This first book in the Sowers Trilogy follows the extraordinary triumphs and hardships of two brave young Russians in search of political and spiritual freedom.

Knowledge Is Power Knowledge is power, Unique as a flower. Add education too, For wisdom to shine thru. To seek and to yearn, For humbleness to learn. Then share what you know, For others to grow!

The way we live, work, and die-alone and with other Americans-have so many hidden layers that we might as well say that there are two Americas: one we think we know and the other virtually unknown to us. Such a thought is compelling enough to motivate a sociologist to start writing down what he thinks about the hidden America. Then, what emerges from this effort is a picture of America that is at once so familiar and so alien. It is the alien part of America that troubles us, that scares us, and that pushes us to escape into louder, more colorful, and more pleasant unreality. As our escapism becomes more urgent each day, so does its testimony to the emptiness and loneliness of our solitary existence. Huer discusses this alien part of America in American Paradise.

The book examines individual and collective visions for the material world of children, from utopian dreams for the citizens of the future to the dark realities of political conflict and exploitation. Surveying more than 100 years of toys, clothing, playgrounds, schools, children's hospitals, nurseries, furniture, posters, animation and books, this richly illustrated catalogue illuminates how progressive design has enhanced the physical, intellectual, and emotional development of children and, conversely, how models of children's play have informed experimental aesthetics and imaginative design thinking.

Building the Human City is a first overview of the award-winning yet quite diverse works of Jesuit philosopher William F. Lynch. Writing from the 1950s to the mid-1980s, Lynch was among the first to warn against the fierce polarizations prevalent in our culture wars and political life. He called for a transformation of artistic and intellectual sensibilities and imaginations through the healing discernments and critical ironies of an Ignatian (and Socratic) spirituality. Yet the breadth of his concerns (from cinema and literature to mental health and hope to secularization and faith) as well as the depth of his thought (philosophical as much as theological) led to little initial awareness of the overall vision uniting his writings. This book, while exploring that vision, also argues that the spirituality Lynch proposes is more needed today than when he first wrote.