Relationships are hard enough to negotiate without advice from outsiders who don’t know you at all. This book is not a “how-to” aimed at attaining the ideal. Rather, it is a how-it-is, an exploration of how relationships are, how they develop, how they deteriorate, how they may end and how they may even revive. Strange as it may seem, it is not a book about how individual human beings are. It doesn’t concern itself with individual human failings. Those failings are given in being human. Instead, it describes the potentials for joy, disappointment and burden that are intrinsic to relationship and by extension to the process of becoming fully human. In a world obsessed with attaining an illusory ideal, becoming fully human is the greatest threat.

The idea of "community" is increasingly vital to our individual and social well-being. Yet at the same time, our ordinary communal relations are being eroded by increased social and geographical mobility, lost traditions, and the growing pluralism of society. Examining this renewed desire for community, Coming Together/Coming Apart locates the current problems of society in the conditions of modern capitalism. Arising out of a common matrix of a world in crisis, contemporary religious, social and feminist discussions of community compose an ideological struggle over the reformation of society.

Praise for Coming Together, Coming Apart "Interesting conversation is Israel's most ingratiating commodity, and this is an especially interesting one. To read Coming Together, Coming Apart is to be engaged in an ongoing dialogue with one of Israel's most thoughtful observers--an American who made Israel his home, despite its imperfections and dangers. Gordis's conversational narrative is irresistible." --Alan dershowitz, author of The Case for Israel "Whether describing a walk through Jerusalem in snow, a hike in the desert, or a farewell family drive to the Gaza settlements, Gordis manages to capture the essential details that tell us the larger meaning of our Israeli lives. There is much irony in this book, and also anger, especially against those who unfairly judge Israel in its most desperate and noble times. Most of all, though, this book is the chronicle of a love story--of an immigrant family in Jerusalem falling in love with Israel and, through that love, discovering the strength to cope with life on the front lines of a jihadist war. As a fellow Jerusalemite, I feel a profound debt to Gordis for explaining what it means to raise a family in the middle of a terror zone, and the courage that average Israelis instinctively display in maintaining the pretense of normal life. Those of us who share his passion are fortunate to be so well represented by this book." --Yossi Klein Halevi, Foreign Correspondent, The New Republic

Next to the death of a loved one, the ending of a relationship is the most painful experience most people will ever go through. Coming Apart is a first aid kit for getting through the ending. It is a tool that will enable you to live through the end of your relationship with your self-esteem intact.Daphne Rose Kingma, the undisputed expert on matters of the heart, explores the critical facets of relationship breakdowns:Love myths: why we are really in relationshipsThe life span of loveHow to get through the endingHow to create a personal workbook for finding resolutionTime does a lot to heal our broken hearts, but really understanding what transpired in each of our relationships is what allows us to finally let go and move on.Replaces ISBN 9781573245470

Julia Chiang's word and pattern based artwork has been exhibited across the world. Her deceptively simple yet precisely painted patterns are merged with poetic language to form the core of her exuberantly colourful work. This collection of her artwork was produced in conjunction with Chiang's summer 2013 exhibition in Tokyo and collects her abstract artwork and ceramics from 2011 to the present. This edition is accompanied by an introductory essay by Lumi Tan.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A fascinating explanation for why white America has become fractured and divided in education and class, from the acclaimed author of Human Diversity. “I’ll be shocked if there’s another book that so compellingly describes the most important trends in American society.”—David Brooks, New York Times In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes do not break along lines of race or ethnicity. Drawing on five decades of statistics and research, Coming Apart demonstrates that a new upper class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their underlying American kinship—divergence that has nothing to do with income inequality and that has grown during good economic times and bad. The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. That divergence puts the success of the American project at risk. The evidence in Coming Apart is about white America. Its message is about all of America.

An independent scholar and former history professor addresses the post-WWII period in Volume 2 of his narrative history of the 20th century. His account revolves around two dominant global events--the Cold War and the revolt against imperialism--showing how these events both drove nations apart while creating political and regional alliances. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR