Fighting for Virtue investigates how Thailand's judges were tasked by the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX) in 2006 with helping to solve the country's intractable political problems—and what happened next. Across the last decade of Rama IX's rule, Duncan McCargo examines the world of Thai judges: how they were recruited, trained, and promoted, and how they were socialized into a conservative world view that emphasized the proximity between the judiciary and the monarchy. McCargo delves into three pivotal freedom of expression cases that illuminate Thai legal and cultural understandings of sedition and treason, before examining the ways in which accusations of disloyalty made against controversial former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra came to occupy a central place in the political life of a deeply polarized nation. The author navigates the highly contentious role of the Constitutional Court as a key player in overseeing and regulating Thailand's political order before concluding with reflections on the significance of the Bhumibol era of "judicialization" in Thailand. In the end, posits McCargo, under a new king, who appears far less reluctant to assert his own power and authority, the Thai courts may now assume somewhat less significance as a tool of the monarchical network.

New insights into the interplay of American politics, religion, sex, and revolution in the 18th century.

Archbishop Averky addresses head on the question, "What is asceticism?" He counters the many false understandings that exist and shows that the practice of authentic asceticism is integral to the spiritual life and the path to blessed communion with God.

Fighting Poverty with Virtue Moral Reform and America's Urban Poor, 1825-2000 Joel Schwartz The emergence, decline, and resurgence of moral reform in addressing urban poverty in the United States. This book is both a historical and a contemporary study of attempts to promote the self-reliance and prosperity of America's urban poor by encouraging the practice of familiar virtues such as diligence, sobriety, thrift, and familial responsibility. In Part One Joel Schwartz considers the efforts of four 19th-century moral reformers who expounded this strategy--Joseph Tuckerman, Robert M. Hartley, Charles Loring Brace, and Josephine Shaw Lowell. Schwartz examines what they did (and why they did it), the obstacles they faced, their successes and failures in confronting them. Part Two describes the 20th-century critique of moral reform. Drawing from the work of figures such as Jane Addams, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Frances Fox Piven, Schwartz traces the rise of a belief that the virtues promoted by the moral reformers were individualistic and "bourgeois," hence inapplicable to the lives of the poor. Part Three assesses African Americans' historical commitment to the virtues of the moral reformers, which are apparent in the writings of figures as divergent as Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Dubois, and Malcolm X. Moving to the present, the author discusses the renewed commitment to a self-help strategy for fighting poverty evident in the widespread interest in the work of faith-based charities and in recent shifts in public policy. He concludes by assessing the reasons to be hopeful, but also to be skeptical, of the success of that strategy. Joel Schwartz is a program officer in the Division of Research Programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities and a contributing editor of Philanthropy. In addition to teaching political science at the universities of Michigan, Toronto, and Virginia, he has served as executive editor of The Public Interest, visiting research associate at the Statistical Assessment Service, and research fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. He has published widely in political philosophy and public policy. Contents Introduction: What Moral Reform Is, and Why It's Important Part One: Moral Reform in the Past Principles and Intentions: Why Moral Reform Was Undertaken The Virtues Taught by the Moral Reformers Why Moral Reform Was Hard to Achieve Part Two: The Critique and Rejection of Moral Reform The Decline of Laissez-Faire and the Critique of Moral Reform The Rejection of Moral Reform African Americans, Irish Americans, and Moral Reform: Historical Considerations The Contemporary Climate for Moral Reform The Contemporary Practice of Moral Reform Urban Ministries, Public Policy, and the Promotion of Virtue

An Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick "Adeyemi has sparked magic once again." —The New York Times After battling the impossible, Zélie and Amari have finally succeeded in bringing magic back to the land of Orïsha. But the ritual was more powerful than they could’ve imagined, reigniting the powers of not only the maji, but of nobles with magic ancestry, too. Now, Zélie struggles to unite the maji in an Orïsha where the enemy is just as powerful as they are. But when the monarchy and military unite to keep control of Orïsha, Zélie must fight to secure Amari's right to the throne and protect the new maji from the monarchy's wrath. With civil war looming on the horizon, Zélie finds herself at a breaking point: she must discover a way to bring the kingdom together or watch as Orïsha tears itself apart. Children of Virtue and Vengeance is the stunning sequel to Tomi Adeyemi's New York Times-bestselling debut Children of Blood and Bone, the first book in the Legacy of Orïsha trilogy. Praise for Children of Virtue and Vengeance: “Electrifying . . . With this second book Adeyemi brings a new maturity and depth to the series. Her characters are no longer underdogs on a hero’s journey to return magic―now they are leaders who are suffering from the consequences and trauma of their previous quest.” ―The New York Times “Like its predecessor, Children of Virtue and Vengeance is fast-paced and unafraid to ask tough questions about the cyclical nature of oppression and the systems that enforce it.” ―TIME “Relentless even beyond its finish, this is a sure-fire hit.” ―Booklist, starred review - The Complete Legacy of Orïsha Series: Children of Blood and Bone (Book 1) Children of Virtue and Vengeance (Book 2) Children of Anguish and Anarchy (Book 3)

The best-selling author of Creating Love sets out to redefine what it means to live a moral life in today's world by helping readers reclaim and cultivate their inborn moral intelligence by developing one's instincts for goodness in childhood and nurturing them through one's adult life to promote good character and moral responsibility.

For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken’s “booboisie” and David Brooks’s “bobos”—all have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues, a magnum opus that offers a radical view: capitalism is good for us. McCloskey’s sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities—from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich—overturns every assumption we have about being bourgeois. Can you be virtuous and bourgeois? Do markets improve ethics? Has capitalism made us better as well as richer? Yes, yes, and yes, argues McCloskey, who takes on centuries of capitalism’s critics with her erudition and sheer scope of knowledge. Applying a new tradition of “virtue ethics” to our lives in modern economies, she affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults and celebrates the bourgeois lives we actually live, without supposing that they must be lives without ethical foundations. High Noon, Kant, Bill Murray, the modern novel, van Gogh, and of course economics and the economy all come into play in a book that can only be described as a monumental project and a life’s work. The Bourgeois Virtues is nothing less than a dazzling reinterpretation of Western intellectual history, a dead-serious reply to the critics of capitalism—and a surprising page-turner.