Most Popular Books by John Perry

A biography of the often misunderstood, yet heroic, Confederate general who sacrificed everything for his native state of Virginia during the Civil War. Traitor. Divider. Defender of slavery. This damning portrayal of Robert E. Lee has persisted through 150 years of history books. And yet it has no basis in fact. In the spirit of bold restoration, Lee: A Life of Virtue reveals the true Lee—passionate patriot, caring son, devoted husband, doting father, don’t-tread-on-me Virginian, Godfearing Christian. Weaving forgotten facts and revelations (Lee considered slavery a moral outrage) with striking personal details (for years he carried his weakened mother to and from her carriage), biographer John Perry crafts a compelling treatment of the virtuous warrior who endured withering opposition and sacrificed all to stand for Constitutional freedoms.

Physicalism is the idea that if everything that goes on is physical, our consciousness and feelings must also be physical. This book defends a view called antecedent physicalism.

Perry''s excellent dialogue makes a complicated topic stimulating and accessible without any sacrifice of scholarly accuracy or thoroughness. Professionals will appreciate the work''s command of the issues and depth of argument, while students will find that it excites interest and imagination. --David M. Rosenthal, CUNY, Lehman College

At last: Self-help for procrastinators. (The secret: acceptance!) Filled with charm, tongue-in-cheek wit, and the insights of a lifelong introspective dawdler, The Art of Procrastination is a philosophical self-help program for every reader who suffers the pangs of being a procrastinator. John Perry celebrates this nearly universal character flaw by pointing out how often procrastinators are, paradoxically, doers. They may not be accomplishing everything on their to-do lists, but that doesn’t make them slackers. It just indicates a need to rethink the to-do list. He also introduces the philosophical notion of akrasia (the mystery of why we often choose to act against our better judgement), examines the torturous relationship between procrastination and perfectionism, and shows how to give yourself permission to do an imperfect but, in fact, perfectly good job. These are strategies—task triage, horizontal organization. Underlying causes—right-parenthesis deficit disorder. Anecdotes and ideas. But above all, an attitude of acceptance. Pat yourself on the back for what you manage to get done—but don’t stop enjoying that time you waste, too. Who knows where daydreams will lead?

Christian Encounters, a series of biographies from Thomas Nelson Publishers, highlights important lives from all ages and areas of the Church. Some are familiar faces. Others are unexpected guests. But all, through their relationships, struggles, prayers, and desires, uniquely illuminate our shared experience. A generation of 20th-century Americans knew him as a gentle, stoop-shouldered old black man who loved plants and discovered more than a hundred uses for the humble peanut. George Washington Carver goes beyond the public image to chronicle the adventures of one of history''s most inspiring and remarkable men. George Washington Carver was born a slave. After his mother was kidnapped during the Civil War, his former owners raised him as their own child. He was the first black graduate of Iowa State, and turned down a salary from Thomas Edison higher than the U.S. President to stay at the struggling Tuskegee Institute, where he taught and encouraged poor black students for nearly half a century. Carver was an award-winning painter and acclaimed botanist who saw God the Creator in all of nature. The more he learned about the world, the more convinced he was that everything in it was a gift from the Almighty, that all people were equal in His sight, and that the way to gain respect from his fellow man was not to demand it, but to earn it.

When Charles Colson was released after seven months of prison time following the Watergate scandal, the last thing on earth he wanted to do was go back into those dark, frightening prisons, but God called him to do just that. Thus was born a life-long ministry, and here, for the first time, if the amazing success story of Prison Fellowship''s thirty years of work in the darkest places on earth.

John Perry--author of the acclaimed Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality (Hackett Publishing Co., 1978)--revisits Gretchen Weirob in this lively and absorbing dialogue on good, evil, and the existence of God. In the early part of the work, Gretchen and her friends consider whether evil provides a problem for those who believe in the perfection of God. As the discussion continues they consider the nature of human evil—whether, for example, fully rational actions can be intentionally evil. Recurring themes are the distinction between natural evil and evil done by free agents, and the problems the Holocaust and other cases of genocide pose for conceptions of the universe as a basically good place, or humans as basically good beings. Once again, Perry’s ability to get at the heart of matters combines with his exemplary skill at writing the dialogue form. An ideal volume for introducing students to the subtleties and intricacies of philosophical discussion.

This volume collects a number of Perry’s classic works on personal identity as well as four new pieces, The Two Faces of Identity,Persons and Information,Self-Notions and The Self, and The Sense of Identity. Perry’s Introduction puts his own work and that of others on the issues of identity and personal identity in the context of philosophical studies of mind and language over the past thirty years.

Growing up in the Tennessee hills, Alvin York was equally renowned as a marksman and as a hard-drinking brawler. A dramatic New Year’s conversion convinced him that killing was against God’s will, and yet this shy, big-boned mountaineer singlehandedly dispatched two dozen Germans and captured 132 in the closing days of World War I. He earned the Medal of Honor and a ticker tape parade but refused to cash in on his fame, insisting “Uncle Sam’s uniform ain’t for sale.” This succinct and gripping new account of Sgt. York’s remarkable life includes details from exclusive interviews with the sergeant’s three surviving children and information drawn from battlefield eyewitness reports and original film studio archives: fresh reminders of the legacy of one of America’s great Christian patriots. We learn about life through the lives of others. Their experiences, their trials, their adventures become our schools, our chapels, our playgrounds. Christian Encounters, a series of biographies from Thomas Nelson Publishers, highlights important lives from all ages and areas of the Church through prose as accessible and concise as it is personal and engaging. Some are familiar faces. Others are unexpected guests. Whether the person is D.L. Moody, Sergeant York, Saint Nicholas, John Bunyan, or William F. Buckley, we are now living in the world that they created and understand both it and ourselves better in the light of their lives. Their relationships, struggles, prayers, and desires uniquely illuminate our shared experience.

Electric Ladyland is one of the greatest guitar albums ever made. During the recording process, Jimi Hendrix at last had time and creative freedom to pursue the sounds he was looking for. In this remarkable and entertaining book, John Perry gets to the heart of Hendrix''s unique talent - guiding the reader through each song on the album, writing vividly about Hendrix''s live performances, and talking to several of Hendrix''s peers and contemporaries.

War hero, Medal of Honor recipient, and one of the world''s first international media celebrities, Sgt. Alvin York was the most famous soldier of his generation. His welcome home ticker-tape parade in New York was the biggest in history at the time. Advertisers clamored for his endorsement, corporations invited him to join their boards of directors, and movie producers vied to put his story on the silver screen. Yet this shy country boy from the hills of Tennessee couldn''t imagine cashing in on fame coming from killing fellow human beings in the service of his country. “Uncle Sam''s uniform ain''t for sale,” he told them. Sgt. York: His Life, Legend & Legacy remains the only complete biography of this great American patriot based on original sources. Author John Perry scoured military records including official accounts of York''s famous battle from surviving eyewitnesses, as well as Warner Bros. archives in Hollywood for details about the film. He also interviewed a host of people who knew York including neighbors who welcomed him home from the war, attended his wedding, hunted and camped with him in the Wolf River Valley. York''s four surviving children were eager participants in the project, with son George Edward Buxton York commenting upon reading the completed draft, tears streaming down his face, “Now people will know what my daddy was really like!” This new edition includes a message from York''s youngest son, 90-year-old Andrew Jackson York.

Anthropologist Perry makes innovative use of ethnographic data to reconstruct Apachean history and culture, shedding light on the origins, dispersions, and relationships of the people who include the Navajo, as well as the Western, Chiricahua, Mescalero, Jicarilla, Lipan, and Kiowa Apaches. His method will be instructive to students of other cultures who face a similar lack of historical and archaeological data. Paper edition (unseen), $17.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

John Perry Barlow’s wild ride with the Grateful Dead was just part of a Zelig-like life that took him from a childhood as ranching royalty in Wyoming to membership in the Internet Hall of Fame as a digital free speech advocate. Mother American Night is the wild, funny, heartbreaking, and often unbelievable (yet completely true) story of an American icon. Born into a powerful Wyoming political family, John Perry Barlow wrote the lyrics for thirty Grateful Dead songs while also running his family’s cattle ranch. He hung out in Andy Warhol’s Factory, went on a date with the Dalai Lama’s sister, and accidentally shot Bob Weir in the face on the eve of his own wedding. As a favor to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Barlow mentored a young JFK Jr. and the two then became lifelong friends. Despite being a freely self-confessed acidhead, he served as Dick Cheney’s campaign manager during Cheney’s first run for Congress. And after befriending a legendary early group of computer hackers known as the Legion of Doom, Barlow became a renowned internet guru who then cofounded the groundbreaking Electronic Frontier Foundation. His résumé only hints of the richness of a life lived on the edge. Blessed with an incredible sense of humor and a unique voice, Barlow was a born storyteller in the tradition of Mark Twain and Will Rogers. Through intimate portraits of friends and acquaintances from Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia to Timothy Leary and Steve Jobs, Mother American Night traces the generational passage by which the counterculture became the culture, and it shows why learning to accept love may be the hardest thing we ever ask of ourselves.

No other American military leader is so important and yet so little known as John J. Pershing. He led an army of more than a million men in France, defeating the seemingly invincible German war machine with only six months of offensive action. He was an American hero, and yet, today, General Pershing has faded away to the second or third tier of America’s historical consciousness. His accomplishments rightly place him in the company of great generals such as MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Patton, all of whom he commanded and inspired, and all of whom he outranked. He shaped world events in Europe as surely as Woodrow Wilson or David Lloyd George,so why has America forgotten him? John Perry chronicles the life of a strong, inflexible leader who was an insufferable nit-picker on the job, but a faithful friend, tender husband, and devoted father. To the small group fortunate enough to know him, Pershing was a great and wonderful man. To the rest, he was stiff, cold, impersonal, and best avoided.

Jane Austen, Sergeant York, Saint Patrick—What did they have in common? Two thousand years and still going strong: that’s the story of Christianity. And while the Christian martyrs and saints and orators may have gotten more press, the fact is the faith has been carried through history in the hearts and deeds of believers who—though beloved to us now—were simply living ordinary lives of devotion. “It would be almost impossible to imagine ten people more different from each other than these,” editor John Perry says. “This [is] the first truth of Christian living: anybody, anywhere can be a champion of the faith, an example and inspiration to all who follow.” There’s no dry biography here, though. Each story teems with fresh insight. D. L. Moody did some of his most powerful evangelizing by befriending ragged street children in Chicago. William F. Buckley never delivered a sermon, yet a Christian worldview informed his erudite, witty, output in print and broadcasting. To compose her poems, Anne Bradstreet had to understand science, history, the Bible, and literature, not to mention the political scene in both Massachusetts and England. You’ll look with new eyes, also, on the lives of George Washington Carver, Jane Austen, Galileo, Johann Sebastian Bach, Sergeant York, John Bunyan, and Saint Patrick. You might think you know their stories . . . but you don’t. Not yet. For lovers of biography, for homeschool or study groups, for anyone seeking encouragement in the Christian walk, 10 Christians Everyone Should Know is a valuable resource.

In this Christian Encounter Series biography, author John Perry explores the life of Sir. Winston Churchill, the man who changed World War II. Winston Churchill captivated the world with his voice and his writings. His books and speeches ooze with patriotism and faith in a just God. But he wasn’t always known for his oratory skills, his faith, or his ability to captivate. In fact, as a child, he was small for his age, accident-prone, and frequently sick. To make matters worse, he was stubborn and self-centered, had a lisp, and did poorly in school. Born to an aristocratic family, young Winston was whisked off to boarding school at an early age, ignored by his parents, and left in the care of a nanny, Elizabeth Everest. But Everest excelled where Winston’s own parents had failed him. She nurtured and encouraged him, and shared with him her own steadfast faith in God, shaping the views and vision of the persistent little English boy who would become one of the most influenu00adtial men in history.

The Ebola virus disease represented a grave crisis for Liberia. After many years of civil conflict its health system had been weakened and there were too few physicians and health care workers who were willing and able to deal effectively with the disease which spread far beyond Africa to Europe and the United States of America. The book offers a convenient summary of the background of the EVD crisis, and the ways it was defeated by the public who were energized by the gravity of the situation. It discusses the lessons learned, the effect of the disease on children, and the way forward for the international health care system to prepare itself better for possible future epidemics of the same scale and gravity.

A biographical account of preacher and ministry leader James T. Draper, interwoven with the story of the life, growth, and character of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Tyler, a nine-year-old boy, is stricken with incurable brain cancer and begins to write letters to God. He turns his suffering into spiritual lessons for his widowed mother, his embittered adolescent brother, and a troubled postman.

Quickly becoming the choice of more and more American families, home schooling a child can be a daunting and exhausting task. When John and Kathy Perry decided to withdraw their sons from public school and teach them at home, they found much information decrying the state of education but little on how to develop a program to ensure academic success. The Complete Guide to Home Schooling presents step-by-step instructions for tailoring a curriculum to the individual, integrating academic home schooling with public school extracurricular opportunities, maintaining family energy and peace, and developing diverse community-based enrichment studies.

What do little Sam Ruskin, sweet Victoria Glassford, and Mr. Singh, the security guard, have

Past president James Draper shares the history of the Baptist Sunday School Board, now known as Lifeway Christian Resources.

For fifty years “ Detroit” has been shorthand for all that'' s wrong with urban America: crime, corruption, decay, racial tension, struggling businesses, failing schools, a declining tax base, and more. Since 1950 Detroit has lost two-thirds of its population, falling from fifth place in the U.S. (just behind Los Angeles) to twenty-fourth (just behind Nashville). Between 2000 and 2017 alone, its population fell 28%, a steeper drop than any other major American city. A third of its land now lies vacant or dotted with empty, derelict houses. The good news is there are unmistakable signs of renewal in Detroit. Given a fresh start— courtesy of the largest municipal bankruptcy in history followed by heroic commitments to the community from visionary local entrepreneurs— Detroit has slowed its rate of population decline, stabilized its finances, and set out to prove to the world that it'' s once again open for business.

Traces Jack London''s paternity, childhood, youthful career, and success as an author. Discusses his business ventures, alcoholism, and his death.

The state of Russia, under the present czar. In relation to the several great and remarkable things he has done, as to his naval preparations, the regulating his army, the reforming his people, and improvement of his countrey. Particularly those works on which the author was employ''d ... Also an account of those Tartars, and other people who border on the eastern and extreme northern parts of the czar''s dominions ... To which is annex''d, a more accurate map of the czar''s dominions, than has hitherto been extant. By Captain John Perry. 1716. This edition first published in 1967. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this provocative book, Barwise and Perry tackle the slippery subject of meaning, a subject that has long vexed linguists, language philosophers, and logicians.

Introduce your students to philosophy with the most widely used, trusted, and comprehensive topically organized collection of classical and contemporary readings available. Easy to use for both students and instructors, Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings incorporates boldfaced key terms (listed after each reading and defined in the glossary), a "Logical Toolkit," a guide to writing philosophy papers, and study questions after each reading selection. The eighth edition features nine new selections that broaden the book''s scope to include work by non-Western philosophers and contemporary women philosophers.