While the term acedia may be unfamiliar, the vice, usually translated as sloth, is all too common. Sloth is not mere laziness, however, but a disgust with reality, a loathing of our call to be friends with God, and a spiteful hatred of place and life itself. As described by Josef Pieper, the slothful person does not “want to be as God wants him to be, and that ultimately means he does not wish to be what he really, fundamentally is.” Sloth is a hellish despair.

Our own culture is deeply infected, choosing a destructive freedom rather than the good work for which God created us. Acedia and Its Discontents resists despair, calling us to reconfigure our imaginations and practices in deep love of the life and work given by God. By feasting, keeping sabbath, and working well, we learn to see the world as enchanting, beautiful, and good—just as God sees it.

A magnificent epic of cataclysmic upheaval and heroic love in a breathless age of mythic wonders

It was a time of legend, when the last shadows of the mighty Roman conqueror faded from the captured Isle of Britain. While, across a vast sea, bloody war shattered a peace that had flourished for two thousand years in the doomed kingdom of Atlantis.

From the award-winning author of THE DRAGON KING TRILOGY comes a majestic tale of breathtaking scope and haunting beauty. It is the remarkable adventure of Charis—the courageous princess from Atlantis who escapes the terrible devastation of her land—and of the fabled seer and druid prince Taliesin, singer at the dawn of the age. A story of an incomparable love that joins two astonishing worlds amid the fires of chaos, and spawns the miracles of Merlin . . . and Arthur the king!

TALIESIN:
“Reminiscent of C. S. Lewis . . . Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal

During the seventeenth century, English Puritan pastors often encouraged their congregations in the spiritual discipline of meditating on God and His Word. Today, however, much of evangelicalism is either ignorant of or turned off to the idea of meditation. In God's Battle Plan for the Mind, pastor David Saxton seeks to convince God's people of the absolute necessity for personal meditation and motivate them to begin this work themselves. But he has not done this alone. Rather, he has labored through numerous Puritan works in order to bring together the best of their insights on meditation. Standing on the shoulders of these giants, Saxton teaches us how to meditate on divine truth and gives valuable guidance about how to rightly pattern our thinking throughout the day. With the rich experiential theology of the Puritans, this book lays out a course for enjoying true meditation on God's Word.

Table of Contents:
1. The Importance of Recovering the Joyful Habit of Biblical Meditation
2. Unbiblical Forms of Meditation
3. Defining Biblical Meditation
4. Occasional Meditation
5. Deliberate Meditation
6. The Practice of Meditation
7. Important Occasions for Meditation
8. Choosing Subjects for Meditation
9. The Reasons for Meditation
10. The Benefits of Meditation
11. The Enemies of Meditation
12. Getting Started: Beginning the Habit of Meditation
Conclusion: Thoughts on Meditation and Personal Godliness

Our current definition of “productivity” is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?

Long before the arrival of pinging inboxes and clogged schedules, history’s most creative and impactful philosophers, scientists, artists, and writers mastered the art of producing valuable work with staying power. In this timely and provocative book, Cal Newport harnesses the wisdom of these traditional knowledge workers to radically transform our modern jobs. Drawing from deep research on the habits and mindsets of a varied cast of storied thinkers – from Galileo and Isaac Newton, to Jane Austen and Georgia O’Keefe – Newport lays out the key principles of “slow productivity,” a more sustainable alternative to the aimless overwhelm that defines our current moment. Combining cultural criticism with systematic pragmatism, Newport deconstructs the absurdities inherent in standard notions of productivity, and then provides step-by-step advice for cultivating a slower, more humane alternative.

From the aggressive rethinking of workload management, to introducing seasonal variation, to shifting your performance toward long-term quality, Slow Productivity provides a roadmap for escaping overload and arriving instead at a more timeless approach to pursuing meaningful accomplishment. The world of work is due for a new revolution. Slow productivity is exactly what we need.

Menopause. Why do we go through it? How can we enjoy this time of life? There is a plethora of confusing and misleading information out there about menopause: what to take, what to eat. Women may begin to wonder: is there something wrong with our bodies? And if menopause is natural, why do doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and the media recommend so much medication to treat menopausal symptoms? The last sixty years of dietary advice, warning women to avoid fat, have actually worsened women’s health. If you’re approaching menopause, in menopause, or are interested in improving your health naturally, here is a book that explains the history of menopause, the evolutionary benefits of this life event, and how to eat the right foods to help you enjoy what should be the longest and most fulfilling part of your life. This book is the first of a three-book series that shows how important eating good fat is for a woman’s health at every stage of her life.

Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising—on campus as well as nationally. How did this happen?

First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures.  Embracing these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life.

Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths. They explore changes in childhood such as the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. They examine changes on campus, including the corporatization of universities and the emergence of new ideas about identity and justice. They situate the conflicts on campus within the context of America’s rapidly rising political polarization and dysfunction.

This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.

Women shaped the men who changed the world.

• History tells of women whose love for the Bible shaped its earliest and most prominent teachers.
• It tells of women who were great theologians in their own right, yet whose only students were their own children.
• It tells, time and time again, of Christian men who owe so much to their godly mothers.

Raising children to honor and glorify the Lord is the goal of every Christian mother, but how can you do that? Who can teach you? One of the best ways to learn is to read examples of women who have succeeded at the very task you are attempting.

Come take a brief look at some of them.

• We will look to the church’s earliest days to find a man who owed his salvation to the careful biblical instruction he received on the lap of his mother.
• We will zoom forward a few centuries to a woman whose constant prayers were at last rewarded when her son came to faith and went on to become one of history’s most influential theologians.
• We will advance to recent centuries to see how the prayers, teaching, and examples of godly mothers have shaped evangelists, preachers, and stalwart defenders of the faith.
• We will learn together of Christian men and their godly moms, mothers who were used to shape the men who changed the world.
  —Tim Challies

Bitterness often grows out of a small offense - perhaps a passing word, an accidental shove, or a pair of dirty socks left in the middle of the living room floor. Yet when bitterness takes root in our hearts, its effects are anything but small. As the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians, we have been called to leave the bitterness and anger of the world and instead embrace the love and compassion of our God. Therefore, the bitterness must go. The authors remind us that we are to forgive others just as we have been forgiven, pointing to Scriptural admonitions and examples as they offer sound teaching on the trials and temptations of everyday life.

With more than 300,000 copies in print and translations in 23 languages, this book has helped thousands to overcome their bitterness since its first publication in 1990. Read it today, and be free.

Contents:

1. How to Be Free from Bitterness

2. Forgiving Others

3. Man’s Anger

4. Fits of Rage

5. Taking Offense

6. Bridling the Tongue

7. Introspection

8. How to Receive Bitterness

9. Relationships with Parents

10. Saturation Love

11. How Does a Woman Become Secure?

12. The Responsible Man

13. Q&A on Becoming a Christian

14. The Gospel

An Oprah Book Club selection, Cry, the Beloved Country, was an immediate worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1948. Alan Paton’s impassioned novel about a black man’s country under white man’s law is a work of searing beauty.

Cry, the Beloved Country, is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son, Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man.

In virtually every way that can be measured, Gen Z’s mental health is worse than that of previous generations. Youth suicide rates are climbing, antidepressant prescriptions for children are common, and the proliferation of mental health diagnoses has not helped the staggering number of kids who are lonely, lost, sad and fearful of growing up. What’s gone wrong with America’s youth?

In Bad Therapy, bestselling investigative journalist Abigail Shrier argues that the problem isn’t the kids—it’s the mental health experts. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with child psychologists, parents, teachers, and young people, Shrier explores the ways the mental health industry has transformed the way we teach, treat, discipline, and even talk to our kids. She reveals that most of the therapeutic approaches have serious side effects and few proven benefits. Among her unsettling findings:

• Talk therapy can induce rumination, trapping children in cycles of anxiety and depression
• Social Emotional Learning handicaps our most vulnerable children, in both public schools and private
• “Gentle parenting” can encourage emotional turbulence – even violence – in children as they lash out, desperate for an adult in charge

Mental health care can be lifesaving when properly applied to children with severe needs, but for the typical child, the cure can be worse than the disease. Bad Therapy is a must-read for anyone questioning why our efforts to bolster America’s kids have backfired—and what it will take for parents to lead a turnaround.

This acclaimed, influential work applies the concepts of systemic family therapy to the emotional life of congregations. Edwin H. Friedman shows how the same understanding of family process that can aid clergy in their pastoral role also has important ramifications for negotiating congregational dynamics and functioning as an effective leader. Clergy from diverse denominations, as well as family therapists and counselors, have found that this book directly addresses the dilemmas and crises they encounter daily. It is widely used as a text in courses on family systems and pastoral care.

In The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes, one of the nation's most-respected economic commentators, offers a striking reinterpretation of the Great Depression. She traces the mounting agony of the New Dealers and the moving stories of individual citizens who through their brave perseverance helped establish the steadfast character we recognize as American today.