Beginning with an examination of West African food traditions during the era of the transatlantic slave trade and ending with a discussion of black vegan activism in the twenty-first century, Getting What We Need Ourselves: How Food Has Shaped African American Life tells a multi-faceted food story that goes beyond the well-known narrative of southern-derived “soul food” as the predominant form of black food expression. While this book considers the provenance and ongoing cultural resonance of emblematic foods such as greens and cornbread, it also examines the experiences of African Americans who never embraced such foods or who rejected them in search of new tastes and new symbols that were less directly tied to the past of plantation slavery. This book tells the story of generations of cooks and eaters who worked to create food habits that they variously considered sophisticated, economical, distinctly black, all-American, ethical, and healthful in the name of benefiting the black community. Significantly, it also chronicles the enduring struggle of impoverished eaters who worried far more about having enough to eat than about what particular food filled their plates. Finally, it considers the experiences of culinary laborers, whether enslaved, poorly paid domestic servants, tireless entrepreneurs, or food activists and intellectuals who used their knowledge and skills to feed and educate others, making a lasting imprint on American food culture in the process. Throughout African American history, food has both been used as a tool of empowerment and wielded as a weapon. Beginning during the era of slavery, African American food habits have often served as a powerful means of cementing the bonds of community through the creation of celebratory and affirming shared rituals. However, the system of white supremacy has frequently used food, or often the lack of it, as a means to attempt to control or subdue the black community. This study demonstrates that African American eaters who have worked to creative positive representations of black food practices have simultaneously had to confront an elaborate racist mythology about black culinary inferiority and difference. Keeping these tensions in mind, empty plates are as much a part of the history this book sets out to narrate as full ones, and positive characterizations of black foodways are consistently put into dialogue with distorted representations created by outsiders. Together these stories reveal a rich and complicated food history that defies simple stereotypes and generalizations.

The Social Contract, originally published as On the Social Contract; or, Principles of Political Rights, is a book in which Rousseau theorized about the best way to establish a political community in the face of the problems of commercial society, which he had already identified in his Discourse on Inequality (1754). The Social Contract helped inspire political reforms or revolutions in Europe, especially in France. The Social Contract argued against the idea that monarchs were divinely empowered to legislate. Rousseau asserts that only the people, who are sovereign, have that all-powerful right. Emile, or On Education is a treatise on the nature of education and on the nature of man. Jean-Jacques Rousseau considered it to be the "best and most important" of all his writings. Due to a section of the book entitled "Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar", Emile was banned in Paris and Geneva and was publicly burned in 1762, the year of its first publication. During the French Revolution, Emile served as the inspiration for what became a new national system of education.

Grandchildren are a wonderful blessing, and they need the best advice possible for their lives to turn out well. As a proud granddad, Dr. Chris Thurman passes along advice he has gleaned from his many years as a person of faith and psychologist. While written for his grandkids, this book can be helpful to all young people and the parents and grandparents helping them live a fuller and healthier life. Some of the biblically-solid advice offered in this book includes • Hang around good people • Think the right thoughts • Be angry, but don’t act the fool • Be content with little • Guard your heart • Let others toot your horn • Be grateful, even for your problems • Do the hard things first In Pop’s Advice, Dr. Chris Thurman guides our children and those of us raising them in a time-tested direction so their lives can be all God intended. The advice in this book can help not only our young people but those of us who are older trying to make our way through life. Regardless of age or situation, Pop’s Advice can guide all of us to live life in a way that goes beyond all we could have ever hoped for or imagined.

In his formative years, author Frank Miranda was exposed to a negative, ignorant, judgmental, and at times, hostile environment where prejudice was rampant. He had become that which had influenced him in terms of how he saw everything. In Waking to a Happy, Fulfilled Life, Miranda shares how he changed his life—how he turned negativity to positivity; ignorance to intelligence and wisdom; judgment to nonjudgment; prejudice to acceptance and seeing everyone as the same; and anger to love. In this combination memoir and inspirational testament, Miranda recounts his enlightening journey that has allowed him to be a good, loving, happy, patient, faithful, and productive human being. After conducting years of research in psychology, science, and religion, he discovered these attributes correlate with one another, and he’s convinced we live in a world of all possibilities. Waking to a Happy, Fulfilled Life recounts how Miranda, who grew up in a dysfunctional home, overcame all of the challenges and obstacles. He illustrates how anyone can change his or her life for the better and evolve to their divine purpose.

Before Jesus went to the Father, he gave instructions to his followers to repent and change their way of thinking, for the kingdom was at hand. This would result in a new way of thinking for them. Things were no longer going to work the way they had before. He instructed them in the good news that the kingdom had begun. He healed all kinds of sickness and diseases and taught them that they could be great in this kingdom that was coming from heaven to earth. He explained how it would start small and would grow throughout the earth in the same manner that yeast multiplies in bread making, and the world would not even see it happening. He gave them the authority and ordered them to take charge of this kingdom and called them “children of the kingdom.” He gave them, and all who would hear about him through their teaching, the keys to function in this new kingdom and explained how this authority was activated by faith-filled words. He said the kingdom was like a man going into a far country and leaving his servants in charge and taught that they would be accountable for what they had accomplished when he returned. We are those people today. You will learn how this kingdom works, the authority of those in charge, and how to use your authority in the unseen realm.

Contains a diverse compilation of major speeches, congressional testimony, policy statements, fact sheets, and other foreign policy information from the State Dept.

To win battles against your enemies, the devil, and the hordes of demonic renegades that attempt to ensnare us by deceptions, we must get to know them. Not personally do we get to know them but through the scriptures by being abreast about their ways, habits, and stratagems to combat their evil plots that they seek to entrap us by. Through Arming Yourself Against Demonic Warfare, you will be ready to face the enemies of our minds. You will learn much about what you have at your powerful spiritual arsenal disposal to keep them at bay. How can one defeat his enemy? It is simple; study him, his ways, flaws, habits, and the imperfections that he has. Arming Yourself Against Demonic Warfare is a book that will enlighten believers on how to stay rooted and grounded when combating their spiritual foes, how to engage in spiritual warfare correctly without falling prey to the enemies tactics, how to guard the mind from being taken hostage by spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places. Your eyes will become open, and you will come away informed so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes (2 Cor. 2:11).

Pedro has always believed his life is boring and that nothing exciting or good will ever happen to him, but things are about to change drastically. Because of circumstances beyond his control, Pedro is now the leader of his group of friends. Now tasked with making life and death decisions for which he has no previous experience, he struggles to make the right choices. He swiftly makes new friends as well as enemies, and discovers different realms that even in his wildest dreams ever imagined could exist. Because of Pedro’s lack of knowledge with traveling through other worlds, he usually ends up in the middle of the of the worst situations. In the past he was warned that “Things are not always the way they appear to be,” and swiftly realizes just how true that statement is. Steven Boyd and the Blufirs have already begun attacking and make everyone’s lives more difficult, yet somehow Pedro has managed to stay alive. But how long will they be able to survive as they travel through new and dangerous worlds where things are anything but normal? Despite all of this, Pedro has succeeded in meeting a few new allies who are now working alongside with him until more reinforcements can arrive, albeit from another solar system thousands of light-years away. As bad as things sometimes get, Pedro has always managed to make everything just a little more interesting and amusing for everybody else. But with every new world, there are more choices and challenges that must be dealt with.