God's Marshall Plan tells the story of the American Protestants who sought to transform Germany into a new Christian and democratic nation in the heart of twentieth-century Europe. James D. Strasburg follows the American pastors, revivalists, diplomats, and spies who crossed the Atlantic in an era of world war, responded to the rise of totalitarian dictators, and began to identify Europe as a continent in need of saving. He examines their far-reaching campaigns to make Germany into the European cornerstone of a new American-led global spiritual order. God's Marshall Plan illuminates the dramatic ramifications of these efforts by showing how the mission to remake Germany in America's image actually remade American Protestantism itself. American Protestants realized they had come to dramatically different conclusions about how to rebuild the West out of the ruins of war. European Protestants, meanwhile, began to sharply protest America's spiritual advance. Forsaking their wartime nationalism, a growing number of ecumenical Protestants championed a new ethic of global fellowship, reconciliation, and justice. However, a fresh wave of evangelical Protestants emerged and ensured that the religious struggle would continue into the Cold War. Strasburg argues that the spiritual struggle for Europe ultimately forged two competing visions of global engagement Christian nationalism and Christian globalism that transformed the United States, diplomacy, and politics in the Cold War and beyond.

Southern Baptists had long considered themselves a missionary people, but when, after World War II, they embarked on a dramatic expansion of missionary efforts, they confronted headlong the problem of racism. Believing that racism hindered their evangelical efforts, the Convention's full-time missionaries and mission board leaders attacked racism as unchristian, thus finding themselves at odds with the pervasive racist and segregationist ideologies that dominated the South. This progressive view of race stressed the biblical unity of humanity, encompassing all races and transcending specific ethnic divisions. In All According to God's Plan, Alan Scot Willis explores these beliefs and the chasm they created within the Convention. He shows how, in the post-World War II era, the most respected members of the Southern Baptists Convention publicly challenged the most dearly held ideologies of the white South.

WITH 8 PAGES OF BLACK-AND-WHITE PHOTOGRAPHS How—and why—do we obsess over movie stars? How does fame both reflect and mask the person behind it? How have the image of stardom and our stars’ images altered over a century of cultural and technological change? Do we create celebrities, or do they create us? Ty Burr, film critic for The Boston Globe, answers these questions in this lively and fascinating anecdotal history of stardom, with all its blessings and curses for star and stargazer alike. From Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin to Archie Leach (a.k.a. Cary Grant) and Marion Morrison (a.k.a. John Wayne), Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts, and such no-cal stars of today as the Kardashians and the new online celebrity (i.e., you and me), Burr takes us on an insightful and entertaining journey through the modern fame game at its flashiest, most indulgent, occasionally most tragic, and ultimately, its most revealing.

From the author of The Spirits of America, an energetic history of tobacco use.

Winner of the 2019 New-York Historical Society Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize in American History Winner of the 2018 American Academy of Diplomacy Douglas Dillon Award Shortlisted for the 2018 Duff Cooper Prize in Literary Nonfiction Honorable Mention (runner-up) for the 2019 ASEEES Marshall D. Shulman Prize “[A] brilliant book…by far the best study yet” (Paul Kennedy, The Wall Street Journal) of the gripping history behind the Marshall Plan and its long-lasting influence on our world. In the wake of World War II, with Britain’s empire collapsing and Stalin’s on the rise, US officials under new Secretary of State George C. Marshall set out to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking would confront Europeans and Americans alike with a vision at odds with their history and self-conceptions. In the process, they would drive the creation of NATO, the European Union, and a Western identity that continue to shape world events. Benn Steil’s “thoroughly researched and well-written account” (USA TODAY) tells the story behind the birth of the Cold War, told with verve, insight, and resonance for today. Focusing on the critical years 1947 to 1949, Benn Steil’s gripping narrative takes us through the seminal episodes marking the collapse of postwar US-Soviet relations—the Prague coup, the Berlin blockade, and the division of Germany. In each case, Stalin’s determination to crush the Marshall Plan and undermine American power in Europe is vividly portrayed. Bringing to bear fascinating new material from American, Russian, German, and other European archives, Steil’s account will forever change how we see the Marshall Plan. “Trenchant and timely…an ambitious, deeply researched narrative that…provides a fresh perspective on the coming Cold War” (The New York Times Book Review), The Marshall Plan is a polished and masterly work of historical narrative. An instant classic of Cold War literature, it “is a gripping, complex, and critically important story that is told with clarity and precision” (The Christian Science Monitor).

A combined omnibus version of Fiona Wimber's local trilogy, the Bridge of the Gods series in its entirety. In the area now known as the Pacific Northwest, two brothers, Wyeast and Pahtoe, arrive in turmoil. Their father, the great god Sahale swears them to peace, but this is not destined to last. To survive, the pair must endure hardships unlike anything ever faced before or since with their only connection being their shared brotherhood and their faith. From the wrath of the great god Sahale, to great earthquakes that destroy the coast and fracture tribes, to a civil war and a forbidden love that threatens to tear the brothers apart, things will never be the same once the brothers arrive in the Pacific Northwest. Friendships will be tested, enemies will become friends and for one brother, their humanity will be lost forever. Meanwhile, a new threat looms on the horizon, a threat that comes from both east and west. With the brothers divided on strategy, their only hope lies in the Velchanos, an ancient power Sahale left behind to combat the darkest of the gods. But one thing is for sure, the tribe's home of the Pacific Northwest will never be the same again.

On July 16, 1945, the 'Trinity' Test effectively brought about the transformation of the ‘American Prometheus’ into the ‘Destroyer of Worlds’ along with an expedited dawn of the nuclear age as the Laws of Physics were successfully reappraised by the Homo Sapiens. However, the initial premise and the hopeful promise of the creation of a ‘Super Weapon’ to end all wars has remained more or less a chimera for humanity even after 7+ decades of its genesis. The dawn of the nuclear age; following Trinity and the subsequent atomic bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki; unleashed the Cold War-era with nuclear weapons effectively becoming the 'Hanging Sword of Damocles’, as famously described by JFK, with the possibility of a potential nuclear catastrophe by accident, miscalculation or madness staying as a very real possibility throughout and the extinction of Homo Sapiens from planet Earth, just a matter of seconds, which fortunately was somehow averted on multiple occasions and humanity, somehow, managed to survive. Part 1 of this multi-part book series; based on recently declassified documents by the CIA , the U.S. State Department, KGB after the end of Cold War and other international agencies; focuses on the evolution of atomic age from its genesis during World War II till 1960.

Imagine one day you went to a cash-machine and found your money was gone. You rushed to your branch, where a teller said that overnight people had stopped believing in money, and it all vanished. Seem incredible? It happened, and it could happen again. Twilight of the Money Gods is the story of economics, told not as the science it strove to be, but as the religion it became. Over two centuries, it searched for the hidden codes which would reveal the path to a promised land of material abundance. While its prophets, from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman, concerned themselves with the human condition, its priesthood gradually grew remote from its followers, until it lost sight of their tribulations. Today, amid a crisis of faith in their expertise, we must re-imagine an economics for a new era - one filled with both danger and opportunity.

The Paradigm of the Kingdom of God This book traces redemptive history, from the Garden of Eden to the New Heaven and Earth, through the paradigm of the kingdom of God. Jesus Christ's saving work is the supreme event in all history, but it takes place within the context of the kingdom. When we follow God's plan of salvation through the kingdom's progress, the events unfold like an immense novel because we see God's divine providence revealed through both biblical and secular accounts. God initiates the kingdom paradigm when he tells Adam and Eve to be "fruitful and multiply . . . and rule" (Gen. 1:28). This is a mandate to establish God's righteous kingdom on the earth, and it is repeated to Noah and then Israel. But the story of the Old Testament is that Adam and Eve, Noah and his family, and Israel, all sin and rebel and cannot establish God's kingdom. The New Testament tells us about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, coming to earth to become one of us. He begins His ministry by proclaiming, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). Jesus begins to fulfill the kingdom mandate. He is fruitful and multiplies through spiritual children. And Jesus begins to rule: He teaches, casts out demons, calms storms, heals the sick, raises the dead, and feeds the hungry. He establishes a kingdom of His faithful followers. But Jesus must also die for their sins, and rise again, so that they can be declared righteous, fit for God's kingdom. After Jesus ascends to heaven and establishes the Church, the kingdom advances through the Church's ministry. Understanding redemptive history through the kingdom paradigm differs from the long standing interpretations of Dispensationalism and Covenantalism. These views are considered in this book, but the focus is on how the kingdom is central to God's design for history. Following its progress helps us see our location and roles in the fulfillment of God's divine plan. This can inform our faith and increase Church unity as we glorify God through His amazing plan of redemption.

Winner, 2014 Distinguished Contribution to Research Award presented by the Latina/o Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association Los Angeles is the epicenter of the American gang problem. Rituals and customs from Los Angeles’ eastside gangs, including hand signals, graffiti, and clothing styles, have spread to small towns and big cities alike. Many see the problem with gangs as related to urban marginality—for a Latino immigrant population struggling with poverty and social integration, gangs offer a close-knit community. Yet, as Edward Orozco Flores argues in God’s Gangs, gang members can be successfully redirected out of gangs through efforts that change the context in which they find themselves, as well as their notions of what it means to be a man. Flores here illuminates how Latino men recover from gang life through involvement in urban, faith-based organizations. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with Homeboy Industries, a Jesuit-founded non-profit that is one of the largest gang intervention programs in the country, and with Victory Outreach, a Pentecostal ministry with over 600 chapters, Flores demonstrates that organizations such as these facilitate recovery from gang life by enabling gang members to reinvent themselves as family men and as members of their community. The book offers a window into the process of redefining masculinity. As Flores convincingly shows, gang members are not trapped in a cycle of poverty and marginality. With the help of urban ministries, such men construct a reformed barrio masculinity to distance themselves from gang life.