An essential history of the influential men who have spearheaded the movement to erode the wall separating church and state.Beginning as far-left radicals during the 1960s, the theocons in Damon Linker’s book (including Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and George Weigel) gradually transitioned to conservatism when they grew frustrated with the failures of the decade’s revolutionary goals. Linker shows how, starting during the Reagan administration, they worked to forge a Christian alliance between Evangelical Protestants and Conservative Catholics. By injecting the language of faith into political life, this movement appealed to a wide swath of voters and ultimately played a central role in the election of George W. Bush. The Theocons is an absorbing and revelatory look at an ideological crusade that every American needs to know about.

After 9/11, the US response to Al-Qaeda - the Global War on Terror - was heavily influenced by the 'clash of civilizations' theory. This book identifies the twenty-first century proponents of the thesis, such as Bernard Lewis and Daniel Pipes, their links to the Bush government and their roles in exploiting hostility between the West and Islam.

An explosive examination of the coalition of forces that threatens the nation, from the bestselling author of American Dynasty In his two most recent bestselling books, American Dynasty and Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips established himself as a powerful critic of the political and economic forces that rule—and imperil—the United States, tracing the ever more alarming path of the emerging Republican majority’s rise to power. Now Phillips takes an uncompromising view of the current age of global overreach, fundamentalist religion, diminishing resources, and ballooning debt under the GOP majority. With an eye to the past and a searing vision of the future, Phillips confirms what too many Americans are still unwilling to admit about the depth of our misgovernment.

On the street and in the corridors of power, religion is surging worldwide. From Russia to Turkey to India, nations that swore off faith in the last century--or even tried to stamp it out--are now run by avowedly religious leaders. This book examines this new world, from exorcisms in São Paulo to religious skirmishing in Nigeria, to televangelism in California and house churches in China. Since the Enlightenment, intellectuals have assumed that modernization would kill religion--and that religious America is an oddity. As these authors argue, religion and modernity can thrive together, and America is becoming the norm. The failure of communism and the rise of globalism helped spark the global revival, but, above all, 21st century religion is being fueled by a very American emphasis on competition and a customer-driven approach to salvation, and its destabilizing effects can already be seen far from Iraq or the World Trade Center.--From publisher description.

War. Torture. Humiliation. Exploitation. Fear. Futility. The daily news is bleak. And it's not reserved to just one corner of the globe. World wide we are bombarded with graphic, emotionally-laden examples of inhumanity. These challenges to peace and freedom have become so commonplace that public and government responses are sedate or self-righteous. Meanwhile in more malevolent countries, manipulative politicians and sadistic terrorists have become skilled at exploiting this state of affairs. And we ignore it at our own peril. A World Ignited is about the surge of hatred that has swept the world in the last decade, its myriad causes, its toll in lives and human misery. This condition is amplified by modern communications technology, especially television and the Internet, and made more lethal by modern weaponry, including assault rifles and rocket launchers, and unprecedented tactics that strive for mass death and anguish. Anger is fed by economic disparities, religious and cultural wars that go back centuries, and deep-seated feelings of defeat and humiliation. The book takes aim at the Bush administration for its penchant for provocative and unilateral policies that have inspired unprecedented waves of anti-Americanism, but it also breaks new ground on both Bush's unsung role in combating worldwide anti-Semitism, and the role of the United States as the fount of hate on the Internet. The authors conclude this important and timely book in a positive manner with a look at the politics of hope and what can be done to halt, and even reverse, this cacophony of hate.

A brilliant biography of one of the intellectual mavericks of 20th Century Catholicism. Richard John Neuhaus (1936-2009) was one of the most influential figures in American public life from the Civil Rights era to the War on Terror. His writing, activism, and connections to people of power in religion, politics, and culture secured a place for himself and his ideas at the center of recent American history. William F. Buckley, Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith are comparable -- willing controversialists and prodigious writers adept at cultivating or castigating the powerful, while advancing lively arguments for the virtues and vices of the ongoing American experiment. But unlike Buckley and Galbraith, who have always been identified with singular political positions on the right and left, respectively, Neuhaus' life and ideas placed him at the vanguard of events and debates across the political and cultural spectrum. For instance, alongside Abraham Heschel and Daniel Berrigan, Neuhaus co-founded Clergy Concerned About Vietnam, in 1965. Forty years later, Neuhaus was the subject of a New York Review of Books article by Garry Wills, which cast him as a Rasputin of the far right, exerting dangerous influence in both the Vatican and the Bush White House. This book looks to examine Neuhaus's multi-faceted life and reveal to the public what made him tick and why.

Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture: Between Cultural Memory and Transmediality analyzes the presence and function of traces of religious narratives in contemporary western culture, from the perspective of cultural memory studies and the transmedial study of narrative and art.