Facing West

Nico: I left my family and tiny Texas hometown fifteen years ago to escape small-town gossips and to give my mom and sister the chance at a better life. But when a phone call from an attorney back home informs me that my sister passed away, leaving me custody of her newborn baby, I'm shocked out of the steady life I've built for myself running a tattoo shop in San Francisco. The thing is: I don't do babies. And I don't do small towns. Or commitment. And I especially don't do family. My plan is to go back to Hobie just long enough to sign adoption papers, giving my niece the kind of stable, loving family I could never provide. But the moment I meet my niece in the arms of Weston Wilde, my sister's best friend and the town's handsome doctor, my plans begin to change. Because suddenly, I see a different future. One with the very thing I thought I never deserved: a family. If only I can convince West that I'm not the same good-for-nothing kid ready to bolt when things get tough. Weston: There's one thing I know for sure about Nico Salerno: he was a good-for-nothing as a kid and judging by the purple-haired, tattoo'd punk who shows up at his sister's funeral, he hasn't changed. There's no way I'm letting him take custody of my best friend's baby. But the more time I spend around him, the more I realize that his rough exterior is just a shell and that beneath all the tattoos is a scared, insecure man searching for a place to belong. And pretty soon I know exactly where he belongs: in my bed and by my side. The problem is, he abandoned his family once before, how do I know that if we become a family he won't do it again? Facing West is the first in the new Forever Wilde series about the huge Wilde family from Hobie, Texas, whose patriarchs aren't above a little meddling if that's what it takes to help their grandkids find true love.

American expansion, says Richard Drinnon, is characterized by repression and racism. In his reinterpretation of "winning" the West, Drinnon links racism with colonialism and traces this interrelationship from the Pequot War in New England, through American expansion westward to the Pacific, and beyond to the Phillippines and Vietnam. He cites parrallels between the slaughter of bison on the Great Plains and the defoliation of Vietnam and notes similarities in the language of aggression used in the American West, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia.

In 1974 nearly 3,000 evangelicals from 150 nations met at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. Amidst this cosmopolitan setting and in front of the most important white evangelical leaders of the United States members of the Latin American Theological Fraternity spoke out against the American Church. Fiery speeches by Ecuadorian René Padilla and Peruvian Samuel Escobar revealed a global weariness with what they described as an American style of coldly efficient mission wedded to a myopic, right-leaning politics. Their bold critiques electrified Christians from around the world. The dramatic growth of Christianity around the world in the last century has shifted the balance of power within the faith away from traditional strongholds in Europe and the United States. To be sure, evangelical populists who voted for Donald Trump have resisted certain global pressures, and Western missionaries have carried Christian Americanism abroad. But the line of influence has also run the other way. David R. Swartz demonstrates that evangelicals in the Global South spoke back to American evangelicals on matters of race, imperialism, theology, sexuality, and social justice. From the left, they pushed for racial egalitarianism, ecumenism, and more substantial development efforts. From the right, they advocated for a conservative sexual ethic grounded in postcolonial logic. As Christian immigration to the United States burgeoned in the wake of the Immigration Act of 1965, global evangelicals forced many American Christians to think more critically about their own assumptions. The United States is just one node of a sprawling global network that includes Korea, India, Switzerland, the Philippines, Guatemala, Uganda, and Thailand. Telling stories of resistance, accommodation, and cooperation, Swartz shows that evangelical networks not only go out to, but also come from, the ends of the earth.

When his family travels west via wagon train in 1845, Ben faces many adventures and hardships. Along with the dangers of rough weather and wild animals, Ben also fears the possibility that he might have a devastating asthma attack. As his family sets out from Missouri to Oregon, young Ben wonders whether he will have more trouble with the dangers of the journey or his debilitating asthma.

"The dramatic growth of Christianity around the world in the last century has shifted the balance of power within the faith away from the traditional strongholds of Europe and the United States to the Global South. While we typically imagine Western missionaries carrying religion to the ends of the earth, David R. Swartz shows that the line of influence has often run the other way, as evangelicals in nations such as Korea, India, and Uganda shaped the American church from abroad. Swartz tells stories of evangelicals crossing national boundaries, offering new insights into a tradition that imagines itself as simultaneously American and part of a global communion"--

On reaching his 47th birthday, a man decides to test whether he is still attractive to women. Two of his pals are bragging of sexual exploits with a certain lady, so he decides to try her, only to be rebuffed. But he takes it philosophically.

From the early years of the republic, many Americans anticipated a Pacific Age in world affairs that the United States would inevitably dominate, not in a territorial sense so much as in a cultural and commercial one. Despite the reality that Asia was of little real economic importance in American life until recently, a powerful image persisted in the American mind of the promises of riches to be found across the Pacific. This book provides the history of that dream, from the time of Spanish galleons to the hypersonic airplane of the future. With bewildering speed, the North Pacific region has come to rival the North Atlantic as a global center of manufacturing, trade and information, and the generation of wealth. The economic statistics show that the Age of the Pacific has truly arrived. Perry vividly shows that from the early years of the republic many Americans anticipated a Pacific Age in world affairs that the United States would inevitably dominate, not in a territorial sense so much as in a cultural and commercial one. Despite the reality that Asia was of little real economic importance in American life until recently, a powerful image persisted in the American mind of the promise of riches to be found across the Pacific. This book provides the history of that dream, from the time of Spanish galleons to the hypersonic airplane of the future. Countless books have been written about American-East Asian relations, but fewer books have addressed the importance of the Pacific Ocean to the United States. No one before has shown so comprehensively how Americans dominated the creation of trans-Pacific trade routes. This book will be of great interest to professional historians and the general public interested in the history of American-Pacific relations, the history of transportation, and the history of the entrepreneurial doers and dreamers who spearheaded American commerce with Asia.

Public Policy Challenges Facing Higher Education in the American West is the first regional public policy study of American higher education. Presidents of the Western State Commission for Higher Education and the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, alongside nationally recognized policy analysts and current western campus presidents, provosts, and administrators, tackle seven key public policy issues facing postsecondary education in the American West: student access, federal research funding, state governance, state financing, state appropriations and their relationship to institutional tuition, distance education and technology, and the role of community colleges. These analysts, researchers, and administrators offer a clear and complete analysis of the facts of each policy situation, the public policy options, and their connections to state and university relationships. Fifteen western states, including Alaska, California, and Hawaii, comprise the expansive region under discussion. With its companion volume, Higher Education in the American West: Regional History and State Contexts, this book is essential reading for higher education policymakers, scholars, and anyone who wants to know what the relationship between states and universities in the West has been and where it is going.