Compte Rendu

Throughout his letters, the apostle Paul consistently references signs, wonders, visions, miracles, divine healings, prophecies, and speaking in tongues. This book examines Paul's repertoire of divinatory and wonderworking practices and contextualizes them in their historical milieu. Furthermore, the book situates such practices within a framework of reciprocity that dominated human-divine relationships in antiquity. Insofar as Paul extends miraculous abilities to his gentile followers, these wondrous abilities come in proportion to their faithfulness.

Each field of study comes with its own set of questions; each period of time refines and redirects those questions. The Christian religion as we find it in the twenty-first century presents a unique set of problems to be solved and questions to be answered. In this introduction to the philosophy of the Christian religion, eminent philosopher and theologian Nancey Murphy applies the tools of philosophical analysis to a set of core yet contemporary religious questions: what does our historical moment mean for the possibility of knowing God? Is faith still possible? Does God intervene in human history? Is there such a thing as universal knowledge of God? Written with the needs of students encountering the philosophy of religion for the first time in mind, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to the fundamental questions inherent in Christian faith. Murphy also provides tools for how to answer those questions.

Middle- and upper-middle-class students continue to outpace those from less privileged backgrounds. Most attempts to redress this inequality focus on the issue of access to financial resources, but as Producing Success makes clear, the problem goes beyond mere economics. In this eye-opening study, Peter Demerath examines a typical suburban American high school to explain how some students get ahead. Demerath undertook four years of research at a Midwestern high school to examine the mercilessly competitive culture that drives students to advance. Producing Success reveals the many ways the community’s ideology of achievement plays out: students hone their work ethics and employ various strategies to succeed, from negotiating with teachers to cheating; parents relentlessly push their children while manipulating school policies to help them get ahead; and administrators aid high performers in myriad ways, even naming over forty students “valedictorians.” Yet, as Demerath shows, this unswerving commitment to individual advancement takes its toll, leading to student stress and fatigue, incivility and vandalism, and the alienation of the less successful. Insightful and candid, Producing Success is an often troubling account of the educationally and morally questionable results of the American culture of success.

A keyword listing of serial titles currently received by the National Library of Medicine.

This book brings together an international team of scholars from Britain, France and North America to examine the causes of the breakdown of the absolute monarchy in eighteenth-century France and offers a new interpretation of the origins of the Revolution of 1789.