Amongst Ourselves

In this eye-opening account, Eli Merritt reveals the deep political divisions that almost tore the Union apart during the American Revolution. So fractious were the founders’ political fights that they feared the War of Independence might end in disunion and civil war. Instead of disbanding into separate regional confederacies, the founders managed to unite for the sake of liberty and self-preservation. In so doing, they succeeded in holding the young nation together. To achieve this, they forged grueling compromises, including Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Mississippi-Fisheries Compromise of 1779, and the ratification of the Articles of Confederation in 1781. In addition to bringing new insights to the history of the American Revolution, Disunion Among Ourselves has inevitable resonances with our present era of political hyperpolarization and serves as a touchstone for contemporary politics, reminding us that the founders overcame far tougher times than our own through commitment to ethical constitutional democracy and compromise.

Author Angelo Codevilla asks, What is to be America's peace? How is it to be won and preserved in our time? He notes that our government's increasingly unlimited powers flow in part from our statesmen's inability to stay out of wars or to win them and that our statesmen and academics have ceased to think about such things. The purpose of this book is to rekindle such thoughts. The author reestablishes early American statecraft's understanding of peace—what it takes to make it and what it takes to keep it. He reminds Americans why our founding generation placed the pursuit of peace ahead of all other objectives; he shows how they tried to keep the peace by drawing sharp lines between America's business and that of others, as well as between peace and war. He shows how our 20th-century statesmen confused peace and war as well as America's affairs with that of mankind's. The result, he shows, has been endless war abroad and spiraling strife among Americans. Codevilla provides intellectual guidelines for recovering the pursuit of peace as the guiding principle by which the American people and statesmen may navigate domestic as well as international affairs.

"This crisp and cogent book by the Rev. Dr. Strouse is published at a time when both interfaith and intrafaith dialogue are critical to the vitality of spiritual life in our nation. As a parish pastor in a small, struggling congregation I have become increasingly aware of the insularity and isolation of many of our parishioners. This seems less the result of inadequate parish education as it is the byproduct of too many people getting their information from biased TV networks, so-called social media or word-of-mouth. We parish pastors need to examine our internal (intra-congregational) conversations about diverse faith traditions and how they bear on congregational mission. I was particularly impressed by the author's use of footnotes and her extensive bibliography. The book is a "walking-talking workshop" in print with its detailed reflection/discussion questions and suggestions for further reading. Thank you, Pastor Strouse, for such a comprehensive presentation of how to approach constructively this timely and important conversation." - Review by Richard G. Eddy.

Karabo is a survivor of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, which claimed the life of her father and sisters, and now she is left alone and lonely in the midst of wounded hearts of Rwanda. She does not know the whereabouts of her mother. When Karabo goes to live with her paternal uncle Kamanzi, a colonel in the new army, she meets Shema, another genocide survivor, one of her uncle’s young escorts. Shema’s charm gives Karabo some jingling. She will surrender her heart to him, but it’s complicated —Shema knows only a part of her story. Shall she reveal the other part of the story to him? She is bamboozled. Hearts Among Ourselves is a story of love, hatred, and the intersection of the two. Karabo and Shema, two grieving orphans, grow up in a torn society—caught between the world of the living and the dead, and the conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Some say love is like water—it flows with everything on its way. Will Karabo and Shema be swept up in its current or tossed to the shore?

After a humiliating scandal, a young writer flees to the West Coast, where she is drawn into the morally ambiguous orbit of a charismatic filmmaker and the teenage girls who are her next subjects. FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD • ONE OF BUZZFEED’S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • “A blistering story about the costs of creating art.”—O: The Oprah Magazine Not too long ago, Cass was a promising young playwright in New York, hailed as “a fierce new voice” and “queer, feminist, and ready to spill the tea.” But at the height of all this attention, Cass finds herself at the center of a searing public shaming, and flees to Los Angeles to escape—and reinvent herself. There she meets her next-door neighbor Caroline, a magnetic filmmaker on the rise, as well as the pack of teenage girls who hang around her house. They are the subjects of Caroline’s next semidocumentary movie, which follows the girls’ clandestine activity: a Fight Club inspired by the violent classic. As Cass is drawn into the film’s orbit, she is awed by Caroline’s ambition and confidence. But over time, she becomes troubled by how deeply Caroline is manipulating the teens in the name of art—especially as the consequences become increasingly disturbing. With her past proving hard to shake and her future one she’s no longer sure she wants, Cass is forced to reckon with her own ambitions and confront what she has come to believe about the steep price of success.

A collection of letters between mothers and daughters, from 1750 to the present, this book reveals the ways in which women through the ages have struggled to break free of constraints and defy society. With insights into the lives of the famous - Anne Sexton, Florence Nightingale, Vera Brittain, Queen Victoria and Sylvia Plath - as well as the unknown - housewives, construction workers, secretaries, political activists, teachers and scientists - this collection displays the vitality and restless, questioning spirit of all women.