Other books that might interest you

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  Ibn Battuta: A short biography -...

  5 Minutes, 5 Minute Biographies,...

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  Ibn Battuta, first Arabic explorer from the middle ages: Life and work in a short biography! Everything you need to know, brief and concise. Infotainment, education and entertainment at its best!

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  Hallowed Ground - The Folklore...

  Mark Norman

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  Hallowed Ground examines the surprising traditions, customs, superstitions, and secular imagery found in Christian churches and churchyards, with a particular emphasis on the traditional rural protestant church.   Beginning with stories associated with the construction of church buildings themselves and the role that they played in the community, the book moves through a number of subjects where everything might not be as it would seem it should be in the Christian church and its grounds.   Expect vestiges of pagan symbols hidden in the fabric of the church building and clergymen rumored to hold strange arcane knowledge of their own, kept within their personal occult libraries. Learn the ways in which you can use the church and its grounds to divine who might die in the next twelve months, where you might find love, and how you might cure illnesses.   Watch out for a number of figures you wouldn’t expect to find on such holy ground, from run-ins with the devil to spectral figures inhabiting the church or its graves. Discover some of the ways in which magic and witchcraft seep into the hallowed ground of the churchyard from outside.  Hallowed Ground will offer more than a few surprises about the folklore that surrounds the church and churchyard and a fascinating insight into the social history of our place of traditional Sunday worship, all delivered with the academic rigor and accessible, engaging style for which the author is known.

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  Passion Plays - How Religion...

  Randall Balmer

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  Randall Balmer was a late convert to sports talk radio, but he quickly became addicted, just like millions of other devoted American sports fans. As a historian of religion, the more he listened, Balmer couldn’t help but wonder how the fervor he heard related to religious practice. Houses of worship once railed against Sabbath-busting sports events, but today most willingly accommodate Super Bowl Sunday. On the other hand, basketball’s inventor, James Naismith, was an ardent follower of Muscular Christianity and believed the game would help develop religious character. But today those religious roots are largely forgotten. 
   
  Here one of our most insightful writers on American religion trains his focus on that other great passion—team sports—to reveal their surprising connections. From baseball to basketball and football to ice hockey, Balmer explores the origins and histories of big-time sports from the late nineteenth century to the present, with entertaining anecdotes and fresh insights into their ties to religious life. Referring to Notre Dame football, the Catholic Sun called its fandom “a kind of sacramental.” Legions of sports fans reading Passion Plays will recognize exactly what that means.

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  Ikigai

  Jim Colajuta

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  The day you decide that your life is your own is the best day of your life. There will be no apologies or excuses. There was no one to lean on, rely on, or point the finger at. The gift is yours, it's an incredible journey, and you're solely responsible for its quality. This is the first day of your life. Having a purpose in life is one of the most fundamental human needs. Ikigai, a Japanese concept, means "a reason for being." It refers to living a fulfilling life. Many different activities can provide people with a sense of purpose in life. These activities can range from volunteering to providing social support to the elderly and even caring for pets, all linked to increased happiness, better health outcomes, and longer lifespan.Everyone is equipped with an ikigai. Your ikigai is the reason you get up in the morning, the reason you want to live fully and cheerfully. Your ikigai isn't something your makeup; it's something you're born with. The Japanese believe that discovering one's ikigai necessitates a long, contemplative search that can lead to life satisfaction and meaning. All you have to do is dig far enough to locate it. Your ikigai lies at the crossroads of four circles: what you enjoy, what the world requires, what you can be compensated for, and what you're skilled at.

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  Life After Capitalism - The...

  George Gilder

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  For over two-hundred years, capitalist systems have overtaken the global economy, spreading near-universal growth and opening the floodgates for limitless human potential. 
   
   
   
  Yet something is going terribly wrong in the world economy. 
   
   
   
  Creativity and faith in the future have been traded for a slippery slope of cautionary paranoia, popular despair, and political overreach by leaders who promise to hold back the tides, control the weather, and print prosperity with little clue as to what is actually going on. 
   
   
   
  This divergence did not begin with the Obama administration, the Trump presidency, the Gates Foundation, or George Soros, says leading futurist George Gilder. The cognitive dissonance and its harvest of confusion and despair reflects a deep misunderstanding at the heart of capitalism itself. 
   
   
   
  In Life After Capitalism, national bestselling author George Gilder explains how economics is not an incentive system but an information system. Redefining capitalism for the modern age, he reveals how free enterprise is a mind driven system, material resources are essentially as infinite as atoms, and what governs economic growth is human creativity—not merely a Marxist class struggle for power.

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  The Search for Reagan - The...

  Craig Shirley

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  Never before has anyone explored the mind, soul, and heart of Ronald Reagan. The Search for Reagan explores the challenges and controversies in Reagan's life and how he successfully dealt with each, depicting a man who was never as conservative as some conservatives wanted him to be, but rather as conservative as he was comfortable being—a man who wanted to win on his own terms and integrity. 
   
   
   
  Ronald Reagan was a singularly unique man and conservative who championed a wildly successful revolution—leading to more freedom and less government for the American people and to the fall of communism, while boosting American morale. He was the first president in many years who believed optimism from the Oval Office had a direct bearing on the affairs of the nation. As a consequence, he left office more popular than when he entered, with a whopping 73 percent approval. He understood that American conservatism was based upon the individual and not the group. In his presidency, he solved the mystery of high inflation that had bedeviled his predecessor, high interest rates, and high gas prices. He created over twenty million new jobs, and the number of American millionaires grew from 4,414 to 34,944. He is considered by most historians to be one of our four greatest presidents, along with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt.

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