New Book Release: Rethinking Gender in Orthodox Christianity

Rethinking Gender in Orthodox Christianity by Ashley Purpura, et al., eds.

What is the role of gender in Eastern Christianity? In this volume, Orthodox experts of different disciplines and cultural backgrounds tackle this complex question. They engage critically with gender issues within their own tradition. Rather than simply accepting pervasive assumptions and practices, the authors challenge readers to reconsider historically or theologically justified views by offering nuanced insights into the tradition. The first part of the book explores normative positions in Orthodox texts and contexts. From examinations of Scripture and hagiography to re-evaluations of monastic, patriarchal, and legal sources, it sheds new light on gender issues in Orthodox Christianity. The second part considers how gendered expectations shape individuals' participation in Orthodox liturgical life and how ecclesial contexts inflect gender theologically. The chapters reflect diverse Orthodox voices brought together to foster new understandings of the ways gender shapes Orthodox religious lives and beliefs. Rethinking what has been inherited from tradition, the authors proffer new perspectives on what it means to be a man or woman within Orthodoxy in the twenty-first century.

New Book Release: Keir Hardie's Creed

Keir Hardie's Creed: Faith in Socialism by Neil Johnson

For James Keir Hardie, founding father of the British Labour Party, Socialism was the Christianity of his day. Keir Hardie realized that the abject poverty of his early years was economic, social, and political oppression, so he dedicated his life to fighting for justice. He found inspiration in the visions, insights, and concepts of figures from Jesus of Nazareth to Robert Burns and Karl Marx. At the heart of Keir Hardie's creed was the belief that human solidarity is sacred. What underpins this study is the understanding that labour history is religious history.

New Book Release: Avoiding Harm

Avoiding Harm: A Muslim Response to COVID-19 by A. Rashied Omar

Research scholars have lamented the fact that most of the extant studies on religious responses to the COVID-19 pandemic focus on a particular religious group, typically Christian. This book fills this lacuna by providing some useful insights into how one Muslim religious institution responded to the pandemic. It portrays the sermons, advice, and guidance provided to the Claremont Main Road Mosque (CMRM) congregation in Cape Town, South Africa, by its Imams and elected board of governors during the course of the pandemic. The book carries a concluding chapter by Professor R. Scott Appleby, an expert in the study of lived religion, who critically reflects on this collection of sermons and the response of the mosque by providing some independent ruminations on the themes of religion, science, and the human person.

New Book Release: Emory University School of Medicine

The Smartest and Most Promising: A History of the Emory University School of Medicine by Armand E. Hendee and Juha P. Kokko

This book traces the distinguished history of the Emory University School of Medicine from its inception to the current day and highlights the intellect, strength, endurance, and hard work of the many who planned and built an internationally renowned health-sciences center. From its earliest days as a small “practitioner’s school” struggling to stay afloat, the Emory University School of Medicine has followed a path to its current place of eminence in teaching, patient care, and research.

New Book Release: Humanism

Humanism: In Command or in Crisis? by Michael A. Schuler

According to bestselling historian Yuval Noah Harari, today's average American has their foot in three ideological camps: nationalism, free market capitalism, and humanism. The first two might seem obvious, but the third? It's entirely possible that most who qualify for that label would be hard pressed to explain its meaning, much less use it self-descriptively. This book is designed to serve two important purposes: First, to provide an accessible resource for anyone curious about the humanist tradition and the arguments advanced by leading contemporary proponents. Second, to address what the author believes is a critical question for our time, the era of the Anthropocene: Is humanism's seemingly benign package of values at least partially responsible for some of the world's most pressing problems? To answer the last question, Schuler draws from an eclectic collection of commentators, including life scientists, spiritual writers, public intellectuals, technologists, novelists, and even poets. In the end, this wide-ranging survey will help the reader determine whether humanism makes sense for them.

New Book Release: Werewolf Stories

Werewolf Stories: Shape-Shifters, Lycanthropes, and Man-Beasts by Nick Redfern and Brad Steiger

Beware the Full Moon! Take a hair-raising tour of werewolf legends. Meet shape-shifters, dogmen, and all variety of human and lupine mixes in this blood curling story collection from two distinguished paranormal researchers!

From today's lycanthropic creatures found in pop culture such as Dracula, Twilight and An American Werewolf in London to the earliest mentions in folklore of the shape-shifting legend, Werewolf Stories: Shape-Shifters, Lycanthropes, and Man-Beasts is an eye-opening tour through the ages of all things werewolf. Along the way, readers land at the doorstep of creatures like serial killer Fritz Haarmann, tiger people and their thirst for human blood, Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome, shapeshifters of all kinds and sizes, and even a spell to repel werewolves. This fascinating tome provides 140,000 years of blood-pounding evidence of strange and obsessional behavior. It tells of stories of becoming a werewolf and the intricacies of slaying the beast. A true homage to the creature, it includes full moon of topics such as …

• Fenrir, the wolf child of the giantess Angrboda and the god Loki, from the Old Norse myth of Ragnarok
• Notorious serial killers, including Peter Stumpp and Michael Lupo, who thought themselves to be—and modeled their crimes on—werewolves
• Coyote people, tricksters, and were-animals of Navajo legend
• The Basque butchers of Louisiana and the loup-garou
• Diana, the goddess of the wilderness and the hunt, and her pack of hunting dogs, who once ruled all the dark forests of Europe
• Leopard creature-men and the deadly cult whose members expressed their were-leopard lust for human blood and flesh that has been in existence in West Africa for several hundred years
• The “werewolf of the Dordogne,” Francis Leroy, and his uncontrollable bloodlust during the full moon
• The secret terrorist group Organization Werewolf, established in 1923, and its possible allegiance to Adolf Hitler
• Ghouls from Arabic folklore, the demonic Djinns that hover near burial grounds and sustain themselves on human flesh stolen from graves
• Tasmania’s thylacine and sightings of the “probably extinct” creature and its remarkable—and frightening—jaw capacity
• Alaska’s Kushtaka and other stories of the Bigfoot man-beast
• Puerto Rico’s chupacabra and its powerful goat-like legs, three-clawed feet, and penchant for sucking blood
• The Doñas de Fuera of Sicily, small fairies who looked human, aside from their paw-like feet, and were cruel and dangerous when crossed
• Enkidu, perhaps our earliest written record of a man-beast that appears on a Babylonian fragment circa 2000 BCE and tells the story of King Gilgamesh and his werewolf-like friend in The Epic of Gilgamesh
• And many more stories and histories of werewolves, night-stalkers, lycanthropes, and man-beasts

Noted cryptozoologists and paranormal researchers Nick Redfern and Brad Steiger share personal stories and encounters with werewolves in Werewolf Stories. They take a deep dive into the legends, the history, the pop-culture take on the man-beast. It's a wild and weird road-trip into the mystery-filled domain of the disturbingly real world of shape-shifters and werewolves!

New Book Release: American Ghost Stories

American Ghost Stories: True Tales from All 50 States by Michael A. Kozlowski and Richard Estep

Take an eerie road trip! A chilling collection of true ghost stories spanning every state in the United States with a full range of ghostly manifestations and haunted locations!

From séances to shiny graveyards, take a ghostly journey across the United States. Visit the highways and byways of the supernatural across the country and in each state in the union. American Ghost Stories: True Tales from All 50 States tours possessed houses, unearthly burial sites, forbidding farms, sinister forests, school bathrooms, and all manner of places haunted by spectral visitors, including …

• Sullivan, Maine, and Nelly Butler, America’s “first ghost.”
• Wilder, Kentucky, and Bobby Mackey’s Music World, which was originally built as a slaughterhouse and then served at various times as a honky-tonk, bingo hall, biker bar, and cocktail lounge before becoming a direct portal to Hell.
• Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and The Pfister Hotel, where every U.S. president since William McKinley stayed—as did Elvis Presley—and its weird noises, flickering lights, malfunctioning electronics, and moving objects.
• Exeter, Rhode Island, and Mercy Lena Brown, the vampire ghost that was caught on a YouTube video.
• San Jose, California, and the maze-like Winchester House, which was allegedly designed to confuse ghosts that haunted the original owner … and have continued to haunt people ever since.
• Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and the Skirvin Hotel, the historic Art Deco hotel, former speakeasy, and location of several gunfights that is haunted full time by Effie, a Prohibition-era chambermaid.
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the numerous sightings at the Betsy Ross House. 
• Huntsville, Alabama, and the Maple Hill Cemetery, the internment site for governors, U.S. senators, representatives, and soldiers that is the site of … a playground!
• Tularosa Basin, New Mexico, and Pavla Blanca, the woman in white roaming the dunes of the White Sand National Monument.
• And many more paranormal experiences, poltergeists, residual hauntings, curses, witches, prisons, bridges, mental institutions of an America plagued with spirits, phantoms and ghosts!

More than merely a collection of 50 true ghost stories, American Ghost Stories puts you in the middle of the eerie action with captivating stories that would be at home at any midnight campfire. The only difference is that these stories aren't urban legends or fantasies meant to scare you. These stories live right next door to every one of us. We suggest you don’t read them when you are home alone and the lights begin to flicker!