New Releases by Eric Schmidt

This book, Peel the Onion, is Eric Schmidts second book of poetry. The book continues in the direction of his first book, Stillness of Heart, distinguishing the different avenues love can take in a persons life. His hope is you will read and gain an insight into love and life. If even one of these poems touches you in this way, this book will be a success.

A leading scholar of American religious history places Americans'' recent spiritual soul-searching in the context of cultural influences of meditation, New Age, holistic workshops, celebrities, and people of influence.

A collection of unique thoughts expressed through various poems and descriptive scenes.

ÒFaith cometh by hearingÓÑso said Saint Paul, and devoted Christians from Augustine to Luther down to the present have placed particular emphasis on spiritual arts of listening. In quiet retreats for prayer, in the noisy exercises of Protestant revivalism, in the mystical pursuit of the voices of angels, Christians have listened for a divine call. But what happened when the ear tuned to GodÕs voice found itself under the inspection of Enlightenment critics? This book takes us into the ensuing debate about Òhearing thingsÓÑan intense, entertaining, even spectacular exchange over the auditory immediacy of popular Christian piety. The struggle was one of encyclopedic range, and Leigh Eric Schmidt conducts us through natural histories of the oracles, anatomies of the diseased ear, psychologies of the unsound mind, acoustic technologies (from speaking trumpets to talking machines), philosophical regimens for educating the senses, and rational recreations elaborated from natural magic, notably ventriloquism and speaking statues. Hearing Things enters this labyrinthÑall the new disciplines and pleasures of the modern earÑto explore the fate of Christian listening during the Enlightenment and its aftermath. In SchmidtÕs analysis the reimagining of hearing was instrumental in constituting religion itself as an object of study and suspicion. The mysticÕs ear was hardly lost, but it was now marked deeply with imposture and illusion.

Just prior to striking the car, the driver started steering the truck back to the right to avoid a second collision. Due to the momentum of the truck, it struck a tree and flipped onto the driver''s side. Seconds after the wreck, the driver crawled out of his loose seat belt and out of the truck. Several residents called Central Dispatch to report the incident. The driver was taken by ambulance to a local hospital where he was treated and released. The victim, who was trapped inside the vehicle, was removed and taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.

On May 30, 1999, two fire fighters died and two were injured while battling a townhouse basement fire. Two fire fighters--victim #1, a 30-year-old nozzleman from Engine 26, and victim #2, a 29-year-old nozzleman from Engine 10--had to be rescued when interior crews were hit by an intense blast of heat and flames. Victim #1 was rescued and transported to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead the following day. Victim #2 was rescued and pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

Reexamining the story of holidays in the United States, Leigh Schmidt shows that commercial appropriations of these occasions were actually as religious in form as they were secular. The new rituals of America''s holiday bazaar offered a luxuriant merger of the holy and the profane - a heady blend of fashion and faith, merchandising and gift giving, profits and sentiments. In this richly illustrated book that captures both the blessings and ballyhoo of American holiday observances from the mid-eighteenth century through the twentieth, the author offers a reassessment of the "consumer rites" that various social critics have long decried for their spiritual emptiness and banal sentimentality.