![]() ![]() He endeavored to show that the Christian God, far from being blameworthy, is actually a source of solace and strength. Augustine wrote City of God in part to rebut this notion. Many Romans interpreted the sack as punishment for abandoning the traditional gods and goddesses in favor of the new state religion, Christianity. Not only a calamity for the city’s citizens, the attack was symbolic of a crumbling empire. The city’s walls had not been breached in eight hundred years. When the Visigoths, led by Alaric, sacked and plundered Rome, its citizens were deeply shocked and devastated. Up to that point, the Roman Empire had dominated Mediterranean civilization for nearly a thousand years. Completed by the year 426 (CE), City of God took Augustine at least a decade to write.Ĭity of God is, in at least some broad sense, a response to the trauma of the Visigoth attack on Rome in 410. The work covers, among other topics, theodicy, civil and natural theology, the history of creation, philosophy of history, eschatology, and martyrdom. Augustine’s City of God is arguably the first magnum opus of Christian philosophy. ![]()
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![]() ![]() Being gameful means bringing the same psychological strengths we naturally display when we play games-such as optimism, creativity, courage, and determination-to real-world situations. ![]() She explains how we can cultivate new powers of recovery and resilience in everyday life simply by adopting a gameful mind-set. In this book, McGonigal reveals a decade’s worth of scientific research into the ways all games change how we respond to stress, challenge, and pain. Today more than 400,000 people have played SuperBetter to get happier and healthier.īut the ideas behind SuperBetter are much bigger than just one game. These rules became a digital game, then an online portal and a major research study with the National Institutes of Health. What started as a simple motivational exercise became a set of rules she shared on her blog. ![]() But rather than let herself sink further, she decided to get better by doing what she does best: she turned her recovery process into a game. Unable to think clearly, or work, or even get out of bed, she became anxious and depressed, even suicidal-a common symptom for concussion sufferers. In 2009, game designer and author Jane McGonigal suffered a severe concussion that wouldn’t heal. A remarkable life plan developed from the program four hundred thousand people have used to recover from setbacks and injuries and achieve personal growth ![]() ![]() ![]() The Tarahumara (pronounced Spanish-style, taramara by swallowing the “hu”) didn’t work out, or stretch, or protect their feet. Their curious appearance matched their mysterious legend-that they defy every known rule of physical conditioning and still speed along for hundreds of miles. ![]() They were Tarahumara Indians from the Copper Canyons region of northwestern Mexico. They weren’t stretching or warming up or showing the faintest sign that they were about to start one of the most grueling ultramarathons in the world. The Leadville ultra, you could say, is closer to mountaineering than marathoning.īut there, next to the carefully pulse-monitored and Polar-Fleeced top seeds at the 1993 starting line, were a half-dozen middle-aged guys in togas, smoking butts and shooting the breeze, deciding whether they should wear some new Rockport cross-trainers they’d been given earlier or the sandals they’d made out of old tires scavenged from a nearby junkyard. You don’t train for Leadville with intervals and striders you train the way a prison gang handles a rock pile, by constantly banging out lots of slow, steady miles and building the kind of thin-air endurance that lets you grind along at 15 minutes a mile all day long and then continue into the night. Leadville forces racers to run and climb 100 high-altitude miles over the scrabbly trails and snowy peaks of the Colorado Rockies. ![]() ![]() UNTIL THAT STRANGE SCENE IN 1993, no one had ever taken the Leadville Trail 100 ultramarathon lightly. ![]() ![]() ![]() it had me bellowing with laughter on one page and needing to weep on the next. ' The Voids is a wild, magical, and magnetically mad picaresque. I want to say this is a book God would like.' -Paul Buchanan, The Blue Nile ‘What triumphs in Broken Ghost is the treasurable ecstasy of its lyrical flights. He’s been a labourer, a barman, a server of fish and chips, a burglar, a farmhand, a tree feller, a factory worker and many other things too tedious to relate. Part of me is still in that high rise or watching the sunlight through the fire exit door at The Satellite. Niall Griffiths was born in Liverpool to a Welsh/Irish/Romany lineage. are all perfect, all harmonious, poetic, but unadorned, even in the blackest of moments. ![]() ![]() O'Connor's lightness of touch, the pace, economy, characters. There is never a word too much, it never lingers. 'Reading The Voids is a sensory experience. The Voids is an unsparing story of modern-day Britain, told with brilliant flashes of humour and humanity. Stumbling from one surreal situation to the next, he encounters others on the margins of society, finding friendship and camaraderie wherever it is offered, grappling with who he is and what shape his future might take. In a condemned tower block in Glasgow, residents slowly trickle away until a young man is left alone with only the angels and devils in his mind for company. Only the wind whistling through vacant interiors.' Voids are flats that have been vacated, that will never be lived in again. 'After a couple of weeks, I found myself standing outside the voids in the middle of the night listening for human activity, for any sign of life at all. ![]() ![]() ![]() The deep-sky star charts are incredibly comprehensive and all the tables of dates and times of future solar and lunar eclipses, planetary conjunctions and planet locations have been updated through to the year 2018. Most of the photographs are taken by amateurs, which gives the section on astrophotography a particularly inspirational gleam. He discusses light pollution, how to choose binoculars and telescopes, how to pronouce the names of stars and constellations, telescope mounts, averted vision and why the Harvest Moon looks especially bright. NightWatch a practical guide to viewing the universe 3rd ed., rev. Terence Dickinson covers all the problems beginners face, starting with the fact that the night sky does not look the way a modern-city dweller expects. With more than 600,000 copies in print since its initial publication, "Nightwatch" has become the standard reference guide to stargazers around the world. This is the fourth edition of this established introduction to astronomy, but the first edition with UK specific content. ![]() ![]() ![]() A successful attorney, she's married to a wonderful man, and together they're raising a beautiful four-year-old daughter. On the outside, Meredith is the model daughter with the perfect life. Determined to have the future she's always wanted, Josie decides to take matters into her own hands. What she wants more than the right guy, however, is to become a mother-a feeling that is heightened when her ex-boyfriend's daughter ends up in her class. Josie, a first grade teacher, is single-and this close to swearing off dating for good. Fifteen years later, Josie and Meredith are in their late thirties, following very different paths. When tragedy strikes their family, their different responses to the event splinter their delicate bond. Josie was impulsive, spirited, and outgoing Meredith hardworking, thoughtful, and reserved. Growing up, Josie and Meredith Garland shared a loving, if sometimes contentious relationship. Borrowed, Where We Belong, and The One & Only introduces a pair of sisters who find themselves at a crossroads. "In this dazzling new novel, Emily Giffin, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Something. ![]() ![]() Her intense contemplation of God’s Will allowed her to make her fiat-to listen first to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, then to follow them. Her heart was like a vessel in which a fruitful, majestic tree could grow. Reflect on how Mary “kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart” (c.f. They have a natural desire to nurture that which they contain, in order to bring forth something good. Gress describes women as uniquely being vessels-for children, as well as for virtues-towards a grace-filled fruitfulness. She still had to say “yes” throughout her life, even though a sword should pierce her heart (c.f. But this doesn’t undermine her cooperation in God’s plan for salvation. ![]() While Jesus would later give the world the beatitudes ( “Blessed are they who…”), our Lady was given blessedness beforehand through prevenient grace. “rom now on will all ages call me blessed.” ( Luke 1:48b) ![]() ![]() ![]() It contains many deep insights into: how radical feminism started (i.e., how it’s historically and ideologically connected to the warnings at Fátima), its ravaging effects on family life and society, and why we need to look at the Blessed Virgin Mary as a model for all women. This week, I finished reading “The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity” by Dr. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() “And No Choirboy is about individuals who did a terrible deed and were literally imprisoned within walls. “ From Wall to Wall looks at our barriers, and who’s inside and who’s outside,” said Kuklin. These include 2002’s From Wall to Wall, a photo essay revealing how walls define spaces and keep things in and out, and 2008’s No Choirboy: Murder, Violence, and Teenagers on Death Row, in which young inmates discuss their experiences. The author, who has written and photographed more than 30 books for children and young adults, explained that Beyond Magenta “seems to follow the strain” of several of her earlier works. ![]() Accompanying the narratives are portraits and candid photos of the teenagers taken by Kuklin, as well as family photographs. Based on the author’s in-depth interviews, the book follows the teens’ emotional and physical journeys before, during, and after their realization of their gender identity. Six transgender or gender-neutral young adults candidly share their stories in Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin, a February release from Candlewick. ![]() ![]() ![]() The main character’s necrophilia is on full display from the beginning, but we also delve into some scenes of cannibalism, pedophilia, and glorification of rape. ![]() Let’s go ahead and address the obvious: this book is hyped as an incredibly fucked up, extreme horror story, and it definitely fits the bill when it comes to depravity. ![]() ![]() As they unwittingly help each other understand a world in which neither of them seems to belong, they begin to realize what it truly means to be alive…and that it might not always be a good thing.Īnd something has happened- is happening-and it terrifies me. When the two of them meet, they embark on a journey of self-discovery as they shatter societal norms while engaging in destructive and abhorrent behavior. A maternity doctor with a horrifically unusual appetite. Or anyone who enjoyed Fifty Shades of Grey.Ī young hospital security guard with a disturbingly unique taste in women. This is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. Along the way, lines will be crossed, taboos will be violated, and common decency will take an extended leave of absence. In this bleak and disturbingly erotic debut novel, iconoclast Chandler Morrison provides readers with a dark exploration of the nature of death, individuality, and generational identity. ![]() ![]() ![]() The film was later made into a video game released on several home computer platforms. ![]() The film starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as Richards. The adaptation only retained the general idea of the violent show and a few names. The Running Man was very loosely adapted into a film with the same name in 1987, five years after the book was released. ![]() The first is titled "Minus 100 and Counting ." with the numbers decreasing, ending with the last chapter called "Minus 000 and Counting" (or, in some versions, simply "000"). The book has a total of 101 chapters, laid out in a "countdown" format. The story follows protagonist Ben Richards as he participates in the reality show The Running Man in which contestants, allowed to go anywhere in the world, are chased by the general public, who get a huge bounty if they kill him. The novel is set in a dystopian United States during the year 2025, in which the nation's economy is in ruins and world violence is rising. It was collected in 1985 in the omnibus The Bachman Books. The Running Man is a dystopian thriller novel by American writer Stephen King, first published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1982 as a paperback original. ![]() |