Preaching's Preacher's Guide to the Best Bible Reference for 2014 (Pauline Studies) Ever since E. P. Sanders published Paul and Palestinian Judaism in 1977, students of Paul have been probing, weighing and debating the similarities and dissimilarities between the understandings of salvation in Judaism and in Paul. Do they really share a common notion of divine and human agency? Or do they differ at a deep level? And if so, how? Broadly speaking, the answers have lined up on either side of the old perspective and new perspective divide. But can we move beyond this impasse? Preston Sprinkle reviews the state of the question and then tackles the problem. Buried in the Old Testament's Deuteronomic and prophetic perspectives on divine and human agency, he finds a key that starts to turn the rusted lock on Paul's critique of Judaism. Here is a proposal that offers a new line of investigation and thinking about a crucial issue in Pauline theology.

In this book, fully revised and updated since its first publication in 1991, Andrew Rigby addresses this gap through a detailed study of the dynamics of the first Palestinian intifada. The focus throughout is upon how Palestinians experienced the years of active resistance, both in relation to protest on the streets and in seeking to create alternative institutions and practices intended to undermine the foundations of the Israeli occupation. The hopes that drove the intifada were ultimately frustrated - not least because in the final analysis the Israeli occupation did not depend on the cooperation of the Palestinians in order to persist. In such circumstances, which have not changed fundamentally over the years, the key leverage over the occupiers continues to lie with those states and agencies upon whose support Israel depends as it continues to deny basic human rights to millions of Palestinians living under occupation.

**CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book** "[Philp] presents a well-balanced account of the legal, political, and economic relationships between Native Americans and the U.S. government during the period shortly before the Indian Reorganization Act (1935) to . . . Termination, the program to dissolve tribal relationships with the federal government. . . . Philp brilliantly ties together the shifting stances of governmental and tribal officials."-Choice. "Termination Revisited is, without question, an important book. It will be required reading for any serious student of modern Indian history."-Nevada Historical Society Quarterly. "The best account we have to date of policy formation during the Truman administration. But there is more. Philp's narrative introduces actors who have not figured prominently in previous accounts of the period. . . . He also illuminates reservation life and politics in the 1940s and 1950s. Philp's book charts the course for many new studies come."-Western Historical Quarterly. "Philp's book is gracefully written, founded on nearly thirty years of research, and finely balanced in its assessments. This history makes sense out of much of the nonsense touching lives of several hundreds of thousands of American Indians in the twentieth century."-Oregon Historical Quarterly. Kenneth R. Philp is a professor of history at the University of Texas, Arlington. He is the author of John Collier's Crusade for Indian Reform, 1920–1954.

When looking at the US from a European perspective a sort of paradox immediately emerges. On the one hand, the ‘American way of life’ has been penetrating in depth our everyday life and, even more, our Western culture through the music, the movies, the literature and all possible consumerist habits. But, on the other hand, all recurrent statements have been emphasizing the ‘American exceptionalism’ of political institutions, that is, how different and distant the North American institutions are from the European ones with regards to the government leadership, the relationships between existing powers, the connections with the citizens and even the very notion of democracy. This book will not analyze the reasons of such exceptionalism. It addresses a more salient and up to date question: how much exceptionalism is today still present if we compare US democratic institutions to the European ones? In other words, has there been a convergence or are the differences still very strong and accentuated? And if there has been convergence, in what directions? Or if resilient divergences, on what aspects? Moreover, how to explain the convergence, if there has been one?

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 remains one of the most enigmatic pieces of legislation in the 20th century. Held by some to have caused the Great Depression, and by others to have worsened it, the Act’s underlying motives continue to be the subject of vigorous debate. For example, Dartmouth College economic historian and trade expert Douglas Irwin pointed to a political ploy on the part of the Republican Party to avert electoral defeat in 1928 by the Mid-West farm lobby. This book presents an alternative view, based in large measure on recently published studies. It is argued that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act should be understood as the Republican Party’s attempt at closing a widening output gap in the US, resulting from the widespread adoption of a new power transmission technology in the form of electric unit drive (EUD). Electric unit drive, by providing the wherewithal to increase machine speed considerably, resulted in productivity gains in the 40-100 percent range. Existing plant and equipment was now vastly more productive as a result of greater machine speeds. The book consists of six papers, five of which were previously published.