An ISIS terrorist planned to kill more than 500 people. He would have succeeded except for three American friends who refused to give in to fear. On August 21, 2015, Ayoub El-Khazzani boarded train #9364 in Brussels, bound for Paris. There could be no doubt about his mission: he had an AK-47, a pistol, a box cutter, and enough ammunition to obliterate every passenger on board. Slipping into the bathroom in secret, he armed his weapons. Another major ISIS attack was about to begin. Khazzani wasn't expecting Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos, and Spencer Stone. Stone was a martial arts enthusiast and airman first class in the US Air Force, Skarlatos was a member of the Oregon National Guard, and all three were fearless. But their decision-to charge the gunman, then overpower him even as he turned first his gun, then his knife, on Stone-depended on a lifetime of loyalty, support, and faith. Their friendship was forged as they came of age together in California: going to church, playing paintball, teaching each other to swear, and sticking together when they got in trouble at school. Years later, that friendship would give all of them the courage to stand in the path of one of the world's deadliest terrorist organizations. The 15:17 to Paris is an amazing true story of friendship and bravery, of near tragedy averted by three young men who found the heroic unity and strength inside themselves at the moment when they, and 500 other innocent travelers, needed it most.

Religious liberty is usually examined within a larger discussion of church-state relations, but Thomas Kselman looks at several individuals in Restoration France whose high-profile conversions fascinated their contemporaries. Exploring their reasons and the repercussions they faced, Kselman demonstrates how this expanded sense of liberty informs our secular age.

Apostles of Empire contributes to ongoing research on the Jesuits, New France, and Atlantic World encounters, as well as on early modern French society, print culture, Catholicism, and imperialism.

Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.

A look at the history of censorship, science, and magic from the Middle Ages to the post-Reformation era. Neil Tarrant challenges conventional thinking by looking at the longer history of censorship, considering a five-hundred-year continuity of goals and methods stretching from the late eleventh century to well into the sixteenth. Unlike earlier studies, Defining Nature’s Limits engages the history of both learned and popular magic. Tarrant explains how the church developed a program that sought to codify what was proper belief through confession, inquisition, and punishment and prosecuted what they considered superstition or heresy that stretched beyond the boundaries of religion. These efforts were continued by the Roman Inquisition, established in 1542. Although it was designed primarily to combat Protestantism, from the outset the new institution investigated both practitioners of “illicit” magic and inquiries into natural philosophy, delegitimizing certain practices and thus shaping the development of early modern science. Describing the dynamics of censorship that continued well into the post-Reformation era, Defining Nature's Limits is revisionist history that will interest scholars of the history science, the history of magic, and the history of the church alike.

Francesco Colonna's weird, erotic, allegorical antiquarian tale, "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili", together with all of its 174 original woodcut illustrations, has been called the first "stream of consciousness" novel and was one of the most important documents of Renaissance imagination and fantasy. The author -- presumed to be a friar of dubious reputation -- was obsessed by architecture, landscape and costume (it is not going too far to say sexually obsessed) and its woodcuts are a primary source for Renaissance ideas.

“A wonderful portrait of Miller in his heyday: full of beans and braggadocio, overflowing with the lust to live and write.”—Erica Jong His years in Paris were the making of Henry Miller. He arrived with no money, no fixed address, and no prospects. He left as the renowned if not notorious author of Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. Miller didn’t just live in Paris—he devoured it. It was a world he shared with Brassaï, whose work, first collected in Paris by Night, established him as one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century and the most exquisite and perceptive chronicler of Parisian vice. In Miller, Brassaï found his most compelling subject. Henry Miller: The Paris Years is an intimate account of a writer’s self-discovery, seen through the unblinking eye of a master photographer. Brassaï delves into Miller’s relationships with Anaïs Nin and Lawrence Durrell, as well as his hopelessly tangled though wildly inspiring marriage to June. He uncovers a side of the man scarcely known to the public, and through this careful portrait recreates a bright and swift-moving era. Most of all, Brassaï evokes their shared passion for the street life of the City of Light, captured in a dazzling moment of illumination.