Dramatic Events

Using the experience of authors Richard Hahlo and Peter Reynolds in a variety of educational, business and theater settings, Dramatic Events: How to Run a Workshop for Theater, Education or Business investigates the connection between practical theater work and drama theory, and its effect on the development and dynamic of any working group.

In 2005, American experts sent out urgent warnings throughout the country: a devastating flu pandemic was fast approaching. Influenza was a serious disease, not a seasonal nuisance; it could kill millions of people. If urgent steps were not taken immediately, the pandemic could shut down the economy and “trigger a reaction that will change the world overnight.” The Pandemic Perhaps explores how American experts framed a catastrophe that never occurred. The urgent threat that was presented to the public produced a profound sense of insecurity, prompting a systematic effort to prepare the population for the coming plague. But when that plague did not arrive, the race to avert it carried on. Paradoxically, it was the absence of disease that made preparedness a permanent project. The Pandemic Perhaps tells the story of what happened when nothing really happened. Drawing on fieldwork among scientists and public health professionals in New York City, the book is an investigation of how actors and institutions produced a scene of extreme expectation through the circulation of dramatic plague visions. It argues that experts deployed these visions to draw attention to the possibility of a pandemic, frame the disease as a catastrophic event, and make it meaningful to the nation. Today, when we talk about pandemic influenza, we must always say “perhaps.” What, then, does it mean to engage a disease in the modality of the maybe?

At a time when surveys reveal that Americans know less and less about our past, Tony Williams provides entertaining and informative descriptions of 50 of the most important and dramatic events from the colonial and Revolutionary period—some known and some forgotten—from the Mayflower Compact to the Annapolis Convention. Published in association with The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, America's Beginnings takes the reader throughout the American colonies and introduces many leading figures, from John Smith and John Winthrop to the Founding Fathers. Along the way, Williams examines the principles that led colonists to come to America and succeeding generations to become a free and independent nation. Read individually or from cover to cover, these stories illuminate the founding principles and heroic struggles that established the country and shaped the American character.

With 150 striking images and fascinating captions explaining each phenomenon, The Weather celebrates the Earth's weather in all its glory. Did you know that, on average, a drop of water spends an average of eight days in the atmosphere before falling back down to Earth in the form of rain, sleet, hail, or snow? Or that rain isn't just water? It can have all sorts of things in it, such as dirt, dust, insects, grass--even chemicals. As for snowflakes, you don't just need an ice crystal to make one, but a speck of dust too, around which the ice crystal forms. And it can take 45 minutes for a snowflake, growing all the time, to fall to Earth. The Weather offers a photographic view of some of the most spectacular aspects of the weather, from close-up shots of raindrops and snowflakes to beds of fog, from lighthouses turned into ice palaces to frozen forests to lightning bolts striking over water. Ranging from rainbows to, yes, they do exist, moonbows, from typhoons as seen from space to skyscrapers emerging out of the fog, from Nordic winters to Antarctica's desert, from twisters in Colorado to ice storms in New England, and from misty Ireland to dust storms in Namibia, the book includes examples from all around the world.

One afternoon in 1987, two renegade climbers in Berkeley, California, hatched an ambitious plan: under the cover of darkness, they would rappel down from a carefully scouted highway on-ramp, gluing artificial handholds onto the load-bearing concrete pillars underneath. Equipped with ingenuity, strong adhesive, and an urban guerilla attitude, Jim Thornburg and Scott Frye created a serviceable climbing wall. But what they were part of was a greater development: the expansion and reimagining of a sport now slated for a highly anticipated Olympic debut in 2020. High Drama explores rock climbing's transformation from a pursuit of select anti-establishment vagabonds to a sport embraced by competitors of all ages, social classes, and backgrounds. Climbing magazine's John Burgman weaves a multi-layered story of traditionalists and opportunists, grassroots organizers and business-minded developers, free-spirited rebels and rigorously coached athletes.

These are but a few of the historical events about which Ellen White received messages from the Lord. Whether writing about war, segregation, spiritualism, healthful living, or the great controversy, god`s messinger boldly spoke unpopular truths to those who needed to hear them. Today we need to listen once again. Herbert E. Douglass has skillfully compiled an arresting variety of examples of messages that were ridiculed at the time they were spoken but were proved true in retrospect. This book will rekindle your faith in the Spirit of Prophecy and inspire you to look carefully at those predictions yet to be fulfilled.

I Wish I’d Been There brings together twenty of our most distinguished historians’ responses to the question “What scene or incident in American history would you most liked to have witnessed—and why?” The answers illuminate crucial moments in our past and give readers a front-row seat at some of American history’s most dramatic events.The Salem witch trials, the raid on Harper’s Ferry, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the voting rights march on Selma, the beginnings of the Vietnam War—all of these and more are vividly recreated here by a stellar list of contributors, including Mary Beth Norton, Joseph Ellis, Carol Berkin, Geoffrey Ward, Robert Dallek, Jay Winik, Robert Cowley, Carolyn Gilman, and William Leuchtenburg, among other luminaries of the profession. With imagination, insight, and vivid detail, I Wish I’d Been There is an engaging tour through key events in American history.

What happens when a five-century tradition of Christian pacifism no longer needs Jesus to support nonviolence? Why does secularity cause this dilemma for Mennonites in their theology of peace? Layton Boyd Friesen offers an ancient theology and spirituality of incarnation as the church's response to the non-resistance of Christ. He explores three key aspects of von Balthasar's Christology to help Mennonite peace theology regain its momentum in the secular age with a contemplative union with Christ. This volume argues that the way to regain a Christ-formed pacifism within secularity is to contemplate and enter the mystery unveiled in the Chalcedonian Definition of Christ, as interpreted by Hans Urs von Balthasar. In this mystery, the believer is drawn into real-time participation in Christ's encounter with the secular world.