“An entertaining and informative look at America’s culture war from a writer who has been embedded in the front lines.”
—Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of The Better Angels of Our Nature

About the Book

In this deeply revealing and engaging autobiography, Herb Silverman tells his iconoclastic life story. Equal parts Bertrand Russell, Woody Allen, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, he takes the reader from his childhood as an Orthodox Jew in Philadelphia, where he stopped fasting on Yom Kippur to test God’s existence, to his adult life in the heart of the Bible Belt, where he became a legendary figure within America’s secular activist community and remains one of its most beloved leaders.

Never one to shy from controversy, Silverman relates many of his high-profile battles with the Religious Right, including his decision to run for governor of South Carolina to challenge the state’s constitutional provision that prohibited atheists from holding public office, and his experiences facing Christian fundamentalists of all stripes in open debate. He is equally candid about the battles he has faced in the secular community itself and the many hurdles he overcame in the historic step of politically uniting the country’s major secular, humanist, and atheist groups under the banner of the Secular Coalition for America.

Silverman combines a satirist’s pen with an activist’s passion, revealing in humorous and often moving ways a personal side few know. Famous for dispatching his opponents and those who might question him with a few carefully chosen words, here he disarms with refreshing candor about his own foibles and flaws, and unabashed honesty about his work and life.

With a voice that crackles with effortless wit and with prose that reveals deep, often hidden wisdom, Candidate Without a Prayer offers an intimate portrait of a central player in today’s increasingly heated culture wars. It will be sure to charm both believers and nonbelievers alike, and will lead all those who care about the separation of church and state to give thanks (if not a prayer) for Silverman’s many gifts to humankind and America’s future.

About the Author(s)

Herb Silverman is Founder and President Emeritus of the Secular Coalition for America, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the College of Charleston. He ran for governor of South Carolina in the 1990s to challenge a state law that required religious belief to hold public office. After an eight-year battle, Herb won a unanimous decision in the South Carolina Supreme Court, which struck down this religious test requirement. You can browse a collection of Herb’s public speeches and debates at his Web site www.herbsilverman.com. Richard Dawkins (foreword by) is a Fellow of the Royal Society and was the inaugural holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.

Details

ISBN: 9780984493296
Format: paperback
SRP: $15.95
Page count: 255 pages
Trim size: 6 x 9
Pub date: May 2015

Previously available in hardcover (ISBN: 9780984493289; SRP: $22.95)

“Vamık Volkan, the world's foremost expert on traumatized societies, developed many of the concepts that are the key to understanding protracted ethnoreligious conflicts. In this captivating memoir, he takes the reader on a tour through a world of war, at the same time teaching his readers about the impact of large-group regression and chosen traumas. He is the rare psychoanalyst who ventures out of the office into the wider world.”
—Jessica Stern, author of Terror in the Name of God and former member of President Bill Clinton's National Security Council staff

About the Book

For more than thirty years, renowned psychoanalyst Vamik D. Volkan has applied the theories of his profession to societies in conflict, venturing into cauldrons of unrest as observer, mediator, and practitioner. In this volume, he shares his experiences facilitating dialogue between opposing enemy groups, in numerous contexts and conflict zones, and presents the pioneering theoretical and practical frameworks he developed. In the process, he provides a unique window onto watershed moments of the recent past—from major historical events, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall, to the tragedy of September 11, 2001, and continued violence in the Middle East. The findings and observations presented in this volume provide not only a new way of looking at recent historical events, but also offer a novel set of tools for understanding and shaping the present and future.

About the Author

Vamık D. Volkan is an emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia. He is widely considered to be the world's foremost expert on the psychology of war-torn societies.

Details

ISBN: 9781939578327
Format: paperback
SRP: $35.00
Page count: 504 pages
Trim size: 6 x 9
Pub date: August 2013

“Killing in the Name of Identity is the latest work in what I would call ‘Vamık’s gift.’ He shares with his readers an extraordinary portion of his own humanity as he describes with disarming modesty ways he has helped victims of traumatic political loss recover and heal. Psychopolitical writing often induces depression in readers. This volume evokes tears at the success of human triumph over tragedy.”
—Joseph Montville, Director, Abrahamic Family Reunion

About the Book

“Why do they hate us so?” Vamık Volkan has the most compelling, humane, and universal response to the riddle of our time. In this extraordinary and timely book, Volkan explains better than anyone the relationship between large-group identities and massive traumas and current events and ongoing conflicts around the world, including those related to the horrific attacks of 9/11. In his newest book, Killing in the Name of Identity, Volkan has taken us further, and deeper, into the dark and vulnerable collective mind of ethnic, religious, cultural, and national group conflict. Through his eyes and words, we find ourselves looking into and making contact with the universal elements present in humanity and in ourselves, which converge in producing the conditions for great human tragedies. No one understands nor writes about large-group terror and violence in a more compassionate and profoundly instructive way.

About the Author

Vamık D. Volkan is an emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia. His thirty books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Details

ISBN: 9781939578310
Format: paperback
SRP: $19.95
Page count: 307 pages
Trim size: 6 x 9
Pub date: April 2019

Previously available in hardcover (ISBN: 9780972887571; SRP: $29.95)

“A very unique and powerful addition to our understanding of what motivates the use of terrorism as a political tool. The question ‘Who are we now?’ animates this timely book, exploring the forces that are changing individual and group identity and leading to a rise in religiously motivated terrorism. I especially appreciated the psychocultural dimensions of this work, and the context it provided for creating more systemic approaches to preventing terrorism.”
—Eileen F. Babbitt, PhD, Director, Institute for Human Security, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University

About the Book

In this timely multidimensional study, historian Jouni Suistola and psychoanalyst Vamık D. Volkan draw on their respective disciplines and their own personal and professional experiences to investigate the historical and psychological roots of terrorism. Specifically, what is it in human nature that allows people to terrorize and kill the other, and what societal factors—whether political, economic, or religious—lead to terrorism? And, in turn, how might terrorist ideologies and groups be defeated, especially when a society’s realistic fears are contaminated with xenophobia, racism, and fantasized dangers? Focusing specifically on modern-day radical Islamist terrorism, the authors argue that studying the minds of individual terrorists can tell us something about those individuals, but that only by examining the deeper historical, political, and society-wide psychological processes at work will we be able to uncover the core causes of terrorism. Only through such understanding, they conclude, will the world be positioned to prevent further radicalization and create lasting and peaceful solutions to the seemingly intractable problem of terrorist violence.

About the Author

Jouni Suistola, PhD, studied history and social sciences at Oulu University. He served as professor of international relations at Near East University in Nicosia. Vamık Volkan, MD, studied medicine at the University of Ankara, Turkey. He is an emeritus professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia.

Details

ISBN: 9781634311304
Format: paperback
SRP: $24.95
Page count: 184 pages
Trim size: 6 x 9
Pub date: September 2017