According to legend, the Garden of Eden was located in Iraq, and for millennia, Jews resided peacefully in metropolitan Baghdad. Memories of Eden: A Journey Through Jewish Baghdad reconstructs the last years of the oldest Jewish Diaspora community in the world through the recollections of Violette Shamash, a Jewish woman who was born in Baghdad in 1912, sent to her daughter Mira Rocca and son-in-law, the British journalist Tony Rocca. The result is a deeply textured memoir—an intimate portrait of an individual life, yet revealing of the complex dynamics of the Middle East in the twentieth century. Toward the end of her long life, Violette Shamash began writing letters, notes, and essays and sending them to the Roccas. The resulting book begins near the end of Ottoman rule and runs through the British Mandate, the emergence of an independent Iraq, and the start of dictatorial government. Shamash clearly loved the world in which she grew up but is altogether honest in her depiction of the transformation of attitudes toward Baghdad’s Jewish population. Shamash’s world is finally shattered by the Farhud, the name given to the massacre of hundreds of Iraqi Jews over three days in 1941. An event that has received very slight historical coverage, the Farhud is further described and placed in context in a concluding essay by Tony Rocca.

In her perceptive chronicle of everyday life on an Arkansas plantation, Harriet Bailey Bullock Daniel sheds light on the plantation economy, medical practices, religion, slavery, and sex roles in the period from 1849 until Daniel's marriage in 1872. The work is a rich mixture of mundane details surrounded by momentous events, and Daniel's sure grasp of both provides enjoyment and enlightenment for any reader.

How do we distinguish between our ancestors' ideas of God and close encounters of an extra-terrestrial kind?

Winner of the Association of Catholic Publishers 2017 Excellence in Publishing Award: Inspirational Books (First Place). In the first book to explore how memories impact and are affected by faith, bestselling author Dawn Eden offers a guide to the process she used to heal the pain of her past. Through her own story, as well as the examples of St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Peter Faber, and Pope Francis, she shows how the mercy of God, who holds all of events of our life in his own memory, can bring you healing and inner peace. Dawn Eden’s My Peace I Give You helped thousands find peace after abuse and established her as the leading Catholic authority on recovering from traumatic stress. In Remembering God’s Mercy, Eden—who suffered childhood sexual abuse that left her with PTSD—describes how she was inspired by the example of Pope Francis, St. Ignatius, and St. Peter Faber, all of whom suffered from their own painful experiences and followed a similar path to healing. Pope Francis has spoken openly about how a life-threatening bout of pneumonia affected his relationship with God, saying that recognizing and accepting the power of memories to color perceptions is essential to seeing God in all things and experiencing inner peace. The pope was influenced by the examples of Ignatius and Faber. Ignatius suffered the loss of his mother at a young age and was sent by his father to live with another family. He also fought as a mercenary soldier as a young man and experienced the trauma of war and physical pain. Faber, a student of Ignatius and among the early members of the Society of Jesus, suffered from bouts of depression and anxiety for years. He wrote in his diary how he applied Ignatius’s spiritual practices in a way that enabled him to rise above his mental suffering to grow closer with God. Through the wisdom of these three Jesuits, Eden developed an Ignatian model of healing: Acknowledge your memories. Accept that they change the way you see God, your fate, and other people. Allow God to transform your memories by coloring the past and present with his story of salvation. Eden examines how Jesus’ wounds can bring healing to your own hurt through prayer, Mass, the Sacraments (particularly confession), and the life of the Church. In each chapter, she will engage you with specific steps to take using the most famous Ignatian prayer, the Suscipe—Latin for “receive”—to transform your past traumas into an offering to God that is united with Jesus’ own self-offering.

Elite party girl Yarrow, the daughter of one of the most powerful women in Eden, and Rowan, whose very existence is illegal, discover threads that bind them and could change Eden forever.

From comic books to summer blockbusters, all people enjoy art in some form or another. However, few of us can effectively explain why certain books, movies, and songs resonate so profoundly within us. In Echoes of Eden, Jerram Barrs helps us identify the significance of artistic expression as it reflects the extraordinary creativity and unmatched beauty of the Creator God. Additionally, Barrs provides the key elements for evaluating and defining great art: (1) The glory of the original creation; (2) The tragedy of the curse of sin; (3) The hope of final redemption and renewal. These three qualifiers are then put to the test as Barrs investigates five of the world's most influential authors who serve as ideal case studies in the exploration of the foundations and significance of great art.