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This work examines word order. More accurately, it is the ordering of constituents that is discussed since prepositional phrases and most noun phrases form syntactic constituents and the encoding of topic and focus in Russian. As has long been observed, word order in Russian encodes specific discourse information: with neutral intonation, topics precede discourse-neutral constituents which precede foci. King extends this idea to show that word order encodes different types of topic and focus in a principled manner.

The first full-length study of a pivotal figure in American evangelical faith

James Dobson—child psychologist, author, radio personality, and founder of the Christian conservative organization Focus on the Family—published his first book, Dare to Discipline, in 1970 and quickly became the go-to family expert for evangelical parents across the United States as American evangelicalism rose as a major political force. The family expert became a leading voice in the Reagan Revolution, and played a role in making American evangelicals even more firmly associated with the Republican Party. Dobson’s principle beliefs are that the family is the center of Christian America and that the traditional family must be defended from perceived threats such as gay rights, feminism, abortion, and the secularization of public schools. Dobson and Focus on the Family dominated Christian media through print, radio, and online venues, and their message reached millions of American evangelical households, shaping the cultural sensibilities and political attitudes of evangelical families throughout the culture wars from the 1980s into the 2000s.
 
Family Matters: James Dobson and Focus on the Family’s Crusade for the Christian Home by Hilde Løvdal Stephens is an insightful history and analysis of James Dobson’s rise to fame, effect on American evangelical culture, and subsequent descent from relevance. Extensively researched, Løvdal Stephens scoured through Dobson’s books, articles, and other materials published by Focus on the Family in order to explore how evangelicals defined and defended the traditional family as an ideal and as a symbol in an ever-changing world.
 
By contextualizing the history of Dobson’s reign, Løvdal Stephens’s discerning analysis fills an important gap in our understandings of the politics and culture of late twentieth-century conservative Christianity in the United States. She explores complex topics ranging from Dobson’s celebration of what he believes are timeless biblical values, such as maintaining strict and defined gender roles, to the ways Dobson and Focus on the Family balanced their basic ideals with real everyday lives of average American evangelical families, facing the realities of divorce, working mothers, and other perceived threats to the traditional family.
 

The proliferation of festivals across the world has given birth to a new academic field: festival studies. Before his premature death Dragan Klaic was the greatest early authority of this discipline. Festivals in Focus contains the last essays which Klaic composed as introductory chapters for a collected volume on festivals. The four essays display the author’s sharp critical ability and raise stimulating questions about cultural festivals not just in Europe but worldwide. Klaic succinctly addresses the historical evolution of festivals, as well as their types, contents and settings.The volume includes an introduction by Christopher Maughan and Franco Bianchini, an essay on the future of festivals by Bernard Faivre d’Acier, the long-time director of the trend-setting Festival d’Avignon, and appreciations of Klaic by Krzysztof Czyżewski, Anne-Marie Autissier, Lucy Neal and Rose Fenton.

Guy de Bres (ca.1522-1567) was an important figure in the Dutch Reformation. He was the author of the Belgic Confession, which is still among the confessional texts of many Dutch denominations. One of the key points of his choice for Reformed doctrine was the Lord’s Supper. It was ultimately the illegal ministry of this for which he was sentenced to death. This study describes De Bres’ view of the Lord’s Supper as expressed in his writings against the background of the Reformation in the Low Countries. If you would like to order the book for delivery outside of the Netherlands, please email orders@aup.nl