Miscellaneous

What does heroism look like? When does friendship become too costly? Do we ever truly touch one another, or are we doomed to walk alone forever? Can love survive trials, or does it inevitably wither and die?

The Accidental Marriage is a contemporary story that explores these questions through vibrant, sympathetic characters whose struggles and triumphs illustrate that love doesn't always look like you would expect.

Scott and Megan are friends who live and work in the vibrant San Francisco Bay Area. Mostly contented with their jobs and same-sex relationships, they meet for lunch and sympathetic conversation from time to time.

When Megan's partner wants a baby, Scott offers to help. The ensuing complications force Scott and Megan to grapple with how much they're willing to sacrifice for friendship and for the child they've conceived. When Megan's situation unravels, Scott must step up to responsibilities he's never assumed before.

Then his circumstances start to crumble, and a series of misfortunes strip them of everything but each other. They end up back in Scott's small Midwestern hometown which he thought he'd left forever. There he learns dark secrets of his own past, and ultimately is forced to wrestle with a terrible legacy which he must master or be destroyed by.

Totally accessible, with fascinating portraits of the nuns and the scientists who study them, Aging with Grace also offers a wealth of practical findings:

- Why building linguistic ability in childhood may protect against Alzheimer's
- Which ordinary foods promote longevity and healthy brain function
- Why preventing strokes and depression is key to avoiding Alzheimer's
- What role heredity plays, and why it's never too late to start an exercise program
- How attitude, faith, and community can add years to our lives

A prescription for hope, Aging with Grace shows that old age doesn't have to mean an inevitable slide into illness and disability; rather it can be a time of promise and productivity, intellectual and spiritual vigor--a time of true grace.

Author and Notre Dame priest-professor Wilson D. Miscamble tracks how Hesburgh transformed Catholic higher education in the postwar era and explores how he became a much-celebrated voice in America at large. Yet, beyond the hagiography that often surrounds Hesburgh's legacy lies another more complex and challenging story. What exactly were his contributions to higher learning; what was his involvement in the civil rights movement; and what was the nature of his role as advisor to popes and presidents?

Understanding Hesburgh's life and work illuminates the journey that the Catholic Church traversed over the second half of the twentieth century. Exploring and evaluating Hesburgh's importance, then, contributes not only to the colorful history of Notre Dame but also to comprehending the American Catholic experience.

Worry, doubt, confusion, depression, anger and feelings of condemnation: all these are attacks on the mind. If readers suffer from negative thoughts, they can take heart! Joyce Meyer has helped millions win these all-important battles. In her most popular bestseller ever, the beloved author and minister shows readers how to change their lives by changing their minds.

She teaches how to deal with thousands of thoughts that people think every day and how to focus the mind the way God thinks. And she shares the trials, tragedies, and ultimate victories from her own marriage, family, and ministry that led her to wondrous, life-transforming truth--and reveals her thoughts and feelings every step of the way.

This special updated edition includes an additional introduction and updated content throughout the book.

What would happen if Christians and a Muslim at a university talked and disagreed, but really tried to understand each other? What would they learn?
That is the intriguing question Peter Kreeft seeks to answer in these imaginative conversations at Boston College. An articulate and engaging Muslim student named 'Isa challenges the Christian students and professors he meets on issues ranging from prayer and worship to evolution and abortion, from war and politics to the nature of spiritual struggle and spiritual submission.
While Kreeft believes Christians should not learn extremism or unitarian theology from Muslims, he does believe that if we really listened we could learn much about devoted religious practice and ethics.
Here is a book to open your understanding of one of the key forces shaping our world today. It's a book that just could make you a better Christian.

The question asked by this story is not "Is abortion wrong?" but rather "Do American citizens have the right to say that abortion is wrong?" -from the Introduction

On Friday, March 20, 2009, fifteen months after the City of Oakland, California, passed a law making it illegal to approach a woman entering an abortion clinic without her consent, Walter B. Hoye II went to jail for standing on a public sidewalk outside an abortion clinic with a sign saying, "God loves you and your baby. Let us help you."

The ordained Baptist minister could have accepted a lesser sentence of community service, provided he agreed never to return to the clinic. But he preferred spending thirty days in the county jail to forfeiting his constitutional right to free speech and his Christian duty to offer help to women in need, most of whom were black like him. Two higher courts eventually exonerated him: one overturned his criminal conviction and the other judged that the enforcement of the Oakland "bubble law" was unconstitutional.

Walter's dramatic days in prison, where he lived and preached the Gospel and won the hearts of fellow inmates, is detailed in this book. The political machinations that created the bubble law and then entrapped Walter are also described, using public records. Both stories are told in the context of Walter's background as the descendant of black slaves and the disciple of his hero, Martin Luther King Jr., whose niece, Alveda, has written the foreword for this book.