The beast, the eunuch, and the glass-eyed child

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Peter G. Peterson

According to recent polls, more young Americans believe in UFOs than think they will ever receive a Social Security check. Yet most Baby Boomers, as they approach retirement age, believe they will continue to live their present lifestyle in retirement - without a fraction of the personal savings or pensions necessary to pay for the future they expect. When the 76 million members of the Baby Boom generation - the largest generation in our history - begin to retire in less than fifteen years, one American in five will be 65 years of age or older. This aging population - double today's load - will depend on as few as 1.6 working Americans to support each retired person. Who will support this nation of Floridas? In this short, powerful book, Peter G. Peterson, one of America's top investment bankers and a leading critic of our entitlement policy, spells out in the clearest possible language, with unmistakable numbers and easy-to-read charts, the disaster that lies ahead if we continue to ignore our low savings rate, our ballooning federal deficit, and our enormous unfunded and unsustainable commitments to retirees. Peterson reveals what politicians are afraid to admit: trillions of dollars of promised Social Security and Medicare benefits for which no funds have been provided. Shattering the myths surrounding this subject with hard facts and eye-opening views of the future, Peterson gives the most comprehensive and candid plan for a gradual, humane, fair, and realistic answer to the greatest challenge of the next century: transforming our political, economic, cultural, and social assumptions to adapt to the realities of the graying of America.

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John F. Hoffmeyer

The Advent of Freedom analyzes two of the key concepts in Hegel's articulation of a logic of freedom. These key concepts are time and possibility. His Science of Logic shows that possibility is constitutive of actuality, without ever being exhausted by actuality. The Logic and other writings present a parallel argument that Hegel himself did not see clearly: the future is constitutive of the present, without ever being exhausted by the present. The full force of Hegel's concept of freedom depends upon combining his explicit analysis of possibility with his generally implicit analysis of time. Since Hegel claimed that time had no place in his Logic, interpreting his notion of freedom in this way requires reading Hegel's text in a way that differs from Hegel's own self-understanding. . This book combines two interpretive approaches. On the one hand, it engages in a detailed reading of a few selected sections of Hegelian texts. On the other hand, in the case of the Logic, it gains insights into these sections by examining their respective places within the careful and complex structuring of the work as a whole. These sections bring into play terms that have been widely used in Western philosophy, but which in Hegel's discourse take on distinctive meanings: actuality, necessity, freedom. The Advent of Freedom is an undertaking of philosophical interpretation. Its ultimate frame of reference, however, is Trinitarian theology. Hegel saw his philosophy in general as a philosophical exposition of the Christian Trinity. His philosophy is one grand response to the question: If we were to take the Trinity as our starting point, how would we think about reality? This volume seeks to render Hegel's response to one aspect of that question: namely, if we were to take the Trinity as our starting point, how would we think about time and possibility?

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Robert Edric

The astonishing new novel from one of the UK's finest literary writersGermany, spring 1946. The Nuremberg Trials are underway. Three hundred miles north, in the Rehstadt Institute, a British "Assessment and Evaluation" centre, Alex Foster interrogates a succession of lesser war criminals, exploring their pasts and their crimes, and deciding their futures in the soon-to-be-reborn Germany.But Rehstadt, a town largely untouched by the war, is a place of old hostilities and burnished hatreds; a place still not entirely at peace; a place where the certainties of the past are still weighed favourably against the deprivations of the present and the vague, uncertain promises of the future.As spring progresses, and as events in the wider world quicken to their own closely observed conclusion, Alex Foster finds himself at the centre of a conflict involving British, American and German interests; and for the first time in his career he also finds himself compromised – forced into subterfuge and deceit as he struggles to weigh personal convictions and loyalties against the greater political and military good...

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a novel by Laura Whitcomb

After 350 years as a Fetch, or death escort, Calder breaks his vows and enters the body of Rasputin, whose spirit causes rebellion in the Land of Lost Souls while Calder struggles to convey Ana and Alexis, orphaned in the Russian Revolution, to Heaven.