Book Reading Thread!
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The instant New York Times bestselling memoir of a young Jewish woman’s escape from a religious sect, in the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel and Carolyn Jessop’s Escape, featuring a new epilogue by the author.
As a member of the strictly religious Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism, Deborah Feldman grew up under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing everything from what she could wear and to whom she could speak to what she was allowed to read. It was stolen moments spent with the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott that helped her to imagine an alternative way of life. Trapped as a teenager in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional marriage to a man she barely knew, the tension between Deborah’s desires and her responsibilities as a good Satmar girl grew more explosive until she gave birth at nineteen and realized that, for the sake of herself and her son, she had to escape.
a video version of that book
:bolt:
Reveals a dark secret of the ideological environmental movement. The movement imposes the views of mostly wealthy, comfortable Americans and Europeans on mostly poor, desperate Africans, Asians and Latin Americans. It violates these people's most basic human rights, denying them economic opportunities, the chance for better lives, the right to rid their countries of diseases that were vanquished long ago in Europe and the United States.
give this to your climate alarmist buddies to help deprogram them from the climate cults
Scrutinizing the experience of growing up Mormon, this personal narrative tells the story of one man's disillusionment with his faith and subsequent excommunication from the Church. This account reveals what is posited as inherent racism and sexism within the church and seeks to expose the controlling methods of indoctrination and the harsh process of excommunication. The basic tenets of the religion are explained, personal stories and analyses are shared, and church authorities are cited to support the claims of extreme gender and racial discrimination. From unknowing follower to angry rebel, and finally to a content, worldly man, this book recounts the experience of a survivor who feels the duty to explain his truth.
The shocking and subversive memoir of a 12-year-NXIVM-member-turned-whistleblower, and her inspiring true story of abuse, escape, and redemption.
Master, would you brand me? It would be an honor." Scarred follows actress Sarah Edmondson's account of her recruitment into the NXIVM cult, founded by Keith Raniere. It narrates in detail the 12 years she spent within the organization, during which she enrolled over 2,000 members, chronicling her breaking point and her harrowing fight to get out, help others, and heal.
• Complete with personal photographs, this tell-all follows Sarah from the moment she takes her first NXIVM seminar, to the invitation she accepts from her best friend, Lauren Salzman, into DOS-a "secret sisterhood" within the cult-to her journey toward becoming a key witness in the federal case against its founders.
• Readers will learn how cults like NXIVM get started, why people get involved (and stay), and the importance of whistleblowers who bring light to illegal and unethical practices.
• Sarah Edmondson is a Canadian actress and playwright who has starred in the CBS series Salvation and more than 12 films for the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime. She is featured in the CBC podcast Uncover: Escaping NXIVM and The Vow, the upcoming HBO documentary series on NXIVM.
Scarred isn't just about NXIVM. It is also a story about abuses of power, the role female friendships play in cults, and how sometimes the search to be "better" can override everything else.
Master, would you brand me? It would be an honor." Scarred follows actress Sarah Edmondson's account of her recruitment into the NXIVM cult, founded by Keith Raniere. It narrates in detail the 12 years she spent within the organization, during which she enrolled over 2,000 members, chronicling her breaking point and her harrowing fight to get out, help others, and heal.
• Complete with personal photographs, this tell-all follows Sarah from the moment she takes her first NXIVM seminar, to the invitation she accepts from her best friend, Lauren Salzman, into DOS-a "secret sisterhood" within the cult-to her journey toward becoming a key witness in the federal case against its founders.
• Readers will learn how cults like NXIVM get started, why people get involved (and stay), and the importance of whistleblowers who bring light to illegal and unethical practices.
• Sarah Edmondson is a Canadian actress and playwright who has starred in the CBS series Salvation and more than 12 films for the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime. She is featured in the CBC podcast Uncover: Escaping NXIVM and The Vow, the upcoming HBO documentary series on NXIVM.
Scarred isn't just about NXIVM. It is also a story about abuses of power, the role female friendships play in cults, and how sometimes the search to be "better" can override everything else.
Jehovah's Witnesses number into the millions globally and are well known for their public evangelism about God's kingdom. But beneath the facade of brotherly love and organizational unity lies a captive organization in which doubts are stifled and dissent is ruthlessly crushed. Once a Witness stops believing, they face being ostracized as a loathed "mentally diseased" apostate. They must navigate a labyrinth of obstacles and dilemmas due to the organization's cruel policy of shunning former members. Lloyd Evans is a well known ex-Witness writer and activist, and in his second book he draws on his firsthand, insider knowledge as a former elder to guide would-be escapees through the minefield that awaits them. How should elders be dealt with? What resources are available for objective research? What should someone do if they are threatened with judicial action? What about coming clean to family members? How does someone go about rebuilding their social circle? What precautions should be taken to maintain privacy when browsing apostate material online? All these questions and more are answered in How to Escape From Jehovah's Witnesses, described by Paul Grundy of JWfacts.com as "an invaluable tool in helping [former Witnesses] move on as efficiently and painlessly as possible."
Covid-19 is an excuse
Police forces across the United States have been transformed into extensions of the military. Our towns and cities have become battlefields, and we the American people are now the enemy combatants to be spied on, tracked, frisked, and searched. For those who resist, the consequences can be a one-way trip to jail, or even death. Battlefield America: The War on the American People is constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead’s terrifying portrait of a nation at war with itself. In exchange for safe schools and lower crime rates, we have opened the doors to militarized police, zero tolerance policies in schools, and SWAT team raids. The insidious shift was so subtle that most of us had no idea it was happening. This follow-up to Whitehead’s award-winning A Government of Wolves, is a brutal critique of an America on the verge of destroying the very freedoms that define it. Hands up!―the police state has arrived.
Police forces across the United States have been transformed into extensions of the military. Our towns and cities have become battlefields, and we the American people are now the enemy combatants to be spied on, tracked, frisked, and searched. For those who resist, the consequences can be a one-way trip to jail, or even death. Battlefield America: The War on the American People is constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead’s terrifying portrait of a nation at war with itself. In exchange for safe schools and lower crime rates, we have opened the doors to militarized police, zero tolerance policies in schools, and SWAT team raids. The insidious shift was so subtle that most of us had no idea it was happening. This follow-up to Whitehead’s award-winning A Government of Wolves, is a brutal critique of an America on the verge of destroying the very freedoms that define it. Hands up!―the police state has arrived.
Lexi Wallace needs a helper around the office. The hot blonde realtor has her eye on the new neighbor.
Andre Thomas is new to the neighborhood. A young black college student.
The perfect man to meet Lexi's needs.
Racial discrimination. Sexual harassment. Off-shore accounts. Inflated and biased attacks on “hate.” These are some of the many reasons Americans should mistrust the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The Southern Poverty Law Center started with noble intentions and has done much good over the years, but a pernicious corruption has undermined the organization’s original mission and contributed to a climate of fear and hostility in America. Hotels, web platforms, and credit card companies have blacklisted law-abiding Americans because the SPLC disagrees with their political views. The SPLC’s false accusations have done concrete harm, costing the organization millions in lawsuits. A deranged man even attempted to commit mass murder, having been inspired by the SPLC’s rhetoric.
How did a civil rights group dedicated to saving the innocent from the death penalty become a pernicious threat to America’s free speech culture? How did an organization dedicated to fighting poverty wind up with millions in the Cayman Islands? How did a civil rights stalwart find itself accused of racism and sexism?
Making Hate Pay tells the inside story of how the SPLC yielded to many forms of corruption, and what it means for free speech in America today. It also explains why Corporate America, Big Tech, government, and the media are wrong to take the SPLC’s disingenuous tactics at face value, and the serious damage they cause by trusting this corrupt organization.
As Heard on the Rush Limbaugh Radio Show
In American Ingrate, Federalist Senior Contributor Benjamin Weingarten exposes Ilhan Omar’s radical and revolutionary Left-Islamist agenda, her seminal role in the progressive takeover of the Democratic Party, and the dire threat she poses to U.S. national security by way of her collusion with subversive anti-American forces.
She says that America was “founded by the genocide of indigenous people and on the backs of slaves,” and that “ignorance really is pervasive” among Americans today.
She says America must “dismantle” capitalism and “demilitarize” U.S. foreign policy, which she sees “from the perspective of a foreigner,” tweeting “thousands of Somalis [were] killed by…American forces…#NotTodaySatan.”
She says American support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins baby;” and that American Jews disloyally pledge “allegiance” to Israel’s “apartheid…regime,” which has “hypnotized the world.”
She says of the 9/11 attacks: “some people did something.”
Shockingly, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) words merely scratch the surface of her hatred of America—and the West—and divert our gaze from the nefarious actions she is taking to sabotage it from within.
American Ingrate is the defining book on the size, scope, and nature of the threat posed by Representative Omar—the personification of the anti-American Left-Islamist nexus—heightened by her hidden collusion with like-minded adversaries foreign and domestic, and alleged criminality and corruption.
This is a clarion wakeup call to the dangers epitomized by Rep. Omar. For she is not merely a lone radical in Congress, but the archetype of the new Democratic Party—and a uniquely dangerous figure at the heart of a uniquely dangerous challenge to America.
This program includes an introduction read by the author.
By the New York Times best-selling author: a provocative account of the attack on the humanities, the rise of intolerance, and the erosion of serious learning.
America is in crisis, from the university to the workplace. Toxic ideas first spread by higher education have undermined humanistic values, fueled intolerance, and widened divisions in our larger culture. Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton? Oppressive. American history? Tyranny. Professors correcting grammar and spelling, or employers hiring by merit? Racist and sexist. Students emerge into the working world believing that human beings are defined by their skin color, gender, and sexual preference, and that oppression based on these characteristics is the American experience. Speech that challenges these campus orthodoxies is silenced with brute force.
The Diversity Delusion argues that the root of this problem is the belief in America’s endemic racism and sexism, a belief that has engendered a metastasizing diversity bureaucracy in society and academia. Diversity commissars denounce meritocratic standards as discriminatory, enforce hiring quotas, and teach students and adults alike to think of themselves as perpetual victims. From #MeToo mania that blurs flirtations with criminal acts, to implicit bias and diversity compliance training that sees racism in every interaction, Heather Mac Donald argues that we are creating a nation of narrowed minds, primed for grievance, and that we are putting our competitive edge at risk.
But there is hope in the works of authors, composers, and artists who have long inspired the best in us. Compiling the author’s decades of research and writing on the subject, The Diversity Delusion calls for a return to the classical liberal pursuits of open-minded inquiry and expression, by which everyone can discover a common humanity.
Have you seen the Netflix version of Unorthodox? Is it similar? I read The Stranger and then saw it on Netflix (screenplay done by Harlen Coben who wrote the book) and it was almost a different presentation.
The instant New York Times bestselling memoir of a young Jewish woman’s escape from a religious sect, in the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel and Carolyn Jessop’s Escape, featuring a new epilogue by the author.
As a member of the strictly religious Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism, Deborah Feldman grew up under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing everything from what she could wear and to whom she could speak to what she was allowed to read. It was stolen moments spent with the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott that helped her to imagine an alternative way of life. Trapped as a teenager in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional marriage to a man she barely knew, the tension between Deborah’s desires and her responsibilities as a good Satmar girl grew more explosive until she gave birth at nineteen and realized that, for the sake of herself and her son, she had to escape.
yes i saw the first 2 episodes the netflix show have a different storyline from the book. in the netflix show the girl fled to Germany after one year of marriage
This isn’t a story about black people - it’s a story about the Left’s agenda to patronize blacks and lie to everyone else."
For decades, the Left has been putting on a play with themselves as heroes in an ongoing civil rights move**ment - which they were mostly absent from at the time. Long after pervasive racial discrimination ended, they kept pretending America was being run by the Klan and that liberals were black America’s only protectors.
It took the O. J. Simpson verdict - the race-based acquittal of a spectacularly guilty black celebrity as blacks across America erupted in cheers - to shut down the white guilt bank.
But now, fewer than two decades later, our "postracial" president has returned us to the pre-O.J. era of nonstop racial posturing. A half-black, half-white Democrat, not descended from American slaves, has brought racial unrest back with a whoop.
The Obama candidacy allowed liberals to engage in self-righteousness about race and get a hard-core Leftie in the White House at the same time. In 2008, we were told the only way for the nation to move past race was to elect him as president. And 53 percent of voters fell for it.
Now, Ann Coulter fearlessly explains the real his**tory of race relations in this country, including how white liberals twist that history to spring the guilty, accuse the innocent, and engender racial hatreds, all in order to win politically. You’ll learn, for instance, how:
A U.S. congressman and a New York mayor con**spired to protect cop killers who ambushed four police officers in the Rev. Louis Farrakhan’s mosque.
The entire Democratic elite, up to the Carter White House, coddled a black cult in San Francisco as hun**dreds of the cult members marched to their deaths in Guyana.
New York City became a maelstrom of racial hatred, with black neighborhoods abandoned to crimi**nals who were ferociously defended by a press that assessed guilt on the basis of race.
Preposterous hoax hate crimes were always believed, never questioned. And when they turned out to be frauds, the stories would simply disappear from the news.
Liberals quickly switched the focus of civil rights laws from the heirs of slavery and Jim Crow to white feminists, illegal immigrants, and gays.
Subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz was surprisingly popular in black neighborhoods, despite hysterical denunciations of him by The New York Times.
Liberals slander Republicans by endlessly repeating a bizarro-world history in which Democrats defended black America and Republicans appealed to segregationists. The truth has always been exactly the opposite.
Going where few authors would dare, Coulter explores the racial demagoguery that has mugged America since the early 70s. She shines the light of truth on cases ranging from Tawana Brawley; Lemrick Nelson; and Howard Beach, New York; to the LA riots and the Duke lacrosse scandal. And she shows how the 2012 Obama campaign is going to inspire the greatest racial guilt mongering of all time.
Leaving a religion is not merely a matter of losing or rejecting faith. For many, it involves dramatic changes of everyday routines and personal habits.
Davidman bases her analysis on in-depth conversations with forty ex-Hasidic individuals. From these conversations emerge accounts of the great fear, angst, and sense of danger that come of leaving a highly bounded enclave community. Many of those interviewed spoke of feeling marginal in their own communities; of strain in their homes due to death, divorce, or their parents' profound religious differences; experienced sexual, physical, or verbal abuse; or expressed an acute awareness of gender inequality, the dissimilar lives of their secular relatives, and forbidden television shows, movies, websites, and books.
Becoming Un-Orthodox draws much-needed attention to the vital role of the body and bodily behavior in religious practices. It is through physical rituals and routines that the members of a religion, particularly a highly conservative one, constantly create, perform, and reinforce the culture of the religion. Because of the many observances and daily rituals required by their faith, Hasidic defectors are an exemplary case study for exploring the centrality of the body in shaping, maintaining, and shedding religions.
This book provides both a moving narrative of the struggles of Hasidic defectors and a compelling call for greater collective understanding of the complex significance of the body in society.
Does assigning fifty math problems accomplish any more than assigning five? Is memorizing word lists the best way to increase vocabulary—especially when it takes away from reading time? And what is the real purpose behind those devilish dioramas?
The time our children spend doing homework has skyrocketed in recent years. Parents spend countless hours cajoling their kids to complete such assignments—often without considering whether or not they serve any worthwhile purpose. Even many teachers are in the dark: Only one of the hundreds the authors interviewed and surveyed had ever taken a course specifically on homework during training.
The truth, according to Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish, is that there is almost no evidence that homework helps elementary school students achieve academic success and little evidence that it helps older students. Yet the nightly burden is taking a serious toll on America’s families. It robs children of the sleep, play, and exercise time they need for proper physical, emotional, and neurological development. And it is a hidden cause of the childhood obesity epidemic, creating a nation of “homework potatoes.”
In The Case Against Homework, Bennett and Kalish draw on academic research, interviews with educators, parents, and kids, and their own experience as parents and successful homework reformers to offer detailed advice to frustrated parents. You’ll find out which assignments advance learning and which are time-wasters, how to set priorities when your child comes home with an overstuffed backpack, how to talk and write to teachers and school administrators in persuasive, nonconfrontational ways, and how to rally other parents to help restore balance in your children’s lives.
Empowering, practical, and rigorously researched, The Case Against Homework shows how too much work is having a negative effect on our children’s achievement and development and gives us the tools and tactics we need to advocate for change.
"So what do you think?" Carlie asked as Derrick looked her up and down. "Do you want me?"
Derrick stood and pulled Carlie to her feet. Instantly, his strong, black hands were on her waist, and he drew her close. "Did that answer your question?"
Carlie isn't getting any sleep tonight! Not while her roommate Rachel and her new black boyfriend Derrick go at it all night long in the next room!
Carlie has never been with a man like Derrick. He's tall and handsome and muscular... and black! She can't help but be jealous of the amazing time it sounds like they're having while she is all alone.
But the next morning she learns the truth. Rachel can barely sit down after her long night with Derrick. And he's ready to come over and do it all again! Together, Carlie and Rachel hatch a plan to give everyone what they need!
Carlie knows she's volunteered for a wild night with a black stud. But she has no idea just how wild it's going to get when her:
Roommate Shares Her Big Black Boyfriend!
Leaving a religion is not merely a matter of losing or rejecting faith. For many, it involves dramatic changes of everyday routines and personal habits.
Davidman bases her analysis on in-depth conversations with forty ex-Hasidic individuals. From these conversations emerge accounts of the great fear, angst, and sense of danger that come of leaving a highly bounded enclave community. Many of those interviewed spoke of feeling marginal in their own communities; of strain in their homes due to death, divorce, or their parents' profound religious differences; experienced sexual, physical, or verbal abuse; or expressed an acute awareness of gender inequality, the dissimilar lives of their secular relatives, and forbidden television shows, movies, websites, and books.
Becoming Un-Orthodox draws much-needed attention to the vital role of the body and bodily behavior in religious practices. It is through physical rituals and routines that the members of a religion, particularly a highly conservative one, constantly create, perform, and reinforce the culture of the religion. Because of the many observances and daily rituals required by their faith, Hasidic defectors are an exemplary case study for exploring the centrality of the body in shaping, maintaining, and shedding religions.
This book provides both a moving narrative of the struggles of Hasidic defectors and a compelling call for greater collective understanding of the complex significance of the body in society.
A New York Times bestseller
Named one of The Economist’s Books of the Year 2014
Named one of The Wall Street Journal’s Top Ten Best Nonfiction Books of 2014
Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Books of 2014
Forbes’s Most Memorable Healthcare Book of 2014
Named a Best Food Book of 2014 by Mother Jones
Named one of Library Journal's Best Books of 2014
In The Big Fat Surprise, investigative journalist Nina Teicholz reveals the unthinkable: that everything we thought we knew about dietary fat is wrong. She documents how the low-fat nutrition advice of the past sixty years has amounted to a vast uncontrolled experiment on the entire population, with disastrous consequences for our health.
For decades, we have been told that the best possible diet involves cutting back on fat, especially saturated fat, and that if we are not getting healthier or thinner it must be because we are not trying hard enough. But what if the low-fat diet is itself the problem? What if the very foods we’ve been denying ourselves—the creamy cheeses, the sizzling steaks—are themselves the key to reversing the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease?
In this captivating, vibrant, and convincing narrative, based on a nine-year-long investigation, Teicholz shows how the misinformation about saturated fats took hold in the scientific community and the public imagination, and how recent findings have overturned these beliefs. She explains why the Mediterranean Diet is not the healthiest, and how we might be replacing trans fats with something even worse. This startling history demonstrates how nutrition science has gotten it so wrong: how overzealous researchers, through a combination of ego, bias, and premature institutional consensus, have allowed dangerous misrepresentations to become dietary dogma.
With eye-opening scientific rigor, The Big Fat Surprise upends the conventional wisdom about all fats with the groundbreaking claim that more, not less, dietary fat—including saturated fat—is what leads to better health and wellness. Science shows that we have been needlessly avoiding meat, cheese, whole milk, and eggs for decades and that we can now, guilt-free, welcome these delicious foods back into our lives.
