front cover of Christian America and the Kingdom of God
Christian America and the Kingdom of God
Richard T. Hughes
University of Illinois Press, 2012
The idea of the United States as a Christian nation is a powerful, seductive, and potentially destructive theme in American life, culture, and politics. And yet, as Richard T. Hughes reveals in this powerful book, the biblical vision of the "kingdom of God" stands at odds with the values and actions of an American empire that sanctions war instead of peace, promotes dominance and oppression instead of reconciliation, and exalts wealth and power instead of justice for the poor and needy. With extensive analysis of both Christian scripture and American history from the founding of the republic to the present day, Christian America and the Kingdom of God illuminates the devastating irony of a "Christian America" that so often behaves in unchristian ways.
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Contemplation and Kingdom
Kevin Hart
St. Augustine's Press, 2020
This book rises out of Dr. Kevin Hart’s 2020 Aquinas Lecture at the University of Dallas. Contemplation and Kingdom seeks to retrieve aspects of Richard of St. Victor's treatment of contemplation, principally in De arca mystica, and does so by weighing Thomas Aquinas's reservations about this treatment in the Summa theologiæ. Is Aquinas right to object, as Augustine does in De Doctrina Christiana, that our contemplation should go directly to God and not be stalled in the consideration of the natural world? What relation is there between Jesus's preaching of the Kingdom and the contemplation of God? Is the contemplative life consistent with Jesus's injunction to love both God and neighbor? These are the principal questions considered in the book.

This book is vintage Hart, erudite, well written, a treat for a wide readership. It is an example of how theology ought to be done, with a clarity and depth unsurpassed in today’s scholarly world. Its blend of anglo-saxon elegance and continental insights will be praised in the Academy and outside. – Jean-Yves Lacoste, Clare Hall, Cambridge
In the light of great contemporary interest in contemplation, this brilliant and erudite work is a stunning example. The focus on Richard of St. Victor and Thomas Aquinas is especially appropriate. Theologians and philosophers will be especially thankful for Kevin Hart’s work on the actuality of contemplation. – David Tracy, University of Chicago 

Kevin Hart holds the Edwin B. Kyle Chair of Christian Theology at the University of Virginia where he is also Courtesy Professor of English and Courtesy Professor of French. In 2020 he was awarded the Aquinas Medal by the Department of Philosophy at the University of Dallas. His 2020 Étienne Gilson Lectures, given at L'Institut Catholique de Paris, offer a fresh approach to the theology of the imago dei in Augustine. His 2020 Gifford Lectures, given at Glasgow University, examine various questions to do with the theology of contemplation and propose a new "hermeneutics of contemplation." His most recent scholarly publications include Kingdoms of God and Poetry and Revelation, and his most recent collections of poetry are Wild Track: New and Selected Poems and Barefoot.
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Familiarity Is the Kingdom of the Lost
Dugmore Boetie
Ohio University Press, 2020
A fast-paced romp through apartheid-era South Africa that exemplifies the creative human capacity to overcome seemingly omnipotent enemies and overwhelming odds. The picaresque hero of this novel, Duggie, is a dispossessed black street kid turned con man. Duggie’s response to being confined to the lowest level of South Africa’s oppressive and humiliating racial hierarchy is to one-up its absurdity with his own glib logic and preposterous schemes. Duggie’s story, as one critic puts it, offers “an encyclopedic catalogue of rip-offs, swindles, and hoaxes” that regularly land him in jail and rely on his white targets’ refusal to admit a black man is capable of outsmarting them. Duggie exploits South Africa’s bureaucratic pass laws and leverages his artificial leg every chance he gets. As “a worthless embarrassment to the authorities and a bad example to the convicts,” Duggie even manages to get himself thrown out of jail. From Duggie’s Depression-era childhood in urban Johannesburg to World War II and the rise of the white supremacist apartheid regime to his final, bitter triumph, Boetie’s narrative celebrates humanity’s relentless drive to survive at any cost. This new edition of Boetie’s out-of-print classic features a recently discovered photograph of the author, an introduction replete with previously unpublished research, numerous annotations, and is accompanied by Lionel Abrahams’ haunting poem, “Soweto Funeral,” composed after attending Boetie’s interment, all of which render the text accessible to a new generation of readers.
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"God Has Made Us a Kingdom"
James Strang and the Midwest Mormons
Vickie Cleverley Speek
Signature Books, 2006
Was polygamy the downfall of the Strangite kingdom or was it something far more ominous and wide-reaching? Vickie Cleverley Speek examines the charismatic figure of James J. Strang and provides a detailed first look at his wives, children, and the Strangite families left behind at his martyrdom. She makes an especially close examination of the practice of “consecration of gentile property” in the Strangite colonies on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan. Were the Strangites guilty of piracy and other crimes, and if so, to what extent?

Strang was considered the prophetic successor to Joseph Smith for the Mormons of the Midwest who later formed the nucleus for the membership of what is now the Community of Christ. Today, 150 years after Strang’s death, about 100 faithful followers in the United States still await the emergence of another prophet to succeed Strang. In the prophetic tradition of Joseph Smith, Strang similarly excavated ancient metallic plates and translated them into the Book of the Law of the Lord and the Rajah Manchou of Vorito. Like Joseph Smith, Strang instigated polygamy, secret ceremonies, baptism for the dead, and communal living. He also introduced a bloomer-like fashion for women, as well as other innovations. Like Joseph Smith, he had himself crowned king of the world.

Where previous treatments of Strang have relied either on inside or outside sources to show either a prophet or charlatan, Speek utilizes all sources, updates the record, corrects previous errors, and shows diverse perspectives. She recounts the turbulent and dramatic events of the 1840s-50s, including the plot to murder Strang and the heartbreaking exile of the Saints from Beaver Island. She traces the dispersion of this once formidable colony of Mormons to the forests of northwest Wisconsin, the far-flung outposts of southwest New Mexico, the hills of Lamoni, Iowa, and to Salt Lake City, Utah.

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Hidden Bhutan
Entering the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon
Martin Uitz
Haus Publishing, 2006
In 2006 Time magazine listed the King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuk, as one of the 100 "leaders and revolutionaries" who are changing our world today. Yet it was only in the 1960s that the first road linking the Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon with India was opened, and since 1974 only a strictly limited number of tourists have been allowed to visit each year. Martin Uitz, a renowned expert on Bhutan, describes how the Bhutanese, in pursuit of the principle of "Gross National Happiness", are carefully moving towards a more modern future, including a constitution and democracy, whilst preserving their traditional society and attempting to conserve the environment. Uitz made many fascinating discoveries in this enigmatic Kingdom. He was able to explain why the only traffic light was taken out of service, why six men are not allowed to go on a journey together, and what the subtle eroticism of a traditional hot-stone bath is all about. Along the way he also discovered that the Bhutanese hills are more alive with Edelweiss than the hills around his native Salzburg.
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Imperial Russian Rule in the Kingdom of Poland, 1864-1915
Malte Rolf
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021

After crushing the Polish Uprising in 1863–1864, Russia established a new system of administration and control. Imperial Russian Rule in the Kingdom of Poland, 18641915 investigates in detail the imperial bureaucracy’s highly variable relationship with Polish society over the next half century. It portrays the personnel and policies of Russian domination and describes the numerous layers of conflict and cooperation between the Tsarist officialdom and the local population. Presenting case studies of both modes of conflict and cooperation, Malte Rolf replaces the old, unambiguous “freedom-loving Poles vs. oppressive Russians” narrative with a more nuanced account and does justice to the complexity and diversity of encounters among Poles, Jews, and Russians in this contested geopolitical space. At the same time, he highlights the process of “provincializing the center,” the process by which the erosion of imperial rule in the Polish Kingdom facilitated the demise of the Romanov dynasty itself.

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In the Kingdom of the Ditch
Todd Davis
Michigan State University Press, 2013
In poetry that is at once accessible and finely crafted, Todd Davis maps the mysterious arc between birth and death, celebrating the beauty and pain of our varied entrances and exits, while taking his readers into the deep forests and waterways of the northeastern United States. With an acute sensibility for language unlike any other working poet, Davis captures the smallest nuances in the flowers, trees, and animals he encounters through a daily life spent in the field. Davis draws upon stories and myths from Christian, Transcendental, and Buddhist traditions to explore the intricacies of the spiritual and physical world we too often overlook. In celebrating the abundant life he finds in a ditch—replete with Queen Anne’s lace and milkweed, raspberries and blackberries, goldenrod and daisies—Davis suggests that life is consistently transformed, resurrected by what grows out of the fecundity of our dying bodies. In his fourth collection the poet, praised by The Bloomsbury Review, Arts & Letters, and many others, provides not only a taxonomy of the flora and fauna of his native Pennsylvania but also a new way of speaking about the sacred walk we make with those we love toward the ultimate mystery of death.
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The Kingdom and the Garden
Giorgio Agamben
Seagull Books, 2020
In a tour-de-force reinterpretation of the Christian tradition, Agamben shows that the Garden of Eden has always served as a symbol for humanity’s true nature.

What happened to paradise after Adam and Eve were expelled? The question may sound like a theological quibble, or even a joke, but in The Kingdom and the Garden, Giorgio Agamben uses it as a starting point for an investigation of human nature and the prospects for political transformation. In a tour-de-force reinterpretation of the Christian tradition, Agamben shows that the Garden of Eden has always served as a symbol of humanity’s true nature. Where earlier theologians viewed the expulsion as temporary, Augustine’s doctrine of original sin makes it permanent, reimagining humanity as the paradoxical creature that has been completely alienated from its own nature. From this perspective, there can be no return to paradise, only the hope for the messianic kingdom. Yet there have always been thinkers who rebelled against this idea, and Agamben highlights two major examples. The first is the early medieval philosopher John Scotus Eriugena, who argued for a radical unity of humanity with all living things. The second is Dante, whose vision of the earthly paradise points towards the possibility of genuine human happiness in this world. In place of the messianic kingdom, which has provided the model for modern revolutionary movements, Agamben contends that we should place our hopes for political change in a return to our origins, by reclaiming the earthly paradise.
 
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Kingdom of Beauty
Mingei and the Politics of Folk Art in Imperial Japan
Kim Brandt
Duke University Press, 2007
A Study of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Kingdom of Beauty
shows that the discovery of mingei (folk art) by Japanese intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s was central to the complex process by which Japan became both a modern nation and an imperial world power. Kim Brandt’s account of the mingei movement locates its origins in colonial Korea, where middle-class Japanese artists and collectors discovered that imperialism offered them special opportunities to amass art objects and gain social, cultural, and even political influence. Later, mingei enthusiasts worked with (and against) other groups—such as state officials, fascist ideologues, rival folk art organizations, local artisans, newspaper and magazine editors, and department store managers—to promote their own vision of beautiful prosperity for Japan, Asia, and indeed the world. In tracing the history of mingei activism, Brandt considers not only Yanagi Muneyoshi, Hamada Shōji, Kawai Kanjirō, and other well-known leaders of the folk art movement but also the often overlooked networks of provincial intellectuals, craftspeople, marketers, and shoppers who were just as important to its success. The result of their collective efforts, she makes clear, was the transformation of a once-obscure category of pre-industrial rural artifacts into an icon of modern national style.
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The Kingdom of Insignificance
Miron Bialoszewski and the Quotidian, the Queer, and the Traumatic
Joanna Nizynska
Northwestern University Press, 2013

In one of the first scholarly book in English on Miron Białoszewski (1922–1983), Joanna Niżyńska illuminates the elusive prose of one of the most compelling and challenging postwar Polish writers. Niżyńska’s study, exemplary in its use of theoretical concepts, introduces English-language readers to a preeminent voice of Polish literature. Niżyńska explores how a fusion of seemingly irreconcilable qualities, such as the traumatic and the everyday, imbues Białoszewski’s writing with its idiosyncratic appeal. 

Białoszewski’s A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising (1977, revised 1991) describes the Poles’ heroic struggle to liberate Warsaw from Nazi occupation in 1944 as harrowing yet ordinary. His later prose represents everyday life permeated by traces of the traumatic. Niżyńska closely examines the topic of autobiography and homosexuality, showing how Białoszewski discloses his homosexuality but, paradoxically, renders it inconspicuous by hiding it in plain sight.

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The Kingdom of Rarities
Eric Dinerstein
Island Press, 2014
When you look out your window, why are you so much more likely to see a robin or a sparrow than a Kirtland's warbler or a California condor? Why are some animals naturally rare and others so abundant? The quest to find and study seldom-seen jaguars and flamboyant Andean cocks-of-the-rock is as alluring to naturalists as it is vitally important to science. From the Himalayan slopes of Bhutan to the most isolated mountain ranges of New Guinea, The Kingdom of Rarities takes us to some of the least-traveled places on the planet to catch a glimpse of these unique animals and many others. As he shares stories of these species, Eric Dinerstein gives readers a deep appreciation of their ecological importance and the urgency of protecting all types of life — the uncommon and abundant alike.

An eye-opening tour of the rare and exotic, The Kingdom of Rarities offers us a new understanding of the natural world, one that places rarity at the center of conservation biology. Looking at real-time threats to biodiversity, from climate change to habitat fragmentation, and drawing on his long and distinguished scientific career, Dinerstein offers readers fresh insights into fascinating questions about the science of rarity and unforgettable experiences from the field.
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The Kingdom of Rus'
Christian Raffensperger
Arc Humanities Press, 2017
As scholarship continues to expand the idea of medieval Europe beyond "the West," the Rus' remain the final frontier relegated to the European periphery. The Kingdom of Rus' challenges the perception of Rus' as an eastern "other" – advancing the idea of the Rus' as a kingdom deeply integrated with medieval Europe, through an innovative analysis of medieval titles. Examining a wide range of medieval sources, this book exposes the common practice in scholarship of referring to Rusian rulers as princes as a relic of early modern attempts to diminish the Rus'. Not only was Rus' part and parcel of medieval Europe, but in the eleventh and twelfth centuries Rus' was the largest kingdom in Christendom.
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The Kingdom of Strangers
Elias Khoury
University of Arkansas Press, 1996

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Kingdom on the Mississippi Revisited
NAUVOO IN MORMON HISTORY
Edited by Roger D. Launius and John E. Hallwas
University of Illinois Press, 1996
     "A significant collection . . . that provides a depth and breadth
        of understanding reflective of the latest and best in Mormon history."
        -- Paul M. Edwards, author of Our Legacy of Faith: A Brief History
        of the RLDS
      Who were the Nauvoo Mormons? Were they Jacksonian Americans or did they
        embody some other weltanschaung? Why did this tiny Illinois town
        become such a protracted battleground for the Mormons and non-Mormons
        in the region? And what is the larger meaning of the Nauvoo experience
        for the various inheritors of the legacy of Joseph Smith, Jr.?
      Kingdom on the Mississippi Revisited includes fourteen thoughtful
        explanations that represent the most insightful and imaginative work on
        Mormon Nauvoo published in the last thirty years. The range of topics
        includes the Nauvoo Legion, the Mormon press, the political kingdom of
        God, the opposition of non-Mormons, the martyrdom of Joseph Smith, and
        the meaning of Nauvoo for Mormons. The introduction provides a critique
        of Nauvoo scholarship, and a closing bibliographical essay analyzes the
        historical literature on the Mormon experience at Nauvoo.
 
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The Kingdom to Come
Thoughts on the Union before and after the Scottish Independence Referendum
Peter Hennessy
Haus Publishing, 2015
Despite the “No” vote in the Scottish Independence Referendum of September 2014, the issue of potential Scottish secession from the United Kingdom has likely only just begun. The Kingdom to Come is the first book-length look at the consequences and implications of this momentous event.

Peter Hennessy discusses the run-up to the Scottish Independence Referendum and its immediate aftermath, as well as the constitutional issues the referendum opened for the entire United Kingdom. This book includes Hennessy’s personal impressions of recent questioning of the Acts of Union that created Great Britain and describes when he, as the top expert on Britain’s unwritten constitution, became an important voice in what might happen next. The Kingdom to Come also offers a valuable examination of the possible agenda for remaking the constitution in both the medium and long term.
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front cover of Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom
Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom
Their Relations to Income, Prices, and Interest Rates
Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz
University of Chicago Press, 1982
The special task of this book is to present a statistical and theoretical analysis of the relation between the quantity of money and other key economic magnitudes over periods longer than those dominated by cyclical fluctuations-hence the term trends in the title. This book is not restricted to the United States but includes comparable data for the United Kingdom.
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Pasic & Trumbic
The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
Dejan Djokic
Haus Publishing, 2010
Nicola Pasic and Ante Trumbic: The book will provide the first parallel biographies of two key Yugoslav politicians of the early 20th century: Nikola Pasic, a Serb, and Ante Trumbic, a Croat. It will also offer a brief history of the creation of Yugoslavia (initially known as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes), internationally accepted at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919-20 (at the Treaty of Versailles). Such an approach will fill two major gaps in the literature - scholarly biographies of Pasic and Trumbic are lacking, while Yugoslavia's formation is due a reassessment - and to introduce the reader to the central question of South Slav politics: Serb-Croat relations. Pasic and Trumbic's political careers and their often troubled relationship in many ways perfectly epitomize the wider Serb-Croat question.
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Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, Volume 1
A Critical Edition
Alexander von Humboldt
University of Chicago Press, 2019
Volume 1 of this critical edition includes a note on the text from the Humboldt in English team, an introduction by editors Vera M. Kutzinski and Ottmar Ette, a preface to the first edition by Alexander von Humboldt, and the translation of Volumes 1 and 2 of Humboldt’s Essai politique sur le royaume de de Nouvelle Espagne from 1825 to 1827.
 
Alexander von Humboldt was the most celebrated modern chronicler of North and South America and the Caribbean, and this translation of his essay on New Spain—the first modern regional economic and political geography—covers his travels across today’s Mexico in 1803–1804. The work canvases natural-scientific and cultural-scientific objects alike, combining the results of fieldwork with archival research and expert testimony.
 
To show how people, plants, animals, goods, and ideas moved across the globe, Humboldt wrote in a variety of styles, bending and reshaping familiar writerly conventions to keep readers attentive to new inputs. Above all, he wanted his readers to be open-minded when confronted with cultural and other differences in the Americas. Fueled by his comparative global perspective on politics, economics, and science, he used his writing to support Latin American independence and condemn slavery and other forms of colonial exploitation. It is these voluminous and innovative writings on the New World that made Humboldt the undisputed father of modern geography, early American studies, transatlantic cultural history, and environmental studies.
 
This two-volume critical edition—the third installment in the Alexander von Humboldt in English series—is based on the full text, including all footnotes, tables, and maps, of the second, revised French edition of Essai politique sur le royaume de de Nouvelle Espagne from 1825 to 1827, which has never been translated into English before. Extensive annotations and full-color atlases are available on the series website.
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front cover of Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, Volume 2
Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, Volume 2
A Critical Edition
Alexander von Humboldt
University of Chicago Press, 2019
Volume 2 of this critical edition includes the translation of Volumes 3 and 4 of the second, revised French edition of Alexander von Humboldt’s Essai politique sur le royaume de de Nouvelle Espagne from 1825 to 1827 as well as notes, supplements, indexes, and more.
 
Alexander von Humboldt was the most celebrated modern chronicler of North and South America and the Caribbean, and this translation of his essay on New Spain—the first modern regional economic and political geography—covers his travels across today’s Mexico in 1803–1804. The work canvases natural-scientific and cultural-scientific objects alike, combining the results of fieldwork with archival research and expert testimony.
 
To show how people, plants, animals, goods, and ideas moved across the globe, Humboldt wrote in a variety of styles, bending and reshaping familiar writerly conventions to keep readers attentive to new inputs. Above all, he wanted his readers to be open-minded when confronted with cultural and other differences in the Americas. Fueled by his comparative global perspective on politics, economics, and science, he used his writing to support Latin American independence and condemn slavery and other forms of colonial exploitation. It is these voluminous and innovative writings on the New World that made Humboldt the undisputed father of modern geography, early American studies, transatlantic cultural history, and environmental studies.
 
This two-volume critical edition—the third installment in the Alexander von Humboldt in English series—is based on the full text, including all footnotes, tables, and maps, of the second, revised French edition of Essai politique sur le royaume de de Nouvelle Espagne from 1825 to 1827, which has never been translated into English before. Extensive annotations and full-color atlases are available on the series website.
 
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Return to the Kingdom of Childhood
Re-envisioning the Legacy and Philosophical Relevance of Negritude
Cheikh Thiam
The Ohio State University Press, 2014
Return to the Kingdom of Childhood: Re-envisioning the Legacy and Philosophical Relevance of Negritude examines the philosophy of Negritude through an innovative analysis of Léopold Sédar Senghor’s oeuvre. In the first book-length study of Senghorian philosophy, Cheikh Thiam argues that Senghor’s work expresses an Afri-centered conception of the human while simultaneously offering a critique of the Western universalization of “man.” Senghor’s corrective, descriptive, and prescriptive theory of humanness is developed through a conception of race as a cultural manifestation of being.
 
Thiam contends that Senghor’s conception of race entails an innovative Afri-centered epistemology and ontology. For Senghor, races are the effects of particular groups’ relations to the world. The so-called “Negroes,” for example, are determined by their epistemology based on their fluid understanding of the ontological manifestations of being. The examination of this ontology and its ensuing epistemology, which is constitutive of the foundation of Senghor’s entire oeuvre, indicates that Negritude is a postcolonial philosophy that stands on its own.
 
The hermeneutics of Senghor’s race theory show that the Senegalese thinker’s pioneering postcolonial philosophy remains relevant in the postcolonial era. In fact, it questions and expands the works of major contemporary African-descended scholars such as Paul Gilroy, Edouard Glissant, and Molefi Asante. Thiam’s approach is thoroughly interdisciplinary, combining perspectives from philosophy, literary analysis, anthropology, and postcolonial, African, and cultural studies.
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The Ruling Families of Rus
Clan, Family and Kingdom
Christian Raffensperger and Donald Ostrowski
Reaktion Books, 2023
A new history of the Kyivan Rus, a medieval dynastic state in eastern Europe.
 
Kyivan Rus’ was a state in northeastern Europe from the late ninth to the mid-sixteenth century that encompassed a variety of peoples, including Lithuanians, Polish, and Ottomans. The Ruling Families of Rus explores the region’s history through local families, revealing how the concept of family rule developed over the centuries into what we understand as dynasties today. Examining a broad range of archival sources, the authors examine the development of Rus, Lithuania, Muscovy, and Tver and their relationships with the Mongols, Byzantines, and others. The Ruling Families of Rus will appeal to scholars interested in the medieval history of eastern Europe.
 
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Spoils of the Kingdom
Clergy Misconduct and Religious Community
Anson Shupe
University of Illinois Press, 2006
In Spoils of the Kingdom, Anson Shupe investigates clergy misconduct as it has recently unfolded across five faith-based groups. Looking at episodes of abuse in the Roman Catholic, Mormon, African American Protestant, white Evangelical Protestant, and First Nations communities, Spoils of the Kingdom tackles hard questions not only about the sexual abuse of women and children, but also about economic frauds perpetrated by church leaders (including embezzlement, mis-represented missions, and outright theft) as well as cases of excessively authoritarian control of members’ health, lifestyles, employment, and politics.
 
Drawing on case evidence, Shupe employs classical and modern social exchange theories to explain the institutional dynamics of clergy misconduct. He argues that there is an implicit contract of reciprocity and compliance between congregants and religious leaders that, when amplified by the charismatic awe often associated with religious authorities, can lead to misconduct.
 
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Spy Chiefs
Volume 1: Intelligence Leaders in the United States and United Kingdom
Christopher Moran
Georgetown University Press, 2018

In literature and film the spy chief is an all-knowing, all-powerful figure who masterfully moves spies into action like pieces on a chessboard. How close to reality is that depiction, and what does it really take to be an effective leader in the world of intelligence?

This first volume of Spy Chiefs broadens and deepens our understanding of the role of intelligence leaders in foreign affairs and national security in the United States and United Kingdom from the early 1940s to the present. The figures profiled range from famous spy chiefs such as William Donovan, Richard Helms, and Stewart Menzies to little-known figures such as John Grombach, who ran an intelligence organization so secret that not even President Truman knew of it. The volume tries to answer six questions arising from the spy-chief profiles: how do intelligence leaders operate in different national, institutional, and historical contexts? What role have they played in the conduct of international relations and the making of national security policy? How much power do they possess? What qualities make an effective intelligence leader? How secretive and accountable to the public have they been? Finally, does popular culture (including the media) distort or improve our understanding of them? Many of those profiled in the book served at times of turbulent change, were faced with foreign penetrations of their intelligence service, and wrestled with matters of transparency, accountability to democratically elected overseers, and adherence to the rule of law. This book will appeal to both intelligence specialists and general readers with an interest in the intelligence history of the United States and United Kingdom.

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Struggles for Power in the Kingdom of Italy
The Hucpoldings, c. 850-c.1100
Edoardo Manarini
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
This book presents a detailed study which focuses upon the Hucpoldings, an elite group in Carolingian and post-Carolingian Italy. Though the Hucpoldings have not received extensive treatment in previous Anglophone scholarship, they are a key clan in this period. Manarini’s ground-breaking study uses this kinship group to highlight and pinpoint the dramatic geopolitical changes in the kingdom of Italy across three crucial centuries. The research deals with the reconstruction of the political events of every identifiable member of the kinship, as well as the inquiry into their patrimony and their networks of relations and patronage throughout the kingdom of Italy. Finally, it examines the particular elements of the group, from which emerges a clearer picture of the nature of their power, their memory strategies and the shared perceptions and self-awareness among the group members.
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Tales from the Kingdom of Lailonia and The Key to Heaven
Leszek Kolakowski
University of Chicago Press, 1989
This volume contains two unusual and appealing satirical works by the well-known European philosopher Kolakowski. The first, Tales from the Kingdom of Lailonia, is set in a fictional land. Each story illustrates some aspect of human inability to come to terms with imperfection, infinitude, history, and nature. The second, The Key to Heaven, is a collection of seventeen biblical tales from the Old Testament told in such a way that the story and the moral play off each other to illustrate political, moral, or existential foibles and follies.
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Useful to the Church and Kingdom
The Journals of James H. Martineau, Pioneer and Patriarch, 1850-1918, Volume: 1
Noel A. Carmack
Signature Books, 2023
After receiving a liberal arts education at the Munro Academy in Elbridge, New York, and a stint in the U.S.–Mexican War, James Henry Martineau spent his life as a surveyor, civil engineer, clerk, mapmaker, and pathfinder in Zion. After becoming a Latter-day Saint in 1850, Martineau went with Apostle George A. Smith to settle Parowan in southern Utah, with a commitment to building God’s kingdom in the West. As a leader in the Utah Territorial Militia he conducted military drills, witnessed events surrounding the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the legal trials of its perpetrators, explored wilderness areas, submitted reports, and drew maps to record his travels throughout the entire Mormon corridor.

These journals document his exploration of virgin lands in southern Utah, his laying out of townsites and farmland in Cache Valley, his participation in canal building and water projects in Arizona, and his near-death experiences while surveying rough, mountainous areas. His work for the Union Pacific Railroad through Weber Canyon and across the Salt Lake Promontory and Humboldt Desert in 1868 is one of the very few complete records of its kind. 
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Useful to the Church and Kingdom
The Journals of James H. Martineau, Pioneer and Patriarch, 1850-1918, Volume: 2
Noel A. Carmack
Signature Books, 2023
After receiving a liberal arts education at the Munro Academy in Elbridge, New York, and a stint in the U.S.–Mexican War, James Henry Martineau spent his life as a surveyor, civil engineer, clerk, mapmaker, and pathfinder in Zion. After becoming a Latter-day Saint in 1850, Martineau went with Apostle George A. Smith to settle Parowan in southern Utah, with a commitment to building God’s kingdom in the West. As a leader in the Utah Territorial Militia he conducted military drills, witnessed events surrounding the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the legal trials of its perpetrators, explored wilderness areas, submitted reports, and drew maps to record his travels throughout the entire Mormon corridor.

These journals document his exploration of virgin lands in southern Utah, his laying out of townsites and farmland in Cache Valley, his participation in canal building and water projects in Arizona, and his near-death experiences while surveying rough, mountainous areas. His work for the Union Pacific Railroad through Weber Canyon and across the Salt Lake Promontory and Humboldt Desert in 1868 is one of the very few complete records of its kind. 
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