INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.

In 1988 Virginia Fabella from the Philippines and Mercy Amba Oduyoye from Ghana coedited With Passion and Compassion: Third world Women Doing Theology, based on the work of the Women's Commission of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT). The book has been widely used as an important resource for understanding women's liberation theologies, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America emerging out of women's struggles for justice in church and society. More than twenty years have passed and it is time to bring out a new collection of essays to signal newer developments and to include emerging voices. Divided into four partsContext and Theology; Scripture; Christology; and Body, Sexuality, and Spiritualitythese carefully selected essays paint a vivid picture of theological developments among indigenous women and other women living in the global South who face poverty, violence, and war and yet find abundant hope through their faith.

As we face new and debilitating catastrophes caused by capitalism and nation-state politics, Saladdin Ahmed argues that our only hope is to create space for a new world by negating the existing order. To achieve this new society, Revolutionary Hope After Nihilism outlines a practical philosophy of change that rejects ideologies of false hope and passive hopelessness. Drawing public attention to the decisiveness of the present historical moment, Ahmed introduces a critical theory of social emancipation based on post-Soviet revolutionary movements that have emerged at the margins of the global social order. The rise of socially and politically exclusionary movements in multiple parts of the world, ongoing ecological crisis, anti-Black racism, and the concretization of despair brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic demand a new approach to revolution, which Ahmed argues, must be rooted in the experiences of the most oppressed in society. Realizing the epistemological potential of emancipatory movements, Ahmed rejects dystopian nihilism and positions our focus on marginalized spaces to break out of capitalist totalitarianism.

Many books have been written on the subject of death and dying over the last twenty-five years, yet none provides a comprehensive spiritual paradigm combined with practical guidance for resounding effectively and compassionately to be most common difficulties and challenges of the dying. Christine's Longaker's uncompromising and uplifting book does it all, and is based on her own personal experiences, her study and work with Sogyal Rinpoche and on the workshops she now holds all over Europe and the USA.

Greece sits at the center of a geopolitical storm that threatens the stability of the European Union. To comprehend how this small country precipitated such an outsized crisis, it is necessary to understand how Greece developed into a nation in the first place. Enlightenment and Revolution identifies the ideological traditions that shaped a religious community of Greek-speaking people into a modern nation-state--albeit one in which antiliberal forces have exacted a high price. Paschalis Kitromilides takes in the vast sweep of the Greek Enlightenment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, assessing developments such as the translation of modern authors into Greek; the scientific revolution; the rediscovery of the civilization of classical Greece; and a powerful countermovement. He shows how Greek thinkers such as Voulgaris and Korais converged with currents of the European Enlightenment, and demonstrates how the Enlightenment's confrontation with Church-sanctioned ideologies shaped present-day Greece. When the nation-state emerged from a decade-long revolutionary struggle against the Ottoman Empire in the early nineteenth century, the dream of a free Greek polity was soon overshadowed by a romanticized nationalist and authoritarian vision. The failure to create a modern liberal state at that decisive moment is at the root of Greece's recent troubles.

This collection contains the first English translations of a group of 18th-century German essays that address the question, "what is Enlightenment?". They explore the origins of 18th-century debate on the Enlightenment, and its significance for the present.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS One of our most renowned and brilliant historians takes a fresh look at the revolutionary intellectual movement that laid the foundation for the modern world. Liberty and equality. Human rights. Freedom of thought and expression. Belief in reason and progress. The value of scientific inquiry. These are just some of the ideas that were conceived and developed during the Enlightenment, and which changed forever the intellectual landscape of the Western world. Spanning hundreds of years of history, Anthony Pagden traces the origins of this seminal movement, showing how Enlightenment concepts directly influenced modern culture, making possible a secular, tolerant, and, above all, cosmopolitan world. Everyone can agree on its impact. But in the end, just what was Enlightenment? A cohesive philosophical project? A discrete time period in the life of the mind when the superstitions of the past were overthrown and reason and equality came to the fore? Or an open-ended intellectual process, a way of looking at the world and the human condition, that continued long after the eighteenth century ended? To address these questions, Pagden introduces us to some of the unforgettable characters who defined the Enlightenment, including David Hume, the Scottish skeptic who advanced the idea of a universal “science of man”; François-Marie Arouet, better known to the world as Voltaire, the acerbic novelist and social critic who challenged the authority of the Catholic Church; and Immanuel Kant, the reclusive German philosopher for whom the triumph of a cosmopolitan world represented the final stage in mankind’s evolution. Comprehensive in his analysis of this heterogeneous group of scholars and their lasting impact on the world, Pagden argues that Enlightenment ideas go beyond the “empire of reason” to involve the full recognition of the emotional ties that bind all human beings together. The “human science” developed by these eminent thinkers led to a universalizing vision of humanity, a bid to dissolve the barriers past generations had attempted to erect between the different cultures of the world. A clear and compelling explanation of the philosophical underpinnings of the modern world, The Enlightenment is a scintillating portrait of a period, a critical moment in history, and a revolution in thought that continues to this day. Praise for The Enlightenment “Sweeping . . . Like being guided through a vast ballroom of rotating strangers by a confiding insider.”—The Washington Post “Fascinating.”—The Telegraph (London) “A political tract for our time.”—The Wall Street Journal “For those who recognize the names Hegel, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Voltaire, and Diderot but are unfamiliar with their thought, [Anthony] Padgen provides a fantastic introduction, explaining the driving philosophies of the period and placing their proponents in context. . . . Padgen’s belief that the Enlightenment ‘made it possible for us to think . . . beyond the narrow worlds into which we are born’ is clearly and cogently presented.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “The Enlightenment really does still matter, and with a combination of gripping storytelling about colorful characters and lucid explanation of profound ideas, Anthony Pagden shows why.”—Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature and The Blank Slate

This book traces the little-known history of an alternative school system erected in Canada by post-WWII Dutch Neo-Calvinist immigrants. In less than four decades, this community established a kindergarten to university education system that extended from Ottawa, Ontario to Victoria, BC. This remarkable tradition of education imagines the school as a dissident and transformational social institution. While this book offers the narrative of faith-based tradition of education, the author makes a strong case that educators from diverse ideological backgrounds, can learn important lessons from it about the implementation of an alternative educational vision, teacher-led curriculum reform and a self-formative pedagogy. To supplement this narrative, the author also provides a separate set of theoretical discussions on key issues in school reform, as well as, his memoir as an educator and curriculum designer within this tradition.

"Tony Monchinski has accomplished an important task here. He has drawn interesting parallels between critical pedagogy and feminist ethics of care. In doing so, he expands greatly how creative teachers can truly ̀care' about their students and social justice at once."--Joan C. Tronto, Professor of Political Science, University of Minnesota --Book Jacket.

Building on the Oxford AQA GCSE Religious Studies Student Books, this Revision Guide offers a structured approach to revising for the new 9-1 exams. 1. RECAP: key content from the Student Book is condensed and re-presented in simple visual styles to make content memorable and help retention. 2. APPLY: students actively apply the content they have just revised to build the knowledge and evaluative skills needed for the exams. 3. REVIEW: regular opportunities to practice exam questions and review answers direct students to pinpoint any areas of weakness in knowledge or exam skills, identifying where they'll need to concentrate their efforts for further revision. This Revision Guide is ideal for students combining Christianity and Buddhism. With all the essential content condensed and made memorable, and plenty of exam practice, tips and annotated sample answers, students can confidently prepare for their new exams.