In the years following its near-bankruptcy in 1976 until the end of the 1980s, New York City came to epitomize the debt-driven, deal-oriented, economic boom of the Reagan era. Exploring the interplay between social structural change and political power during this period, John Mollenkopf asks why a city with a large minority population and a long tradition of liberalism elected a conservative mayor who promoted real-estate development and belittled minority activists. Through a careful analysis of voting patterns, political strategies of various interest groups, and policy trends, he explains how Mayor Edward Koch created a powerful political coalition and why it ultimately failed.

When young Devon is forbidden from marrying his beloved by the Elders of the agrarian Cypress Corners community, he begins to question not only their authority, but why the sky is metal and the ground is not, and other troubling questions.

"PHOENIX ASCENDING; Rise From Your Ashes" is a motivational memoir written by Movita Johnson-Harrell, the first Muslim woman elected to the Pennsylvania legislature. This memoir is a raw and brutally honest depiction of survival against all odds. Movita tells her story of sexual abuse, drug addiction and trauma which lends inspiration and hope to others that have faced challenges in their own lives.

Phoenix from the Ashes is a comprehensive look at the state of the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council--one of a series of recurrent periods of moral and intellectual crisis to which it has succumbed in its history. A chapter on the Council describes in detail how Pope Paul VI diverted it by placing it under the exclusive control of European liberals. An equally close study is devoted to the liturgical "reform" entrusted by the same pope to a group of radicals whose work undermined the spiritual and devotional legacy of the faithful. The loss of orthodox teaching and the disorientation following upon these changes produced a grave crisis in both clergy and laity, but the movement of return to tradition visible today promises a revival of the full Catholic life of the Church. Catholic readers now have a complete and eminently accessible account of the last 50 years of momentous changes in the Church, right up to the pontificates of Benedict XVI and Francis I. "This wide-ranging account of the self-destruction of the Roman Catholic Church and its identification of her only realistic route back to the land of the living simultaneously strikes a blow at history's two most prevalent temptations: rejection or twisting of evidence in the service of an ideological thesis, and honest dedication to intense research on subjects whose ultimate existential value the 'unbiased' historian somehow fears to reveal to his readers. Henry Sire courageously shuts no doors and stifles no evidence, employing a passionate and lively prose that leaves no doubt regarding his sense of the crucial moral and cultural importance of his topic."--JOHN RAO, author of Black Legends and the Light of the World and Removing the Blindfold "For Catholics feeling lost at sea as a result of the turbulent crisis tossing and flooding the Barque of Peter, Henry Sire's work identifies clear landmarks to steady our gaze. He situates the present disarray within the larger historical context of the Arian heresy and Protestant revolution, and points to the buoys of tradition--liturgical, doctrinal, and philosophical--as sure guides to our way out. Sire distills entire epochs of history, from the first centuries of the Church through the current pontificate, into a highly readable and thought-provoking story. In the course of his tale he exposes the radical progressivism of the Second Vatican Council and its after-effects as well as the tepid conservatism of the Reform of the Reform and the Hermeneutic of Continuity."--BRIAN M. MCCALL, author of To Build the City of God "Historian H.J.A. Sire has compiled a balanced assessment of the revolution in the Roman Catholic Church. His mastery of the material is complete. The book flows along easily and readers will finish it confident that they have a comprehensive understanding of the last 60 years in the Church."--ROGER MCCAFFREY, President, Roman Catholic Books "Thanks to Henry Sire's penetrating book, we have some profound answers to nagging questions. How did the West end up so quickly in a post-Christian age, when only decades ago one could still speak of a Christian culture? How did we go from the seemingly healthy Roman Catholic Church of the 1950s to the mass apostasy and grave scandals of recent years? As Sire shows, the antecedents go back quite far, in fact many centuries, but the possibility of healing and regeneration is not as remote as we think."--STEPHEN KLIMCZUK-MASSION, Senior Adviser, Hildebrand Project H.J.A. SIRE was born in 1949 in Barcelona of a family of French ancestry and was educated in England, at Stonyhurst College and at Exeter College, Oxford, where he took a degree in Modern History. He has written several books on subjects of Catholic history and biography and currently lives in Rome, where he works professionally as a historian.

A raw and compassionate reflection upon life and its lessons. It is honest attempt to capture the meaning within experiences and to find the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary.

Legend says a phoenix will rise again—but all that remains of the immortal bird are ashes and whispered fairy tales... Lyra Adams enjoys her job as a rare books dealer, but when an angry wizard barges into her store and demands she fork over a unique tome from the antiquities section, she's not about to let him get away with grand larceny without a fight. Except it's suddenly very difficult to defend her wares, seeing as the wizard turned her into some kind of weird red bird by flinging a handful of ashes in her face. Her only hope of returning to her normal, human self lies in the hands of the one man she never wanted to see again: her lying, stealing, sorcerous scumbag ex, James Pierce. The same light-fingered thief who tried to steal that very same tome from her a few days before. She knows she can’t trust James with her heart or her inventory. Can she trust him to turn her back?