Terri Apter reveals how everyday judgments impact our relationships and how praise, blame, and shame shape our sense of self. Do you know that praise is essential to the growth of a healthy brain? That experiences of praise and blame affect how long we live? That the conscious and unconscious judgments we engage in every day began as a crucial survival technique? Do you think people shouldn’t be judgmental? But, how judgmental are you, and how does this impact your relationships? “Keenly perceptive” (The Atlantic) psychologist and writer Terri Apter reveals how everyday judgments impact our relationships, and how praise, blame, and shame shape our sense of self. Our obsession with praise and blame begins soon after birth. Totally dependent on others, rapidly we learn to value praise, and to fear the consequences of blame. Despite outgrowing an infant’s dependence, we continue to monitor others’ judgments of us, and we ourselves develop what relational psychologist Terri Apter calls a “judgment meter,” which constantly scans people and our interactions with them, and registers a positive or negative opinion. In Passing Judgment, Apter reveals how interactions between parents and children, within couples, and among friends and colleagues are permeated with praise and blame that range far beyond specific compliments and accusations. Drawing on three decades of research, Apter gives us the tools to learn about our personal needs, goals and values, to manage our biases, to tolerate others’ views, and to make sense of our most powerful, and often confusing, responses to ourselves and to others.

George Jean Nathan (1882-1958) was formative influence on American letters in the first half of this century, and is generally considered the leading drama critic of his era. With H. L. Mencken, Nathan edited The Smart Set and founded and edited The American Mercury, journals that shaped opinion in the 1920s and 1930s. This series of reprints, individually introduced by the distinguished critic and novelist Charles Angoff, collects Nathan's penetrating, witty, and sometimes cynical drama criticism.

In Passing Judgment, Helene Bilis examines how an overlooked character-type--the royal judge--remained a constant of the tragic genre throughout the 17th century.

As the national debate between Hollywood and the Christian Coalition heats up, one man must battle an entire town's prejudice to find a fundamentalist killer. With the U.S. presidential campaign in full swing and the players ranging from the Hollywood elite to the Religious Right, Passing Judgment is a novel poised on the border between politics and religion. In this charged atmosphere, New Spirit stands at the center of Southern Christian fundamentalism, a high-profile showplace where everyone knows one another but no one is quite what he seems. And these followers and residents of New Spirit are clashing with their local devil...Baird Lowen. A highly acclaimed Hollywood director forced into early retirement as a result of tragedy on the set of his last masterpiece, Baird is content to fish for bass in the nearby pond and write incendiary articles about New Spirit. But when the fiery death of a fellow detractor spurs Baird to find the murderers, he must first uncover a plot of extortion that circles back on his own troubled past. National anti-drug crusader and gubernatorial hopeful Roy Duncan is the right-hand man to New Spirit's Reverend Frederick Prescott, and both are suspects in Baird's private search for the killers. But it is Roy who seeks Baird out with an offer he really can't refuse: Find Roy's blackmailer or suffer the exposure of his own tragic secret. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

At head of title: National Cooperative Highway Research Program.

In ZeroTheology, John Tucker argues that not only can one be a Christian without holding any traditional beliefs but that one can only be a Christian by getting out of religious belief altogether. Utilizing the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, John offers a way of escaping the belief/disbelief trap that explains why believers and unbelievers cannot understand each other and why neither understands the alternative religious path that the author promotes. Tucker addresses many of today’s most pressing religious questions and introduces his own: Why do evangelicals believe that homosexual fidelity is more harmful to marriage than heterosexual infidelity? Why are believers so bothered by science and so impressed by miracles? What if Sin and Grace are synonyms? What if Jesus is sinless in an ironic way? What is the difference between making judgments and passing judgment? Why does the literal versus metaphorical debate completely miss the point of religious language? Using Catch–22s, ZeroTheology offers a new way of looking at Christian religious life that emphasizes the non–reasonable transcendent choice over the perfectly reasonable choice of belief or unbelief.