English Culture

We live in a time when our culture is becoming increasingly shallow, coarse, and empty. Radical shifts in the areas of sexuality, ethics, technology, secular ideologies, and religion have caused the once-familiar landscape of a generation ago to be virtually unrecognizable. Yet rather than shine as a beacon of light, the church often is silent or accommodating. This isn’t a new phenomenon. During World War II, pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was deeply troubled by the compromise in the German church.

Through the stories of gaming's greatest innovations and most-beloved creations, journalist Harold Goldberg captures the creativity, controversy - and passion - behind the videogame's meteoric rise to the top of the pop-culture pantheon. Over the last 50 years, video games have grown from curiosities to fads to trends to one of the world's most popular forms of mass entertainment.

The daughter of Iraqi Jewish refugees, Samantha grew up surrounded by the noisy, vivid, hot sounds of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic. A language that’s now on the verge of extinction. The realisation that she won’t be able to tell her son he’s ‘living in the days of the aubergines’ or ‘chopping onions on my heart’ opens the floodgates. The questions keep coming. How can she pass on the stories without passing on the trauma of displacement? Will her son ever love mango pickle?

In this new edition, popular author Walter Brueggemann writes that the Sabbath is not simply about keeping rules but rather about becoming a whole person and restoring a whole society. Brueggemann calls out our 24/7 society of consumption, a society in which we live to achieve, accomplish, perform, and possess. We want more, own more, use more, eat more, and drink more. Brueggemann tells listeners how keeping the Sabbath allows us to break this restless cycle and focus on what is truly important: God, other people, all life.

In an increasingly secular society, those who have a biblical worldview are now a shrinking minority. As mainstream culture grows more hostile toward the Bible’s truths and those who embrace them, you’ll face mounting pressures — from family, friends, media, academia, and government — to change and even abandon your beliefs. But these challenges also create abundant opportunities to stand strong for Christ and shine light to those hurt by the darkness of our day.

Ballyhoo! The Roughhousers, Con Artists, and Wildmen Who Invented Professional Wrestling is a history of professional wrestling’s formative period in the U.S., from roughly 1874 to 1941, and the contested interplay of wrestlers and promoters who built the “sport” as we know it. During this period, the major conventions that would define wrestling to the present day were perfected and codified, as wrestling morphed from a rough sport practiced on farms and at town gatherings to melodramatic mass entertainment that reliably drew large crowds in cities across the nation.

The Arsonist in the Office is your survival guide for enduring the toxic workplace (and toxic people) and a call to action for a bold new approach to addressing tough issues. If you have ever led an organization or participated on a team and felt completely frustrated by the sabotage of another colleague, leader, or even a client, this book is for you.

This audiobook provides the practical tools necessary to help you regain your fervor and leave your mark on the world - and experience more happiness than you thought possible. Together, we can change the course of history - with humility, generosity, kindness, and joy, one holy moment at a time.

As coaches and sport leaders what can we do to ensure that we maximize the potential of our athletes and teams so they are successful and continue to enjoy sport? How do we ensure that we coach in a way that benefits the team and remains respectful of the individual? In their first book together, André Lachance and Jean François Ménard offer tangible and practical strategies to help sport leaders create efficient group dynamics, build team culture, and help a group of athletes to gel.

“How are you feeling today?” We may think of emotions as universal responses, felt inside. Using decades-long, cutting-edge research, acclaimed psychologist Batja Mesquita asks us to reconsider emotions through the lens of what they do in our relationships, both one-on-one and within larger social networks.

Scholars of US and transatlantic slavery have largely ignored or dismissed accusations that Black Americans were cannibalized. Vincent Woodard takes the enslaved person's claims of human consumption seriously, focusing on both the starvation of the slave and the tropes of cannibalism on the part of the slaveholder, and further draws attention to the ways in which Blacks experienced their consumption as a fundamentally homoerotic occurrence.

Lifelong luddite Treena Orchard was a newly sober woman coming off a much-needed break from relationships, reluctantly taking the digital plunge by downloading a dating app. Instead of the fun, easy experiences advertised on swiping platforms, she discovered endless upkeep, ghosting, fleeting moments of sexual connection, and a steady flow of misogyny.

Great business leaders understand that acceptance of greater personal accountability and responsibility leads individuals, teams, and organizations back on the path to success. But with the evolving nature of 21st century business, the practical steps that go into creating a high performance culture of accountability have become more muddled than ever.

Neil Atkinson explores how Klopp, heralded as one of the most charismatic and successful managers in the history of football, has taken Liverpool FC to great heights over the past nine years. As Klopp's departure nears, Atkinson looks back on the trailblazing manager's time in Liverpool, the legacy he leaves behind and what it means for Liverpool: the club and the city.

Wonder Woman and Philosophy: The Amazonian Mystique explores a wide range of philosophical questions surrounding the most popular female superhero of all time, from her creation as feminist propaganda during World War II up to the first female lead in the blockbuster DC movie franchise.

Pink and pretty or predatory and hardened, sexualized girlhood influences our daughters from infancy onward, telling them that how a girl looks matters more than who she is. Somewhere between the exhilarating rise of Girl Power in the 1990s and today, the pursuit of physical perfection has been recast as a source - the source - of female empowerment. And commercialization has spread the message faster and farther, reaching girls at ever-younger ages.

In Jezebel Unhinged Tamura Lomax traces the use of the jezebel trope in the Black church and in Black popular culture, showing how it is pivotal to reinforcing men's cultural and institutional power to discipline and define Black girlhood and womanhood. Drawing on writing by medieval thinkers and travelers, Enlightenment theories of race, the commodification of women's bodies under slavery, and the work of Tyler Perry and Bishop T. D. Jakes, Lomax shows how Black women are written into religious and cultural history as sites of sexual deviation.

In 2020, an estimated 5.8 million Americans had Alzheimer’s, and more than half a million died because of the disease and its devastating complications. Sixteen million caregivers are responsible for paying as much as half of the $226 billion annual costs of their care. As more people live beyond their 70s and 80s, the number of patients will rise to an estimated 13.8 million by 2025. Part case studies, part meditation on the past, present and future of the disease, The Problem of Alzheimer's traces Alzheimer’s from its beginnings to its recognition as a crisis.

This history will be of interest to people who know nothing about Japan, but also full of insights for those who do. Lesley Downer takes the listener through the great sweep of Japanese history, focusing on the dramatic stories of larger-than-life individuals—from emperors descended from the Sun Goddess to warlords, samurai, merchants, court ladies, women warriors, geisha, and businessmen who shaped this extraordinary modern society.

Bill Johnson, respected pastor, best-selling author, and senior leader of Bethel Church, lives in a culture of the miraculous. In his groundbreaking new book, The Way of Life, he shares not as a theological spectator, but as an active participant in a historic move of God that has been sweeping the nations.