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With the end of the Renaissance in Europe, the Western world experienced a long series of cataclysmic events that still reverberate in modern society. The Golden Thread Volume Two: The Modern and Contemporary West begins with the end of the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church on European states during the Protestant Reformation, before turning to the creation of empires that swiftly circled the globe, and to the explosion of intellectual, economic, and technological advancements of the Enlightenment. These were often moments of flourishing in Western Civilization, but also moments of shadow, as they pointed toward the violent political upheavals that shook continental Europe and the Americas during the American, French and Bolivarean Revolutions and the Napoleonic Wars. The political leaders of the Western nations struggled to minimize the impact of these developments. But the Industrial Revolution, the Romantic revolt against the Enlightenment (and Enlightenment politics), and a second wave of scientific movements in the 19th century challenged any attempt to restore the classical unity of the West. A radically re-drawn world emerged from these developments, and one which was ill-prepared for the colossal physical and moral shocks of the First and Second World Wars. In the closing chapters, we will see how Western civilization has, in our lifetimes, been simultaneously challenged by secular totalitarianisms and yet remarkably successful in laying the foundations for material prosperity around the globe. These contradictions will present to the student the most significant problems facing Western civilization today.

The World's Medicine Chest details how America became the world's leader in biopharmaceutical innovation and reveals how new threats to this industry will have disastrous consequences for patients and the U.S. economy.In the 1970s, Europe was the global hub for pharmaceutical innovation. European drug companies developed more than twice as many drugs in that decade as their U.S.-based counterparts. But times have changed. Today, nearly half of all new drugs come from the United States. Just 22 percent are of European origin. And U.S. patients get access to innovative medicines before anyone else in the world. Drawing on her decades of experience as a health policy scholar, Sally Pipes details how America became the world's leader in biopharmaceutical innovation. She argues that efforts over the last few years by Democrats and Republicans alike to impose price controls on prescription drugs will have disastrous consequences for patients and for the U.S. Economy.

The Golden Thread Volume One: The Ancient World and Christendom. Beginning with the seminal culture of the classical Greeks and the Hellenic expansion, followed by the rise and dominance Rome and the emergence of medieval Christendom, before culminating with the Renaissance, Volume One explores the unfolding of early Western history, laying the foundation for the complex historical narratives that arise during the modern period.

Enjoy the original ideas and heroes of the Greeks: the developers of philosophy, history, drama, geometry, architecture, and science. Their achievements have had an immeasurable impact on the world today. Becoming Greece weaves together an exciting narrative with extensive passages from Greek historians and eyewitnesses, covering the Bronze Age, the Persian Wars, the Peloponnesian War, and Alexander the Great's spread of Hellenistic culture. Experience each "polis" (city-state) from the inside: their values, their political and societal structures, their victories, and their defeats. Hundreds of images, maps, and diagrams are provided, so that even a beginner can thoroughly appreciate the accomplishments of these intellectual pioneers.

Follow the Romans through Kingship, Republic, and Empire. Understand their society, their values, their heroes, their victories, and their defeats. The name "Rome" brings to mind an array of images: a Senate, an empire, an army, the Seven Hills, the seat of Christianity, and the marvels of engineering and architecture. Becoming Rome weaves together an exciting historical narrative with accounts from the Romans themselves. Enjoy Rome as they did, with images, maps, and diagrams that enable even a beginner to thoroughly appreciate how the Romans have helped us to become more civilized, and what led them at times to be uncivilized.

In Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth, Robert George, an acclaimed political philosopher and legal scholar who has taught generations of students at Princeton University and Harvard Law School, tackles many of the most vexing and divisive issues in American politics. He demonstrates what it means to reason one's way to conclusions on controversial issues, rather than simply following the tribe or the crowd, or allowing oneself to be dragged around by one's feelings or emotions. George has long proclaimed that it is a teacher's sacred mission to form his students to be determined truth seekers and courageous truth speakers. In Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth he illustrates that teaching by showing us how it's done.

"In his debut poetry collection, The Nature of Things Fragile, Peter Vertacnik depicts a world fraught with vulnerability and loss. Utilizing a wide range of both received and nonce poetic forms, including sonnets, villanelles, triolets, a sestina, epigrams, blank verse, and word-count, he confronts the illnesses and deaths of loved ones, both recent and long past ("Face Value," "Odd Elegy," "Trace,"); the memories of old houses and towns left behind ("Departure," Sugar Beets," "Mourning Doves"); and the vanishing of once-ubiquitous analog particulars ("Apology to Candles," "Dial Tone," "In Praise of Blank Cassettes"). It is indeed a book of elegies, but one that also celebrates the people, places, and things it laments, preserving their names and details while laying them to rest"--

"The melting pot metaphor has been the prevailing ideal for integrating new citizens throughout most of America's history. Yet contemporary elites often reject it as antiquated or even racist and advocate replacing it with multiculturalism. This book informs the debate over multiculturalism and the melting pot with an essential international and historical perspective. It evaluates how the melting pot and multicultural models have worked out in other societies around the world over 2,500 years of history: it provides a multicultural look at the melting pot and multiculturalism"--

"The U.S. and China are locked in a tech struggle that will determine the course of our era. America is already behind in critical areas. Gordon G. Chang outlines what has happened and what must be done"--

In the 1970s, John M. Olin, one of the country's leading industrialists, decided to devote his fortune to saving American free enterprise. Over the next three decades, the John M. Olin Foundation funded the conservative movement as it emerged from the intellectual ghetto and occupied the halls of power. The foundation spent hundreds of millions of dollars fostering what its longtime president William E. Simon called the ?counterintelligentsia? to offset liberal dominance of university faculties and the mainstream media and to make conservatism a significant cultural force. Among the counterintellectuals the foundation identified and supported at key stages of their careers were Charles Murray during his early work on welfare reform, Allan Bloom as he wrote The Closing of the American Mind, and Francis Fukuyama as he was developing his ?End of History? thesis. Using exclusive access to the John M. Olin Foundation's leading personalities as well as its extensive archives, John J. Miller tells the story of an intriguing man and his unique philanthropic vision. He gives fascinating insights into the foundation's role in helping the CIA fund anti-Communist organizations during the Cold War and its extensive help to Irving Kristol and others as they moved from left to right to found the neoconservative movement. He tells of the foundation's early and critical role in building institutions such as the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, which served to transform conservative ideas into national policies. A Gift of Freedom shows how John M. Olin's ?venture capital fund for the conservative movement? helped develop one of the leading forces in American politics and culture.

The wonders of progress are all around us, so commonplace that we usually take them for granted. Moved by curiosity and compassion, we have built a world that satisfies many deep human needs, especially the desire not to stand so naked in the face of nature's many malignancies. To cancer, we say chemotherapy; to infertility, we say in vitro; to depression, we say Prozac. Without technology, man is impotent, and only a fool would romanticize the age when mothers and children died regularly in childbirth, when keeping warm and staying fed were life's central struggles, and when the visible afflictions of the body had no other explanation except the hatred of the gods. Of modern progress, there is much to be proud.