"A group of American patriots, all former military, are looking for a way to get their number one choice, Senator Ben Corn, elected president. Corn is a telegenic, perfect candidate-yet harbors secrets that threaten him. The group's goal is to implement their own foreign policy and fundamentally restructure American society. Essential to this scheme is Greta Webb, a sophisticated and beautiful CIA agent who is an expert on how global dark money flows, not to mention skilled in lethal hand-to-hand combat. To achieve their goals, they form dangerous alliances. One is with a woman who manages the largest, and most corrupt, private pool of capital that has ever existed. And another with the brilliant, ruthless founder of Russia's most successful private military company: a mercenary's mercenary, who has ties to Vladimir Putin. He has his eye on Greta Webb-and while she would be wise to avoid him at all costs, she cannot. Journeying across the globe from New York to Washington to Middle Eastern war zones to wine cellars in the French countryside to Putin's private restaurant in St. Petersburg, the group of Americans become enmeshed in this underground world. And as they discover the secret of the dark money's pool's success-which involves manipulating the markets to rake in billions of dollars-they come into ever increasing danger. Ultimately the team of Americans must decide whether their ultimate objectives are worth the cost of ruthlessly sacrificing not just a few but potentially many human lives. Brilliantly told and filled with jaw-dropping action and unforgettable characters, Undermoney offers a savage look at the secret lives of the world's richest people"--

J. B. Kennedy argues that Plato's dialogues have an unsuspected musical structure and use symbols to encode Pythagorean doctrines. The followers of Pythagoras famously thought that the cosmos had a hidden musical structure and that wise philosophers would be able to hear this harmony of the spheres. Kennedy shows that Plato gave his dialogues a similar, hidden musical structure. He divided each dialogue into twelve parts and inserted symbols at each twelfth to mark a musical note. These passages are relatively harmonious or dissonant, and so traverse the ups and downs of a known musical scale. Many of Plato's ancient followers insisted that Plato used symbols to conceal his own views within the dialogues, but modern scholars have denied this. Kennedy, an expert in Pythagorean mathematics and music theory, now shows that Plato's dialogues do contain a system of symbols. Scholars in the humanities, without knowledge of obsolete Greek mathematics, would not have been able to detect these musical patterns. This book begins with a concise and accessible introduction to Plato's symbolic schemes and the role of allegory in ancient times. The following chapters then annotate the musical symbols in two of Plato's most popular dialogues, the Symposium and Euthyphro, and show that Plato used the musical scale as an outline for structuring his narratives.

Using enlightening exercises and rich examples, this book helps us become aware of the role we unwittingly play in getting conversations stuck and empowers us to share what really matters so that together we can create positive change. --

In Dialogues with Jen: On Issues of Daily Living, five friends, representing three generations, get together to discuss contemporary topics that touch their lives. The six dialogues unfold dramatically, reflecting situations of the participants, who share personal insights, sometimes surprisingly. Jen, the senior member, suggests the lead topic of romantic love, and the discussion moves from carnal attraction to conscious, purposeful love, citing Shakespeare's "marriage of two minds." Events of the tragic death of one member's sister and a terrorist attack witnessed by another member lead them to consider guilt, justice, and forgiveness. The dialogues are deeply rooted in spirituality, while not specific to any particular religious tradition. The author loosely draws on the classic Dialogues of Plato to develop arguments through the exchange of ideas of his fictional characters. This book is a sequel to Dialogues with Jay: On Life and Afterlife, but can be read independently.

This is the self-portrait of a missionary, minister, and teacher, at age 100, sharing the adventures of his childhood in Korea, exhilarating academic career at Princeton University, and then a lifetime of purposeful dedication to the ministry and to teaching. The author, a poet and gifted prose writer, engages the reader in beautiful landscapes of rural Korea, a trans-Siberian journey in the 1930s, his pioneering ministry in the desert of northern Chile, and the throes and conscientious commitment to civil rights in the 1960s. His life partnership with Martha, a church musician, features prominently in the book, as does their experience with her Alzheimer’s disease. The writer shares moments of epiphany, and the discovery of God’s will, represented by turning points in a life lived on three continents. More than just a memoir, this is a book full of devotional meaning and spiritual inspiration, for readers who enjoy a good story and excellent prose.

Jay Parini (b. 1948) is best known for his novel about Leo Tolstoy's last year, The Last Station, which has been translated into more than twenty-five languages and made into a Hollywood film. But he has also published numerous volumes of poetry; biographies of William Faulkner, Robert Frost, and John Steinbeck; novels; and literary and cultural criticism. This book contains the most important interviews with the former Guggenheim fellow; former Fowler Hamilton Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford; and former fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of London. Parini's work is valuable not just because of its high quality and intellectual range. Parini's life and writings often seem like a seminar table, with friends gathered, talking and trading stories. He has openly written poems in conversation with writers he knew personally: Robert Penn Warren, Gore Vidal, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. He has, in his own life, kept an ongoing conversation with many literary friends over the years—Alastair Reid, Seamus Heaney, Anne Stevenson, Ann Beattie, Julia Alvarez, Peter Ackroyd, A. N. Wilson, and countless others. These interviews offer a more comprehensive understanding of Parini's work as a poet, scholar, public intellectual, literary critic, intellectual historian, biographer, novelist, and biographical novelist. More importantly, these interviews will contribute to our understanding of the history of ideas, the condition of knowledge, and the state of literature, all of which Parini has played an important role in shaping.

Four (and a half) Dialogues on Homosexuality and the Bible explores four different interpretive approaches to biblical texts regarding homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Differences of interpretation are discussed openly, honestly, and charitably. The dialogues’ four characters maintain friendship with each other despite their disagreements, and so the book serves as a model of how difficult, potentially divisive conversations on a controversial topic might be conducted. Three of the four perspectives presented for examination are well represented in the existing literature; the fourth is not as familiar and is offered and developed as a proposal for bridging the divide that persists among theologically conservative Christians who honor the authority of Scripture over their thinking and their living. Ongoing conflict over this issue is destructive of the unity toward which the Bible summons all believers to strive, and so the book includes also a call to create space for one another—both individually and institutionally—for differences in theological conclusions and in community practices. Each of the dialogues begins with one of the characters telling their personal story regarding their sexuality, continues with that character’s case for their view, and concludes with a series of suggested discussion questions.