Though much has been written about the political implications of the religious revival which has engulfed America in recent years, a question remains unanswered: what pushes its people into 'declaring for Jesus'? Douglas Kennedy spent a long hot summer cruising through that expanse of the American South known as 'The Bible Belt' exploring that question. In a remarkable journey into one of the strangest corners of the United States, Kennedy finds himself spending time in Miami with a one-time member of the Mafia turned charismatic preacher, discovering Christian heavy metal music in Nashville, and visiting Death Row in South Carolina with an evangelist who ministers to the condemned. Repeatedly discovering the extraordinary within the ordinary, IN GOD'S COUNTRY is a profound, yet brilliantly entertaining exploration of life in late twentieth century America.

In God's Country

History

KENNEDY, Douglas

World

Abacus Non-Fiction

An uneducated youth, William Booth left home in 1849 at the age of twenty to preach the gospel for the New Methodist Connexion. Six years later he founded a new religious movement which succeeded to such a degree that the Salvation Army (which it became) is now a worldwide operation with massive membership.But that is only part of Booth's importance and heritage. In many ways his story is also that of the Victorian poor, as he and his wife Catherine made it their lives' work to battle against the poverty and deprivation which were endemic in the mid- to late 1800s. Indeed, it was Catherine who, although a chronic invalid, inspired the Army's social policy and attitude to female authority. Her campaign against child prostitution resulted in the age of consent being raised and it was Catherine who, dying of cancer, encouraged William to clear the slums -- In Darkest England, The Way Out. Roy Hattersley's masterful dual biography is not just the story of two fascinating lives but a portrait of an integral part of our history.

Blood and Fire (William and Catherine Booth and the Salvation Army)

Biographies & Memoirs

HATTERSLEY, Roy

Community & Culture

Since his untimely death aged fifty-one in 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte has been too often the victim of biographical revisionism that treats him either as a demi-god or as devil incarnate. In the first of this monumental new two-volume biography, Robert Asprey has preferred to treat him as a human being. The Rise and Fall of Napoleon (Volume 1: The Rise) chronicles the beginning of this most extraordinary of lives, from Napoleon's birth in 1769 to the historic Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, when he brilliantly defeated the Austro-Russian armies. What emerges is both a fascinating and contradictory figure: a child of the French Revolution who grew to be its master; who exploited the national will for what he believed to be the national good; who converted the surging passions of thirty million persons into an irresistible force to challenge and often topple archaic thrones; whose desire for European reforms ultimately fell victim to feudal superstition and misery. Based on years of research, Robert Asprey tells this remarkable tale with the even-handedness such a major historical figure deserves. He presents Napoleon as he was - a man dedicated to his vision of himself and his empire.

The Rise And Fall Of Napoleon Vol 1

Asprey, Robert

Europe

The Siege of Derry

Gébler, Carlo

Ghost Soldiers

Hampton Sides

Military

Scholars have long argued that moral judgements arise from rational deliberations about what society determines is right and wrong. This has generated the idea that our moral psychology is founded on cultural experience. In the revolutionary MORAL MINDS, Marc Hauser challenges these concepts, showing that this view is illusory and arguing instead that humans have evolved a 'moral instinct', a universal feature of the human mind rather than one informed by gender, education or religion.Combining his own cutting-edge research with cognitive psychology, linguistics, evolutionary biology and economics, Hauser examines his groundbreaking theory in terms of bioethics, religion and law, as well as our everyday lives.

Moral Minds

Politics & Social Sciences

Hauser, Marc

Philosophy

Guerrillas

Anderson, Jon Lee

First published in 1925 THE OLD STRAIGHT TRACK remains the most important source for the study of ancient tracks or leys that criss-cross the British Isles- a fascinating system which was old when the Romans came to Britain. First in the Herefordshire countryside, and later throughout Britain, Alfred Watkins noticed that beacon hills, mounds, earthworks, moats and old churches built on pagan sites seemed to fall in straight lines. His investigation convinced him that Britain was covered with a vast network of straight tracks, aligned with either the sun or the path of a star. Although traces of this network can be found all over the country, the principles behind the ley system remain a mystery. Are they the legacy of a prehistoric scientific knowledge which is now all but lost? And was their purpose secular or religious?

The Old Straight Track (Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones)

Watkins, Alfred

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