Product Description: Sex, seduction, and the perfect marriage. Though it may not have been the intent of Genesis 1-3, the biblical first couple has been used for generations to sell consumable goods and strange ideologies―both salacious and holy―to willing western masses...read more

Product Description: <div>Julia Ward Howe, celebrated in her own day, remains known as the author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and as an early proponent of Mother's Day. Ziegler's biography contrasts Howe's public image with the private struggle she endured as an ambitious woman trapped in a confining and desperately unhappy marriage...read more

A revealing study of the world view of nineteenth-century American peace activists, this book chronicles the political and intellectual development of the two major antebellum peace movements. The American Peace Society, a moderate group, understood peace work in the context of a positive view of the role of the state and social institutions in restraining war. It aimed to work through the institutions of church and state to achieve peace. The Garrisonian nonresistants of the New England Non-Resistant Society constituted a radical group which advocated the individual's complete separation from all institutions and a strict adherence to the example of Christ's life and teachings. As Valarie H. Ziegler shows, the task of establishing peace in a culture where institutionalized forms of violence such as slavery were legally protected proved endlessly frustrating for both groups. As they faced the questions raised by such diverse events as the lynching of abolitionists, the women's rights movement, the Mexican War, the Fugitive Slave Law, and John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, the advocates of peace faced the challenge of reformulating their ethical models, in hope of finding some way to reconcile peace, liberty, and social order. (view table of contents)

Product Description: "Wonderful! A marvelous introduction to the ways in which the three major Western religious traditions are both like, and unlike one another. Scholars will be familiar with many of the texts, while others will be both new and of enormous interest...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)