Showing titles in Religious Studies

For many, the medieval world seems dark and foreign - a miraculous, brutal, and irrational time of superstition and strange relics. The pursuit of heretics, the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the domination of the "Holy Land" come to mind.

WINNER OF A NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD A USA TODAY BESTSELLER "A gifted writer, astonishingly adept at nuance, narration, and the politics of passion."—Toni Morrison Set in London of the 1660s and of the early twenty-first century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of...

Atheist? Believer? Uncertain? No matter: The Portable Atheist will engage you every step of the way. From the number one New York Times best-selling author of God Is Not Great, comes this provocative and entertaining guided tour of atheist and agnostic thought through the ages with original pieces by Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

You’ve seen them in movies and on TV, but cults are more prevalent than you think - and they’re armed with strategies that can brainwash and persuade even the most unlikely of candidates. But how do individuals get involved with cults in the first place, and what steps can be taken to “deprogram” and heal those who have been drawn into these damaging groups? These questions and more are addressed in Cults Inside Out, written by leading cult expert Rick Alan Ross.

This excellent audiobook is the first of its kind and has been selected by a number of organizations as a worthy introduction to the life of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), including Muslim Welfare House, London, and the Muslim Council of Britain.

A publishing sensation, the publication of Victor Klemperer's diaries brings to light one of the most extraordinary documents of the Nazi period. 'A classic ... Klemperer's diary deserves to rank alongside that of Anne Frank's' SUNDAY TIMES 'I can't remember when I read a more engrossing book'...

In The Culting of America, cult survivor, military veteran, and bestselling author of Uncultured Daniella Mestyanek Young delivers a gripping investigation into the invisible systems of control shaping our lives. Raised in the notorious sex cult the Children of God, she escaped to America as a teenager—only to find herself inside another rigid institution: the U.S. Army. Years later, as a Harvard-trained expert in organizational psychology, she began asking a dangerous question: What if we’re all in cults—and America is built to keep us there?

Eckhart Tolle brings us a much-needed message of hope, revealing how we each have a role in leading humanity in a new direction. As the perils of our world seem to escalate beyond control, how can we reverse the direction we appear to be heading? According to Eckhart Tolle, the answer lies in...

Homer's Iliad is the famous epic poem set among the tales of Troy. Its subject is the anger of the hero Achilles and its consequences for the warring Greeks and Trojans. Unlike other books on the Iliad, this one combines the detailed expertise of a historian with the sensitivity of a teacher of it as poetry. Lane Fox goes on to consider hallmarks of the poem, its values, implicit and explicit, its characters, its women, its gods and even its horses. He argues repeatedly for its beautiful observation and addresses its parallel use of what is, to us, the natural world.

Has modern scholarship debunked the traditional Christ? Has the church suppressed the truth about Jesus to advance its own agenda? What if the real Jesus is far different from the atoning Savior worshipped through the centuries? In The Case for the Real Jesus, former award-winning legal editor...

Brought to you by Penguin. Two spiritual giants. Seven days. One timeless question. 'The ultimate source of happiness is within us.' DALAI LAMA 'We grow in kindness when our kindness is tested.' DESMOND TUTU Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama have been friends for many, many years...

Jamie Bartlett takes us inside the worlds of innovators, disruptors, idealists and extremists who think society is broken, and believe they know how to fix it. Radicals introduces us to techno-futurists questing for immortality, far-right groups seeking to close borders, environmentalists striving to save the planet, libertarian movements founding new countries, autonomous cooperatives in self-sustaining micro-societies and psychedelic pioneers attempting to heal society

The Qur'an, recited daily by over 2 billion Muslims, is the final revelation sent by God (Allah) to mankind, conveyed over 23 years to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) through the Angel Gabriel. It speaks directly in the first person as the verbatim word of God, addressing: the nature of God, mankind's responsibilities, and the afterlife. Additionally, it features the Islamic stories of Jesus, Moses, Abraham, Joseph and many other prophets!

In just over a hundred years - from the death of Muhammad in 632 to the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750 - the followers of the Prophet swept across the whole of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. Their armies threatened states as far flung as the Franks in Western Europe and the Tang Empire in China. The conquered territory was larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest expansion, and it was claimed for the Arabs in roughly half the time.

Until his death in 4 BCE, Herod the Great's monarchy included territories that once made up the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Although he ruled over a rich, strategically crucial land, his royal title did not derive from heredity. His family came from the people of Idumea, ancient antagonists of the Israelites.

You think you know about Islam. But, did you know that Islam teaches that Muslims must wage war to impose Islamic law on non-Muslim states, or that American Muslim groups are engaged in a huge cover-up of Islamic doctrine? These and other "politically incorrect" facts are revealed by Robert Spencer in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades).

Reveals the tradition of goddess worship in early Judaism and how Jesus attempted to restore the feminine side of the faith Provides historical and archaeological evidence for an earlier form of Hebrew worship with both male and female gods, including a 20th-century discovery of a Hebrew...

Saint Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) is one of the most inspiring figures in Christianity: a Doctor of the Church, visionary mystic, powerful composer of hymns, artist, and philosopher. Now, you have the opportunity to know Hildegard intimately in this program on her life and spirituality.

C S Lewis’s philosophical defence of Natural Law (absolute morality) – without which human beings are reduced to less than fully human, and are, thus ‘abolished’. CS Lewis argues that objective value actually exists and that to believe otherwise is to create nonsense. Human beings...

April 7, 1944 - This date marks the successful escape of two Slovak prisoners from one of the most heavily-guarded and notorious concentration camps of Nazi Germany. The escapees, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, fled over 100 miles to be the first to give the graphic and detailed descriptions of the atrocities of Auschwitz. Originally published in the early 1960s, I Escaped from Auschwitz is the striking autobiography of none other than Rudolf Vrba himself. Vrba details his life leading up to, during, and after his escape from his 21-month internment in Auschwitz.