Fractured Times

Eric Hobsbawm, who passed away in 2012, was one of the most brilliant and original historians of our age. Through his work, he observed the great twentieth-century confrontation between bourgeois fin de siècle culture and myriad new movements and ideologies, from communism and extreme nationalism to Dadaism to the emergence of information technology. In Fractured Times, Hobsbawm, with characteristic verve, unpacks a century of cultural fragmentation. Hobsbawm examines the conditions that both created the flowering of the belle époque and held the seeds of its disintegration: paternalistic capitalism, globalization, and the arrival of a mass consumer society. Passionate but never sentimental, he ranges freely across subjects as diverse as classical music, the fine arts, rock music, and sculpture. He records the passing of the golden age of the "free intellectual" and explores the lives of forgotten greats; analyzes the relationship between art and totalitarianism; and dissects phenomena as diverse as surrealism, art nouveau, the emancipation of women, and the myth of the American cowboy. Written with consummate imagination and skill, Fractured Times is the last book from one of our greatest modern-day thinkers.

If ever a period of time felt ‘fractured’ it is now. Whichever way we turn, we witness the dismembering and fracturing of many previously taken for granted realities, with maps and borders – physical and metaphorical – being redrawn before our eyes. What place for the feminist practical theologian in such a climate? “In Fragments for Fractured Times”, one of the world’s leading feminist practical theologians, Nicola Slee, brings together 15 years of papers, articles, talks and sermons, many of them previously unpublished. Collected from diverse times, places, settings and occasions, Slee offers an introduction to each fragment, “holding it up to the light and examining its size, shape, texture and pattern”. Drawing on a wide and diverse range of her writing, Slee demonstrates the richness and variety of feminist practical theological writing. What feminist theology brings to the table of scholarly thinking and embodied practice is, she suggests, something creative, artful, prophetic as well as playful – a resource for Christian living and thinking in fractured times.

Communication and information, facilitated by the internet and social media, play a highly influential role in the daily lives of peoples around the world. Drawing attention to many contemporary issues, the contents of this eclectic, multifaceted, international, and well-researched volume are engaging, thought-provoking, and informative. This book will be of great value to researchers and media professionals, and will serve as an essential resource for senior and graduate-level college courses in international communication, cultural studies, mass media, journalism, political communication, and related subjects.

Damaged. Broken. Destroyed. I’ve heard it all. A single moment of trusting the wrong person shattered my life into pieces, and my family has never looked at me the same. It’s impossible to convince them that I’m anything more than the broken girl they rescued all those years ago. Until I meet him. Ramsey’s grumpy demeanor and menacing scowl scare most of the world away. But not me. Not when I’ve seen his gentle hands soothe an abused colt or comfort a terrified mare. And when I finally get up the courage to strike out on my own, Ramsey’s there. Roommates felt like such a safe proposition until Ramsey’s lingering touches and wicked smile light a fire in me I don’t think will ever be extinguished. And he feels it, too… But just as my new life begins to take root, an evil from my past emerges from the shadows, casting a darkness on my newfound freedom. And this time, they won’t settle for pieces of me. They want everything…

Abandoned by her parents as a three-year-old, and ultimately leaving her home country India for a new life in America as a young mother of a three-year-old son, this is not only an immigrant's story, but a poignant and powerful memoir that is at first, one of sadness and continuing adversity, but ultimately one of strength, purpose, and the universal triumph of hope. It is a story of dislocation, disruption, and despair, and brings focus to the silencing of girlhood and womanhood and how with time, love, and support we can work our way out of that silence. Shabnam Samuel was twenty-seven when she moved to the US, carrying with her a troubled marriage, an almost estranged husband, and a three-year-old son. Hoping to create a fresh start from everything that was holding her down, it took Shabnam twenty-five years of trials and tribulations to finally find her voice, her strength, and her place in this world.

The catastrophic story of how the Arab world has descended into chaos since the 2003 invasion of Iraq as told by the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and international bestselling author of Lawrence in Arabia, a probing and insightful work of reportage. From world-renowned war correspondent, Scott Anderson, comes this gripping, human account of the unraveling of the Arab world, the rise of ISIS, and the global refugee crisis after the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003. This portrait of the region is framed by the stories of six individuals--the matriarch of a dissident Egyptian family, a Libyan Air Force cadet with divided loyalties, an Iraqi day-laborer turned ISIS fighter, a Kurdish doctor on leave from his practice to fight ISIS, a college student caught in the chaos of Aleppo, and an Iraqi women's rights activist targeted by militias. Through these personal stories, the myriad, complex causes of the widespread war and instability in the region come into focus and the concrete reality of the unspeakable tragedies occurring in the Middle East becomes clear.

After your faith has fractured, let what takes its place be the real thing . . . at last. Somewhere along the way, the Christianity you knew began to crumble. You began to suspect your faith was misplaced. Disillusionment set in. Churches hurt you. Their people failed you. Christian institutions were exposed as fake. And in it all, God was silent. Is He gone? Or is God really there, waiting for you to find Him instead of the counterfeits? If you’re walking this difficult spiritual path, Lina AbuJamra understands you. After experiencing the near deconstruction of her own faith, Lina had to rebuild something more solid when the faith she once knew let her down. With her diagnostic style that comes from her training as an ER doc, Lina helps you grapple with questions like: Where is God in my pain? Is this how Christians are supposed to act? Why did my story end up this way? Is this the normal Christian life? Why is it so hard for Christians to love? Let Fractured Faith help you find your way back to God. You just might discover that the real God has been waiting for you all along.

Born almost a hundred years ago in Vienna - the cultural heart of a bourgeois Mitteleurope - Eric Hobsbawm, who was to become one of the most brilliant and original historians of our age, was uniquely placed to observe an era of titanic social and artistic change. As the century progressed the forces of Communism and Dadaism, Ibiza and cyberspace, would do battle with the bourgeois high culture fin-de-siecle Vienna represented - the opera, the Burgtheater, the museums of art and science, City Hall. In Fractured Times Hobsbawm unpicks a century of cultural fragmentation and dissolution with characteristic verve and vigour. Hobsbawm examines the conditions that created the great cultural flowering of the belle epoque and held the seeds of its disintegration, from paternalistic capitalism to globalisation and the arrival of a mass consumer society.