Search results for ""Author Douglas Alan""

As religious leaders, ministers are often assumed to embody the faith of the institution they represent. As cultural symbols, they reflect subtle changes in society and belief-specifically people's perception of God and the evolving role of the church. For more than forty years, Douglas Alan Walrath has tracked changing patterns of belief and church participation in American society, and his research has revealed a particularly fascinating trend: portrayals of ministers in American fiction mirror changing perceptions of the Protestant church and a Protestant God. From the novels of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who portrays ministers as faithful Calvinists, to the works of Herman Melville, who challenges Calvinism to its very core, Walrath considers a variety of fictional ministers, including Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegon Lutherans and Gail Godwin's women clergy. He identifies a range of types: religious misfits, harsh Puritans, incorrigible scoundrels, secular businessmen, perpetrators of oppression, victims of belief, prudent believers, phony preachers, reactionaries, and social activists. He concludes with the modern legacy of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century images of ministers, which highlights the ongoing challenges that skepticism, secularization, and science have brought to today's religious leaders and fictional counterparts. Displacing the Divine offers a novel encounter with social change, giving the reader access, through the intimacy and humanity of literature, to the evolving character of an American tradition.

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A fascinating new angle on presidential history, assessing the performances of the presidents in their freshman year of the toughest job in the world. Grouped by the issues the new presidents confronted in their first years in office, the book takes readers into the history, thought processes, and results on a case-by-case basis, including how the presidents’ subsequent actions proved that they learned (or didn’t learn) from their mistakes. From George Washington to Barack Obama, The President’s First Year details the challenging first twelve months of all our presidents’ tenures.

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Thirty-five years ago, Sir John Hackett published The Third World War, which speculated how WW3 might start and how it would be fought. Since it is now fashionable to call WW3 the Cold War, the time is right to publish a book about WW4, how it might start and most likely be fought. War planners must envision the unexpected and plan for the improbable, and the 20th century’s theories of total war are going to be rendered obsolete by the 21st century’s nuclear-enforced concept of limited war. In the future, with mutual acceptance of national survival in place, Mutually Assured Survival (MAS) wars will be waged between nuclear powers without introducing nuclear weapons. This is the possible future in nine scenarios: ·The Post-NATO War: It will begin between allies, not enemies, in seemingly unconnected events. ·The Great Russian War: Russia will seek to reverse its loss of empire through its version of Manifest Destiny. ·The Great China War: By embracing capitalism in an authoritarian command-control economy, China supplanted communism with a form of expansionist fascism. ·The Chinese Civil War: Chinese fascism will become a victim of rising expectations and diminishing realities. ·The Polar War: Another resource rush is on, and as 500 years ago, a treaty allocating sovereignty was made to be broken. ·The Blue Gold War: Diminishing fresh water will spawn conflicts of desperation. ·The Lunar War: The Moon will come to be coveted as the only permanent low-gravity satellite. ·The Nuclear Terrorist War: As the Taliban, al Qaeda, and ISIS terrorists inch closer in connection and proximity to sympathetic extremists in Pakistan, that nation’s nuclear arsenal is increasingly likely to fall into their hands. ·The Commerce, Currency, and Cyber War: With globalization, government-sanctioned predatory trade practices, cyber-based industrial espionage, currency manipulation, and other financially provocative actions will lead to war. Human folly is the great imponderable. Yet, does folly upset the calm or is the storm the natural state in the sea of humanity? Either way, folly or nature ensures a future filled with conflict.

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