Brandy Vencel

The Puritan poet John Milton is most famous for his massive theological epic Paradise Lost. He was also known as perhaps the greatest genius of the English Renaissance possibly the best-educated man of his day and also a major theorist of classical learning for Christians. The man who wrote the seminal words 'The end then of Learning is to repair the ruines of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him . . . ' (Of Education, 1644) argues across all his voluminous writings that the purpose of education is soul work for virtue as opposed to information gathering for profit. In this book, Milton scholar Professor Grant Horner from The Master's College examines the poet's powerful vision of a Christian and classical education. Trained at Duke University by Stanley Fish, the world's most influential Miltonist, Horner approaches the text as a Christian educator himself, bringing the complex seventeenth-century texts into modern light for practical application. Addressing questions such as how to handle pagan texts, how to develop a theology of aesthetics, and why we must grapple with the relationship between pagan wisdom and scripture, this book will serve as a thorough and readable introduction to the complex thought of one of the Puritan intellectual giants.

In his masterful work, The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis observed how modern education was changing our conception of what it means to be human. By cutting off students from the transcendent values of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, modern schools ceased cultivating virtue in students and instead communicated a mechanistic vision of the world that viewed students as products to be engineered. Lewis believed that in seeking to control nature, modern conditioners would also seek to control humans and remake them according to the preference of the conditioners, since any appeal to Truth, Goodness, or Beauty had been rejected. Lewis argued that we must recover these transcendent values in order to prevent the dehumanizing tendency in modern education and renew the cultivation of virtue in our students.
With Awakening Wonder, Steve Turley demonstrates that it is precisely such a recovery that is at the heart of the current classical education renewal. Once again, Truth, Goodness, and Beauty are celebrated as those objective values that are essential for cultivating students as flourishing human beings. In these pages you will discover the history and development of these transcendent values and how they redeem our senses and sanctify our imaginations. Teachers will also learn how to incorporate these values into their teaching to awaken awe and wonder in both themselves and their students.

Some of today’s greatest historians, including Antonia Fraser, found lifelong inspiration in H. E. Marshall’s classic. First published in 1905, it combines truth and legend to create a lively narrative history of England from the Roman era until Queen Victoria’s death. And this new illustrated edition, featuring vivid color art, is attractive and appealing. Every tale will capture the imagination of children and adults alike, including the myth of Albion and Brutus, in which the Roman gods first see the scept’rd isle; the founding of King Arthur’s Round Table; the Battle of Hastings, and the story of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Professor Pollack takes us on a fantastic voyage through water, showing us a hidden universe teeming with physical activity that provides answers so simple that any curious person can understand. In conversational prose, Pollack lays a simple foundation for understanding how changes in water's structure underlie most energetic transitions of form and motion on earth.

While nothing can equal or replace the adventure in reading Tolkien’s masterwork, The Lord of the Rings, Peter Kreeft says that the journey into its underlying philosophy can be another exhilarating adventure.
Thus, Kreeft takes the reader on a voyage of discovery into the philosophical bones of Middle earth. He organizes the philosophical themes in The Lord of the Rings into 50 categories, accompanied by over 1,000 references to the text of Lord.Since many of the great questions of philosophy are included in the 50-theme outline, this book can also be read as an engaging introduction to philosophy. For each of the philosophical topics in Lord, Kreeft presents tools by which they can be understood. Illustrated.

Charlotte Mason looked at the world and saw that it was governed by universal laws, such as the law of gravity. Then she wondered. What if there were similar laws that governed the way people learn? If we knew what those laws were, we’d be able to pursue education along the most promising lines .

She devoted her life to finding the key principles of education and then developing methods to make the most of them. The result is a comprehensive picture of living and learning that breathes life into education at every level—from babyhood to the adult years. It’s not a rote system, but a flexible set of ideas that keep education in focus.

These principles are for everyone concerned with teaching and learning. They are no more difficult to implement than the principle of gravity which allows you to walk, run, and even--when you know what you are doing--to soar.

Young reporter Owen Daniels wants nothing more than to be a journalist for a big-city paper. But when he discovers a vast corporate-political conspiracy to murder 80-year-olds in his California town, he is forced to choose between family loyalty and personal ambition. As time ticks away to save his last living relative, Owen must delve into the cold logic of public pensions and rely on unexpected friendships to unravel the deadly mystery—and unmask a faceless enemy. ... THE PENSION PLAN is a murder mystery that will entertain fiction readers with a plot *unlike any other* on the market. No other author has touched this subject, and no one tells it better than Josiah Vencel.

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print.

One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning―but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

During the 1980s the velocity of circulation of the dollar became erratic; now the whole country is affected. "The Money Mystery" explains why Federal Reserve officials remain so afraid of inflation, explains precautions you should take, and explains the wild swings in the stock market. Few analysts understand what velocity is doing to the economy. Learn what you can do about it. This third edition includes an all new chapter titled A New, or Very Old, Form of Inflation.

"The Money Mystery" is the first sequel to "Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?" and provides essential background for getting the most from "The Clipper Ship ", both books are also available through Amazon.

After over 100 years of mandatory schooling in the U.S., literacy rates have dropped, families are fragmented, learning "disabilities" are skyrocketing, and children and youth are increasingly disaffected. Thirty years of teaching in the public school system led John Taylor Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory governmental schooling is to blame, accomplishing little but to teach young people to follow orders like cogs in an industrial machine.

Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This book contains all the investigations and adventures of the world's most popular detective, Sherlock Holmes. From The Adventure of the Gloria Scott to His Last Bow, we follow the illustrious career of this quintessential British hero from his university days to his final case. His efforts to uncover the truth take him all over the world and into conflict with all manner of devious criminals and dangerous villains, but thankfully his legendary powers of deduction, and his faithful companion Dr. Watson, are more than up to the challenge.