Best History of Christianity

Millions of readers have thrilled by bestselling authors Bill O’Reilly and historian Martin Dugard's Killing Kennedy and Killing Lincoln , page-turning works of nonfiction that have changed the way we read history. The iconic anchor of The O'Reilly Factor led the program to the status of the highest rated cable news broadcast in the nation for sixteen consecutive years. He holds a history degree from Marist College, a masters degree in Broadcast Journalism from Boston University, and another masters degree from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

In a moving example of unconditional love in dif­ficult times, the Jesuit priest and bestselling author of Tattoos on the Heart , Gregory Boyle, shares what three decades of working with gang members in Los Angeles has taught him about faith, compassion, and the enduring power of kinship. In his first book, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion , Gregory Boyle introduced us to Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervention program in the world . Now, after the suc­cessful expansion of Homeboy Industries, Boyle returns with Barking to the Choir to reveal how com­passion is transforming the lives of gang members. It's written by Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest in Los Angeles who has worked with (and loved) gang-members for decades. “If you’re in the market for genuine inspiration, I urge you to read Barking to the Choir by Gregory Boyle, a book that shows what the platitudes of faith look like when they’re put into action.” —Ann Patchett. It is lovely and tough and tender beyond my ability to describe and left me in tears of both sorrow and laughter." "One of the bravest, most humane, heartbreaking, brilliant, and hopeful stories I’ve read in ages. Father Greg, the Gandhi of the Gangs, fills Tattoos with unquenchable soul force and down-to-earth love." Boyle somehow maintains an exuberant voice that celebrates the strength, compassion and humanity of people often demonized. Boyle intersperses his narratives about gang members and his work with them with theological and spiritual reflections from a variety of theologians, poets and other writers. By introducing book-buying, highly educated readers to people we may never otherwise encounter, Boyle aspires to "broaden the parameters of our kinship.'". Boyle approaches each person as a child of God and fully deserving of love and compassion.

For twenty years, Gregory Boyle has run Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention program located in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, the gang capital of the world. Boyle somehow maintains an exuberant voice that celebrates the strength, compassion and humanity of people often demonized. Boyle intersperses his narratives about gang members and his work with them with theological and spiritual reflections from a variety of theologians, poets and other writers. By introducing book-buying, highly educated readers to people we may never otherwise encounter, Boyle aspires to "broaden the parameters of our kinship.'". Father Greg, the Gandhi of the Gangs, fills Tattoos with unquenchable soul force and down-to-earth love." It is lovely and tough and tender beyond my ability to describe and left me in tears of both sorrow and laughter." "Tattoos on the Heart is an honest, raw, and compelling collection from Father Greg Boyle's life and work with gang-involved youth. His commitment should teach us all a lesson in compromise, sharing, learning, loving, and, most important, living life to the fullest."

Drawing from the diversity of her life as a campus minister, Anglican priest, friend, wife, and mother, Tish Harrison Warren opens up a practical theology of the everyday. "To live in the vision that Warren is offering―to find sacredness in the everyday practices of life―will require that we engage with these and other institutional realities in our midst. Her words can help us grasp what my grandfather learned through a lifetime of commonsense faith―and a lot of sweeping: The 'new life into which we're being baptized is lived out in days, hours, and minutes. Under Tish Harrison Warren's insightful gaze, our seemingly 'boring' daily routines become a liturgy of their own―calling us to confession and community, Scripture and Sabbath, baptism and embodiment. This marvelous little book is that certain slant of light that illuminates the everyday as an arena of sanctification, where the Spirit makes us holy in ways we might miss. No mundane daily task will be the same once these pages open your eyes to how the work of your hands reflects the ways of the Creator and the rhythms of eternity." "In this moment in culture, when much feels complicated and shallow, Tish Harrison Warren offers a beautiful and life-giving narrative: a way toward the ordinary sacred. "If Christianity is to retain its witness in our frenetic and fragmented age, it must take root not only in the thoughts and emotions but also in the daily lives and even bodies of those who call Christ Lord. Tish Harrison Warren has beautifully 'enfleshed' the concepts and doctrines of our faith into quotidian moments, showing how every hour of each day can become an occasion of grace and renewal. If you want to know how faith matters amid messy kitchens, unfinished manuscripts, marital spats, and unmade beds, Liturgy of the Ordinary will train your eyes to see holy beauty all around." The highest compliment I can offer is that her book inspired me to go back to my dirty sink and my screaming kids with a renewed sense of purpose."

In a moving example of unconditional love in dif­ficult times, the Jesuit priest and bestselling author of Tattoos on the Heart , Gregory Boyle, shares what three decades of working with gang members in Los Angeles has taught him about faith, compassion, and the enduring power of kinship. In his first book, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion , Gregory Boyle introduced us to Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervention program in the world . Now, after the suc­cessful expansion of Homeboy Industries, Boyle returns with Barking to the Choir to reveal how com­passion is transforming the lives of gang members. It's written by Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest in Los Angeles who has worked with (and loved) gang-members for decades. “If you’re in the market for genuine inspiration, I urge you to read Barking to the Choir by Gregory Boyle, a book that shows what the platitudes of faith look like when they’re put into action.” —Ann Patchett. It is lovely and tough and tender beyond my ability to describe and left me in tears of both sorrow and laughter." "One of the bravest, most humane, heartbreaking, brilliant, and hopeful stories I’ve read in ages. Father Greg, the Gandhi of the Gangs, fills Tattoos with unquenchable soul force and down-to-earth love." Boyle somehow maintains an exuberant voice that celebrates the strength, compassion and humanity of people often demonized. Boyle intersperses his narratives about gang members and his work with them with theological and spiritual reflections from a variety of theologians, poets and other writers. By introducing book-buying, highly educated readers to people we may never otherwise encounter, Boyle aspires to "broaden the parameters of our kinship.'". Boyle approaches each person as a child of God and fully deserving of love and compassion.

Seldom does one find serious scholarship so easy to read.” – The Times , Book of the Year A New York Times bestseller, this major new history of the knights Templar is “. a fresh, muscular and compelling history of the ultimate military-religious crusading order, combining sensible scholarship with narrative swagger" – Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Jerusalem A faltering war in the middle east. These are the first Knights Templar, a band of elite warriors prepared to give their lives to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. Over the next two hundred years, the Templars would become the most powerful religious order of the medieval world. In this groundbreaking narrative history, Dan Jones tells the true story of the Templars for the first time in a generation, drawing on extensive original sources to build a gripping account of these Christian holy warriors whose heroism and alleged depravity have been shrouded in myth. His aim is to present a gripping historical narrative, and in this he succeeds… As he describes it, the order comes across as a combination of Blackwater, Goldman Sachs, Kroll International, FedEx, Fort Knox, Bechtel and the Red Cross. Information is unreliable and easily manipulated, allowing conspiracy theories to take root and spread.” – Cullen Murphy, The Washington Post "Dan Jones has created a gripping page-turner out of the dramatic history of the Templars, from their spiritual warrior beginnings until their tragic destruction by the French king and the pope. …In Jones’s bravura account, this tension between aristocratic killer and humble monk shadows the Templar story. “Gripping… Jones tells the story of the Templars with energy and verve, regalling readers with well-chosen details and anecdotes. He has done precisely that.” – Peter Frankopan, The Telegraph "Business chiefs listen up, especially in the world of big tech where egos are becoming rather inflated . The caution, although not explicit, comes in the epic story of the warrior monks known as the Knights Templar whose activities have given rise to much speculation and theories, some reasonable and some absurd. “The story of the Templars, the ultimate holy warriors, is an extraordinary saga of fanaticism, bravery, treachery and betrayal, and in Dan Jones they have a worthy chronicler. “A fresh, muscular and compelling history of the ultimate military-religious crusading order, combining sensible scholarship with narrative swagger, featuring a cast of exuberantly monstrous sword swingers spattering Christian and Islamic blood from Spain to Jerusalem.” -- Simon Sebag Montefiore author of Jerusalem: The Biography "In this thrillingly lucid account, Dan Jones demystifies the Templars in a story spanning hundreds of years and countless rulers, knights and archbishops, a seemingly disproportionate number of whom ended up beheaded . Anyone who has read Jones’s earlier medieval chronicles will know what to expect here: fast-paced narrative history depicted with irresistible verve, bloody battle scenes and moments of laugh-out-loud wit. There are contemporary parallels, too, with the Templars eventually being laid low by the medieval equivalent of a kind of 'fake news': anti-Templar propaganda spread by the church. “Thank God this book is sane… Jones tells the engrossing story of an ascetic order of warrior knights chiefly dedicated to the defense of pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem… Templars is based on a wide-ranging and thorough research and relies overwhelmingly on primary sources… It reads like a morality tale.” – Robert Irwin, Literary Review. Jones examines the storied Templars, an organization of quasi-monastic warriors who rose to fame and power in the midst of the Crusades, only to rapidly collapse in questionable scandals . Jones chronicles the Templars’ actual record of great military achievement, fiduciary responsibility, exceptional faithfulness, and lasting cultural significance.” --Booklist. A thrilling dynastic history of royal intrigues, violent skullduggery, and brutal warfare across two centuries of British history.” —Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Young Stalin. “Dan Jones’s epic portrait of the medieval royals is a timely reminder that things haven’t always been so rosy for those on the throne.” —GQ. There is fine scholarly intuition on display here and a mastery of the grand narrative; it is a supremely skillful piece of storytelling.” —The Sunday Telegraph. “If you’re a fan of Game of Thrones or The Tudors, then Dan Jones’ swashbucklingly entertaining slice of medieval history will be right up your alley. “Jones is a born storyteller, peopling the terrifying uncertainties of each moment with a superbly drawn cast of characters and powerfully evoking the brutal realities of civil war.” —The Evening Standard. “Dan Jones has an enviable gift for telling a dramatic story while at the same time inviting us to consider serious topics like liberty and the seeds of representative government.” —Antonia Frasier. Dan Jones is the New York Times bestselling author of The Templars, The Plantagenets, Wars of the Roses, and Magna Carta . He wrote and presented the popular Netflix series Secrets of Great British Castles and appeared alongside George R.R.

In the tradition of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris's recent bestseller, The End of Faith , Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. "[An] impressive and enjoyable attack on everything so many people hold dear ... Hitchens has outfoxed the Hitchens watchers by writing a serious and deeply felt book, totally consistent with his beliefs of a lifetime.

Fully revised with forty thousand new words that take the reader up to present-day India, John Keay’s India: A History spans five millennia in a sweeping narrative that tells the story of the peoples of the subcontinent, from their ancient beginnings in the valley of the Indus to the events in the region today. Yet, observes historian John Keay , most historical work on India concentrates on the period after the arrival of Europeans, with predictable biases, distortions, and misapprehensions. Keay traces the growth of subsequent states and kingdoms throughout antiquity and the medieval period, suggesting that the lack of unified government made the job of the European conquerors somewhat easier--but by no means inevitable.

But this book is not about the success stories. " Bad Rabbi is a masterful set of finely-tuned scholarship and critical zingers that brings detailed archival history of 'downwardly mobile' nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jews alive through vivid, erudite, and spit-take funny storytelling. "Don't feel guilty chuckling your way through Bad Rabbi as you read about the crazy deeds and commonplace misfortunes of marginal Jews from a century ago. ". "In the staid world of academic Yiddishists, Eddy Portnoy is a live wire, a funny guy, a mischief-maker, what they used to call in the Catskills, a tummler ... Bad Rabbi is a succession of outlandish misadventures, a wild panorama populated by an astonishing array of characters... Yiddish journalists were showboats, garnishing tabloid sensationalism with literary jokes and religious references. "Eddy Portnoy's Bad Rabbi is an extraordinary thing: a gateway to the lost world of Jewish street life in pre-World War II New York and Warsaw. The Yiddish newspapers Portnoy mines were free from piety and light on decorum; instead they present a vast, roiling canvas of human behavior in all its extremes, from comedy to horror, with fiercely unbuttoned characters declaiming eloquently as stoopside choruses annotated their rants.

Drawn directly from 24 Pali, Sanskrit, and Chinese sources, and retold by Thich Nhat Hanh in his inimitably beautiful style, this book traces the Buddha’s life slowly and gently over the course of 80 years, partly through the eyes of Svasti, the buffalo boy, and partly through the yes of the Buddha himself. The simple style is engaging, leading the reader through events in the Buddha's life while taking care to present and reinforce the central meaning and tone of his teaching.

This well-researched examination of human moral impulses will appeal to liberals and conservatives alike following the 2016 presidential campaign and election. Beautifully written, Haidt’s book shines a new and creative light on moral psychology and presents a provocative message.”. — Science “A remarkable and original synthesis of social psychology, political analysis, and moral reasoning.”. —Edward O. Wilson, University Research Professor Emeritus, Harvard University. The principal posture in which one envisions him is that of a scrappy, voluble, discerning patriot standing between the warring factions in American politics urging each to see the other’s viewpoint, to stop demonizing, bashing, clobbering. “Jonathan Haidt is one of smartest and most creative psychologists alive, and his newest book, The Righteous Mind is a tour de force—a brave, brilliant and eloquent exploration of the most important issues of our time. This is the book that everyone is going to be talking about.”. —Paul Bloom, Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology, Yale University. This elegantly written book has far-reaching implications for anyone interested in anthropology, politics, religion, or the many controversies that divide modern societies. If you want to know why you hold your moral beliefs and why many people disagree with you, read this book..”. —Simon Baron-Cohen, Cambridge University, Author of Zero Degrees of Empathy and The Science of Evil. “Jonathan Haidt’s absorbing The Righteous Mind should come with a warning label: ‘contents highly addictive.’ Written in a breezy and accessible style but informed by an impressively wide range of cutting-edge research in the social sciences, evolutionary biology and psychology, The Righteous Mind is about as interesting a book as you’ll pick up this year.”. — The Globe and Mail. “What makes [ The Righteous Mind ] so compelling is the fluid combination of erudition and entertainment, and the author’s obvious pleasure in challenging conventional wisdom. [Haidt’s] core point is simple and well-made: our morality, much of it wired into brains from birth, at the same time binds us together and blinds us to different configurations of morality.”. — The Guardian (London). Haidt’s brilliant synthesis shows that Christians have nothing to fear and much to gain from the evolutionary paradigm.”. —Michael Dowd, author of Thank God for Evolution. “The Righteous Mind is an intellectual tour de force that brings Darwinian theorizing to the practical realm of everyday politics. “As a fellow who listens to heated political debate daily, I was fascinated, enlightened, and even amused by Haidt’s brilliant insights. This penetrating yet accessible book will help readers understand the righteous minds that inhabit politics.”. —Larry Sabato, University of Virginia, author of A More Perfect Constitution. “A profound discussion of the diverse psychological roots of morality and their role in producing political conflicts.

For the first time in 3,300 years, The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day: The Papyrus of Ani is showcased in its entirety in seventy-four magnificent color pages. Dr. Ogden Goelet, Jr. is a Clinical Professor of Egyptian Language and Culture in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University.

Millions of readers have thrilled by bestselling authors Bill O’Reilly and historian Martin Dugard's Killing Kennedy and Killing Lincoln , page-turning works of nonfiction that have changed the way we read history. The iconic anchor of The O'Reilly Factor led the program to the status of the highest rated cable news broadcast in the nation for sixteen consecutive years. He holds a history degree from Marist College, a masters degree in Broadcast Journalism from Boston University, and another masters degree from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Black Elk Speaks , the story of the Oglala Lakota visionary and healer Nicholas Black Elk (1863–1950) and his people during momentous twilight years of the nineteenth century, offers readers much more than a precious glimpse of a vanished time. (N. Scott Momaday 2013-10-25). “An American classic.”— Western Historical Quarterly.

The World’s Religions, by beloved author and pioneering professor Huston Smith ( Tales of Wonder ), is the definitive classic for introducing the essential elements and teachings of the world's predominant faiths, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, as well as regional native traditions. Huston Smith's masterpiece explores the essential elements and teachings of the world's predominant faiths, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the native traditions of Australia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.