For young people, the space of the drama classroom can be a space for deep learning as they struggle across difference to create something together with common purpose. Collaborating across institutions, theatres, and community spaces, the research in Hope in a Collapsing World mobilizes theatre to build its methodology and create new data with young people as they seek the language of performance to communicate their worries, fears, and dreams to a global network of researchers and a wider public. A collaboration between a social scientist and a playwright and using both ethnographic study and playwriting, Hope in a Collapsing World represents a groundbreaking hybrid format of research text and original script – titled Towards Youth: A Play on Radical Hope – for reading, experimentation, and performance.

Implosion: denial, delusion, and the prospect of collapse is a penetrating look at contemporary collective delusions slithering across the American landscape. A delusion is a false idea about the world, a kind of intellectual “trance.” When an individual suffers one, the diagnosis of mental illness is not far behind. When a nation labors under them, we have a state of collective mental instability. This odyssey explores five gargantuan delusions infecting the American psyche: our understanding of our democratic political system, the Iraq war, the perception of ourselves as an empire, the musical genre of hip-hop, and our extremely precarious financial condition. In the final chapter, “Slip-slidin to dystopia,” Dr. Kroth reviews the seven major signs of societal collapse. These factors are combined to form “the American Dystopia Index.” When one looks at this metric, the transformation of the American dream to an American nightmare seems all but assured should we not awaken from our myriad trance states in time. Reviews: Jerry Kroth’s book, Implosion, is so exciting that I had to stop reading it for a few minutes just to calm down. Kroth does for his readers just what he says the truth will do for us. He presents an utterly compelling case for seven deadly symptoms which combined will bring America down and the world with it. However, he does it so well and documents his work so meticulously, that the excitement of learning the truth renders reading implosion a thrilling experience. As Yeats said in his prescient poem, “the Second Coming “The centre cannot hold.” Kroth promises us a second coming of hope and possibility. He exposes our march towards destruction and also a path for reversing that. Implosion strips away our illusions and denials giving us the truth, a chance to reverse our deadly course, and also a reason to hope. —Harried Fraad, Ph.D., psychoanalytic psychotherapist author of Bringing it all back home Duped! is incredible. You will want to shove it up the nose of every pompous, conservative, right wing, born again, love it or leave it jerk you have ever met. Dr. Kroth continues to approach the unapproachable. He holds no punches in describing our American culture's blind xenophobia; telling ourselves we are the best while betraying our most basic common sense as the evidence piles up at our feet. We choose leaders who simply tell us what we wish we could believe, and continue to act in ways that shorten our lives, steal our money, and leave us less secure than ever. In this crisp criticism of our collective confusion, we see how we have all become the chickens praising Colonel Sanders. We are simply outgunned by short-term corporate and political profits and power from the getgo. I wish there were more like Dr. Kroth aboard think tanks, committees, and boardrooms across our land, but if there ever were, they are probably planted in the Nevada desert somewhere. Enjoy the ride before your nickel runs out. —Steve Stelle, author of On Shaky Ground Totally eye opening, and, frankly, a very scary narrative. I never realized how deluded we are, and how a thick cloud of denial covers over our public discourse. This is a necessary read for any conscious American. —M.S. Forrest, Ph.D., clinical psychotherapist.

The Civil War was arguably the watershed event in the history of the United States, forever changing the nature of the Republic and the relationship of individuals to their government. The war ended slavery and initiated the long road toward racial equality. The United States now stands at the sesquicentennial of that event, and its citizens attempt to arrive at an understanding of what that event meant to the past, present, and future of the nation. Few states had a greater impact on the outcome of the nation⿿s greatest calamity than Georgia. Georgia provided 125,000 soldiers for the Confederacy as well as thousands more for the Union cause. Also, many of the Confederacy⿿s most influential military and civilian leaders hailed from the state. Georgia was vital to the Confederate war effort because of its agricultural and industrial output. The Confederacy had little hope of winning without the farms and shops of the state. Moreover, the state was critical to the Southern infrastructure because of the river and rail links that crossed it and connected the western Confederacy to the eastern half. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the war was arguably decided in North Georgia with the Atlanta Campaign and Lincoln⿿s subsequent reelection. This campaign was the last forlorn hope for the Southern Republic and the Union⿿s greatest triumph. Despite the state⿿s importance to the Confederacy and the war⿿s ultimate outcome, not enough has been written concerning Georgia⿿s experience during those turbulent years. The essays in this volume attempt to redress this dearth of scholarship. They present a mosaic of events, places, and people, exploring the impact of the war on Georgia and its residents and demonstrating the importance of the state to the outcome of the Civil War.

Practically all Civil War historians agree that after the fall of Atlanta in September 1864 and Lincoln's triumphant reelection in November, the South had no remaining chance to make good its independence. Well aware that Appomattox and Durham Station were close at hand, historians have treated the war's final months in a fashion that smacks strongly of denouement: the great, tragic conflict rolls on to its now-certain end. ø Certain, that is, to us, but deeply uncertain to the millions of Northerners and Southerners who lived through the anxious days of early 1865. The final months of the Confederacy offer fascinating opportunities-as a case study in war termination, as a period that shaped the initial circumstances of Reconstruction, and as a lens through which to analyze Southern society at its most stressful moment. The Collapse of the Confederacy collects six essays that explore how popular expectations, national strategy, battlefield performance, and Confederate nationalism affected Confederate actions during the final months of the conflict.

We have reached the point no return on planet Earth, where the collective intent for biosphere collapse is manifesting at dizzying speed. From widespread social unrest to aggressive threats of nuclear war, to pollution soiling every inch of the planet (and beyond), to mass animal and plant extinction, global overpopulation, and runaway biosphere decay. Many powerful forces are converging to create unprecedented chaos and breakdown. In her outspoken way, Deb Ozarko exposes the madness of the cultural conditioning that has separated humanity from the web of life that sustains existence. In raw, yet eloquent detail, she makes it impossible for the reader to dismiss this truth for themselves. The question we are now faced with is, "How do we choose to live in a dying world?" Many people consider "hope" to be the fuel of possibility. If one doesn't have hope, possibility dies. Beyond Hope debunks this long-standing myth and liberates the reader to choose a more powerful way. Beyond Hope is a profound act of love. Beyond a simple litany of all that is in collapse, Deb's perspective compels us to awaken to something beyond our abilities to tell stories about what is happening "out there" and begin to turn the formidable power of our attention to what is happening "in here" ... inside, where we live. Inside, where we are already whole, unique and essential to our world. This is where our deepest power lies. Beyond Hope is not a book of science, philosophy or reason to appease the oppressive intellect. It's a book about letting go. Letting go of the fear of uncertainty. Letting go of false hope for an illusory future. Letting go of the dream for a collective awakening. Letting go of the stories of what may or may not be. Letting go of what once defined meaning. Letting go of the fear of mortality. Letting go of what we've been conditioned to believe ourselves to be. Letting go of our broken, dysfunctional world. We no longer have the luxury of time to lie to ourselves or each other anymore. We can no longer defer or delay taking a long, hard look at what we have allowed ourselves to become. We can no longer rationalize the irrational, or deny the undeniable. The greatest gift that runaway biosphere decay offers lies in the density and intensity of its press for us to notice how personal it all is. It can be a profound propellant to move us into our own evolution in a non-incremental, non-linear way. Beyond Hope is written from the Soul, for the Soul. As such, it is profoundly intimate-both in its writing and in its reading. Those who dare to read it, engage it, and act on it, will be transformed.

He was one of the most embattled heads of state in American history. Charged with building a new nation while waging a war for its very independence, he accepted his responsibilities reluctantly but carried them out with a fierce dedication to his ideals. Those efforts ultimately foundered on the shoals of Confederate defeat, leaving Davis stranded in public memory as both valiant leader and desolate loser. Now two renowned Civil War historians, Herman Hattaway and Richard Beringer, take a new and closer look at Davis's presidency. In the process, they provide a clearer image of his leadership and ability to handle domestic, diplomatic, and military matters under the most trying circumstances-without the considerable industrial and population resources of the North and without the formal recognition of other nations. Hattaway and Beringer examine Davis's strengths and weaknesses as president in light of both traditional evidence and current theories of presidential leadership. They show us a man so respected that northern colleagues regretted his departure from the U.S. Senate, but so bent on Southern independence he was willing to impose unthinkable burdens on his citizens-an apologist for slavery who was committed to state rights, even while growing nationalism in his new country called for a stronger central government. In assessing Davis's actual administration of the Confederate state, the authors analyze the Confederate government's constitution, institutions, infrastructure, and cabinet-level administrators. They also integrate events of Davis's presidency with the ongoing war as it encroached upon the South, offering a panoramic view of military strategy as seen from the president's office. They tell how Davis reacted to the outcomes of key battles and campaigns in order to assess his leadership abilities, his relations with civilian and military authorities, and-his own personal competency notwithstanding-his poor judgment in selecting generals. Rich in detail and exhilaratingly told with generous selections from Davis's own letters and speeches, Hattaway and Beringer provide the most insightful account available of the first and only Confederate presidency-suggesting that perhaps it was the Confederate government, rather than Davis himself, that failed. More than that, it shows us Jefferson Davis as an American leader and offers a new appreciation of his place in our country's history.

A secret older than religion, or a more recent delusion? Hired to find the witness to a crime, PI John Daly soon realizes he hasn’t been told everything. With the Vatican and local mobsters also on the man’s trail, does his loyalty to a client of questionable sanity outweigh his religious devotion and his chance at redemption?