Joseph W. Michels

Renowned evangelical theologian Gerald Bray provides a clear and coherent account of the church in biblical, historical, and theological perspective. He tells the story of the church in its many manifestations through time, starting with its appearance in the New Testament, moving through centuries of persecution and triumph, and discussing how and why the ancient church broke up at the Reformation. Along the way, Bray looks at the four classic marks of the church--its oneness, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity--and illustrates how each of these marks has been understood by different Christian traditions. The book concludes with a look at the ecumenical climate of today and suggests ways that the four characteristics of the church can and should be manifested in our present global context. This accessible introduction to the church from an evangelical perspective explores ecclesiology through the lenses of church history and doctrine to reveal what it means for us today. Bray discusses the church as a living reality, offering practical ways churches and individuals can cooperate and live together. -- Provided by publisher.

In 1956, as a nineteen-year old university student, the author and a companion set out on a two-month-long journey around the eastern Mediterranean. A unique feature of the trip was their decision to hitchhike. The journey began in Madrid, Spain. War, and the threat of war, posed barriers to a continuous land-based effort, inspiring them to book passage on tramp steamers plying the Mediterranean whenever the need arose. Less than a dozen years after the Second World War, it was a time when Americans were well received wherever they went. It was also a time when university students, of all nationalities, were held in high regard. Capitalizing on these two sentiments, the author and his companion navigated the treacherous currents of cultural misunderstanding, rigid officialdom, and language, to arrive at their intended destination - Istanbul, Turkey - just as planned. The memoir recounts their adventures hitchhiking down to Sicily, deck passage to Malta and on to Benghazi, Libya, hitchhiking across North Africa, taking deck passage to Beirut, hitchhiking through the Middle East, and finally boarding the famed Orient Express in Istanbul, Turkey, for a memorable train trip behind the Iron Curtain.

An Historical Novel. In 1889 twenty-five-year old Lemuel Dearce heads for Chicago where he gets swept up in the country's new craze: bicycles. Hiring on as a worker in a bicycle manufacturing plant, he masters the technology and seeks to apply it as a bicycle repairman. This takes him to Minneapolis in 1893, a city in the full grip of bicycle mania. By 1910, married with three children, he watches his dream of a career in bicycles collapse as the automobile takes center stage. Lemuel then gets caught up in the widespread enthusiasm for scientific farming of dry lands out west. he brings his family to eastern Montana where he files a homestead claim on a desolate patch of prairie. Hardships and separations plague the family. But by 1917 he manages to secure legal title to the land only to see it devastated by the drought of 1918. With his dreams in tatters, Lemuel once again searches for a new beginning.

The first comprehensive study of a Mayan chiefdom based on archaeological findings. This book presents a detailed reconstruction of its social, political, and economic organization. The evolution of a Precolumbian chiefdom throughout 2,000 years is reconstructed from data gathered by the Penn State University Kaminaljuyu Project.

An historical novel. Twenty-year-old Will Porter doesn't want his parents to get divorced even though his newborn brother may not be his father's. But when he seeks to keep; his mother and father together he's thrown out of the house and disinherited. His college education cut short, Will strikes out on his own, traveling through various towns of the South during the 1890's before heading west to seek his fortune. A member of one of the more prominent families of historic Virginia, Will trades on his gentlemanly Southern manners and his sense of entitlement to carve out a living and start a family of his own. But even with his pedigree he turns egalitarian and populist as the Great Depression takes its toll. He begins to write poetry in his older years - satirical, muckraking diatribes that target those with economic power and political influence. yet in the face of his past hardships Will maintains a deep sense of optimism symbolic of a generation that confronted a rapidly changing America.