From 1854 to 1952, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service delivered one-third to one-half of all revenue available to China’s central authorities. Much more than a tax collector, the institution managed China’s harbors and surveyed the Chinese coast. It oversaw a college training Chinese diplomats; translated legal, philosophical, economic, and scientific documents; organized contributions to international exhibitions; and pioneered China’s modern postal system. After the 1911 Revolution, the agency began managing China’s international loans and domestic bond issues, and in the 1930s, it created a coast guard to combat smuggling. The Customs Service was central to China’s post-Taiping entrance into the world of modern nation-states and twentieth-century trade and finance, and this is the first comprehensive history of the Customs Service’s activities and truly cosmopolitan nature. At times, the Service kept China together when little else did.

The Trump administration’s peace agreements in the Middle East were the greatest foreign policy accomplishment in decades. Now, for the first time, his ambassador to Israel explains how they pulled it off. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is insanity. For decades, the U.S. State Department called it diplomacy. David Friedman was an outside candidate when President Trump appointed him U.S. ambassador to Israel. He took office to find U.S.-Israel policy stuck in stalemate. For years, accepted wisdom was that extensive experience and detailed knowledge of Middle Eastern history and culture were necessary to negotiate treaties. In truth, Friedman realized, all parties played on that accepted wisdom to stall—expecting to get a better deal further down the road. Tossing the State Department playbook aside and incorporating insights from his many years as a negotiator in the American private sector, Friedman and a small team with no prior diplomatic experience revamped American diplomacy to project “peace through strength.” He emphasized the importance of leverage, the key to any good negotiation. After painstaking, behind-the-scenes work, the Abraham Accords were signed: a historic series of peace deals between Israel and the five Muslim nations. In Sledgehammer, Friedman tells the true story of how the Abraham Accords came about. He takes us from the Oval Office to the highest echelons of power in the Middle East, putting us at the table during the intense negotiations that led to this historic breakthrough. The inside story of arguably the greatest achievement of the Trump Administration, Sledgehammer is an important, inspiring account of the hard, hopeful work necessary to bring long overdue—and lasting—peace to one of the most turbulent and tragic regions of the globe.

In Break the Grip of Past Lovers, author Jumana Sophia teaches women how to move beyond the lingering betrayals of past relationships to reclaim their personal power, reestablish healthy boundaries, and move forward into deeper and more intimate relationships with a renewed sense of sensual receptivity and emotional balance. With a teaching style that is warm, down to earth, and full of wisdom that speaks to the often-misunderstood vulnerability and power of female sexuality, Jumana guides women beyond the limitations of talk therapy and into a personal homecoming that will become a foundation for truly healthy intimacy in the future. Break the Grip of Past Lovers addresses regret, remorse, low self-esteem, and the inability to connect fully or trust someone new. Jumana guides the reader through experiences of betrayal, neglect, loss of personal power, manipulation, and even experiences that were so beautiful that they have left grief and irreconcilable longing in their place. The journey she presents is a journey of initiation into power, catalyzed by the kind of heartbreak and loss of self that only past sexual relationships can provide.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Breaking with the Past; Or, Catholic Principles Abandoned at the Reformation" by Francis Aidan Gasquet. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Whether a person is born into an LDS family and experiences abuse or later converts and had an abusive past, it is critical for the adult survivor to find hope, comfort, and healing. Yet all too often, as these brave individuals reach out for help, they struggle in overcoming the gap between the doctrine of the Atonement and the practical application of it. How frustrating it is to be members of Christ s Church and not know how to use the greatest gift He has given us His infinite and everlasting sacrifice.

Taking an active stand in today's conservative educational climate can be a risky business. Given both the expectations of the profession and the challenge of participation in social justice activism, how do educator activists manage the often competing demands of professional and activist commitments? Activist Educators offers a view into the big picture of assertive idealistic professionals’ lives by presenting rich qualitative data on the impetus behind educators’ activism and the strategies they used to push limits in fighting for a cause. Chapters follow the stories of educator activists as they take on problems in schools, including sexual harassment, sexism, racism, reproductive rights, and GLBT rights. The research in Activist Educators contributes to an understanding of professional and personal motivations for educators’ activism, ultimately offering a significant contribution to aspiring teachers who need to know that education careers and social justice activist causes need not be mutually exclusive pursuits.

What should we do when we feel stuck in life? You know how it feels. There’s a hurt in your past that is hard to get beyond. There’s a bad habit that’s difficult to break. There’s a setback that is just too tough to overcome. We all have our own unique situations in which we feel “stuck.” Americans’ favorite suggestions for how to fix our lives—self-help programs, self-esteem techniques, or simple willpower—leave many of us ceaselessly spinning our wheels and feeling just as “stuck” as ever. Vince Antonucci knows what this feels like, and he knows many who have struggled to fix their lives with these dead-end methods. He struggled to get past the pain of a neglectful and angry father. It wasn’t until Vince decided to go through a recovery and rehab course, focused on God, that he learned ways to break free of that hurt and to live in God’s future. Today, when someone walks through the doors of Vince’s innovative church, located just off the Las Vegas Strip, he offers a Restore class as one of three core classes that every member takes. He knows how important it is to learn to break free of these old hurts and bad habits. The essence of that popular class is contained in this book. Move past your past, heal your hurts, and break your bad habits.