An Anxious Pursuit

In An Anxious Pursuit, Joyce Chaplin examines the impact of the Enlightenment ideas of progress on the lives and minds of American planters in the colonial Lower South. She focuses particularly on the influence of Scottish notions of progress, tracing the extent to which planters in South Carolina, Georgia, and British East Florida perceived themselves as a modern, improving people. She reads developments in agricultural practice as indices of planters' desire for progress, and she demonstrates the central role played by slavery in their pursuit of modern life. By linking behavior and ideas, Chaplin has produced a work of cultural history that unites intellectual, social, and economic history. Using public records as well as planters' and farmers' private papers, Chaplin examines innovations in rice, indigo, and cotton cultivation as a window through which to see planters' pursuit of a modern future. She demonstrates that planters actively sought to improve their society and economy even as they suffered a pervasive anxiety about the corrupting impact of progress and commerce. The basis for their accomplishments and the root of their anxieties, according the Chaplin, were the same: race-based chattel slavery. Slaves provied the labor necessary to attain planters' vision of the modern, but the institution ultimately limited the Lower South's ability to compete in the contemporary world. Indeed, whites continued to wonder whether their innovations, some of them defied by slaves, truly improved the region. Chaplin argues that these apprehensions prefigured the antimodern stance of the antebellum period, but she contends that they were as much a reflection of the doubt inherent in theories of progress as an outright rejection of those ideas.

What if trying to conform to a sick culture is making us sick? It's Not You, It's Everything is an incisive, impertinent, and witty inquiry into the anxious pursuit of happiness. Psychotherapist Eric Minton helps readers rethink everything we thought we knew about God, depression, and culture to find a radical okayness that will set us free.

The author embarks on a pilgrimage to investigate how the national obessession with happiness infiltrates all areas of life, from religion to parenting, from the workplace to academia. She attends a Landmark Forum self-help course, visits Zappos headquarters in Las Vegas (a "happiness city"), looks into the academic "positive psychology movement" and spends time in Utah with Mormons, officially America's happiest people.

A Redeemed and Renewed Vision of Health Despite all the care available to us, our society is more concerned about health than ever. Increased technology and access to health care give us the illusion of control but can never deliver us from the limitations of our bodies. But what if our health is a gift to nurture, rather than a possession to protect? Drawing from decades of medical experience in many different contexts, Dr. Bob Cutillo helps us cultivate a biblical understanding of the relationship between faith and health in the modern age, reorienting us to a wiser pursuit of health for the good of all. Weaving in his own story of serving the most vulnerable, he leads us to a bigger view of health care and a hope that is more secure than our physical wellness—hope with the power to transform our communities.

Famous, fascinating Benjamin Franklin -- he would be neither without his accomplishments in science. Joyce Chaplin's authoritative biography considers all of Franklin's work in the sciences, showing how, during the rise and fall of the first British empire, science became central to public culture and therefore to Franklin's success. Having demonstrated in his earliest experiments and observations that he could master nature, Franklin showed the world that he was uniquely suited to solve problems in every realm. In the famous adage, Franklin "snatched lightning from the sky and the scepter from the tyrants" -- in that order. The famous kite and other experiments with electricity were only part of Franklin's accomplishments. He charted the Gulf Stream, made important observations on meteorology, and used the burgeoning science of "political arithmetic" to make unprecedented statements about America's power. Even as he stepped onto the world stage as an illustrious statesman and diplomat in the years leading up to the American Revolution, his fascination with nature was unrelenting. Franklin was the first American whose "genius" for science qualified him as a genius in political affairs. It is only through understanding Franklin's full engagement with the sciences that we can understand this great Founding Father and the world he shaped.

A Bible study about sex for women? Now that’s different! This new study, Passion Pursuit: What Kind of Love Are You Making?, lets God’s Word speak about sex as being holy and erotic, blessed by God, and satisfying far beyond what the world can even imagine. Picture that as a headline on the cover of Cosmopolitan! By using scripture throughout the Bible, Passion Pursuit not only urges women to pursue passion but details how God has given them permission to do so. Though there is fun to be had along the way in this study, it hits hard on the questions women have but are hesitant to ask, like: What does God say is okay and not okay in the bedroom? I’m 54 years old; how can my husband still be attracted to me? Why did God make men and women so different? This audaciously bold study combines the psychological expertise of Dr Juli Slattery, formerly of Focus on the Family, along with moving stories from trusted Bible teacher and best-selling author Linda Dillow. The groups who have already done this study have seen their marriages come alive, whether they’ve been married four months or forty years; be next! PLUS! Check out the Passion Pursuit DVD for even more great teaching from Lisa Dillow and Dr. Slattery. It's the perfect resource for individuals or small groups.

For two decades, Davis Phinney was one of America’s most successful cyclists. He won two stages at the Tour de France and an Olympic medal. But after years of feeling off, he was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s. The body that had been his ally was now something else: a prison. The Happiness of Pursuit is the story of how Davis sought to overcome his Parkinson’s by reaching back to what had made him so successful on the bike and adjusting his perspective on what counted as a win. The news of his diagnosis began a dark period for this vibrant athlete, but there was also light. His son Taylor’s own bike-racing career was taking off. Determined to beat the Body Snatcher, Davis underwent a procedure called deep brain stimulation. Although not cured, his symptoms abated enough for him to see Taylor compete in the Beijing Olympics. Davis Phinney had won another stage. But the joy, he discovered, was in the pursuit. With humor and grace, Phinney weaves the narrative of his battle with Parkinson’s with tales from his cycling career and from his son’s emerging career. The Happiness of Pursuit is a remarkable story of fathers and sons and bikes, of victories large and small.

Every day of the week in contemporary America (and especially on Sundays) people raise money for their religious enterprises--for clergy, educators, buildings, charity, youth-oriented work, and more. In a fascinating look into the economics of American Protestantism, James Hudnut-Beumler examines how churches have raised and spent money from colonial times to the present and considers what these practices say about both religion and American culture. After the constitutional separation of church and state was put in force, Hudnut-Beumler explains, clergy salaries had to be collected exclusively from the congregation without recourse to public funds. In adapting to this change, Protestants forged a new model that came to be followed in one way or another by virtually all religious organizations in the country. Clergy repeatedly invoked God, ecclesiastical tradition, and scriptural evidence to promote giving to the churches they served. Hudnut-Beumler contends that paying for earthly good works done in the name of God has proved highly compatible with American ideas of enterprise, materialism, and individualism. The financial choices Protestants have made throughout history--how money was given, expended, or even withheld--have reflected changing conceptions of what the religious enterprise is all about. Hudnut-Beumler tells that story for the first time.

Whether in our careers, churches, schools or families, busyness is the norm, and anything less makes us feel unproductive and anxious. John Koessler understands that rest is not automatic or easy to attain. With honest, biblical reflections on trends in our culture and churches, he presents a unique perspective on how pursuing rest leads us to the heart of God.

Now reissued, this book encourages and enables readers to discover simplicity with single-mindedness in the midst of life's turmoil. +