"The Midwest has been characterized as an excellent seedbed for the germination of great thinkers, but a wasteland for their further growth. This collection reveals that representation to be false. More than just a springboard for the careers of future expatriates, the region has cultivated extraordinary intellectuals and allowed for the cross-pollination of a diversity of ideas. It has also been the site of shifting interpretations-to some a frontier,...

Twenty-two recognized authors have contributed their thoughts on their Middle West.

This manifesto urges all Americans to recognize and confront the religious convictions and passions that fuel Islamic jihadism, to understand its theological sources and ideological roots, and to take its global vision of the human future with the seriousness this challenge requires. The book offers fifteen prescriptions for meeting the threat of jihadist terrorism. On the far side is the brighter prospect of a world capable of genuine pluralism:...

A reappraisal of the impact of Constantine's adoption of Christianity in 368 AD on the later Roman world, and on Western civilization. Adopting those aspects of the religion that suited his purposes, Constantine turned Rome on a course from the relatively open, tolerant and pluralistic civilization of the Hellenistic world, towards a culture that was based on the rule of fixed authority. Only a thousand years later, with the Renaissance and the emergence...

"The shocking story of the Sullivan Institute, a psychoanalytic organization of artists and intellectuals that devolved into a dangerous cult on Manhattan's Upper West Side"-- In the middle of the 1950s, the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis opened its doors in New York City. Its founders, Saul Newton and Jane Pearce, wanted to start a revolution grounded in ideals of creative expression, sexual liberation, and freedom from the expectations...