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The AMC TV show Mad Men was in its second season when Thomas Murray died in 2009. But he'd only seen a couple episodes of the show, because he hated it. "You don't make great ads by drinking and screwing all day," the old man bellowed. Murray had been a mad man-the creative director at a prominent advertising agency in the 1960s-and if some TV creeps were going to box up his life's work and file it under The Bad Old Days, it would be over his dead body--and that of his ex-wife, the young, sexy star copywriter who worked for him in his prime. Their son, writer David Murray, set out on a quest for the real meaning of his parents' work and its enduring influence, for ill and good. "Not just on me," he says, "but on all of us." He serves a rich, bittersweet dessert that Mad Men fans crave from a show that's dropping off its characters in mid-career. As Murray writes, "Mad Men asks us to contemplate the cynical recklessness of workplace drinking and the passion of office affairs. Reality challenges us to fathom the earnest, sober, plodding devotion to progress. Work MATTERED to these people." And their work still matters to us today, as readers of this concise book will discover. Because we were all ... Raised By Mad Men.

Join author and minister David Murray as he introduces you to Jesus through the lens of the Old Testament. When you think of a son trudging uphill, carrying wood for his own sacrifice because his father has decided to give him up to death, what biblical event does this bring to mind? Is it Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22, or is it Christ's passion in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? The kinship between these two stories is deeper than mere coincidence, and the similarities don't end there. In fact, Murray argues that Christ isn't just present in the story of Abraham and Isaac--he's present on every page of the Old Testament. In Jesus on Every Page, Dr. Murray guides the reader down his own Road to Emmaus, describing how the Scriptures were opened to him, revealing Jesus from Genesis 1 all the way through Revelation 22. Dr. Murray shares his ten simple ways to seek and find Christ in the Old Testament, diving deep into: Christ's planet--discovering Jesus in the story of Creation Christ's people--discovering Jesus in the characters of the Old Testament Christ's promises--discovering Jesus in the covenants of the Old Testament Recognizing Jesus in the full breadth of scripture is important for every Christian. In this step-by-step guide to discovering Jesus in the Old Testament, Dr. Murray provides a framework that will help you start practicing this wonderful way of enjoying Jesus throughout the Bible. Whether you are preaching Jesus through Old Testament readings or just beginning to discover the reality of Christ in the Old Testament, Jesus on Every Page is an accessible guide to getting to know the Old Testament for what it truly is: full of Jesus.

Every man who writes about himself is, on the face of the matter, obnoxious to the suspicion which haunts the daily pathway of the Bore. To talk of self and not be offensive demands an art which is not always given to man. And yet we are always longing to get near each other and to understand each other; and in default of a closer communion with our living fellows we take to our bosoms the shadows of fiction and the stage. If the real man could be presented to us by any writer of his own history we should all hail him with enthusiasm. Pepys, of course, came nearer than anybody else; but this is only because he wrote for his own reading and meant to keep himself a secret. Dickens exquisitely veils and unveils his own personality and career in Copperfield, and scores of smaller writers have done the same thing in fiction to our great pleasure. But to set down boldly, openly, and as a fact for general publication the things of one's own doing, saying, and thinking is an impertinence whose only justification can be found in the public approval. If Pepys had written his Diary for publication he would have been left to oblivion as a driveller. But we surprise the man's secret, we see what he never meant to show us, the peering jackdaw instinct is satisfied; and we feel, besides, a certain sense of humorous pity and affectionate disdain which the man himself, had we known him in life as we know him in his book, could never have excited. Rousseau, to me, is flatly intolerable, because he meant to tell the world what every man should have the decency to hide.

The spiritual and religious beliefs and practices of Native Americans and African Americans have long been sources of fascination and curiosity, owing to their marked difference from the religious traditions of white writers and researchers. Matter, Magic, and Spirit explores the ways religious and magical beliefs of Native Americans and African Americans have been represented in a range of discourses including anthropology, comparative religion, and literature. Though these beliefs were widely dismissed as primitive superstition and inferior to "higher" religions like Christianity, distinctions were still made between the supposed spiritual capacities of the different groups. David Murray's analysis is unique in bringing together Indian and African beliefs and their representations. First tracing the development of European ideas about both African fetishism and Native American "primitive belief," he goes on to explore the ways in which the hierarchies of race created by white Europeans coincided with hierarchies of religion as expressed in the developing study of comparative religion and folklore through the nineteenth century. Crucially this comparative approach to practices that were dismissed as conjure or black magic or Indian "medicine" points as well to the importance of their cultural and political roles in their own communities at times of destructive change. Murray also explores the ways in which Indian and African writers later reformulated the models developed by white observers, as demonstrated through the work of Charles Chesnutt and Simon Pokagon and then in the later conjunctions of modernism and ethnography in the 1920s and 1930s, through the work of Zora Neale Hurston, Zitkala Sa, and others. Later sections demonstrate how contemporary writers including Ishmael Reed and Leslie Silko deal with the revaluation of traditional beliefs as spiritual resources against a background of New Age spirituality and postmodern conceptions of racial and ethnic identity.

..". creates a new definition of American Indian literary texts as aself-representational genre. This is an intelligent and insightful application ofpost-modern critical methods to American Indian texts. The scope of the study isbroad and ambitious, and the attempt to define Indian self-representations fromcolonial times to the present is innovative and instructive." -- Raymond J.DeMallie ..". very suggestive, provocative, engaging... --Studies in American Indian Literatures ..". Murray's bookestablishes itself as the single best introduction to Native American text-making inparticular and the betrayals of the translation in general. An essential acquisitionfor all college and university libraries, and highly recommended for larger publiclibraries." -- Choice "It is a pleasure to recommendwith wholehearted enthusiasm David Murray's Forked Tongues." -- WesternAmerican Literature

Anthrax scares. Airplane crashes. The AIDS epidemic. Presidential election polls and voting results. Global warming. All these news stories require scientific savvy, first to report, and then-for the average person-to understand. It Ain't Necessarily So cuts through the confusion and inaccuracies surrounding media reporting of scientific studies, surveys, and statistics. Whether the problem is bad science, media politics, or a simple lack of information or knowledge, this book gives news consumers the tools to penetrate the hype and dig out the facts. "Whether it's a scientific study on day care or health care, hunger in America or the environment, once it gets into the hands of journalists - look out! You may think you're getting the straight story - but it ain't necessarily so, as this aptly named book makes clear. But beware: It Ain't Necessarily So may confirm your worst fears about the media. Which is precisely why it's such an important contribution to our understanding of how things really operate inside the American newsroom." (Bernard Goldberg, author of Bias)