Showing results by narrator "Peter Lerman" in All Categories

A penetrating look at near-future disruption as truly autonomous vehicles arrive.

Based in the idea that social phenomena are best studied through the lens of different disciplinary perspectives, Empty Churches studies the growing number of individuals who no longer affiliate with a religious tradition. Coeditors Jan Stets, a social psychologist, and James Heft, a historian of theology, bring together leading scholars in the fields of sociology, developmental psychology, gerontology, political science, history, philosophy, and pastoral theology.

Over the past few decades, the complicated divides of geography, class, religion, and race created deep fractures in the United States, each side fighting to advance its own mythology and political interests. We lack a central story, a common ground we can celebrate and enrich with deeper meaning. Unable to agree on first principles, we cannot agree on what it means to be American. As we dismantle or disregard symbols and themes that previously united us, can we replace them with stories and rites that unite our tribes and maintain meaning in our American identity?

The Curse of Demagogues: Lessons Learned from the Presidency of Donald J. Trump is a collection of 32 essays by 22 writers that make the case that the pathway back to a healthy American democracy is for citizens to understand demagogues and defend against them.

This interdisciplinary study offers a comprehensive analysis of the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Providing full historical context and drawing on a wide range of literature, this book explores the continuous economic and social transformation of the post-socialist world. While the future is yet to be determined, understanding the present phase of transformation is critical.

The hate is deep. The death is slow. The cause is silent. You know that Atlanta PD has given up on a case when they call in Dr. Damon Keane. The sleuth scientist is quietly famous in forensic circles for unraveling the most daunting technical puzzles, but this case is bewildering. Two people are already dead. The third victim, a priest, is dying by inches in an Atlanta hospital, and the cause is a complete mystery to doctors and detectives alike.

School safety has become a critical topic of concern in educational contexts. In this book, editors Christopher C. Morphew, Vanya C. Jones, and Ashley Cureton bring together a timely collection of essays to outline the obstacles to and most promising approaches for creating safe, healthy, and inclusive schools for all children.

In Under the Dome, Alan Hantman, the Architect of the Capitol from 1997 to 2007, provides a personal account of how the Capitol works as a physical space; who runs it, how and why decisions are made about the security of the Capitol and the people who work there, and how politicians think about the Capitol Building.

Another pandemic is coming. We need to identify the lessons learned from our successes and failures during the COVID-19 pandemic to plan better for our future response.

A host of technologies—including digital cameras, drones, facial recognition devices, night-vision binoculars, automated license plate readers, GPS, geofencing, DNA matching, datamining, and artificial intelligence—have enabled police to carry out much of their work without leaving the office or squad car, in ways that do not easily fit the traditional physical search and seizure model envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. Virtual Searches develops a useful typology for sorting through this bewildering array of old, new, and soon-to-arrive policing techniques.

If it were your job to bring a company to the bargaining table so it could merge, sell, or divest, you had better have the stamina and guts as well as an intricate knowledge of how the human mind operates. Negotiating these kinds of deals is not for the faint of heart. But for over 50 years, one merchandising giant after another - Marshalls, TJ Maxx, Home Depot, Nine West, Kohl's, Macy's, Sears, CVS, The Limited, Dollar Tree, Eddie Bauer, Interparfums, Jeffrey Stores, and Jos A. Bank, to name a few - have relied on Gilbert Harrison to help them forge just these kinds of deals.

Harness the natural rhythms already present within us and the world, which are so basic and instinctual to who we are as humans, and experience a lifetime of balance and wholeness. Dr. Frank Lawlis's evidence-based methods are centered around connecting to healing rhythms - in our body, in nature, and in the universe. These tools and exercises interrupt pain and illness signals to encourage coping, healing, and thriving alike.

In The Fourth Branch: Reconstructing the Administrative State for the Commercial Republic Brian J. Cook confronts head-on the accumulating derangements in the American constitutional system and how the administrative state has contributed to the problems, how it has been a key force in addressing the troubles, and how it can be reformed to serve the system better. Cook calls for a decisive, pattern-breaking response in the form of a constitutional redesign to accommodate a fourth branch, an administrative branch.

Mr. Wrenn is part Walter Mitty and part Forrest Gump - decades before either came to be. A most well-meaning but completely unsophisticated 36-year-old clerk in a novelty and souvenir company, he dreams of great travels, adventure, and romance. He lives in a boarding house in New York City and travels by cattle boat to Europe when an unexpected windfall puts one thousand dollars in his hands. His good-hearted misunderstandings of the world around him amuse and entertain. He does realize his dreams.

The Glory and the Burden: The American Presidency from FDR to Trump is a timely examination of the state of the American presidency and the forces that have shaped it over the past 75 years, with an emphasis on the dramatic changes that have taken place within the institution and to the individuals occupying the Oval Office.

A dark and humorous, albeit, twisted story of two opposites on their sixth anniversary. They should never have married. Violet is submersed in fantasy and denial. She is blindly in love with Gideon who cannot bear to breathe in the same room with her. She manages her day in the ignorance of bliss, an element of the marriage that only she knows. Gideon is in torment every moment of each passing day. He finally realizes that it must end if he is to be free to search for his own happiness. What will he do?

J. Jacob Potashnik's collection of short stories about Montreal and other places is in the tradition of Saul Bellow, Mordechai Richler, and reminiscent of the work of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Sholom Aleichem, among others.

In the spring of 1946, following the defeat of Hitler’s Germany, America found itself still struggling with the subtler but no less insidious tyrannies of racism and segregation at home. In the midst of it all, Jackie Robinson, a full year away from breaking major league baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers, was undergoing a harrowing dress rehearsal for integration - his first spring training as a minor league prospect with the Montreal Royals, Brooklyn’s AAA team.

In Saving Our Cities, William W. Goldsmith shows how cities can be places of opportunity rather than places with problems. With strongly revived cities and suburbs, working as places that serve all their residents, metropolitan areas will thrive, thus making the national economy more productive, the environment better protected, the citizenry better educated, and the society more reflective, sensitive, and humane.

An amusing story about two elderly men who stumble upon an unusual way to make money by creating a new religion. Jack and David are the main characters--both about 80 years old. Their unique plan to get rich unfolds one morning when they're sitting on their beach chairs in Florida lamenting the limited income they receive from Social Security and want more.