Redemption

History has been central to a number of heated public debates in recent years. As Indigenous people have sought redress through the law, the role of history in the courts has become highly charged. Rights and Redemption is a detailed investigation of the uses of history and historians in high-profile cases involving Indigenous litigants, something not previously attempted. Ann Curthoys, Ann Genovese and Alexander Reilly look at cases before the Federal Court during the era of the Howard government, a time when Indigenous rights and the place of Aboriginal people in the national story were undermined in government laws and policies. They investigate how the courts have made use of historians as expert witnesses, and how the colonial past has been framed and understood by the courts. Rights and Redemption is an important record of a unique period of litigation in Indigenous affairs in Australia and a meditation on ways in which law and history might improve Indigenous rights. Book jacket.

Arie Morgenstern argues the roots of modern Zionism go backy to a group of messianic jews in the early 1800s. reader Morgenstern shows how the belief in the messianic modern significance of the year 1840 spurred immigration to Israel by Jews from all over the world.

From the author of the New York Times-bestselling Robert B. Parker's Blind Spot Walking the Perfect Square introduced Moe Prager - retired New York City cop-turned-wine shop owner - to much acclaim and an enthusiastic readership. Still possessed of his vintage police savvy, and perhaps the only Jewish licensed PI in the five boroughs, Moe wonders if he’s really meant to be a merchant and not a cop. Redemption Street finds him in 1981, lured into the mystery of a 1966 hotel fire - one that killed seventeen people, including his first love - by a long-grieving brother and Moe’s own restless determination to set things right. Reed Farrel Coleman’s crisp, page-turning narrative has Moe trudging through his childhood summer vacation stomping grounds, the now-decaying Catskill resort scene. The borscht belt’s near-forgotten landscape of scarred lives, ambitious politicians, and corrupt cops is the minefield Moe must brave to find the truth. Was the fire really sparked by a negligent smoker or was it murder? Will the long dead keep their secrets or divulge their stories? And will what Moe uncovers lead him down another blind alley or into the bright light of Redemption Street?

This book serves to feed human nature with both a religious and literary mood. It may bring the reader a little closer to an understanding of life's complexities, or it may challenge the reader's own philosophical self, as he or she discovers the unraveling of Hawthorne's. The editor of the book, which has been composed from his memory of an unknown student's work, claims to have unearthed a rare discovery that may unveil a mystery that has puzzled the best of minds in the literary field for many years. In the words of its author, his purpose is clear: "I have thought to publish my interpretations of Hawthorne's novel so that those critics in the field of literature, who will, may have additional cause for which to expound their intelligence, either in trying to better understand this mystery, or to salvage the old cherished ambiguities by which the public brain is presently intoxicated. If I am correct in only a few of my impressions, hopefully the main ones, we shall have to reappraise Hawthorne as a literary prophet who hoped for and predicted a future time when mankind would look more favorable upon the creation, man." Both the author and editor send the reader on a journey into the mind and heart of an American icon which have too long been misunderstood and underappreciated. He asks the reader to drink deep from the depths of his or her own intuitive awakenings, and encourages each to rediscover the man who created The Scarlet Letter. In so doing, one may see the vexations and conflicts in his own life as a "dark necessity" to be endured, as in the character of his beloved Hester, who speaks to the heart of every human, and in behalf of our own human nature.

The Dred Scott case is the most notorious example of slaves suing for freedom. Most examinations of the case focus on its notorious verdict, and the repercussions that the decision set off-especially the worsening of the sectional crisis that would eventually lead to the Civil War-were extreme. In conventional assessment, a slave losing a lawsuit against his master seems unremarkable. But in fact, that case was just one of many freedom suits brought by slaves in the antebellum period; an example of slaves working within the confines of the U.S. legal system (and defying their masters in the process) in an attempt to win the ultimate prize: their freedom. And until Dred Scott, the St. Louis courts adhered to the rule of law to serve justice by recognizing the legal rights of the least well-off. For over a decade, legal scholar Lea VanderVelde has been building and examining a collection of more than 300 newly discovered freedom suits in St. Louis. In Redemption Songs, VanderVelde describes twelve of these never-before analyzed cases in close detail. Through these remarkable accounts, she takes readers beyond the narrative of the Dred Scott case to weave a diverse tapestry of freedom suits and slave lives on the frontier. By grounding this research in St. Louis, a city defined by the Antebellum frontier, VanderVelde reveals the unique circumstances surrounding the institution of slavery in westward expansion. Her investigation shows the enormous degree of variation among the individual litigants in the lives that lead to their decision to file suit for freedom. Although Dred Scott's loss is the most widely remembered, over 100 of the 300 St. Louis cases that went to court resulted in the plaintiff's emancipation. Beyond the successful outcomes, the very existence of these freedom suits helped to reshape the parameters of American slavery in the nation's expansion. Thanks to VanderVelde's thorough and original research, we can hear for the first time the vivid stories of a seemingly powerless group who chose to use a legal system that was so often arrayed against them in their fight for freedom from slavery.

The Ravenous Tavern, standing dark and beautiful at the edge of town, holding untold secrets of the night. Through the dark streets surrounding it walks the hidden dangers, and the destiny of one young woman. No past, no future, and desperate for the acceptance and kinship they offer. Haunted by faces from a long forgotten past and voices in the night. Keri joins the dark ones thinking they would give her everything she wanted, only to learn everything comes with a price. Now, she must learn about her past, face her nightmares, and accept what fate brings next.

J. J. Johnson Leese discusses how the apostle Paul's writing on Christ's relationship to creation, read alongside the interpretations of Irenaeus of Lyon, provide a meaningful contribution to contemporary debates on the interrelationship between religion and nature. Leese draws upon the integration of three related scholarly trends – the increased importance placed on biblical creation themes, the emergence of ecotheology, and the history of reception – while focusing on the Pauline corpus and readings of Paul by Irenaeus, thus uncovering a robust creation and ecotheological theology. Irenaeus' approach provides the possibility for Paul to contribute to ecotheology, by way of a theological vision where the whole of reality in relationship to Christ and creation and by extension, to soteriology and ecclesiology, are central components of Paul's theology.