The Marriage of East and West


Book Description

Bede Griffiths was a Benedictine monk who achieved worldwide recognition for his pioneering efforts to bridge the great traditions of Christian and Hindu faith. He advocates a global spiritual friendship, rather than a global religion, cultivating respct for each other's spiritual practices.




The Marriage of East and West


Book Description




East Eats West


Book Description

“Includes some of Lam’s most memorable writings, about cuisine, self-esteem, sex and kung fu, all seen from a two-hemisphere perspective.” —SFGate East Eats West shines new light on the bridges and crossroads where two global regions meld into one worldwide “immigrant nation.” In this new nation, with its amalgamation of divergent ideas, tastes, and styles, today’s bold fusion becomes tomorrow’s classic. But while the space between East and West continues to shrink in this age of globalization, some cultural gaps remain. In this collection of twenty-one personal essays, Andrew Lam, the award-winning author of Perfume Dreams, continues to explore the Vietnamese diaspora, this time concentrating not only on how the East and West have changed but how they are changing each other. Lively and engaging, East Eats West searches for meaning in nebulous territory charted by very few. Part memoir, part meditation, and part cultural anthropology, East Eats West is about thriving in the West with one foot still in the East. “In these lovely, wise, probing essays, Andrew Lam not only illuminates the crucial twenty-first-century issues of immigration and cultural identity but the greater, enduring issues of what it means to be human . . . a compelling book.” —Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author “Andrew Lam is an expert time-traveler, collapsing childhood and adulthood; years of war and peace; and the evolution of language in his own life, time, and mind. To read Andrew’s work is a joy and a profound journey.” —Farai Chideya, author of The Episodic Career “One of the best American essayists of his generation.” —Wayne Karlin, author of A Wolf by the Ears




Similarity in Difference


Book Description

A study of marriage in preindustrial Europe and Asia that goes beyond the Malthusian East–West dichotomy to find variation within regions and commonality across regions. Since Malthus, an East–West dichotomy has been used to characterize marriage behavior in Asia and Europe. Marriages in Asia were said to be early and universal, in Europe late and non-universal. In Europe, marriages were supposed to be the result of individual choices but, in Asia, decided by families and communities. This book challenges this binary taxonomy of marriage patterns and family systems. Drawing on richer and more nuanced data, the authors compare the interpretations based on aggregate demographic patterns with studies of individual actions in local populations. Doing so, they are able to analyze simultaneously the influence on marriage decisions of individual demographic features, socioeconomic status and composition of the household, and local conditions, and the interactions of these variables. They find differences between East and West but also variation within regions and commonality across regions. The book studies local populations in Sweden, Belgium, Italy, Japan, and China. Rather than a simple comparison of aggregate marriage patterns, it examines marriage outcomes and determinants of local populations in different countries using similar data and methods. The authors first present the results of comparative analyses of first marriage and remarriage and then offer chapters each of which is devoted to the results from a specific country. Similarity in Difference is the third in a prizewinning series on the demographic history of Eurasia, following Life under Pressure (2004) and Prudence and Pressure (2009), both published by the MIT Press.




East, West


Book Description

From the Booker Prize-winning, bestselling author of Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses comes nine stories that reveal the oceanic distances and the unexpected intimacies between East and West. Daring, extravagant, comical and humane, this book renews Rushdie's stature as a storyteller who can enthrall and instruct us with the same sentence. "Richly nuanced, full or humor, bitter anger, an embracing tenderness, and a buyancy of language." —Boston Globe




East of the Sun and West of the Moon


Book Description

The Moon, Father Forest, Great Fish of the Sea, and North Wind help a maiden rescue her true love from a troll princess in a faraway kingdom.




Marriage, a History


Book Description

Just when the clamor over "traditional" marriage couldn’t get any louder, along comes this groundbreaking book to ask, "What tradition?" In Marriage, a History, historian and marriage expert Stephanie Coontz takes readers from the marital intrigues of ancient Babylon to the torments of Victorian lovers to demonstrate how recent the idea of marrying for love is—and how absurd it would have seemed to most of our ancestors. It was when marriage moved into the emotional sphere in the nineteenth century, she argues, that it suffered as an institution just as it began to thrive as a personal relationship. This enlightening and hugely entertaining book brings intelligence, perspective, and wit to today’s marital debate.




The Golden String


Book Description

Record of a spiritual journey which led the author through the Church of England into Roman Catholic Church, by an English Benedictine abbot.




Marriage and Modernization


Book Description

The processes of modernization and globalization promise more wealth and health for many people. But they are also a threat to the stability and quality of marriage and family life. This new book -- at once sobering and constructive -- looks at the impact of these processes on marriage and asks what Christianity, in cooperation with other religions, can do to strengthen married life today. Among the deleterious effects of modernization and globalization on marriage are a worldwide drift of men away from the responsibility of parenthood and the tendency of mothers too readily to take on the task of childrearing alone. After looking at recent research on these and other problems, Don Browning suggests that the cure for modern marital disruption entails reforming and reconstructing the institution of marriage while also nurturing relevant forms of social support. Yet the effort to initiate a "world marriage revival" requires a complex cultural work, and Browning explores the key contributions that the religions of the world must make for such an effort to be successful.




Marriage and Sexuality in Early Christianity


Book Description

Marriage and Sexuality in Early Christianity is part of Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources, a series designed to present ancient Christian texts essential to an understanding of Christian theology, ecclesiology, and practice. The books in the series make the wealth of early Christian thought available to new generations of students of theology and provide a valuable resource for the church. Developed in light of recent patristic scholarship, the volumes provide a representative sampling of theological contributions from both East and West. The series provides volumes that are relevant for a variety of courses: from introduction to theology to classes on doctrine and the development of Christian thought. The goal of each volume is not to be exhaustive but rather to be representative enough to denote for a nonspecialist audience the multivalent character of early Christian thought, allowing readers to see how and why early Christian doctrine and practice developed the way it did.




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