed U.S. history

At the time of his tragic death in February 2013, former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the top sniper in U.S. military history, was finishing one of the most exciting missions of his life: a remarkable book that retold American history through the lens of a hand-selected list of firearms.

"Perhaps more than any other nation in the world," Kyle writes, "the history of the United States has been shaped by the gun." Drawing on his unmatched firearms knowledge and combat experience, Kyle carefully chose ten guns to help tell his story: the American long rifle, Spencer repeater, Colt .45 revolver, Winchester rifle, Springfield 1903 rifle, Thompson submachine gun, 1911 pistol, M1 Garand, .38 Special police revolver, and the M-16 rifle platform Kyle himself used as a SEAL. Through them, he revisits thrilling turning points in American history, including the single sniper shot that turned the tide of the Revolutionary War, the firearms design that proved decisive at Gettysburg, and the "gun that won the West."

Filled with an unforgettable cast of characters, Chris Kyle's American Gun is a sweeping epic of bravery, adventure, invention, and sacrifice. It is essential reading for anyone seeking to under-stand our national story.