This wide-ranging, comparative, and multidisciplinary collection addresses the significance of books in creating the idea of home. The chapters present cases that reveal the affective and sensory dimensions of books and reading in the practice of everyday life of individuals, in communities, and in society. The complex relationship of books, reading, and home is explored through American and European case studies both in bourgeois and middle-class homes, and in working-class and immigrant families and communities with limited possibilities for reading. The volume combines the conceptions and representations of domesticity, the materiality of reading, and library as a place, drawing on book history and material culture studies as well as anthropology and sociology of the home.

This memoir chronicles three southern European clans, their migration to the United States, and intertwining, as well as hard working, warm, loving, and close-knit personal values they bestowed on their kin. Their story flows across Europe and North America from the mid 19th to the late 20th centuries. Family bonds survived and strengthened despite parental and sibling deaths, boarding schools, upheavals in occupied Romania during WW I, personal tragedies, separations imposed by WW II and the Communist bloc, civil war, and financial struggles. The Theodosious present a microcosm of southern European immigration to the United States in the earliest 1900s. From seemingly endless lines of railroad track stretching out before repair gangs of excited young Greeks in their first jobs in America to opening of substantial business establishments, they were comforted in the knowledge their toils would someday benefit their progeny.

Eminently readable historical treatment of the Jesus Movement in First Century context. Vividly describes the life and death of Jesus and how his charismatic teaching became a worldwide religion; how Jesus the man became Jesus the Christ. Plus the heroic Jewish fight against despotic Roman rule and the violent separation of Christianity from Judaism. The reader encounters the ancient land of Palestine, King Herod’s incestuous family, fascinating legends surrounding Christianity’s birth, the wanderings and violent deaths of the 12 apostles, the mysterious Cross Gospel and Secret Gospel of Mark and a strange writing called Q. Separate chapters spotlight two shames of Christianity. Christian Sexism portrays the denigration of women from co-equal disciples of Jesus to permanent second-class status. Christian Anti-Semitism begins with the Gospels of Mark and John and the letters of Paul and highlights centuries of conflict between the Jewish people and the Roman Catholic Church. An appendix sorts out today’s confusing proliferation of versions of the New Testament, explaining their origins and detailing both serious and humorous textual differences. Helps answer the question of which version to use.

‘For we walk by faith not by sight . . .’ In this book, the third in the ‘Bouquet of Blessings’ trilogy, Doreen Harrison once again draws on her many years of rich and varied experience to present a fresh selection of inspiring stories which are sure to encourage, challenge and bless readers of all ages.

While there are many books that tell the "stories" about churches and church life, this work takes the rarely traveled path of looking directly into the lives of church members, focusing on the process of spiritual formation in each.

'Lived religion' signifies a shift of focus in order to attend to the religiosity of individuals and groups as embedded in the contexts of life-worlds. It suggests fresh attention to the body, to perception, to experience, to everyday life, and to biography. The essays in this collection gravitate around the concept of ‘lived religion’, honoring the contributions of Hans-Günter Heimbrock, in which he suggests this conceptual framework for understanding practical theology and religious education and for designing empirical research in theology. The contributions embrace a broad spectrum and include empirical studies, exegetical and historical investigations, contributions on practical theology as well as on the theory and practice of religious education, inviting further reflection and discussion about ‘lived religion.’