This book has several purposes. First, I intend to illustrate that Christianity can be a good foundation for a career in music. Second, I would like to mention and thank as many people as possible who have made positive contributions to my career. Third, I would like to provide a collection of stories (perhaps proverbs or parables) that could be useful to teachers. Fourth, I recognize now that my lifetime has seen historical revolution in the arts, finance, sex, marriage, military, politics, transportation, entertainment: practically every value we took for granted when I was a child has either been discarded or modified to the point where it is hardly recognizable. However, humanity still exists and with all its faults it is lovable and worth preserving. Oh, yes, I would also like this book to be enjoyable reading! Vernal E. Richardson

This revised best-seller is an inspiring daily devotional based on 366 great hymns of the faith. It contains a portion of each hymn along with Scripture readings, meditations, and practical applications.

The Complete Book of Hymns brings to life the stories behind more than 600 hymns and worship songs. With background on the composer, the inspiration behind the lyrics, scriptural references for devotional consideration, and a sampling of the song lyrics, this book brings forth the message of these great songs of the faith like never before!

The startling originality of Amazing Adventures of a Heart Surgeon is intrinsically imbued in its focus on historical ethics and esthetic theories. Author and cardiovascular surgeon Domingo Liotta provides a penetrating interpretation from the first millennium BC, considered a major mystery to the world, to modern science. He also discusses the early conception of cardiovascular system, the oxygenation of tissues, the mysterious medical power of shamanism, Taoism, Ugarit, the mythic lost city. It is in this unique melding of Science and humanism that Liotta vehemently intends the definition of a good medical doctor-while recounting the story of his remarkable life. These lectures portray Liotta's dedication in search of the hearts of studious and meditative youths reluctant to change their tools of comprehension and the strategies for mastering difficult-to-understand topics. Thus, Liotta's interests extend from pure science to many adjoining fields-such as philosophy, philology, theology, and education. He shares his knowledge of modern scientific results and his enormous historical information to help rescue his bewildered students. In a collaborative endeavor between science and humanities, Amazing Adventures of a Heart Surgeon reflects Liotta's marvelous adventure to develop the first totally artificial heart and its clinical application-the first in the history of mankind-in his tireless fight for human life.

To question the idea of hell as a default destination is to question the entire fundamentalist evangelical worldview. This book does just that. Fundamentalist evangelicalism holds that the Bible is an infallible authority and that all are born in sin. Sinners go to hell, but Jesus, taking their place, died to save them from hell. How did this belief come to be? What were the effects on people brought up with a belief in the reality of hell? What has been the process of people leaving the fundamentalist evangelical movement? In Bad Girls and Boys Go To Hell (or not), Gloria Neufeld Redekop takes us on her own personal journey as she engages a movement in which she was raised, conducting a careful study of the history of fundamentalist evangelicalism, the attachment to a literal-factual interpretation of the Bible, and an analysis of the experience of those who have left the movement.