Sex and the City of God


Book Description

After studying at Oxford University and finding God, Carolyn Weber grappled with a new invitation: to think bigger about love. Through Weber's personal story of courtship, marriage, and parenthood, as well as spiritual, theological, and literary reflection, this memoir explores what life looks like when we choose to love God first.




Surprised by Oxford


Book Description

When Carolyn Weber set out to study Romantic literature at Oxford University, she didn't give much thought to God or spiritual matters—but over the course of her studies she encountered the Jesus of the Bible and her world turned upside down. Surprised by Oxford chronicles her conversion experience with wit, humor, and insight into how becoming a Christian changed her. Carolyn Weber arrives at Oxford a feminist from a loving but broken family, suspicious of men and intellectually hostile to all things religious. As she grapples with her God-shaped void alongside the friends, classmates, and professors she meets, she tackles big questions in search of truth, love, and a life that matters. From issues of fatherhood, feminism, doubt, doctrine, and love, Weber explores the intricacies of coming to faith with an aching honesty and insight echoing that of the poets and writers she studied. Surprised by Oxford is: The witty memoir of a skeptical agnostic who comes to a dynamic personal faith in God Rich with illustration and literary references Gritty, humorous, and spiritually perceptive An inside look at Oxford University Weber eloquently describes a journey many of us have embarked upon, grappling with tough questions and doubts about the meaning of faith—and ultimately finding it in the most unlikely of places.




Sex and the City


Book Description

'"Relationships in New York are about detachment, so how do you get attached when you decide you want to?" "Honey, you leave town."' Meet Carrie, Miranda, Sam and their stylish friends. Successful, attractive, thirty-something career women living the high life in New York; blazing a glorious cocktail trail from the Bowery Bar to the Baby Doll Lounge; holidaying in the Hamptons and going to Aspen by Lear Jet. But they have more in common than just their enviable lifestyle; they're all searching for lasting love. Finding it is easier said than done in a town full of gorgeous, single, rich men, none of whom want to settle down. Toxic bachelors and serial daters are a perennial problem - but maybe Mr. Big will be different?




Sex and the City and Us


Book Description

The bestselling author of Seinfeldia offers a fascinating retrospective of the iconic and award-winning television series, Sex and the City, in a “bubbly, yet fierce cultural dissection of the groundbreaking show” (Chicago Tribune). This is the story of how a columnist, two gay men, and a writers’ room full of women used their own poignant, hilarious, and humiliating stories to launch a cultural phenomenon. They endured shock, slut-shaming, and a slew of nasty reviews on their way to eventual—if still often begrudging—respect. The show wasn’t perfect, but it revolutionized television for women. When Candace Bushnell began writing for the New York Observer, she didn’t think anyone beyond the Upper East Side would care about her adventures among the Hamptons-hopping media elite. But her struggles with singlehood struck a chord. Beverly Hills, 90210 creator Darren Star brought her vision to an even wider audience when he adapted the column for HBO. Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha launched a barrage of trends, forever branded the actresses that took on the roles, redefined women’s relationship to sex and elevated the perception of singlehood. Featuring exclusive new interviews with the cast and writers, including star Sarah Jessica Parker, creator Darren Star, executive producer Michael Patrick King, and author Candace Bushnell, “Jennifer Keishin Armstrong brings readers inside the writers’ room and into the scribes’ lives…The writing is fizzy and funny, but she still manages an in-depth look at a show that’s been analyzed for decades, giving readers a retrospective as enjoyable as a $20 pink cocktail” (The Washington Post). Sex and the City and Us is both a critical and nostalgic behind-the-scenes look at a television series that changed the way women see themselves.




Sex and the Supremacy of Christ


Book Description

The Bible has a way of shocking us. If Americans could still blush, we might blush at the words, "Rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love" (Proverbs 5:18-19). But, of course, sin always tries to trash God's gifts. So we can't just celebrate sex for what God made it to be; we have to fight what sin turned it into. The contributors to this unique volume encourage you to do both: celebrate and struggle. This book has something for all-men and women, married and single-from contributors like John Piper, C. J. and Carolyn Mahaney, Mark Dever, Al Mohler, Carolyn McCulley, and others.




Sexless in the City


Book Description

Discover a renewed biblical vision for sex, singleness, and relationships, and transform into an empowered woman of faith equipped to navigate today's dating culture with vision, clarity, and freedom. Let's face it: being single in today's culture as a woman of faith can be a STRUGGLE FEST. But it doesn't have to be. With real talk and straight wisdom, speaker, podcaster, and founder of The Refined Woman Kat Harris says it's time for a new conversation about singleness, sex, and desire. Growing up at the height of the purity movement, Kat knew this much: good Christians don't have sex until marriage. But approaching 30 and thrust into the New York City dating scene, she found a set of rules was not a compelling enough reason to keep her clothes on. Caught between purity culture's rules and popular culture's do what feels good, Kat began a multi-year journey searching for answers to the biggest questions about sexuality and faith: What does the Bible really say about sex? Why does almost everyone deal with some sort of sexual shame? But really--what's a single girl to do with her sexual desire? What if we never get married . . . then what? It turns out Kat was asking questions that countless women were dying to ask but didn't know they had the permission to do so. Hungry for clarity, she researched, wrestled, and discovered a God who wasn't afraid or ashamed of sex and desire as she thought He might be. In actuality, God created sex and desire within humanity and called it very good. Now she believes God desires to restore a generation disillusioned with purity culture and Christian dating, discouraged about their singleness, ashamed of their sexual desire, and uncertain how to practically walk this season out well. Join Kat on her messy, sometimes painful, and always honest journey to discovering God's heart for sexuality, desire, singleness, and our purpose within it all.




Sex and the Unreal City


Book Description

Unreal City: a cartoon megalopolis where towers are built of cotton candy, facts scatter like pixie dust, and the truth is whatever you feel it to be. And it's no fantasy. It's where we live. "We dwell in Unreal City. We believe in un-being." With saber-like wit, poet and professor Anthony Esolen leads readers on a tour through the ruins of their own Western world—through king-size bookstores, manicured college campuses, strobe-lit choir lofts, mechanized farms, divorce courts, drag-queen libraries, and beyond. This hilarious guide to a culture gone mad with sex and self-care minces no words and spares no egos. We the people of Unreal City are no better, and certainly no smarter, than our fathers. But fear not. Sex and the Unreal City insists there's no need to settle down in the ninth circle of unreality. Esolen lights a torch and heads up the well-trod path back to our cleaner, kinder, truer homeland: Earth. Along the way, the author sings the songs of masters long forgotten—Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, the Evangelists—and asks us to join in.




Sex and the City Uncovered


Book Description

The moral and social standards upheld on the television hit "Sex and the City" are brought into question by a former fan of the show.




Desires in Paradise


Book Description

For Augustine, the pre-Fall Paradise was a life of tranquil love and joy. The post-Fall world is marked by loss of control over our bodies and emotions. But whatexactly happened in the Fall, and why? How does desire relate to man's disobedience, and is there any sense in which we can recover what Adam and Eve havelost?In treating City 14 as an integral whole, this study explores Augustine's critiquesof the Manichean and Platonist positions that the body is bad or evil, and discusseshis biblical doctrine of emotions in light of the two-cities theme. The entirestudy concerns topics germane to the paradisal situation: the theme of the PrimalFall and the will being 'spontaneous', the exploration of the disobedience ofthe genitals in all forms of sex, including married life, and the workings of Adamand Eve's hypothetical sexual experience in the pre-Fall world.




Dancing with the Devil in the City of God


Book Description

From prizewinning journalist and Brazilian native Juliana Barbassa comes a deeply reported and beautifully written account of the seductive and chaotic city of Rio de Janeiro as it struggles with poverty and corruption on the brink of the 2016 Olympic Games. Juliana Barbassa moved a great deal throughout her life, but Rio was always home. After twenty-one years abroad, she returned to find her native city—once ravaged by inflation, drug wars, corrupt leaders, and dying neighborhoods—undergoing a major change. Rio has always aspired to the pantheon of global capitals, and under the spotlight of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games it seems that its moment has come. But in order to prepare itself for the world stage, Rio must vanquish the entrenched problems that Barbassa recalls from her childhood. Turning this beautiful but deeply flawed place into a pristine showcase of the best that Brazil has to offer in just a few years is a tall order—and with the whole world watching, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Library Journal called Dancing with the Devil in the City of God “akin to Charlie LeDuff’s Detroit”—a book that “combines history and personal interviews in an informative and engaging work.” This kaleidoscopic portrait of Rio introduces the reader to the people who make up this city of extremes, revealing their aspirations and their grit, their violence, their hungers, and their splendor, and shedding light on the future of this city they are building together. Dancing with the Devil in the City of God is an insider perspective from a native daughter and “a fascinating look at the people who live in and aspire to change one of the world’s most impressive cities” (Booklist, starred review).