LITMIR.BIZ

Angola's civil war was the longest in Africa. Once the battleground for a proxy war between the Cold War superpowers, the country was supposed to become a model for a smooth transition from armed conflict to democracy. The government, earlier backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, and the UNITA rebels, supported by the Americans and South Africans, would exchange bullets for ballots – but it all went wrong – UNITA's Jonas Savimbi rejected his defeat in the elections and plunged Angola back into war. The United Nations could only wring its hands, eventually negotiating a fragile new peace agreement. For most Angolans, however, the effects of a quarter of a century of violence have proved to be more enduring than the taste of peace. Karl Maier was the Angola correspondent for The Independent and Washington Post for 10 years, and provides a fascinating analysis of the realities behind the conflict as well as a vivid eye-witness account of the devastation it brought. Whether speaking to soldiers, nurses, black-market traders or aid workers, he views Angola's strife with a rare sympathy for the ordinary people caught in the crossfire. Sceptical of both sides' promises and lies, his is a classic account of one of the civil wars that continue to plague Africa. This updated new edition covers the massive corruption and other problems that have arisen since the ending of the war with Savimbi's death. Armed conflict has been replaced by an oil boom that has benefited only the country's elite – as Maier observes, the vast majority of Angolans now face 'a war of neglect by their rulers'.

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A Westerner’s travels among the persecuted and displaced Christian remnant in Iraq and Syria teach him much about faith under fire. Gold Medal Winner, 2018 IPPY Book of the Year Award Silver Medal Winner, 2018 Benjamin Franklin Award Finalist, 2018 ECPA Christian Book Award Inside Syria and Iraq, and even along the refugee trail, they’re a religious minority persecuted for their Christian faith. Outside the Middle East, they’re suspect because of their nationality. A small remnant of Christians is on the run from the Islamic State. If they are wiped out, or scattered to the corners of the earth, the language that Jesus spoke may be lost forever – along with the witness of a church that has modeled Jesus’ way of nonviolence and enemy-love for two millennia. The kidnapping, enslavement, torture, and murder of Christians by the Islamic State, or ISIS, have been detailed by journalists, as have the jihadists' deliberate efforts to destroy the cultural heritage of a region that is the cradle of Christianity. But some stories run deep, and without a better understanding of the religious and historical roots of the present conflict, history will keep repeating itself century after century. Andreas Knapp, a priest who works with refugees in Germany, travelled to camps for displaced people in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq to collect stories of survivors – and to seek answers to troubling questions about the link between religion and violence. He found Christians who today still speak Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, the language of Jesus. The uprooted remnant of ancient churches, they doggedly continue to practice their faith despite the odds. Their devastating eyewitness reports make it clear why millions are fleeing the Middle East. Yet, remarkably, though these last Christians hold little hope of ever returning to their homes, they also harbor no thirst for revenge. Could it be that they – along with the Christians of the West, whose interest will determine their fate – hold the key to breaking the cycle of violence in the region?Includes sixteen pages of color photographs.

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The year is 1665. England is in the midst of the Restoration, and John Milton, a blind, politically and religiously marginalized writer associated with Oliver Cromwell's failed attempt to form a republic, has not yet published Paradise Lost. When one of the worst plagues in history descends upon London, he and his much younger wife are forced to flee to the countryside.  There Milton is befriended by the local curate, Rev. Theodore Wesson, who knows nothing about Milton's controversial past or the dangers of associating with him. Soon their fates become intertwined when the curate's hopes for advancement are threatened by his relationship to the notorious traitor and «king-killer,» John Milton.  The situation tests Wesson's loyalty–to the monarchy, to friendship, to a church career–while complicating his already blurry sense of God's involvement in human affairs. For Milton, the cost is potentially even greater: the target of assassination attempts since the restoration of the monarchy five years earlier, he has real reason to fear for his life.  A riveting and briskly paced novel that transports the reader to a very particular place and time even as its themes resonate with our own time, Thom Satterlee's God's Liar will take its place next to works as varied as Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Colm Toibin's The Master.

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Human societies live and breathe through their myths. A myth is not a simple story; it is the complex social reasoning of a people, a way of making sense of the world. Burton Mack calls this reasoning «social logic,» and as a master of ancient Rome and the rise of Christianity, he knows that the Western experience has been embedded in the Christian myth as its «big picture» narrative. But what happens when the big picture becomes fragmented and when an old myth loses its ability to function in a new world order? Mack is convinced that at the heart of contemporary political crises lies the need to create a new myth beyond the grand narratives and lingering fragments history has given us. Mack invites his reader to think historically about the present, and imaginatively about the future, in this important book about ourselves.

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The term Canaanite will be familiar to anyone who has even the most casual familiarity with the Bible. Outside of the terminology for Israel itself, the Canaanites are the most common ethnic group found in the Bible. They are positioned as the foil of the nation of Israel, and the land of Canaan is depicted as the promised allotment of Abraham and his descendants. The terms Canaan and Canaanites are even evoked in modern political discourse, indicating that their importance extends into the present. With such prominent positioning, it is important to gain a more complete and historically accurate perspective of the Canaanites, their land, history, and rich cultural heritage. So, who were the Canaanites? Where did they live, what did they believe, what do we know about their culture and history, and why do they feature so prominently in the biblical narratives? In this volume, Mary Buck uses original textual and archaeological evidence to answer to these questions. The book follows the history of the Canaanites from their humble origins in the third millennium BCE to the rise of their massive fortified city-states of the Bronze Age, through until their disappearance from the pages of history in the Roman period, only to find their legacy in the politics of the modern Middle East.

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In this book, Professor Stephen Vicchio gives a comprehensive analysis of the religious beliefs of the first president of the United States, George Washington. After discussing Washington's early religious life in the Anglican and Episcopal churches, Professor Vicchio goes on to analyze Washington's views on God, the Bible, religious toleration, ethics and virtue, prayer, and whether or not America was established as a Christian nation, as well as his understanding of the problem of evil and the afterlife.

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Do people who follow the same religion the same way also make the same political choices? Even if that might not be always true, is it true enough that it should be treated as an axiom in America's popular culture? God on Three Sides explores two communities where ethnic Germans in early America followed the same religion in the same way but, within each community, held very different views regarding the political issues of the eighteenth century. The political issues in focus are what surfaced in the crises of the wars against the French, the engagement with indigenous peoples, and the American Revolution.

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Judas Iscariot. The ultimate traitor. It was his kiss of greeting that signaled the temple officials to arrest Jesus of Nazareth and send him to his death. We all know the story: in exchange for a paltry sum of money–thirty pieces of silver–Judas agreed to hand over his rabbi to the religious authorities in Jerusalem, who put Jesus on trial and ultimately ensured that he would be crucified. When Judas saw what was about to happen to Jesus, he was seized with remorse, gave back the money, and went out and hanged himself.
That's the story as we have it in the New Testament Gospels. But what if, before he hanged himself, Judas took the time to write a suicide note? What would he have had to say?
That question lies at the center of this novel. A Rope for Judas is Judas Iscariot's suicide note, and it delves into the complicated inner life of this most despised of disciples in an effort to find out what motivated him to do what he did.

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As America approaches her 250th birthday, she is also approaching a fork in the road. The choice before us is moral and boils down to two terms: liberty or social justice? We cannot have both. This book, written by a Swedish immigrant, lays out the moral case for returning America to the Christian, libertarian values that the Founding Fathers wrote into the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. These values guarantee liberty and opportunity, but they also require responsible citizenship in return. In understanding the latter, we can resurrect the former. By contrast, the failure to understand responsible citizenship and its critical role in defending liberty opens the door for America to irrevocably change character. Our country is already on the cusp of becoming a full-fledged egalitarian welfare state, defined not by liberty, but by the endless pursuit of social justice. As this book explains, there is a path back to freedom, one illuminated by faith, paved with practical, sensible policy reforms and traveled by people ready to exercise responsible citizenship.

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Levi's Chalice is an extraordinary journey of transformation to destiny. –What if a young beggar found himself trapped in the upper room during the Last Supper and, in hiding, overhears the secrets Jesus shares with his men? –What if he wanted to do something about the claim of Jesus' betrayal? –What if Jesus spoke a deeply profound message impacting everything the beggar believes, but the message doesn't seem to come true? –What if Jesus gave him the chalice from the table with no apparent explanation? Levi lives in a crucible of hardships in the streets of Jerusalem, believing he is under the beggar's curse. Risking everything, he sets out on the journey of his life. –What secret will he learn regarding abandonment? –Will he discover the truth about the chalice and staff? –Will the words spoken over him in the upper room come to pass?
In a dramatic way, the chalice guides his journey into identity innovation, the power of transformation, and a path to motivation. This book is a colorful, fast-paced story addressing one of life's major challenges with inspiration, as well as a surprise ending.

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