Books about Sanctity from Amazon.com

One of the foremost financial writers of his generation, Peter Bernstein has the unique ability to synthesize intellectual history and economics with the theory and practice of investment management. Now, with classic titles such as Economist on Wall Street, A Primer on Money, Banking, and Gold, and The Price of Prosperity—which have forewords by financial luminaries and new introductions by the author—you can enjoy some of the best of Bernstein in his earlier Wall Street days.

Peter Bernstein's Economist on Wall Street is a collection of writings from 1955 to 1970. The book is especially interesting because so many of Bernstein's observations reflect the most important issues of the present—the outlook for inflation and its control, the intricacies of monetary policy, the future of the dollar, and the dilemmas of household finances. Bernstein was also concerned with developments in portfolio management, including the new influence of institutional investors and rules for optimal asset mixes. He provides light touches, too, as he indulges in fantasies and philosophical musings over a wide variety of topics.

With so many years of hindsight, we should not be surprised to find some of Bernstein's predictions running awry. But why? In each instance, these forecasts were biased by memories of the past. There is a big lesson to be learned there.

Economist on Wall Street is a remarkable book, with lasting relevance and keen insights into the art of investment management, the capital markets, gold and the dollar, and the fun of being alive..
Price: $8.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A moving first-hand account of Mother Teresa and her work, written by someone who worked by her side. As an idealistic young volunteer, author Susan Conroy spent a summer serving in one of Mother Teresa's orphanages and in the Home for the Dying. "In a city where I found hell on earth," she says, "I also found each day a deep sense of peace and incredible happiness."

It was an experience that changed her life forever. She learned why Mother Teresa had found real joy in working with the poorest of the poor. Along the way, she took striking photographs that have never been seen before now - photographs that show Mother Teresa at her everyday best. This is an account you won't soon forget, told with simple and loving directness by an eyewitness..
Price: $4.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This book is a unique meditation on the beauty of Christ and His saints and centers on several works of art by Fra Angelico Saward has written a book not on art history but on the spendor of Catholic truth. Beauty is the splendor of truth..
Price: $10.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

At the dawn of the second millennium, authors from monasteries in Burgundy and northern Germany recorded the lives and deaths of two powerful and pious women, Mathilda (d. 968) and Adelheid (d. 999). Both were extolled as saints, exemplary figures guided by God and witnessing to His grace. Unlike most other holy women, however, Mathilda and Adelheid were not ascetic nuns, but queens. They were deemed worthy of praise not only for their devotion to God and their lives of faith, but for integrating these traditional virtues with more "worldly" attributes: noble birth, royal marriage, political power and illustrious offspring. In turn, the saintly reputations of both women were used by their biographers to advance the interests not only of their own ecclesiastical communities, but of a new generation of secular rulers. This volume brings together in English the anonymous "Lives of Mathilda" and Odilo of Cluny's "Epitaph of Adelheid". With an introduction placing the texts and their subjects in historical and hagiographical context, it provides teachers and students with a crucial set of sources for the history of Europe (particularly Germany) in the 10th and 11th centuries, for the development of sacred biography and medieval notions of sanctity, and for the life of aristocratic and royal and royal women in the early Middle Ages. In addition, two appendices present contemporary accounts of Mathilda by the monk and historian Widukind of Corvey, and a survey of the evidence for Mathilda's ancestral ties to the legendary Saxon hero Widukind, whose defeat by Charlemagne in the late eighth century ultimately led to Saxony's assimilation into the Frankish church and kingdom..
Price: $24.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Your marriage can be a path to sanctity and heroic virtue — here’s how

Based on Scripture, documents of the Magisterium, and the works of trustworthy spiritual guides, this is a compact, complete, and inspiring guide to the nobility and beauty of Christian marriage. Authors Javier Abad and Eugenio Fenoy examine marriage as a vocation, the nature of spousal love, the true nature of responsible parenthood, chastity in marriage, and the sanctification of matrimony. They also take on the hard questions: contraception, sexuality, and more — making this a complete guidebook for married couples and those preparing for or thinking about marriage..
Price: $8.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Canonized in 1297 as Saint Louis, King Louis IX of France (r. 1226-1270) was one of the most important kings of medieval history and also one of the foremost saints of the later Middle Ages. As a saint, Louis became the centerpiece of an ideological program that buttressed the ongoing political consolidation of France and underscored Capetian claims of sacred kingship. M. Cecilia Gaposchkin reconstructs and analyzes the process that led to the monarch's canonization and the consolidation and spread of his cult.

Differing political and religious ideals produced competing images of the sanctity of Louis in late-thirteenth and early fourteenth-century France. Drawing on hagiography, sermons, and liturgical evidence--the latter a rich but little-explored historical source--Gaposchkin shows how various groups (including Dominicans, Cistercians, and Franciscans) and individuals (such as Philip the Fair and Joinville) used commemoration of the saint-king to sanctify their own politics and notions of identity and religious virtue. Louis' cult was disseminated to a wider, nonelite public through sermons in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and then revived by the Bourbon kings in the seventeenth century. In deepening our knowledge of this royal saint, this elegantly written book opens the curtain on the religious sensibilities and secular politics of a transitional period in European history..
Price: $31.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Heated debates are not unusual when confronting tough medical issues where it seems that moral and religious perspectives often erupt in conflict with philosophical or political positions. In "The Sanctity of Human Life", Jewish theologian David Novak acknowledges that it is impossible not to take into account the theological view of human life, but the challenge is how to present the religious perspective to non-religious people. In doing so, he shows that the two positions - the theological and the philosophical - aren't as far apart as they may seem. Novak digs deep into Jewish scripture and tradition to find guidance for assessing three contemporary controversies in medicine and public policy: the use of embryos to derive stem cells for research, socialized medicine, and physician-assisted suicide. Beginning with thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Nietsche, and drawing on great Jewish figures in history - Maimonides, Rashi, and various commentators on the Torah (written law) and the Mishnah (oral law) - Novak speaks brilliantly to these modern moral dilemmas. "The Sanctity of Human Life" weaves a rich and sophisticated tapestry of evidence to conclude that the Jewish understanding of the human being as sacred, as the image of God, is in fact compatible with philosophical claims about the rights of the human person - especially the right to life - and can be made intelligible to secular culture. Thus, according to Novak, the use of stem cells from embryos is morally unacceptable; the sanctity of the human person, and not capitalist or socialist approaches, should drive our understanding of national health care; and physician-assisted suicide violates humankind's fundamental responsibility for caring for one another. Novak's erudite argument and rigorous scholarship will appeal to all scholars and students engaged in the work of theology and bioethics..
Price: $33.22 [Notify me when price goes down.]