Author: Mark Z. Danielewski File Type: pdf The Familiar, Volume 1 Wherein the cat is found . . .The Familiar, Volume 2 Wherein the cat is hungry . . .The Familiar, Volume 3 Wherein the cat is blind . . .p MS Shell Dlg 2, serif 12px p MS Shell Dlg 2, serif 12pxReleased for the summer from the perils of school, Xanther and her nameless cat are settling into a comfortable routine at home. However, the rest of the Ibrahim family is growing more and more unsettled. Astair fears their stretched finances are already at a breaking point. Not even a visit from an old friend can mitigate Anwars feeling that hes failing to support those he loves and that even worse things are to come. The twins, Freya and Shasti, sense something too and blame their older sister. Honeysuckles haunt the air and smell of offerings . . . Meanwhile, Cas and Bobbys survival may depend on facing the one person they fear most. And on the other side of the world, Jingjing and Tian Li set out to find what was lost their missing cat. With spectacular visuals and the vibrant wordplay that are his trademark, The Familiar (Volume 3) is a beautiful and singular reading experience that could come only from the imagination of Mark Z. Danielewski.p MS Shell Dlg 2, serif 12px p MS Shell Dlg 2, serif 12pxTHE FAMILIARcontinues... p MS Shell Dlg 2, serif 12pxThe FamiliarVolume4 Wherein the cat is toothlessem font-style italicThe FamiliarVolume5 Wherein the cat is names

Author: Peter J. Schuurman File Type: pdf Evangelicals have been scandalized by their association with Donald Trump, their megachurches summarily dismissed as religious Walmarts. In The Subversive Evangelical Peter Schuurman shows how a growing group of reflexive evangelicals use irony to critique their own tradition and distinguish themselves from the stereotype of right-wing evangelicalism. Entering the Meeting House an Ontario-based Anabaptist megachurch as a participant observer, Schuurman discovers that the marketing is clever and the venue (a rented movie theatre) is attractive to the more than five thousand weekly attendees. But the heart of the church is its charismatic leader, Bruxy Cavey, whose anti-religious teaching and ironic tattoos offer a fresh image for evangelicals. This charisma, Schuurman argues, is not just the power of one individual it is a dramatic production in which Cavey, his staff, and attendees cooperate, cultivating an identity as an irreligious megachurch and providing followers with a more culturally acceptable way to practise their faith in a secular age. Going behind the scenes to small group meetings, church dance parties, and the homes of attendees to investigate what motivates these reflexive evangelicals, Schuurman reveals a playful and provocative counterculture that distances itself from prevailing stereotypes while still embracing a conservative Christian faith. **Review The Subversive Evangelical provides a compelling portrait of an ironic religious orientation--an anti-Christian Christianity--that mixes subversion and deconversion to uphold religious orthodoxy while seeming to reject it. This book uncovers the sociological workings of an enormous multi-campus megachurch led by an overweight, unkempt, and self-deprecating pastor who kicks seriousness to the curb and insists that Jesus is a totally fun guy. This quirky, whimsical, and iconoclastic minister overturns established tradition by restructuring his church around Those Who Hate Church. Given the increased number of disaffected white Christians walking away from organized religion, this book explains how an inventive and charismatic leader adopted and now orchestrates the performance of an unexpected and newly legitimated ecclesiology for contemporary evangelicals, one that is aggressively fighting for the continued relevancy of congregational faith in North America. Gerardo Marti, L Richardson King Professor of Sociology at Davidson College and co-author of The Deconstructed Church Understanding Emerging Christianity. A rigorous sociological, theoretical, and empirical ethnographic study of one of Canadas most witty, playful, and humorous evangelical leaders (and his congregation). Schuurman masterfully unpacks the place of charisma in a congregations attempt to systematically distance itself from a popularized and stigmatized conception of what it means to be evangelical in a post-Christian Canada. A must read for scholars of religion and church leaders in Canada who wish to think carefully and critically about congregations andor evangelicals. Joel Thiessen, Ph.D. Professor of Sociology Director, Flourishing Congregations Institute About the Author Peter J. Schuurman is adjunct professor at Redeemer University College, instructor in the Doctor of Ministry program at Tyndale University College and Seminary, and executive director of Global Scholars Canada.

Author: Lydia Bean File Type: pdf The Politics of Evangelical Identity is a bracing corrective to the perception of evangelicals as theological stooges mesmerized by the spell of conservative masterminds. Bean persuasively argues that the appeal of conservatives in the evangelical base has far more to do with how they connect the political to everyday spiritual and religious practices. Her path-clearing and transformative book brilliantly engages the political perspectives, moral passions, and religious beliefs of evangelicals from a practical, grounded perspective.--Michael Eric Dyson, Georgetown UniversityThe Politics of Evangelical Identity is a very important book, a truly original and deeply insightful exploration of why Americas white evangelical Christians allied with the political Right to a degree that evangelicals in other countries have not. Writing with flair, respect, and understanding, Bean shows how American evangelicals have woven political conservatism into the fabric of everyday religious life. This book should permanently alter how both its friends and its critics view the Religious Right.--E. J. Dionne, Jr., author of Souled Out and Our Divided Political HeartThe question of how evangelicals will vote has become increasingly important in recent elections. In her insightful and well-researched book, The Politics of Evangelical Identity, Lydia Bean explores how political forces have influenced and re-formed an American evangelical identity from the grassroots. Anyone who is serious about understanding evangelicals political participation should read this book.--Jim Wallis, president and founder of SojournersThis is an outstanding comparative study of how evangelical Protestants learn to make their politics comport with their religious identity. Beans exemplary, close-up observation shows us the subtle yet powerful cues that church settings communicate to worshippers about how to understand, and filter, the larger public world. Challenging existing understandings of the Christian Right in America, The Politics of Evangelical Identity delivers news of the utmost importance for scholars of conservative religion and politics.--Paul Lichterman, author of Elusive Togetherness Church Groups Trying to Bridge Americas DivisionsBean is really doing something quite subtle and original in showing the connection between partisan coalition building and the different ways in which religious narratives and practices are linked (or not linked) with explicit partisan projects and identifications. The case material is wonderful and extremely rich. Some of the findings here are genuinely surprising.--Ann Mische, author of Partisan Publics Communication and Contention across Brazilian Youth Activist Networks

Author: Steven Levy File Type: pdf Written with full cooperation from top management, including cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, this is the inside story behind Google, the most successful and most admired technology company of our time, told by one of our best technology writers. Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes readers inside Google headquartersthe Googleplexto show how Google works. While they were still students at Stanford, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized Internet search. They followed this brilliant innovation with another, as two of Googles earliest employees found a way to do what no one else had make billions of dollars from Internet advertising. With this cash cow, Google was able to expand dramatically and take on other transformative projects more efficient data centers, open-source cell phones, free Internet video (YouTube), cloud computing, digitizing books, and much more. The key to Googles success in all these businesses, Levy reveals, is its engineering mind-set and adoption of such Internet values as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk taking. After its unapologetically elitist approach to hiring, Google pampers its engineersfree food and dry cleaning, on-site doctors and masseusesand gives them all the resources they need to succeed. Even today, with a workforce of more than 23,000, Larry Page signs off on every hire. But has Google lost its innovative edge? With its newest initiative, social networking, Google is chasing a successful competitor for the first time. Some employees are leaving the company for smaller, nimbler start-ups. Can the company that famously decided not to be evil still compete? No other book has ever turned Google inside out as Levy does with In the Plex. **From Publishers Weekly The contradictions of the Internet search behemoth are teased apart in this engaging, slightly starry-eyed business history. Wired magazine writer Levy (Hackers) insightfully recaps Googles groundbreaking search engine and fabulously profitable online adbrokering business, and elucidates the cutting-edge research and hard-nosed cost-efficiencies underlying them. He also regales readers with the Googley corporate culture of hip techno-capitalism the elitist focus on braininess, the campus game rooms, the countercultural rectitude of billionaire founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin (which can read more like puerile arrogance as they roller-blade into meetings with business-suited squares). Levys narrative updates a familiar portrait of the company, with breathless accounts of recent innovations. He offers a smart analysis of the tensions between Googles aCyDont Be Evil slogan and its censorship of its Chinese Web site and the privacy implications of its drive to sponge up all informationbut he accepts Googles blinkered conception of e-ethics and its demands for huge tax breaks with too much complacency. (Apr.) (c) PWxyz, LLC. Review Levy is Americas premier technology journalist. . . . He has produced the most interesting book ever written about Google. He makes the biggest intellectual challenges of computer science seem endlessly fun and fascinating. . . . We can expect many more books about Google. But few will deliver the lively, idea-based journalism of In the Plex. Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Washington Post Almost nothing can stop a remarkable idea executed well at the right time, as Steven Levys brisk-but-detailed history of Google, In the Plex, convincingly proves. . . . makes obsolete previous books on the company. Jack Shafer, The San Francisco Chronicle The rise of Google is an engrossing story, and nobodys ever related it in such depth. Hiawatha Bray, The Boston Globe Dense, driven examination of the pioneering search engine that changed the face of the Internet. Thoroughly versed in technology reporting, Wired senior writer Levy deliberates at great length about online behemoth Google and creatively documents the companys genesis from a feisty start-up to a market-dominating giant. The author capably describes Googles founders, Stanford grads Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as sharp, user-focused and steadfastly intent on organizing all the worlds information. Levy traces how Googles intricately developed, intrepid beginnings and gradual ascent over a competitive marketplace birthed an advertising-fueled money machine (especially following its IPO in 2004), and he follows the expansion and operation of the companys liberal work campus (Googleplex) and its distinctively selective hiring process (Page still signs off on every new hire). The author was afforded an opportunity to observe the companys operations, development, culture and advertising model from within the infrastructure for two years with full managerial cooperation. From there, he performed hundreds of interviews with past and current employees and discovered the type of creative disorganization that can either make or break a business. Though clearly in awe of Googles crowning significance, Levy evenhandedly notes the companys more glaring deficiencies, like the 2004 cyber-attack that forced the removal of the search engine from mainland China, a decision vehemently unsupported by co-founder Brin. Though the author offers plenty of well-known information, its his catbird-seat vantage point that really gets to the good stuff. Outstanding reportage delivered in the upbeat, informative fashion for which Levy is well known. Kirkus Reviews (starred review) An instructive primer on how the minds behind the worlds most influential internet company function. Richard Waters, The Wall Street Journal [Steven Levy] spent much of the past three years playing anthropologist at one of the Internets most interesting villages and set of inhabitants -- the Googleplex and the tribue of Googlers who inhabit it. . . . A deep dive into Googles culture, history and technology. --Mike Swift, San Jose Mercury News The wizards of Silicon Valley often hype their hardwaresoftware breakthroughs as magical for the products ability to pull off dazzling stunts in the blink of an eye. And true to the magicians code, these tech talents rarely let mere mortals peer behind the curtains. . . . Thats what makes Levys just-out tome so valuable. Jonathan Takiff, The Philadelphia Daily News The most comprehensive, intelligent and readable analysis of Google to date. Levy is particularly good on how those behind Google think and work. . . . Whats more, his lucid introductions to Googles core technologies - the search engine and the companys data centres - are written in non-geek English and are rich with anecdotes and analysis. . . . In The Plex teems with original insight into Googles most controversial affairs. Andrew Keen, New Scientist Steven Levys new account [of Google], In the Plex, is the most authoritative to date and in many ways the most entertaining. James Gleick, The New York Review of Books