Following the life of newborn infant, Emmanuel, this great contemporary novel of Quebec exposes a painful history central to the new consciousness that... emerged in the 1960s known as “the quiet revolution.” The story of Emmanuel and his 15 brothers and sisters spotlights the grinding poverty under the mental regime of the Catholic Church at its least enlightened and most inescapable. This insightful narrative documents the hardships and cruelties of their social condition with dark humor and passionate imagination as they endeavor to survive harsh schools, dreary convents, and hunger.

Journey through the splendor and the excesses of the Gilded Age "Every aspect of life in the Gilded Age took on deeper, transcendent meaning intended to... prove the greatness of America: residences beautified their surroundings; works of art uplifted and were shared with the public; clothing exhibited evidence of breeding; jewelry testified to cultured taste and wealth; dinners demonstrated sophisticated palates; and balls rivaled those of European courts in their refinement. The message was unmistakable: the United States had arrived culturally, and Caroline Astor and her circle were intent on leading the nation to unimagined heights of glory."—From A Season of SplendorTake a dazzling journey through the Gilded Age, the period from roughly the 1870s to 1914, when bluebloods from older, established families met the nouveau riche headlong—railway barons, steel magnates, and Wall Street speculators—and forged an uneasy and glittering new society in New York City. The best of the best were Caroline Astor's 400 families, and she shaped and ruled this high society with steel.A Season of Splendor is a panoramic sweep across this sumptuous landscape, presenting the families, the wealth, the balls, the clothing, and the mansions in vivid detail—as well as the shocking end of the era with the sinking of the Titanic.

Lust • Tradition • Love • Faith • Self • Family Elisha walks through Brooklyn with side curls tucked behind his ears and an oversized black... hat on his head. He is a Chassidic Orthodox Jew and the son of a revered rabbi in whose footsteps he's expected to follow. When he leaves his insular world to take classes at a secular college, he vows to remain unchanged… PRAISE FOR A SEAT AT THE TABLE "A poignant depiction of a deeply loving father and a no less loving son desperate to find his own very different path without shattering the connection to his family, to his father." Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, Author of Jewish Literacy and a Jewish Code of Ethics "Halberstam takes you deeply into the Chassidic community with a critical eye but a loving, understanding heart. This tender, compassionate coming-of-age story brims over with wisdom from the Jewish tradition. It's worth reading for the Chassidic tales alone." David Grubin, Documentary Filmmaker, The Jewish Americans, LBJ "Joshua Halberstam knows the soul of Chassidic Brooklyn better than anyone without payes and a black hat. He explores that world with a unique combination of skepticism and compassion. A Seat at the Table is a lovely and deeply humane book." Melvin Jules Bukiet, Author of Strange Fire and Neurotica "In this novel of fathers and sons, faith and doubt, Joshua Halberstam illuminates a world rich with religious tradition and Chassidic stories, and he proves himself to be a master storyteller in his own right. A Seat at the Table is unusually wise, genuine, and always affecting." Tova Mirvis, author of The Ladies Auxiliary and The Outside World

In this collection of illuminating conversations, renowned historian of world religions Huston Smith invites ten influential American Indian spiritual... and political leaders to talk about their five-hundred-year struggle for religious freedom. Their intimate, impassioned dialogues yield profound insights into one of the most striking cases of tragic irony in history: the country that prides itself on religious freedom has resolutely denied those same rights to its own indigenous people. With remarkable erudition and curiosity--and respectfully framing his questions in light of the revelation that his discovery of Native American religion helped him round out his views of the world's religions--Smith skillfully helps reveal the depth of the speakers' knowledge and experience. American Indian leaders Vine Deloria, Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux), Winona LaDuke (Anishshinaabeg), Walter Echo-Hawk (Pawnee), Frank Dayish, Jr. (Navajo), Charlotte Black Elk (Oglala Lakota), Douglas George-Kanentiio (Mohawk-Iroquois), Lenny Foster (Dine/Navajo), Tonya Gonnella Frichner (Onondaga), Anthony Guy Lopez (Lakota-Sioux), and Oren Lyons (Onondaga) provide an impressive overview of the critical issues facing the Native American community today. Their ideas about spirituality, politics, relations with the U.S. government, their place in American society, and the continuing vitality of their communities give voice to a population that is all too often ignored in contemporary discourse. The culture they describe is not a relic of the past, nor a historical curiosity, but a living tradition that continues to shape Native American lives.

In this collection of illuminating conversations, renowned historian of world religions Huston Smith invites ten influential American Indian spiritual... and political leaders to talk about their five-hundred-year struggle for religious freedom. Their intimate, impassioned dialogues yield profound insights into one of the most striking cases of tragic irony in history: the country that prides itself on religious freedom has resolutely denied those same rights to its own indigenous people. With remarkable erudition and curiosity--and respectfully framing his questions in light of the revelation that his discovery of Native American religion helped him round out his views of the world's religions--Smith skillfully helps reveal the depth of the speakers' knowledge and experience. American Indian leaders Vine Deloria, Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux), Winona LaDuke (Anishshinaabeg), Walter Echo-Hawk (Pawnee), Frank Dayish, Jr. (Navajo), Charlotte Black Elk (Oglala Lakota), Douglas George-Kanentiio (Mohawk-Iroquois), Lenny Foster (Dine/Navajo), Tonya Gonnella Frichner (Onondaga), Anthony Guy Lopez (Lakota-Sioux), and Oren Lyons (Onondaga) provide an impressive overview of the critical issues facing the Native American community today. Their ideas about spirituality, politics, relations with the U.S. government, their place in American society, and the continuing vitality of their communities give voice to a population that is all too often ignored in contemporary discourse. The culture they describe is not a relic of the past, nor a historical curiosity, but a living tradition that continues to shape Native American lives.

Focusing on applicable rather than applied mathematics, this text begins with an examination of linear systems of differential equations and... 2-dimensional linear systems and then explores the use of polar coordinate techniques, Liapunov stability and elementary ideas from dynamic systems. Features an in-depth treatment of existence and uniqueness theorems, more. 1986 edition. Includes 39 figures.

The 2006 INFORMS Expository Writing Award-winning and best-selling author Sheldon Ross (University of Southern California) teams up with Erol Peköz... (Boston University) to bring you this textbook for undergraduate and graduate students in statistics, mathematics, engineering, finance, and actuarial science. This is a guided tour designed to give familiarity with advanced topics in probability without having to wade through the exhaustive coverage of the classic advanced probability theory books. Topics include measure theory, limit theorems, bounding probabilities and expectations, coupling and Stein's method, martingales, Markov chains, renewal theory, and Brownian motion. No other text covers all these advanced topics rigorously but at such an accessible level; all you need is calculus and material from a first undergraduate course in probability.

This reader-friendly book focuses on building linear statistical models and developing skills for implementing regression analysis in real-life... situations. It includes applications for a range of fields including engineering, sociology, and psychology, as well as traditional business applications. The authors use the latest material available from news articles, magazines, professional journals, the Internet, and actual consulting problems to illustrate real business situations and how to solve them using the tools of regression analysis. In addition, this book emphasizes model building and multiple regression models and pays special attention to model validation and spline regression. For professionals in any number of fields, including engineering, sociology, and psychology, who would benefit from learning how to use regression analysis to solve problems.

A Second Course in Statistics: Regression Analysis, Seventh Edition, focuses on building linear statistical models and developing skills for... implementing regression analysis in real situations. This text offers applications for engineering, sociology, psychology, science, and business. The authors use real data and scenarios extracted from news articles, journals, and actual consulting problems to show how to apply the concepts. In addition, seven case studies, now located throughout the text after applicable chapters, invite readers to focus on specific problems.

An inspiring account of America at its worst-and Americans at their best-woven from the stories of Depression- era families who were helped by gifts... from the author's generous and secretive grandfather. Shortly before Christmas 1933 in Depression-scarred Canton, Ohio, a small newspaper ad offered $10, no strings attached, to 75 families in distress. Interested readers were asked to submit letters describing their hardships to a benefactor calling himself Mr. B. Virdot. The author's grandfather Sam Stone was inspired to place this ad and assist his fellow Cantonians as they prepared for the cruelest Christmas most of them would ever witness. Moved by the tales of suffering and expressions of hope contained in the letters, which he discovered in a suitcase 75 years later, Ted Gup initially set out to unveil the lives behind them, searching for records and relatives all over the country who could help him flesh out the family sagas hinted at in those letters. From these sources, Gup has re-created the impact that Mr B. Virdot's gift had on each family. Many people yearned for bread, coal, or other necessities, but many others received money from B. Virdot for more fanciful items-a toy horse, say, or a set of encyclopedias. As Gup's investigations revealed, all these things had the power to turn people's lives around- even to save them. But as he uncovered the suffering and triumphs of dozens of strangers, Gup also learned that Sam Stone was far more complex than the lovable- retiree persona he'd always shown his grandson. Gup unearths deeply buried details about Sam's life-from his impoverished, abusive upbringing to felonious efforts to hide his immigrant origins from U.S. officials-that help explain why he felt such a strong affinity to strangers in need. Drawing on his unique find and his award-winning reportorial gifts, Ted Gup solves a singular family mystery even while he pulls away the veil of eight decades that separate us from the hardships that united America during the Depression. In A Secret Gift, he weaves these revelations seamlessly into a tapestry of Depression-era America, which will fascinate and inspire in equal measure. Watch a Video

"A wonderful reminder that economic hardship can bring suffering but can also foster compassion and community." -The Boston Globe In hard economic... times like these, readers will find bestselling author Ted Gup's unique book uplifting as well as captivating. Inside a suitcase kept in his mother's attic, Gup discovered letters written to his grandfather in response to an ad placed in a Canton, Ohio, newspaper in 1933 that offered cash to seventy-five families facing a devastating Christmas. The author travels coast to coast to unveil the lives behind the letters, describing a range of hardships and recreating in his research the hopes and suffering of Depression-era Americans, even as he uncovers the secret life led by the grandfather he thought he knew.

What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age? Almost everyone would agree that we--in the West, at least--largely do. And clearly the place... of religion in our societies has changed profoundly in the last few centuries. In what will be a defining book for our time, Charles Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean--of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is only one human possibility among others. Taylor, long one of our most insightful thinkers on such questions, offers a historical perspective. He examines the development in "Western Christendom" of those aspects of modernity which we call secular. What he describes is in fact not a single, continuous transformation, but a series of new departures, in which earlier forms of religious life have been dissolved or destabilized and new ones have been created. As we see here, today's secular world is characterized not by an absence of religion--although in some societies religious belief and practice have markedly declined--but rather by the continuing multiplication of new options, religious, spiritual, and anti-religious, which individuals and groups seize on in order to make sense of their lives and give shape to their spiritual aspirations. What this means for the world--including the new forms of collective religious life it encourages, with their tendency to a mass mobilization that breeds violence--is what Charles Taylor grapples with, in a book as timely as it is timeless.

The world-famous psychiatrist and author of the classic works Attachment, Separation, and Loss offers important guidelines for child rearing based on... the crucial role of early intimate relationships.

Award-winning artist Sylvia Long and author Dianna Hutts Aston have teamed up again to create this gorgeous and informative introduction to seeds.... Poetic in voice and elegant in design, the book introduces children to a fascinating array of seed and plant facts, making it a guide that is equally at home being read on a parent's lap as in a classroom reading circle.