The Biology of Desire


Book Description

Through the vivid, true stories of five people who journeyed into and out of addiction, a renowned neuroscientist explains why the "disease model" of addiction is wrong and illuminates the path to recovery. The psychiatric establishment and rehab industry in the Western world have branded addiction a brain disease. But in The Biology of Desire, cognitive neuroscientist and former addict Marc Lewis makes a convincing case that addiction is not a disease, and shows why the disease model has become an obstacle to healing. Lewis reveals addiction as an unintended consequence of the brain doing what it's supposed to do-seek pleasure and relief-in a world that's not cooperating. As a result, most treatment based on the disease model fails. Lewis shows how treatment can be retooled to achieve lasting recovery. This is enlightening and optimistic reading for anyone who has wrestled with addiction either personally or professionally.




Introduction to the Art of Programming Using Scala


Book Description

With its flexibility for programming both small and large projects, Scala is an ideal language for teaching beginning programming. Yet there are no textbooks on Scala currently available for the CS1/CS2 levels. Introduction to the Art of Programming Using Scala presents many concepts from CS1 and CS2 using a modern, JVM-based language that works we




The Theological and the Political


Book Description

Mark Lewis Taylor has always worked at the intersection of the political and theological. Now, in this intense and exciting work, he explores in a systematic way how those two dimensions of human reality can be conceived anew and together.




How John Wrote the Book of Revelation: From Concept to Publication


Book Description

How John Wrote the Book of Revelation is the first of its kind, and introduces genetic literary reconstruction to Biblical studies. It enables the reader to produce prior drafts of Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, thereby allowing the reader to apply the literary science of genetic criticism to a book in the Bible. How John Wrote the Book of Revelation takes the most difficult book to understand in the Christian Scriptures and reveals the sequence in which it was written, from the very first line to the final parallel. This provides the reader, for the first time, with the experience of observing how a Biblical book was written, and does this from an intimate perspective, as though they were looking over John's shoulders as he crafted it. How John Wrote the Book of Revelation is the first book that teaches the reader how to read Revelation the way it was written. After centuries of blind guess work trying to divine meaning, and weak interpretations of symbols, this book finally presents a clear, precise, and consistent method. It is a guidebook to identify all the rich symbols and their meanings within Revelation. Inside the pages of this book is the all-encompassing theory of construction for the book of Revelation. It includes three prior drafts of the book of Revelation, along with hundreds of charts and illustrations. How John Wrote the Book of Revelation is like no other book that has been written before, and sets a new paradigm for all Biblical works.




Political Mercenaries


Book Description

An insider's account of the dirty dealings, backroom donations, and mega-wealthy donors that turned political campaigns into money races—from the notorious political fundraiser




The Executed God


Book Description

The new edition of Mark Lewis Taylor’s award-winning The Executed God is both a searing indictment of the structures of “Lockdown America” and a visionary statement of hope. It is also a call for action to Jesus followers to resist US imperial projects and power. Outlining a “theatrics of state terror,” Taylor identifies and analyzes its instruments—mass incarceration, militarized police tactics, surveillance, torture, immigrant repression, and capital punishment—through which a racist and corporatized Lockdown America enforces in the US a global neoliberal economic and political imperialism. Against this, The Executed God proposes a “counter-theatrics to state terror,” a declamation of the way of the cross for Jesus followers that unmasks the powers of US state domination and enacts an adversarial politics of resistance, artful dramatic actions, and the building of peoples’ movements. These are all intrinsic to a Christian politics of remembrance of the Jesus executed by empire. Heralded in its first edition, this new edition is thoroughly revised, updated, and expanded, offering a demanding rethinking and recreating of what being a Christian is and of how Christianity should dream, hope, mobilize, and act to bring about what Taylor terms “a liberating material spirituality” to unseat the state that kills.




Who Is a Scientist?


Book Description

Scientists work hard in the lab and in the field to make important discoveries. But who are they really? It turns out they are just like us! Scientists can be any race. And any gender. They can wear lab coats, jeans, or even tutus. And they are people who love to fly drones, make art, and even eat French fries! Meet fourteen phenomenal scientists who might just change the way you think about who a scientist is. They share their scientific work in fields like entomology, meteorology, paleontology, and engineering as well as other interesting facts about themselves and their hobbies. An "if you like this, you'll like that" flowchart in the back of the book helps students identify science careers they might be interested in. Scan a QR code at the end of the book for a video of the scientists introducing themselves!




Religion, Politics, and the Christian Right


Book Description

Princeton theologian Mark Taylor here looks at the influence and stance of the right-wing Christian movement in the U.S. He questions its religious authenticity, its claim to be called Christian, and the ethical stands it has taken in national politics of the last ten years. The heart of Taylor's argument is Jesus himself. Using the latest New Testament scholarship on the historical Jesus and his tactic in relation to the Roman Empire, Taylor argues that Jesus' life and work and message are inherently political and driven by the need to show God's love for the poor, condemnation of the oppressor, and search for a reign of justice. These Christian hallmarks, Taylor asserts, stand as a critical corrective to a distorted Christianity that often dominates the U.S. political scene today.




China’s Cosmopolitan Empire


Book Description

The Tang dynasty is often called China’s “golden age,” a period of commercial, religious, and cultural connections from Korea and Japan to the Persian Gulf, and a time of unsurpassed literary creativity. Mark Lewis captures a dynamic era in which the empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Chinese rule, painting and ceramic arts flourished, women played a major role both as rulers and in the economy, and China produced its finest lyric poets in Wang Wei, Li Bo, and Du Fu. The Chinese engaged in extensive trade on sea and land. Merchants from Inner Asia settled in the capital, while Chinese entrepreneurs set off for the wider world, the beginning of a global diaspora. The emergence of an economically and culturally dominant south that was controlled from a northern capital set a pattern for the rest of Chinese imperial history. Poems celebrated the glories of the capital, meditated on individual loneliness in its midst, and described heroic young men and beautiful women who filled city streets and bars. Despite the romantic aura attached to the Tang, it was not a time of unending peace. In 756, General An Lushan led a revolt that shook the country to its core, weakening the government to such a degree that by the early tenth century, regional warlordism gripped many areas, heralding the decline of the Great Tang.




The Annotated Royal Road to Card Magic


Book Description

Mark Lewis has added new ideas, variations to this classic book first published in 1949. Lots of colour photos added to the original text. Bonus appendix section with five extra chapters. 400 pages. Foreword by legendary card magician and memory expert Harry Lorayne.