A Necessary Heresy

In 2004, Kentaro Toyama, an award-winning computer scientist, moved to India to start a new research group for Microsoft. Its mission: to explore novel technological solutions to the world's persistent social problems. Together with his team, he invented electronic devices for under-resourced urban schools and developed digital platforms for remote agrarian communities. But after a decade of designing technologies for humanitarian causes, Toyama concluded that no technology, however dazzling, could cause social change on its own. Technologists and policy-makers love to boast about modern innovation, and in their excitement, they exuberantly tout technology's boon to society. But what have our gadgets actually accomplished? Over the last four decades, America saw an explosion of new technologies – from the Internet to the iPhone, from Google to Facebook – but in that same period, the rate of poverty stagnated at a stubborn 13%, only to rise in the recent recession. So, a golden age of innovation in the world's most advanced country did nothing for our most prominent social ill. Toyama's warning resounds: Don't believe the hype! Technology is never the main driver of social progress. Geek Heresy inoculates us against the glib rhetoric of tech utopians by revealing that technology is only an amplifier of human conditions. By telling the moving stories of extraordinary people like Patrick Awuah, a Microsoft millionaire who left his lucrative engineering job to open Ghana's first liberal arts university, and Tara Sreenivasa, a graduate of a remarkable South Indian school that takes children from dollar-a-day families into the high-tech offices of Goldman Sachs and Mercedes-Benz, Toyama shows that even in a world steeped in technology, social challenges are best met with deeply social solutions.

Some of the most portentous events in medieval history—the Cathar crusade, the persecution and mass burnings of heretics, the papal inquisition—fall between 1000 and 1250, when the Catholic Church confronted the threat of heresy with force. Moore’s narrative focuses on the motives and anxieties of elites who waged war on heresy for political gain.

Heresy is a central concept in the formation of Orthodox Christianity. Where does this notion come from? This book traces the construction of the idea of ‘heresy’ in the rhetoric of ideological disagreements in Second Temple Jewish and early Christian texts and in the development of the polemical rhetoric against ‘heretics,’ called heresiology. Here, author Robert Royalty argues, one finds the origin of what comes to be labelled ‘heresy’ in the second century. In other words, there was such as thing as ‘heresy’ in ancient Jewish and Christian discourse before it was called ‘heresy.’ And by the end of the first century, the notion of heresy was integral to the political positioning of the early orthodox Christian party within the Roman Empire and the range of other Christian communities. This book is an original contribution to the field of Early Christian studies. Recent treatments of the origins of heresy and Christian identity have focused on the second century rather than on the earlier texts including the New Testament. The book further makes a methodological contribution by blurring the line between New Testament Studies and Early Christian studies, employing ideological and post-colonial critical methods.

Book 3 of the Epic Fantasy series Instrument of Omens

For generations the Inquisition has stood between humanity and the forces of darkness. It has failed. Thanquil Darkheart is a witch hunter for the Inquisition, on a holy crusade to rid the world of heresy. He’s also something else... expendable. When the God Emperor gives Thanquil an impossible task, he knows he has no choice but to venture deep into the Wilds to hunt down a fallen Inquisitor. Even the best swordswoman is one bad day away from a corpse. It’s a lesson Blademaster Jezzet Vel’urn isn’t keen to learn. Chased into the Wilds by a vengeful warlord, Jezzet makes it to the free city of Chade. But instead of sanctuary all she finds are more enemies from her past. The Black Thorn is a cheat, a thief, a murderer and worse. He’s best known for the killing of several Inquisitors and every town in the Wilds has a WANTED poster with his name on it. Thorn knows it’s often best to lie low and let the dust settle, but some jobs pay too well to pass up. As their fates converge, Jezzet, Thanquil, and the Black Thorn will need to forge an uneasy alliance in order to face the truth the Inquisition has been hiding from them all. A dark epic fantasy full of zealous witch hunters, roving warlords, dark magic, and demons. Perfect for fans of Joe Abercrombie and Brent Weeks.

The finale to the Chronicles of William Wilde! William and Serena struggle to recover from the devastation wrought upon their home by the forces of Sinskrill. They want nothing more than peace, but they have to fight on. They know that the war between the two islands, one spanning millennia, is reaching its denouement. Both Arylyn and Sinskrill--magi and mahavans--prepare for the final battle. Warriors are trained, readied for the battle neither side truly wants. Indeed, peace might be a possibility, but not so long as the Servitor, Serena's father, rules Sinskrill. He brings Sapient Dormant, the dread Overward to the mahavan home island to serve at his side. Worse, he rouses Salachar Rakshasa, an ancient demon who no one can truly control. Every man, woman, and child of both Arylyn and Sinskrill might pay the price for the Servitor's zeal to survive. Rukh and Jessira have their own troubles. Some of the magi no longer trust their leadership, but their wisdom and guidance is needed now more than ever for on the far-off world of Seminal, Shet is awake and readying his armies. And he has his own vengeance in mind.

Exploring the relationship of heresy, dissent and society in the 12th and 13th Centuries,The Devil’s World shows how people made conscious choices between heresy and orthodoxy in the middle ages and were not afraid to exert their power as ‘consumers’ of religion. The book gives an account of all popular religious movements, looks at the threat that heresy presented to the Church and lay powers and considers the measures they took to deal with it. Ideal for students of medieval and religious history.

A driven art critic’s plan to steal a painting leads to murder in this classic neo-noir novel by the author of the Hoke Moseley series. Fast-talking, backstabbing, womanizing, and fiercely ambitious art critic James Figueras will do anything—blackmail, burglary, and beyond—to make a name for himself. When an unscrupulous collector offers Figueras a career-making chance to interview Jacques Debierue, the greatest living—and most reclusive—artist, the critic must decide how far he will go to become the art-world celebrity he hungers to be. Will Figueras stop at the opportunity to skim some cream for himself or push beyond morality’s limits to a bigger payoff? Crossing the art world with the underworld, Willeford creates a novel of dark hue and high aesthetic polish. The Burnt Orange Heresy—the 1970s crime classic now back in print—has lost none of its savage delights as it re-creates the making of a murderer, calmly and with exquisite tension, while satirizing the workings of the art world as the ultimate con. Now a major motion picture starring Donald Sutherland and Mick Jagger Praise for The Burnt Orange Heresy “Stunning . . . A novel full of genuine fun that also manages to make a level statement about the art world and its hermetic credulities.” —New Yorker