Author: Clare Jackson File Type: epub Remembered as one of Britains most charismatic, affable and instantly recognisable monarchs, Charles II embodies all the luxury, theatricality, excess and raciness of the Restoration. Yet, as Clare Jacksons gloriously enjoyable and perceptive biography shows, his fathers execution and his own years of exile following the Civil War made Charles a guarded, curious and unusually self-aware ruler, acutely sensitive to public perceptions of his kingship and adept at the art of role-playing. Here she captures Charles complicated mixture of majesty, lasciviousness, cynicism and elusiveness. Encompassing events from the Fire of London to the Dutch wars, and drawing on the many depictions of Charles from Pepys to popular novels, this is a study of kingship as the ultimate performance.

Author: James Martin File Type: epub James Martin, SJ, gifted storyteller, editor at large of America magazine, popular media commentator, and New York Times bestselling author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, brings the Gospels to life in Jesus A Pilgrimage, and invites believers and seekers alike to experience Jesus through Scripture, prayer and travel.Combining the fascinating insights of historical Jesus studies with profound spiritual insights about the Christ of faith, Father Martin recreates the world of first-century Galilee and Judea to usher you into Jesuss life and times and show readers how Jesus speaks to us today. Martin also brings together the most up-to-date Scripture scholarship, wise spiritual reflections, and lighthearted stories about traveling through the Holy Land with a fellow (and funny) Jesuit, visiting important sites in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.The person at the heart of the Gospels can seem impossibly distant. Stories about his astonishing life and ministryclever parables that upended everyones expectations, incredible healings that convinced even skeptics, nature miracles that dazzled the dumbstruck disciplescan seem far removed from our own daily lives, hard to understand, and at times irrelevant. But in Jesus you will come to know him as Father Martin knows him Messiah and Savior, as well as friend and brother.

Author: Dennis J. Goldford File Type: pdf Located at the intersection of law, political science, philosophy, and literary theory, this book explores the nature of American constitutional interpretation through a reconsideration of the long-standing debate between the interpretive theories of originalism and nonoriginalism. It traces that debate to a particular set of premises about the nature of language, interpretation, and objectivity, premises that raise the specter of unconstrained, unstructured constitutional interpretation that has haunted contemporary constitutional theory.ReviewQuite illuminating Keith E. Whittington, Drake University Book DescriptionThis is a work of constitutional theory that explores the nature of American constitutional interpretation through a reconsideration of the long-standing debate between the interpretive theories of originalism and nonoriginalism. The book presents the novel argument that a critique of the underlying premises of originalism dissolves not just originalism but nonoriginalism as well, which leads to the recognition that constitutional interpretation is already and always structured. By their fidelity to the Constitution, Americans are a textual people in that they live in and through the terms of a fundamental text. On the basis of this central idea, the book presents a new understanding of constitutional interpretation and an innovative account of the democratic legitimacy and binding capacity of the Constitution.

Author: Christopher Alexander File Type: pdf In Book One of this four-volume work, Alexander describes a scientific view of the world in which all space-matter has perceptible degrees of life, andestablishes this understanding of living structures as an intellectual basis for a new architecture. He identifies fifteen geometric properties which tend to accompany the presence of life in nature, and also in the buildings and cities we make. These properties are seen over and over in nature and in the cities and streets of the past,but theyhave almost disappeared in theimpersonal developments and buildings of the last hundred years. This book shows that living structures depend on features which make a close connection with the human self, and that only living structure has the capacity to support human well-being.Amazon.com ReviewChristopher Alexander, the humble messiah of good architectural design, invites readers to get comfortable with their inner judgments in The Nature of Order The Phenomenon of Life. Best known as principal author of A Pattern Language, Alexander has designed and built countless projects worldwide, all the while thinking deeply about the nature of his work. Frustrated with the 20th centurys reluctance to acknowledge human commonality and reliance on Cartesian mechanism, he urges us to rethink our understanding of space itself. With an architects precision and clarity, he explains his theory of life as the order inhabiting space--an order both variable in degree and apprehensible to human minds. Though the scientifically minded will resist his seeming subjectivity, it will be hard for any to argue that his many examples of good and bad design are equivalent. Alexanders combination of powerful analysis and compelling synthesis makes The Nature of Order essential 21st-century reading. --Rob LightnerFrom Publishers WeeklyIn The Nature of Order Book One, the Phenomenon of Life, architectural theorist Christopher Alexander (The Timeless Way of Building) ponders why 20th-century buildings so often seem inhospitable. The problem seemingly stems from the mechanistic worldview of architects, who ignore fundamental but elusive properties like the order and life of a building. Alexander works to define such terms using copious illustrations and showing that people almost always agree on which buildings have more life to them. This first in a four-volume series on architectures role in the universe builds on Alexanders pioneering and now classic study, A Pattern Language, and should be showing up on syllabi around the world. 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.