"I really don’t know John. I really only know of John, by virtue of pastoring in the same province and denomination together. I mention this to say that by reading his book, I finally had the chance to get to know him! In doing so, I felt that I’d met a kindred spirit. Sharing a common Dutch heritage, being former worship ministers, and growing up in a loving, musical home established an easy common ground between us. In picking up a copy of his book, I anticipated sitting down to read an autobiographical account of this life. I was wrong. Instead I sat down to discover stories of friends and family who had shaped his life. It’s a tribute really. What a wonderful way to get to know a person! Instead of making himself the focus of his own writing, he instead shines a spotlight in the direction of the relationships that were most meaningful to him." —Phil Spoelstra Assistant Superintendent, British Columbia and Yukon District of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada

Laughter and Tears follows the life story of Mark, a young man with autism, from birth to the age of 30, and is interwoven with observations of the history of autism as it unfolds from its first diagnosis in 1943 to the present day.

Now sorrowful, now joking, but always in deadly earnest, the Chinese philosopher faces the grim facts of war and the grimmer prospects of peace. Dismayed by the materialism of the West, he offers not a “blueprint” for the postwar world, but an approach to thinking about it, that is new to us but not new at all to the Orient, wise in the ways of Man. This book is a positive contribution from the store of Chinese political philosophy to the vexed question of world peace. More important than the Four Freedoms, says Lin, is Freedom from Humbug. The changes in our thinking must be basic if we are to be saved from utter disaster. We cannot be saved by science, by mathematics, by modern mechanism. We need deep draughts of the wine of wisdom, matured through four thousand years by Asiatic thought and experience in learning how man must deal with man. Confucius and Lao-tse, the ancient Greeks and the Hindus, join forces with Lin Yutang in his thrusts at such topics as: The White Man’s Burden, American Isolationism, British Imperialism, Nazi Geopolitics, the Crimes of Europe, The Future of Asia, and The Crux of the Modern Age. No citizen of the Western world can ignore this wisdom and this warning except at his own peril. “A powerful and relentless warning.”—Boston Herald “If you think a gentle, well-mannered philosopher can’t deliver a punch, you’d better read this book. It’s out-and-out sensational, no less, enormously, provocative.”—San Francisco Chronicle “He gives us, mixed with the tolerance and humor of the philosopher, some of the plainest speaking we have had in a long time on the issue of the war and the peace.”—The New Yorker

While histories of Czech cinema often highlight the quality of Czechoslovak New Wave films made in the 1960s, post-socialist Czech cinema receives little attention. Through a methodology of historical reception, Stories between Tears and Laughter explores how attitudes towards post-socialist Czech cinema have shifted from viewing it as radical “art cinema” and more towards popular cinema. By analyzing publicity materials, reviews, and articles, Richard Vojvoda offers a new perspective on the notions of cultural value and quality that have been shaping the history of post-socialist Czech cinema.

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