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The religious beliefs of America's leaders and the role of religion in public life have long captivated the American public. In this book, historian Carl J. Richard looks at the many ways that the Bible has influenced America's leaders in their personal and political lives.

This book traces notable people in Western history who tried to decipher the mysteries of illness and health. I have chosen specific women and men for their unique perspectives in healing-some "traditional" physicians, shamans from Indigenous peoples, some focused on the body, some on the spirit. As a rule, they were individuals of compassionate character who felt for the miseries of humankind. But each one revealed to us a lesson. Each one illuminated the extreme complexity of humanness but also the extreme delicacy: human beings of organs and tissues and blood but also of worry and fear and sorrow. Suffering affects both. And each healer was human themselves. The story will span antiquity to the present. Ancient Greece produced the earliest concepts of disease and illness, that one may affect the other. The cult of Asclepius, the man-god of healing, addressed spirits damaged by pernicious gods and worked to insert the supernatural in their healing schemes. Hippocrates, the great physician, instructed proper respect for the human constitution and urged compassion - qualities for healers as important today as then. The charismatic Jesus of Nazareth revolutionized healing practices by demonstrating a compassion for all infirmed people, particularly the impoverished, a behavior taken up by his followers and which formed the basis for modern healthcare. Galen, the Greek physician, provided a method of understanding - however imprecise - that allowed interaction of flesh and spirit through the maintenance of internal harmony.The medievalists, on the brink of scientific thought, stressed knowledge of the body as the first exercise in treating disease. Skill with their hands - the newfound art of surgery - largely replaced the ineffectual remedies of the day. The Lakota shaman Black Elk (1863-1950) showed a different comprehension of illness and healing, not scientific nor contemporary but filled with invisible spirits and forces that only the chosen few could manipulate. We will also examine numerous women healers, including psychiatrist Sabina Spielrein (1885-1942), both victim and healer, tormented by childhood traumas lodged deep in her subconscious that stimulated an interest in understanding and healing others afflicted with disorders of the mind, often as severe and disabling as those of physical natures. This history of healers is not comprehensive; it is illustrative. It is not exhaustive; it is instructional. Everyone faces existential threats to health and wellness at some point in their lives. The frightful prospect of suffering and death, in the moment, is terrifying. Is science enough? Very often the answer is no. Advances in medicine and surgery have no doubt substantially contributed to the process of recovery, in fact painful and debilitating treatments may be necessary to achieve healing. Yet, there must be more. History has provided some insight to the arduous, metaphysical, and religious journey of reconciliation and resignation. This book will illuminate pivotal figures who provided not only the physical but also the metaphysical elements of therapy for those sufferers facing tormented and abbreviated futures. There is wisdom in this history, as spiritual equanimity is timeless and science remains imperfect. It is an inner, spiritual peace that humankind truly pursues. Reconciliation with illness and disease can only come by finding and embracing that peace. The Healers illustrates those variegated and multicultural attempts to seek holistic health.

The concept of the subject remains one of the most important and debated notions in social theory and philosophy. Whether it is adopted as a central notion of personhood or rejected as a product of ideology or fiction, its usage has been a theme in a variety of political and speculative thought. Unfortunately, the prevalence of the term has often rendered its meaning opaque. Being Subjects examines the history of this notion from Descartes to the present and discusses its emergence as a philosophical category as well as its connection to related notions such as essence and being. Drawing from the tradition of Fanon's revolutionary existentialism and a historical materialist approach to thought, J. Moufawad-Paul argues that despite the rejection of the subject by thinkers such as Althusser and Foucault, thinking the subject remains a meaningful philosophical practice for a politics dedicated to radical social transformation. If we can think through the category of the subject, we can also think through the legacy of modernity which includes settler-colonialism, slavery, and capitalism. We can also think through a conception of transformative subjectivity and the path to a new personhood and collective agency beyond this legacy's weight of dead generations.

Your Name Is Your Blessing: Hebrew Names and Their Mystical Meanings represents the first time that the secrets of the Kabbalah, the mystical teachings of Jewish spiritual leaders, were introduced to the general public for the purpose of explaining the profound meanings hidden in every person's name. Your Name is Your Blessing remains alone in its application of Kabbalistic teachings to the choice and understanding of one's name. A name tells a story that captures a person's character and personality, and in Your Name Is Your Blessing, Benjamin and Elaine Blech provide a guide to understanding what your name says about you and your life. The Blechs give the gematria-the total numerical value of a word, which is the starting point for kabbalistic analysis-for hundreds of names, as well as Biblical words, phrases, and blessings associated with this numerical value.

"[An] exhaustively detailed account of the life of Madam C.J. Walker." Booklist, Starred Review - Madam C. J. Walker-reputed to be America's first self-made woman millionaire-has long been celebrated for her rags-to-riches story. This biography places this remarkable and large...

"[Sh]ould take a prominent place on the shelf of literature about the man who changed 20th century America." Publishers Weekly, Starred Review - In the first biography of Martin Luther King to look at his life through the prism of his evolving faith, Paul Harvey examines Mart...

Samuel R. Delany: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works contains a chronology, an introduction, an extensive bibliography, and previously unpublished Delany family photographs. The dictionary section has more than 200 cross-referenced entries addressing each of Delany's major novels, short stories, nonfiction, and theoretical texts.

Focusing on the contributions of Frantz Fanon's writing to the construction of a theory of the postcolonial subject, this book engages post-structuralist discussions on subjectivity and explores the most important readings and discussions of Fanon's work. Problems such as hist...