New Releases by Kevin Hart

What is contemplation? How is it distinct from meditation? Is contemplation essentially religious or mystical? What should one contemplate, and how? Are there different styles of contemplation, and why should one practice them? Ought we try to lead more contemplative lives? This book offers a philosophical introduction to the theory and practice of contemplation. Kevin Hart examines a variety of religious, aesthetic, and philosophical notions, shedding light on the singular qualities of contemplation. This book spans topics including the spiritual exercises of the ancient Greeks, overlooked aspects of Christian spirituality, and aesthetic contemplation of nature and art. Contemplation ranges from ancient thinkers such as Aristotle, Plato, and Plotinus to Aquinas and other medieval theologians as well as modern philosophers like Kant, Husserl, and Wittgenstein. Though focused on Christianity, it also considers contemplation in other religious traditions, among them Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Paganism. Concise and comprehensive, this book provides both religious and nonreligious readers with a foundational understanding of the history and nature of contemplation as well as the benefits of practicing it.

"Put this beautiful book on your shelf between Frank Conroy's Stop-Time and Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life."—William Giraldi, author of The Hero's Body This powerful memoir from poet Kevin Hart traces his difficult childhood as a "backward boy" in a poor part of London, a disorienting move to tropical Australia, and the secrets he and his family kept from one another. Dark-Land: Memoir of a Secret Childhood is Kevin Hart’s searing, yet at times hilarious, narrative of his first thirteen years. It is a story of survival and transformation, of deception and recovery, and it passes from a frightening childhood in the East-End of London to a new and bewildering life in sub-tropical Australia. Throughout, Hart draws on John Bunyan’s evocation of “Dark-Land” in Pilgrim’s Progress, the place Valiant-for-Truth leaves in order to seek the Celestial City. But Dark-Land is no allegory. We see Hart’s hidden inner life, his family’s penchant for keeping secrets, and their illusions about the nature of their shared past. We see Hart grow from being the despair of his teachers in a rough primary school to experiencing a “conversion” in a math class in Brisbane, Australia, which turned him into a Christian, a poet, and an academic. Written in elegant, lucid prose, without a trace of sentimentality, Dark-Land is a memoir of a working-class childhood, a narrative of a migrant, and the story of a convert to Christianity.

An original and profound exploration of contemplation from philosopher, theologian, and poet Kevin Hart. In Lands of Likeness, Kevin Hart develops a new hermeneutics of contemplation through a meditation on Christian thought and secular philosophy. Drawing on Kant, Schopenhauer, Coleridge, and Husserl, Hart first charts the emergence of contemplation in and beyond the Romantic era. Next, Hart shows this hermeneutic at work in poetry by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, and others. Delivered in its original form as the prestigious Gifford Lectures, Lands of Likeness is a revelatory meditation on contemplation for the modern world.

Blanchot and his writings on three major poets, Mallarmé, Hölderlin, and Char, provide a decisive new point of departure for English language criticism of his philosophical writings on narrative in this study by leading Blanchot scholar, Kevin Hart. Connecting his work to later leading figures of 20th-century French philosophy, including Emmanuel Levinas, Simone Weil, and Jacques Derrida, Hart highlights the importance of Jewish philosophy and political thought to his overall conception of literature. Chapters on community and negation reveal Blanchot's emphasis on the relationship between narrative and politics over the more commonly connected narrative and aesthetics. By fully discussing Blanchot's elusive concept of “the Outside” for the first time, this book progresses scholarly understandings of his entire oeuvre further. This central concept engages Franz Rosenzweig's work on Abrahamic faiths, enabling a reckoning on the role of suffering and literature in the wake of the Shoah, with significant implications for Jewish studies more generally.

Stand-up comedian and Hollywood box-office hit Kevin Hart keeps the laughs coming in an illustrated middle-grade novel about a boy who has big dreams of making a blockbuster superhero film. Perfect for readers of James Patterson's Middle School series and Lincoln Peirce's Big Nate series. Marcus is NOT happy to be stuck in after-school film class . . . until he realizes he can turn the story of the cartoon superhero he’s been drawing for years into an actual MOVIE! There’s just one problem: he has no idea what he’s doing. So he’ll need help, from his friends, his teachers, Sierra, the strong-willed classmate with creative dreams of her own, even Tyrell, the local bully who’d be a perfect movie villain if he weren’t too terrifying to talk to. Making this movie won’t be easy. But as Marcus discovers, nothing great ever is—and if you want your dream to come true, you’ve got to put in the hustle to make it happen. Comedy superstar Kevin Hart teams up with award-winning author Geoff Rodkey and lauded illustrator David Cooper for a hilarious, illustrated, and inspiring story about bringing your creative goals to life and never giving up, even when nothing’s going your way.

From celebrity author Kevin Hart comes the laugh-out-loud highly illustrated sequel to Marcus Makes a Movie about a young boy who has big Hollywood dreams--and the hustle to make it happen. "Everybody, grab a ticket and run for a front row seat to Marcus Makes a Movie!" —Judd Winick, New York Times bestselling author of the Hilo series Marcus’s movie, Toothpick vs. the Doom, is a HIT! But the only thing harder than making a movie is making a SECOND one. Marcus needs to come up with another great idea fast. Too bad his film crew (aka friends) are too preoccupied with their MeTube channels to notice. An invite to The Helen Show has Marcus thinking they’ll be back on top, but will nerves, unchecked ambition, and a rivalry between friends shut down this show before it even begins? In the laugh-out-loud sequel, actor and comedian Kevin Hart delivers a message about being creative, working hard, and learning that sometimes the best dreams are the ones you achieve with your friends.

This book rises out of Dr. Kevin Hart's 2020 Aquinas Lecture at the University of Dallas. Contemplation and Kingdom seeks to retrieve aspects of Richard of St. Victor's treatment of contemplation, principally in De arca mystica, and does so by weighing Thomas Aquinas's reservations about this treatment in the Summa theologiæ. Is Aquinas right to object, as Augustine does in De Doctrina Christiana, that our contemplation should go directly to God and not be stalled in the consideration of the natural world? What relation is there between Jesus's preaching of the Kingdom and the contemplation of God? Is the contemplative life consistent with Jesus's injunction to love both God and neighbor? These are the principal questions considered in the book. This book is vintage Hart, erudite, well written, a treat for a wide readership. It is an example of how theology ought to be done, with a clarity and depth unsurpassed in today's scholarly world. Its blend of anglo-saxon elegance and continental insights will be praised in the Academy and outside. - Jean-Yves Lacoste, Clare Hall, Cambridge In the light of great contemporary interest in contemplation, this brilliant and erudite work is a stunning example. The focus on Richard of St. Victor and Thomas Aquinas is especially appropriate. Theologians and philosophers will be especially thankful for Kevin Hart's work on the actuality of contemplation. - David Tracy, University of Chicago Kevin Hart holds the Edwin B. Kyle Chair of Christian Theology at the University of Virginia where he is also Courtesy Professor of English and Courtesy Professor of French. In 2020 he was awarded the Aquinas Medal by the Department of Philosophy at the University of Dallas. His 2020 Étienne Gilson Lectures, given at L'Institut Catholique de Paris, offer a fresh approach to the theology of the imago dei in Augustine. His 2020 Gifford Lectures, given at Glasgow University, examine various questions to do with the theology of contemplation and propose a new "hermeneutics of contemplation." His most recent scholarly publications include Kingdoms of God and Poetry and Revelation, and his most recent collections of poetry are Wild Track: New and Selected Poems and Barefoot.

Kevin T. Hart Sr. is the Senior Pastor of Christian Tabernacle Church in Washington DC. Kevin T. Hart Sr. has a Masters in Divinity from Virginia Union University. These pearls of wisdom are excerpts of sermons and messages from Kevin T. Hart Sr. It is our hope that these words will encourage or inspire your heart. May these words provoke thought and spur you to action.

Barefoot is Kevin Hart’s eighth collection of poems; it is rich in elegies, meditations on lost love, and celebrations of new love. The title speaks of mourning, pilgrimage, and the direct sensuous contact of flesh with earth. Harold Bloom has long extolled Hart as a “visionary of desire,” and in this collection we find that vision deepened and that desire extended. Never before has Hart stretched his range of inspiration quite so far; while continuing to draw from Christianity, he also responds to the rich heritage of American Blues, and reveals a wit as sharp as a razor’s edge. The poetry is at once religious poetry and love poetry; indeed, the “religious poetry” is itself love poetry. Always, Hart speaks to us in words that seem inevitable in their simplicity. As he himself has written, “The best conductor of mystery is clarity. The true bearer of complexity is simplicity.” Barefoot will delight poetry lovers everywhere.

Comedian and Hollywood actor Kevin Hart discusses his traumatic early life, his career, and how he has been able to overcome the odds and become successful.

Religious poetry has often been regarded as minor poetry and dismissed in large part because poetry is taken to require direct experience; whereas religious poetry is taken to be based on faith, that is, on second or third hand experience. The best methods of thinking about "experience" are given to us by phenomenology. Poetry and Revelation is the first study of religious poetry through a phenomenological lens, one that works with the distinction between manifestation (in which everything is made manifest) and revelation (in which the mystery is re-veiled as well as revealed). Providing a phenomenological investigation of a wide range of “religious poems”, some medieval, some modern; some written in English, others written in European languages; some from America, some from Britain, and some from Australia, Kevin Hart provides a unique new way of thinking about religious poetry and the nature of revelation itself.

This Training Guide is amongst one of the most resourceful and informative out there. Packed full of reliable and tested information - written by a highly experienced Trainer. Easy to read, and in-depth in its nature - you will thoroughly enjoy your journey through it, all while expanding your knowledge. It contains a wealth of interesting facts and reliable information, along with detailed advice for owners. This is one book that is certainly a must-have addition to your collection.

This book portrays the nativity of Christ in bold images of the Australian outback. Most of our Christmas art and verse have been inherited from English and European sources, but the Christian message is universal and other cultures commonly portray the characters and events surrounding Christ's birth in line with local custom.

The poems of Kevin Hart have nurtured international poetry audiences for nearly four decades. Translations of Hart’s work have appeared in Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, and Vietnamese, among other languages, and bear witness to the growing interest in Hart’s poetry both in the United States and abroad. This volume performs a valuable service by bringing together the best of Hart’s work from seven published collections, some of them now out of print, and from his forthcoming book, Barefoot. Wild Track reveals a poet capable of articulating genuine feeling and considerable philosophical depth. This volume confirms Hart’s standing as one of the most sophisticated poets writing today.

What did Jesus mean by the expression, the Kingdom of God? As an answer, Kevin Hart sketches a "phenomenology of the Christ" that explores the unique way Jesus performs phenomenology. According to Hart, philosophers and theologians continually reinterpret Jesus’s teaching of the Kingdom so that there are effectively many Kingdoms of God. Working in, while also displacing, a tradition inaugurated by Husserl and continued by philosophers such as Heidegger, Marion, and Lacoste, Hart puts forward a new phenomenology of religion that claims that ethics and religion are not always unified or continuous.

In Morning Knowledge, Kevin Hart grieves the passing of his father, while continuing his unique interlacing of the spiritual and the sensuous. A book of elegies and love poems, prayers and lullabies, a book in which poems sing about a museum of shadows and about rats and afternoons, all wrapped in quatrains, Morning Knowledge is a major book by a poet read and loved throughout the world.

The poems in YOUNG RAIN have a lucidity that makes them seem almost casual, so that it is with a feeling of surprise that you realize that you have been drawn into a conversation of the utmost gravity concerning the private reaches of the self, darkness and death. YOUNG RAIN is Kevin Hart's sixth collection of poetry.

While several studies have examined rates of malpractice claims at state levels, there is little systematic work looking at variations of claiming rates within a state. This study reports on small area variations in malpractice claims rates within New York State over a 14 year period. Counties with high rates generally had high rates over the entire period, while counties with low rates maintained low rates. Rates across counties varied considerably, with an almost 5 times difference between the rates for the lowest county and the highest county. In a multivariate analysis of potential factors influencing a county''s rate, median family income was one of the strongest factors positively associated with the claims rate. A measure of the risk of hospital admissions for an adverse outcome also had a strong association with the county''s malpractice claims rate, but the risk factor was negatively associated with high claims rates, perhaps suggesting an association with quality of care and malpractice claims. The number of lawyers per capita was weakly, but positively, associated with the claims rate.

Publisher Description

Adopting the role of tour guide, award-winning writer Kevin Hart leads the reader through the pitfalls, conundrums and complexities that characterize postmodernism, while providing an overview of the many different approaches (philosophical, cultural, literary…) to the subject. All the major thinkers are introduced – from Derrida to Blanchot, Irigaray to Foucault, and more besides – while the book is unique among introductory guides in its consideration of the role of religion in a postmodern world.