This book is written from a personal coming of age perspective. It shares the many years and stages of a non-believer and the radical transformation to a believer. Though many of the stories can be quite embarrassing for the author at times, he feels it is imperative to share his memories, leaving nothing out, with a no holds barred approach revealing a lifestyle worth of much shame. The transformation is the key to the story, as he is led by the Holy Spirit. As his story develops, life then takes on new meaning and he admires how God works His providence, trusting in His will to be done. Lives can change, as you will see, but that does not mean there wont be opposition. As you will come to learn through Blue Collar Believer, sometimes the biggest obstacles come with the ones you love the most. It takes the reality of life, which is death, and this is the only tool to give the afterlife serious thought. Though we can appeal to the intellect, it is up to the Holy Spirt to convict the heart. As an ambassadors for Christ, we must always be ready for opportunities to defend the gospel, showing love and compassion. We live in a lost and dying world, and if only it were easy to share the Gospel and get a positive response 100% of the time, but as you will see, this just not is the case. Jesus said, He who has ears, let him hear. Unfortunately most ears who hear are deaf, but that does not mean we give up. Persistence and love for the lost can do wonders and all things are possible with God. Journey with Blue Collar Believer, from beginning to end and be guided on a tour with a testimony that will not soon be forgotten. It is an emotional roller coaster, filled with many ups and downs. You will laugh, you will cry, but more importantly, it will get you to think. If you have to see it to believe it, get ready to experience it for yourself through the words of a Blue Collar Believer.

Red Neck, Blue Collar, Atheist - Simple Thoughts About Reason, Gods and Faith follows in the footsteps of recent best-sellers such as Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great, Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, and Sam Harris' The End of Faith. Whereas Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris have written mainly about the rational basis, the WHY of atheism, this book looks at the HOW - how it feels, how it works, from the inside. Coming from a writer who grew up in Texas and worked as a real cowboy and draft horse teamster (the cover picture even shows the author riding a bull!), as well as a carpenter, roofer and truck driver, the book is based on decades of examining the process in his own mind as he moved from Christianity to atheism. Putting it simply, here are some of the things an atheist might think, and the way he or she might think them. More than once called a master of metaphor in the blogosphere, author Hank Fox tackles the subject of atheism with subtle humor and a friendly, informal tone, in two dozen chapters with names like Sundae Worship, The Parable of the M&Ms, Batman Almighty, The Wellspring of the Gods, Sucking Up to the Virgin Mary, The Evidence of True Things, The Headwaters of Reality, Hello Mr. Death, and Saying Goodbye to Gods. Primarily aimed at young adults, especially those from religious backgrounds and new to thinking about atheism and freethought, this book will also provide ammunition for those of a more intellectual bent faced with the necessity of explaining atheism in simple terms to friends and relatives. Best of all, the book focuses not just on the negatives of religion, but on the positives of atheism - the freedom and mental clarity for individuals, but also the hopeful future for our entire world as we proceed with a social revolution already in progress.

Stupid is the new smart—but it wasn’t always so Popular culture has divorced itself from the life of the mind. Who has time for great books or deep thought when there is Jersey Shore to watch, a txt 2 respond 2, and World of Warcraft to play? At the same time, those who pursue the life of the mind have insulated themselves from popular culture. Speaking in insider jargon and writing unread books, intellectuals have locked themselves away in a ghetto of their own creation. It wasn’t always so. Blue Collar Intellectuals vividly captures a time in the twentieth century when the everyman aspired to high culture and when intellectuals descended from the ivory tower to speak to the everyman. Author Daniel J. Flynn profiles thinkers from working-class backgrounds who played a prominent role in American life by addressing their intellectual work to a mass audience. Blue Collar Intellectuals tells the fascinating story of the unschooled hobo who migrated from skid row anonymity to White House chats with the president and prime-time TV specials. Blue Collar Intellectuals tells the fascinating story of: •The scandalous teacher-student romance that spawned a half-century labor of love in writing the history of the world. •The Ivy League Ph.D. who held neither a high school nor college degree, and fittingly launched a renaissance in reading the great books outside of formal schools. •The scholarship student who experienced the free market firsthand waiting tables and peddling socks, and who became one of capitalism’s most influential exponents. •The impoverished outcast who became the poet of the pulps, elevating millions of readers along with heretofore marginal genres. Guiding us through a world now vanished, Flynn causes us to look anew at our own digital age and its nostrums: Video gaming is just a new form of literacy, Reality shows . . . Challenge our emotional intelligence, and Who cares if Johnny can’t read? The value of books is overstated. Blue Collar Intellectuals shows us how much everyone intellectual and everyman alike has suffered from mass culture’s crowding out of higher things and the elite’s failure to engage the masses.

The MPs’ expenses scandal in England and Wales and the international banking crisis have both brought into focus a concern about ‘elite’ individuals and their treatment by criminal justice systems. This interest intersects with a well-established concern within criminology for the transgressions of such offenders. However, up until now there has been little sustained consideration of what happens to such offenders following conviction and little discussion of how they attempt to avoid reoffending in the wake of their punishment. This study rectifies this omission by drawing upon white-collar offenders’ own accounts of their punishment and their attempts to make new lives in the aftermath of it. Detailing the impact of imprisonment on white-collar offenders, their release from prison and efforts to be successful again, this book outlines the particular strategies white-collar offenders used to cope with the difficulties they encountered and also analyses the ways they tried to work out ‘who they were’ in the post-release worlds they found themselves in. Representing the first sustained qualitative study of white-collar offenders and desistance from crime, this book will be of interest to academics and students engaged in the study of white-collar crime, desistance from crime and prison. The insights it offers into a particular group of offenders’ experience of criminal justice would also make it useful for criminal justice practitioners and anyone who wishes to understand the challenges faced by a group of offenders who are assumed to have many advantages when it comes to desisting from crime.

A celebrated historian recounts Hubert Humphrey’s role as a liberal hero of twentieth-century America Hubert Humphrey was liberalism’s most dedicated defender, and its most public and tragic sacrifice. As a young politician in 1948, he defied segregationists and forced the Democratic Party to commit itself to civil rights. As a senator in 1964, he made good on that commitment by helping pass the Civil Rights Act. But as Lyndon B. Johnson’s vice president, his support for the war in Vietnam made him a target for both Right and Left, and he suffered a shattering loss in the presidential election of 1968. Though Humphrey’s defeat was widely seen as the end of America’s era of liberal optimism, he never gave up. Even after his humiliation on the most public stage, he crafted a new vision of economic justice to counter the yawning political divisions consuming American politics. This biography reveals a deep-dyed idealist willing to compromise and even fight ugly in pursuit of a better society. Elegantly crafted and strikingly relevant to the present, True Believer celebrates Hubert Humphrey’s long struggle for justice for all.

This book not only tells about the hardships and tributes of the life of John Calvert but also gives an in-depth view of the educational system today from the eyes of a man who has been involved with it almost fifty years. It includes concerns and complaints from many people in several states in the country, who have seen issues in the system as well and voice their views and hope to be heard. It takes every position in the school--from student, parent, all the way to principal, teacher, and superintendent--and holds them accountable for what is happening in the schools today, giving them a new perspective of what the public really thinks and lets them know what is being said about them. One of the most important things that this book does is give a brilliant example of how schools should be run by providing the plans and activities that have actually worked for years! This includes copies of letters given to students and parents, the discipline policies that work, and the in-school suspension handbook that John and others have lived by to make their schools successful.

Too often people believe that they have to be perfect to be forgiven, but Christ came to save the lost. Just because an alcoholic accepts Christ though, or goes to AA, does not mean he will necessarily be able to stop his addictions. Learn about the poignant struggle of one believer and what the Bible really has to say about addiction, Heaven and Hell, and who Jesus really is.