New York Times Bestseller! From the man who became Pope Francis, Jorge Mario Bergoglio shares his thoughts on religion, reason, and the challenges the world faces in the 21st century with Abraham Skorka, a rabbi and biophysicist. For years Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Argentina, and Rabbi Abraham Skorka were tenacious promoters of interreligious dialogues on faith and reason. They both sought to build bridges among Catholicism, Judaism, and the world at large. On Heaven and Earth, originally published in Argentina in 2010, brings together a series of these conversations where both men talked about various theological and worldly issues, including God, fundamentalism, atheism, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and globalization. From these personal and accessible talks comes a first-hand view of the man who would become pope to 1.2 billion Catholics around the world in March 2013.

We are all haunted by the call, indeed command, to pray - to pray fervently, and without ceasing. And yet, people who pray are in constant search of a proven pattern, that gives power, and meaning, to this noblest of disciplines. Encompassing all of the essential elements of meaningful communion, and communication between Maker and man, in Heaven To Earth, Pastor Anthony Mangun distills more than fifty years of ministry - marked by the preaching and practice of intercessory prayer - down to just such a pattern. Mining the true meaning in each of the Divinely designed pieces of furniture found in the Tabernacle of Moses in the Old Testament, Pastor Mangun marks for us, a clear path into God's presence.

A powerful, epic novel of four friends as they grapple with desire, youth, death, and faith in a sweeping story by the international bestselling author of The Solitude of Prime Numbers “Perfect, moving, honest, brilliant, with characters who feel like old friends.” –Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer prize-winning author of Less "Heaven and Earth is a stunning achievement and confirms him as an electrifying presence in contemporary fiction.” –André Aciman, author of Call Me By Your Name and Find Me Every summer Teresa follows her father to his childhood home in Puglia, down in the heel of Italy, a land of relentless, shimmering heat, centuries-old olive groves and families who have lived there for generations. She spends long afternoons enveloped in a sunstruck stupor, reading her grandmother's paperbacks. Everything changes the summer she meets the three boys who live on the farm next door: Nicola, Tommaso and Bern - the man Teresa will love for the rest of her life. Raised like brothers on a farm that feels to Teresa almost suspended in time, the three boys share a complex, intimate and seemingly unassailable bond. But no bond is unbreakable and no summer truly endless, as Teresa soon discovers. Because there is resentment underneath the surface of that strange brotherhood, a twisted kind of love that protects a dark secret. And when Bern - the enigmatic, restless gravitational centre of the group - commits a brutal act of revenge, not even a final pilgrimage to the edge of the world will be enough to bring back those perfect, golden hours in the shadow of the olive trees. An unforgettable story of enduring love, the bonds between men, and the all-too-human search for meaning, Heaven and Earth is Paolo Giordano at his best: an author capable of unveiling the depths of the human soul, who has now given us the old-fashioned pleasure of a big, sprawling novel in which to lose ourselves.

DJ is David McLean's eldest grandson, so it stands to reason that he be the one to scatter his beloved grandfather's ashes. At least that's how DJ sees it. He's always been the best at everything—sports, school, looking after his fatherless family—so climbing Kilimanjaro is just another thing he'll accomplish almost effortlessly. Or so he thinks, until he arrives in Tanzania and everything starts to go wrong. He's detained at immigration, he gets robbed, his climbing group includes an old lady and he gets stuck with the first ever female porter. Forced to go polepole (slowly), DJ finds out the hard way that youth, fitness level and drive have nothing to do with success on the mountain—or in life. DJ's adventures start in Jungle Land, part of The Seven Prequels and continue in Sleeper, part of The Seven Sequels.

An approach to understanding religion that draws on both humanities and natural science but rejects approaches that employ simple monisms and radical dualisms. In Beyond Heaven and Earth, Gabriel Levy argues that collective religious narratives and beliefs are part of nature; they are the basis for the formation of the narratives and beliefs of individuals. Religion grows out of the universe, but to make sense of it we have to recognize the paradox that the universe is both mental and material (or neither). We need both humanities and natural science approaches to study religion and religious meaning, Levy contends, but we must also recognize the limits of these approaches. First, we must make the dominant metaphysics that undergird the various disciplines of science and humanities more explicit, and second, we must reject those versions of metaphysics that maintain simple monisms and radical dualisms. Bringing Donald Davidson’s philosophy—a form of pragmatism known as anomalous monism—to bear on religion, Levy offers a blueprint for one way that the humanities and natural sciences can have a mutually respectful dialogue. Levy argues that in order to understand religions we have to take their semantic content seriously. We need to rethink such basic concepts as narrative fiction, information, agency, creativity, technology, and intimacy. In the course of his argument, Levy considers the relation between two closely related semantics, fiction and religion, and outlines a new approach to information. He then applies his theory to discrete cases: ancient texts, modern media, and intimacy.

What happens to us when we die? Will heaven be a place of fluffy clouds, angels and cherubs playing harps? Is the Christian faith just about securing a place in heaven when we die? In What on Earth is Heaven? James Paul explores the radical truth of what the Bible says about heaven and the afterlife, and its relevance for your life here and now on earth. Unpacking the biblical story of the separation and reunion of heaven and earth, he shows that heaven isn't a place somewhere 'out there' but a dimension of reality - the dimension where God's will is done. The Good News isn't that we get to escape to heaven, but that God invites us to be a part of his plan to bring the kingdom of heaven to our square inch of the earth. Insightful and accessible, What on Earth is Heaven? is a book for anyone wanting a deeper understanding of the Bible's teaching on heaven, or anyone who has wondered about the true meaning of finding heaven on earth. Life-affirming and uplifting, this book will fire your imagination as to how you can be a part of bringing heaven to the world around you.

Climate, sea level, and ice sheets have always changed, and the changes observed today are less than those of the past. Climate changes are cyclical and are driven by the Earth's position in the galaxy, the sun, wobbles in the Earth's orbit, ocean currents, and plate tectonics. In previous times, atmospheric carbon dioxide was far higher than at present but did not drive climate change. No runaway greenhouse effect or acid oceans occurred during times of excessively high carbon dioxide. During past glaciations, carbon dioxide was higher than it is today. The non-scientific popular political view is that humans change climate. Do we have reason for concern about possible human-induced climate change? This book's 504 pages and over 2,300 references to peer-reviewed scientific literature and other authoritative sources engagingly synthesize what we know about the sun, earth, ice, water, and air. Importantly, in a parallel to his 1994 book challenging "creation science," Telling Lies for God, Ian Plimer describes Al Gore's book and movie An Inconvenient Truth as long on scientific "misrepresentations." "Trying to deal with these misrepresentations is somewhat like trying to argue with creationists," he writes, "who misquote, concoct evidence, quote out of context, ignore contrary evidence, and create evidence ex nihilo."