Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality


Book Description

“A tour de force.... No one has ever written a book on the Declaration quite like this one.” —Gordon Wood, New York Review of Books Winner of the Zócalo Book Prize Winner of the Society of American Historians’ Francis Parkman Prize Winner of the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize (Nonfiction) Finalist for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Hurston Wright Legacy Award Shortlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Shortlisted for the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Ralph Waldo Emerson Award A New York Times Book Review Editors Choice Selection Featured on the front page of the New York Times, Our Declaration is already regarded as a seminal work that reinterprets the promise of American democracy through our founding text. Combining a personal account of teaching the Declaration with a vivid evocation of the colonial world between 1774 and 1777, Allen, a political philosopher renowned for her work on justice and citizenship reveals our nation’s founding text to be an animating force that not only changed the world more than two-hundred years ago, but also still can. Challenging conventional wisdom, she boldly makes the case that the Declaration is a document as much about political equality as about individual liberty. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Our Declaration is an “uncommonly elegant, incisive, and often poetic primer on America’s cardinal text” (David M. Kennedy).




The Emerging Brave New World


Book Description

In his classic novel Brave New World, English writer Aldous Huxley wrote of a future where human beings are manipulated, abused and even killed for the perceived good of society. Huxley envisioned a future where human life is cheapened and easily disposed of for the benefit of a controlling elite. Christian philosopher C.S. Lewis referred to such an elite as “men without chests.” Indeed, in such a “brave new world” humanity itself is redefined to allow for the elimination of those deemed inferior. Is Huxley’s ghoulish nightmare about to descend upon America? Will we lose control over our destiny to an elite comprised of “men without chests?” Thomas Glessner writes of the gradual dehumanization on human beings that has invaded American culture and has accelerated at a frightening pace since the 1973 Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade. The subsequent dehumanization of unborn human beings and the emergence of abortion-on-demand have opened the door to a culture where humanity is redefined and those deemed of insignificant value are eliminated. This book discusses the ongoing cultural battle between the traditional sanctity-of-life ethic, which has been the foundation of Western civilization and American culture for centuries and the modern quality-of-life ethic, which is increasingly gaining control in academia as well as the hearts and minds of the public. Glessner challenges the Christian church to respond to the current cultural decline by placing priority upon efforts to restore the sanctity-of-life ethic in our cultural institutions. Only through such monumental efforts will the emergence of a “brave new world” be defeated. With foreword by Senator Tom Coburn, United States Senate.




Reflections


Book Description

This is a fiction based on the settings and traditions generally of the Noakhali civil district of Bangladesh. Those were commonly akin to the greater Muslim Bengal of the pre-1947 (partition of India) period and mostly relevant even now with innate changes. Russel Rabbani was born in that milieu in a well-to-do family of the semi-urban locale of Noakhali. While growing up, he systematically opposed tradition-laden social systems and strived for rapid changes. As he grew up, he learned through his own life experiences that radical changes are not always workable and good, mostly causing irritation and confusion, disturbing social equilibrium. The likely impact on family and personal life is often appalling. In the process of pursuing life, his sweeping zeal yielded to unrelenting but gradual changes, with himself being a beneficiary of that. He also learned while growing up that even an ordinary person like his Sanskrit teacher, Bashu Dev Sir, can be a source of wisdom and knowledge, that every element of any surrounding can provide joy and happiness, and that even the most depressed setting can provide relaxation if one intends to have it. For Raniya, a widow, it was her second marriage with Russel. With educational attainment up to high school, she exhibited immense capability to grasp changes and evolving requirements, both at national and international locales. Her single greatest achievement was the ability to shape and articulate conjugal conversations in helping create a conducive family environment. Other support characters like Afzal (the elder brother of Russel), Fatima Bhabi (sister-in-law and the wife of Afzal), and Parul (the wife of his younger brother Asif) played their due support roles, and so was done by Farzana (Raniya’s Bhabi). Friends like Farhan and Mukith played their roles in positively influencing Russel’s emotional paradigm at even mature later life. After retiring from professional life in a multinational financial institution, Russel and Raniya settled in Chicago, having a stint of few years in Vancouver initially. It was a day of incessant snowfall in late March of 2021, akin to the famous bitter cold of Chicago. That overcast skies didn’t have any marked impact on Russel’s positive mindset of the day. Without lamenting and complaining, Russel decided to travel back to his life. That long spell of contemplation was found to be refreshing and rewarding in stress management. That art of thinking had been rated as smooth. To Russel, and the ongoing life setting of human beings, “reflection,” a continuous process, is a valued therapy for living as long as care and caution are exercised. He happily enjoyed that sort of summation while enjoying kichuri (the Bangladeshi food preparation of rice and lentil) in that snow-laden night with Raniya.




Evolution of My Thoughts


Book Description

This is an autobiographical sketch of selected events, with emphasis on church memberships and experiences, which affected my religious philosophy that evolved into my present convictions that all major world religions and their underlying written documentation are the works of men, to some of whom divine inspiration is attributed; that their deities are either nonexistent fabrications of the authors, interpreters, and practitioners of their particular religions, or human beings who claim to be divine, or prophets of a deity or deities, or who were determined by their followers to be such; and some related essays.







Love Unleashes Life


Book Description




Washington and Hamilton


Book Description

The true story of the friendship between founding fathers George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. From the American Revolution to the nation's first tempestuous years, this history book tells the largely untold story of the men who built America from the ground up and changed US history. In the wake of the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers faced a daunting task: overcome their competing visions to build a new nation, the likes of which the world had never seen. As hostile debates raged over how to protect their new hard-won freedoms, two men formed an improbable partnership that would launch the fledgling United States: George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. Washington and Hamilton chronicles the unlikely collaboration between these two conflicting characters at the heart of our national narrative: Washington, the indispensable general devoted to classical virtues, and Hamilton, an ambitious officer and lawyer eager for fame of the noblest kind. Working together, they laid the groundwork for the institutions that govern the United States to this day and protected each other from bitter attacks from Jefferson and Madison, who considered their policies a betrayal of the republican ideals they had fought for. Yet while Washington and Hamilton's different personalities often led to fruitful collaboration, their conflicting ideals also tested the boundaries of their relationship—and threatened the future of the new republic. From the rumblings of the American Revolution through the fractious Constitutional Convention and America's turbulent first years, this captivating history reveals the stunning impact of this unlikely duo that set the United States on the path to becoming a superpower. Ideal for fans of nonfiction best sellers Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow and The First Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer, Washington and Hamilton is a story of American history, political intrigue, and a friendship for the people.




This is Your Life?


Book Description

This Is Your Life is about the journey to the center of your mind (Twilight Zone music in the background). Well maybe not quite the center, but it challenges the premise that we are mechanical beings living in a mechanical world. Contrary to the popular cultural voice that says, "Resistance is futile, assimilated you will be . . ." (Yoda), people are tired, broken, and poor from living in this Marxist socialist paradise. If we can reclaim a true definition of liberty, perhaps we can achieve a Modern Reformation. The human experience we call life is mind, body, and spirit. If any one of these is missing, we die. Our culture has been trying to convince us for decades that we are mind and body, but without any spirit. People have been treated as if they were automobiles to be driven, manipulated, and finally discarded when their benefits run out. The results of this philosophy have been disastrous. The fruits of Marxist philosophy today are the same as they have been throughout history: to lie, steal, kill, and destroy, leaves death in its wake and itself ultimately self-destructs in a suicidal fit of rage. A Christian philosophy will emerge out of the ash heap, hopefully sooner rather than later. We must recognize that every human being is different than every other person who has ever been. We are like a microcosm, an entire universe contained in this human body. The spiritual realm is more real than the physical realm and twice as dangerous. Unless we wish to continue living like a zombie (in mind and body denying the spirit), we must understand the spiritual aspect in order to experience true life. This Is Your life recognizes the fact that we all have an appointment with Revelation 20:12, "And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And they were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done." The books are our life stories. We are all writing a book, and each day is another page in our book. The good, the bad and the ugly, it's all there. The book of life is also there. There was a show from the 1960s and '70s called This Is Your Life. The host Ralph Edwards always had a book in his hand. He would walk up to the person being highlighted and say, "So and so, this is your life." They would have events and people from their past and things on their life journey that helped make them who they were. This is how one might imagine it could be when we stand before the Lord.




The Pursuit of Happiness in the Founding Era


Book Description

Scholars have long debated the meaning of the pursuit of happiness, yet have tended to define it narrowly, focusing on a single intellectual tradition, and on the use of the term within a single text, the Declaration of Independence. In this insightful volume, Carli Conklin considers the pursuit of happiness across a variety of intellectual traditions, and explores its usage in two key legal texts of the Founding Era, the Declaration and William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. For Blackstone, the pursuit of happiness was a science of jurisprudence, by which his students could know, and then rightly apply, the first principles of the Common Law. For the founders, the pursuit of happiness was the individual right to pursue a life lived in harmony with the law of nature and a public duty to govern in accordance with that law. Both applications suggest we consider anew how the phrase, and its underlying legal philosophies, were understood in the founding era. With this work, Conklin makes important contributions to the fields of early American intellectual and legal history.