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Faith, Gender, and Activism in the Punjab Conflict: The Wheat Fields Still Whisper
by Mallika KaurPunjab was the arena of one of the first major armed conflicts of post-colonial India. During its deadliest decade, as many as 250,000 people were killed. This book makes an urgent intervention in the history of the conflict, which to date has been characterized by a fixation on sensational violence—or ignored altogether. Mallika Kaur unearths the stories of three people who found themselves at the center of Punjab’s human rights movement: Baljit Kaur, who armed herself with a video camera to record essential evidence of the conflict; Justice Ajit Singh Bains, who became a beloved “people’s judge”; and Inderjit Singh Jaijee, who returned to Punjab to document abuses even as other elites were fleeing. Together, they are credited with saving countless lives. Braiding oral histories, personal snapshots, and primary documents recovered from at-risk archives, Kaur shows that when entire conflicts are marginalized, we miss essential stories: stories of faith, feminist action, and the power of citizen-activists.
Faith, Hope and Charity: English Neighbourhoods, 1500–1640
by Andy WoodFaith, Hope and Charity explores the interaction between social ideals and everyday experiences in Tudor and early Stuart neighbourhoods, drawing on a remarkably rich variety of hitherto largely unstudied sources. Focusing on local sites, where ordinary people lived their lives, Andy Wood deals with popular religion, gender relations, senses of locality and belonging, festivity, work, play, witchcraft, gossip, and reactions to dearth and disease. He thus brings a new clarity to understandings of the texture of communal relations in the historical past and highlights the particular characteristics of structural processes of inclusion and exclusion in the construction and experience of communities in early modern England. This engaging social history vividly captures what life would have been like in these communities, arguing that, even while early modern people were sure that the values of neighbourhood were dying, they continued to evoke and reassert those values.
Faith, Hope and Rice: Private Cox's Account of Captivity and the Death Railway
by Ellie TaylorFred Cox, a young soldier in the East Surrey Regiment, was taken prisoner by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore in February 1942. The next three and a half years were spent in a series of PoW camps, notably in Thailand working on the aptly named Death Railway. Fortunately he was not one of the 12,000 Allied prisoners who perished as a result of extreme maltreatment, starvation or disease, but his health, both physical and psychological, was seriously affected. After liberation, whilst in hospital in Ceylon, Fred was nursed by Joan whom he married. Advised by the doctors to face his horrific experiences, he and Joan spent the winter of 1946 1947 getting his story down on paper. Seventy years on, sadly after his death, Faith, Hope and Rice, (which were what sustained Fred through his ordeal) can now be shared with a wider audience. Readers cannot fail to be moved by the author's and his comrades' inspiring courage and resilience in the face of extreme adversity and ever present death.
Faith in Empire: Religion, Politics, and Colonial Rule in French Senegal, 1880-1940
by Elizabeth A. FosterFaith in Empire is an innovative exploration of French colonial rule in West Africa, conducted through the prism of religion and religious policy. Elizabeth Foster examines the relationships among French Catholic missionaries, colonial administrators, and Muslim, animist, and Christian Africans in colonial Senegal between 1880 and 1940. In doing so she illuminates the nature of the relationship between the French Third Republic and its colonies, reveals competing French visions of how to approach Africans, and demonstrates how disparate groups of French and African actors, many of whom were unconnected with the colonial state, shaped French colonial rule. Among other topics, the book provides historical perspective on current French controversies over the place of Islam in the Fifth Republic by exploring how Third Republic officials wrestled with whether to apply the legal separation of church and state to West African Muslims.
Faith in Exposure: Privacy and Secularism in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Early American Studies)
by Justine S. MurisonRecent legal history in the United States reveals a hardening tendency to treat religious freedom and sexual and reproductive freedom as competing, even opposing, claims on public life. They are united, though, by the fact that both are rooted in our culture’s understanding of privacy. Faith in Exposure shows how, over the course of the nineteenth century, privacy came to encompass such contradictions—both underpinning the right to sexual and reproductive rights but also undermining them in the name of religious freedom.Drawing on the interdisciplinary field of secular studies, Faith in Exposure brings a postsecular orientation to the historical emergence of modern privacy. The book explains this emergence through two interlocking stories. The first examines the legal and cultural connection of religion with the private sphere, showing how privacy became a moral concept that informs how we debate the right to be shielded from state interference, as well as who will be afforded or denied this protection. This conflation of religion with privacy gave rise, the book argues, to a “secular sensibility” that was especially invested in authenticity and the exposure of hypocrisy in others.The second story examines the development of this “secular sensibility” of privacy through nineteenth-century novels. The preoccupation of the novel form with private life, and especially its dependence on revelations of private desire and sexual secrets, made it the perfect vehicle for suggesting that exposure might be synonymous with morality itself. Each chapter places key authors into wider contexts of popular fiction and periodical press debates. From fears over religious infidelity to controversies over what constituted a modern marriage and conspiracy theories about abolitionists, these were the contests, Justine S. Murison argues, that helped privacy emerge as both a sensibility and a right in modern, secular America.
Faith in Freedom: Propaganda, Presidential Politics, and the Making of an American Religion
by Andrew R. PolkIn Faith in Freedom, Andrew R. Polk argues that the American civil religion so many have identified as indigenous to the founding ideology was, in fact, the result of a strategic campaign of religious propaganda. Far from being the natural result of the nation's religious underpinning or the later spiritual machinations of conservative Protestants, American civil religion and the resultant "Christian nationalism" of today were crafted by secular elites in the middle of the twentieth century. Polk's genealogy of the national motto, "In God We Trust," revises the very meaning of the contemporary American nation.Polk shows how Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, working with politicians, advertising executives, and military public relations experts, exploited denominational religious affiliations and beliefs in order to unite Americans during the Second World War and, then, the early Cold War. Armed opposition to the Soviet Union was coupled with militant support for free economic markets, local control of education and housing, and liberties of speech and worship. These preferences were cultivated by state actors so as to support a set of right-wing positions including anti-communism, the Jim Crow status quo, and limited taxation and regulation.Faith in Freedom is a pioneering work of American religious history. By assessing the ideas, policies, and actions of three US Presidents and their White House staff, Polk sheds light on the origins of the ideological, religious, and partisan divides that describe the American polity today.
Faith in Markets: Christian Capitalism in the Early American Republic (Columbia Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism)
by Joseph P. SlaughterIn the first half of the nineteenth century, the United States saw both a series of Protestant religious revivals and the dramatic expansion of the marketplace. Although today conservative Protestantism is associated with laissez-faire capitalism, many of the nineteenth-century believers who experienced these transformations offered different, competing visions of the link between commerce and Christianity. Joseph P. Slaughter offers a new account of the interplay between religion and capitalism in American history by telling the stories of the Protestant entrepreneurs who established businesses to serve as agents of cultural and economic reform.Faith in Markets examines three Christian business enterprises and the visions of a Christian marketplace they represented. Shaped by Pietist, Calvinist, and Arminian theologies, each offered different answers to the question of what a moral, Christian market should look like. George Rapp & Associates operated sophisticated textile factories as the business side of the model community the Harmony Society, which practiced communal living in pursuit of a harmonious workforce. The Pioneer Stage Coach Line provided transportation services only six days a week to keep Sunday sacred, attempting to reform society by outcompeting less pious businesses. The publisher Harper & Brothers sought to elevate American culture through commerce by producing virtuous products like lavishly illustrated Bibles. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Faith in Markets explores how the founders and owners of these enterprises infused their faith into their businesses and, in turn, how distinctly religious businesses shaped American capitalism and society.
Faith in Objects
by Erin L. HasinoffIn the early twentieth century, missionary expositions were a central event in the religious life of many Americans. Hasinoff brings the untold history of the World in Boston of 1911, "America's First Great Missionary Exposition,"to light, focusing on how the material culture of missions shaped domestic interactions with evangelism, Christianity, and the consumption of ethnological knowledge. "
Faith in Paper: The Ethnohistory and Litigation of Upper Great Lakes Indian Treaties
by Charles E. ClelandFaith in Paper is about the reinstitution of Indian treaty rights in the Upper Great Lakes region during the last quarter of the 20th century. The book focuses on the treaties and legal cases that together have awakened a new day in Native American sovereignty and established the place of Indian tribes on the modern political landscape. In addition to discussing the historic development of Indian treaties and their social and legal context, Charles E. Cleland outlines specific treaties litigated in modern courts as well as the impact of treaty litigation on the modern Indian and non-Indian communities of the region. Faith in Paper is both an important contribution to the scholarship of Indian legal matters and a rich resource for Indians themselves as they strive to retain or regain rights that have eroded over the years. Charles E. Cleland is Michigan State University Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Curator of Anthropology and Ethnology. He has been an expert witness in numerous Native American land claims and fishing rights cases and written a number of other books on the subject, including Rites of Conquest: The History and Culture of Michigan's Native Americans;The Place of the Pike (Gnoozhekaaning): A History of the Bay Mills Indian Community; and (as a contributor)Fish in the Lakes, Wild Rice, and Game in Abundance: Testimony on Behalf of Mille Lacs Ojibwe Hunting and Fishing Rights.
Faith in the Face of Tyranny: An Examination of the Bethel Confession Proposed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hermann Sasse in August 1933
by Torbjörn JohannsonIn 1933 a group of theological students in Berlin asked Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hermann Sasse to work together with other theologians to come up with a confession that could be used to challenge nazi ideology and its inroads into the church bodies of Germany through the so-called "German Christians" who wanted to reshape Christianity into a worship of German ethnicity. The result was the August Bethel Confession named after the town in which Sasse and Bonhoeffer worked together. Unfortunately, church bureaucrats got a hold of it and watered it down, and then it was forgotten for the Barmen Declaration what was much more heavily influenced by Reformed theology and concerns and failed to even take up the question of what place Jews had in the church.This was a huge disappointment to both Bonhoeffer and Sasse who are largely regarded as two of the greatest Lutheran theologians of that era. In Faith in the Face of Tyranny, Torbjö rn Johannson takes a look at the work that both these men brought to the forgotten Bethel Confession to show just what a confessional response to national socialism and racism looks like. Today there are often calls for new confessions and declarations addressing different political ideologies and issues and well as cultural movements. This book shows what such a confession should look like and why as well as what considerations should be taken into account when looking at such a project.
Faith in the Fight: Religion and the American Soldier in the Great War
by Jonathan H. EbelFaith in the Fight tells a story of religion, soldiering, suffering, and death in the Great War. Recovering the thoughts and experiences of American troops, nurses, and aid workers through their letters, diaries, and memoirs, Jonathan Ebel describes how religion--primarily Christianity--encouraged these young men and women to fight and die, sustained them through war's chaos, and shaped their responses to the war's aftermath. The book reveals the surprising frequency with which Americans who fought viewed the war as a religious challenge that could lead to individual and national redemption. Believing in a "Christianity of the sword," these Americans responded to the war by reasserting their religious faith and proclaiming America God-chosen and righteous in its mission. And while the war sometimes challenged these beliefs, it did not fundamentally alter them. Revising the conventional view that the war was universally disillusioning, Faith in the Fight argues that the war in fact strengthened the religious beliefs of the Americans who fought, and that it helped spark a religiously charged revival of many prewar orthodoxies during a postwar period marked by race riots, labor wars, communist witch hunts, and gender struggles. For many Americans, Ebel argues, the postwar period was actually one of "reillusionment." Demonstrating the deep connections between Christianity and Americans' experience of the First World War, Faith in the Fight encourages us to examine the religious dimensions of America's wars, past and present, and to work toward a deeper understanding of religion and violence in American history.
Faith in the Great Physician: Suffering and Divine Healing in American Culture, 1860–1900 (Lived Religions)
by Heather D. CurtisRecipient of the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History for 2007Faith in the Great Physician tells the story of how participants in the evangelical divine healing movement of the late nineteenth century transformed the ways Americans coped with physical affliction and pursued bodily health. Examining the politics of sickness, health, and healing during this period, Heather D. Curtis encourages critical reflection on the theological, cultural, and social forces that come into play when one questions the purpose of suffering and the possibility of healing.Curtis finds that advocates of divine healing worked to revise a deep-seated Christian ethic that linked physical suffering with spiritual holiness. By engaging in devotional disciplines and participating in social reform efforts, proponents of faith cure embraced a model of spiritual experience that endorsed active service, rather than passive endurance, as the proper Christian response to illness and pain. Emphasizing the centrality of religious practices to the enterprise of divine healing, Curtis sheds light on the relationship among Christian faith, medical science, and the changing meanings of suffering and healing in American culture.
Faith in the Great Physician: Suffering and Divine Healing in American Culture, 1860–1900 (Lived Religions)
by Heather D. CurtisThis history of evangelical faith healing in nineteenth-century America examines the nation’s shifting attitudes about sickness, suffering, and health. Faith in the Great Physician tells the story of how participants in the divine healing movement transformed the ways Americans coped with physical affliction and pursued bodily wellbeing. Heather D. Curtis offers critical reflection on the theological, cultural, and social forces that come into play when one questions the purpose of suffering and the possibility of healing.Belief in divine healing ran counter to a deep-seated Christian ethic that linked physical suffering with spiritual holiness. By engaging in devotional disciplines and participating in social reform efforts, proponents of faith cure embraced a model of spiritual experience that endorsed active service, rather than passive endurance, as the proper Christian response to illness and pain.Emphasizing the centrality of religious practices to the enterprise of divine healing, Curtis sheds light on the relationship among Christian faith, medical science, and the changing meanings of suffering and healing in American culture.Recipient of the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize of the American Society of Church History for 2007
Faith in the Time of AIDS: Religion, Biopolitics And Modernity In South Africa (Non-governmental Public Action Ser.)
by Marian Burchardt
Faith in Their Own Color: Black Episcopalians in Antebellum New York City (Religion and American Culture)
by Craig TownsendOn a September afternoon in 1853, three African American men from St. Philip's Church walked into the Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of New York and took their seats among five hundred wealthy and powerful white church leaders. Ultimately, and with great reluctance, the Convention had acceded to the men's request: official recognition for St. Philip's, the first African American Episcopal church in New York City. In Faith in Their Own Color, Craig D. Townsend tells the remarkable story of St. Philip's and its struggle to create an autonomous and independent church. His work unearths a forgotten chapter in the history of New York City and African Americans and sheds new light on the ways religious faith can both reinforce and overcome racial boundaries. Founded in 1809, St. Philip's had endured a fire; a riot by anti-abolitionists that nearly destroyed the church; and more than forty years of discrimination by the Episcopalian hierarchy. In contrast to the majority of African Americans, who were flocking to evangelical denominations, the congregation of St. Philip's sought to define itself within an overwhelmingly white hierarchical structure. Their efforts reflected the tension between their desire for self-determination, on the one hand, and acceptance by a white denomination, on the other.The history of St. Philip's Church also illustrates the racism and extraordinary difficulties African Americans confronted in antebellum New York City, where full abolition did not occur until 1827. Townsend describes the constant and complex negotiation of the divide between black and white New Yorkers. He also recounts the fascinating stories of historically overlooked individuals who built and fought for St. Philip's, including Rev. Peter Williams, the second African American ordained in the Episcopal Church; Dr. James McCune Smith, the first African American to earn an M.D.; pickling magnate Henry Scott; the combative priest Alexander Crummell; and John Jay II, the grandson of the first chief justice of the Supreme Court and an ardent abolitionist, who helped secure acceptance of St. Philip's.
Faith in Their Own Color: Black Episcopalians in Antebellum New York City
by Craig D. TownsendOn a September afternoon in 1853, three African American men from St. Philip's Church walked into the Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of New York and took their seats among five hundred wealthy and powerful white church leaders. Ultimately, and with great reluctance, the Convention had acceded to the men's request: official recognition for St. Philip's, the first African American Episcopal church in New York City. In Faith in Their Own Color, Craig D. Townsend tells the remarkable story of St. Philip's and its struggle to create an autonomous and independent church. His work unearths a forgotten chapter in the history of New York City and African Americans and sheds new light on the ways religious faith can both reinforce and overcome racial boundaries. Founded in 1809, St. Philip's had endured a fire; a riot by anti-abolitionists that nearly destroyed the church; and more than forty years of discrimination by the Episcopalian hierarchy. In contrast to the majority of African Americans, who were flocking to evangelical denominations, the congregation of St. Philip's sought to define itself within an overwhelmingly white hierarchical structure. Their efforts reflected the tension between their desire for self-determination, on the one hand, and acceptance by a white denomination, on the other. The history of St. Philip's Church also illustrates the racism and extraordinary difficulties African Americans confronted in antebellum New York City, where full abolition did not occur until 1827. Townsend describes the constant and complex negotiation of the divide between black and white New Yorkers. He also recounts the fascinating stories of historically overlooked individuals who built and fought for St. Philip's, including Rev. Peter Williams, the second African American ordained in the Episcopal Church; Dr. James McCune Smith, the first African American to earn an M.D.; pickling magnate Henry Scott; the combative priest Alexander Crummell; and John Jay II, the grandson of the first chief justice of the Supreme Court and an ardent abolitionist, who helped secure acceptance of St. Philip's.
Faith in War: Religion and the Military in Germany, c.1500-1650 (Spektrum: Publications of the German Studies Association #31)
by Nikolas M. FunkeWhile the social and cultural history of the early modern military has greatly advanced in the last few decades, the religious dimension of the military life in the Holy Roman Empire between 1500 and 1650 has hardly been explored. The Reformation brought profound political, social and cultural upheavals, but the religiosity of the men and women who followed the Christian life in the chaos of war still represents a large gap in the historiography. Faith in War shows that confessional antagonisms lost much of their meaning during war and coexistence became a fact of army life. Connecting military and civilian social and cultural history in these ways, Nikolas Funke’s case study on this period brings new life to important current historiographical discussions in a military context, including stereotyping, confessionalization, social discipline, deviance, toleration, religious violence, and the culture of death.
The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures
by Nicholas WadeNoted science writer Nicholas Wade offers for the first time a convincing case based on a broad range of scientific evidence for the evolutionary basis of religion.
“‘Faith’ is a fine invention”: Dickinson’s Performance of Doubt and Belief
by Regina YoongThis book covers nineteenth-century American poet Emily Dickinson who captured the multifaceted nature of life in all of its uncertainties. Studies on her exploration of faith are ample, but in this book, the author uncovers Dickinson’s playful role-play in enacting solemn themes of religion, death, and the unknown. Dickinson’s creativity encompasses not only her use of language but also her poetic personae and self-created poetic stages inviting readers to question, contemplate deeply or even poke fun at life's absurdities. By using performative roles such as the rejected outcast, passive supplicant, and playful warrior, Dickinson unveils--through a paradoxical framework of belief and unbelief-- a line of inquiry that is multifocal and erratic to “tell all the truth and tell it slant.”
Faith, Medical Alchemy and Natural Philosophy: Johann Moriaen, Reformed Intelligencer and the Hartlib Circle (Routledge Revivals)
by John T. YoungPublished in 1998, this is a fundamental re-assessment of the world-view of the alchemists, natural philosophers and intelligencers of the mid 17th century. Based almost entirely upon the extensive and hitherto little-researched manuscript archive of Samuel Hartlib, it charts and contextualises the personal and intellectual history of Johann Moriaen (c.1592-1668), a Dutch-German alchemist and natural philosopher. Moriaen was closely acquainted with many of the leading thinkers and experimenters of his time, including René Descartes, J.A. Comenius, J.R. Glauber and J.S. Küffler. His detailed reports of relations with these figures and his response to their work provide a uniquely informed insight into the world of alchemy and natural philosophy. This study also illuminates the nature and mechanisms of intellectual and technological exchanges between Germany, The Netherlands and England.
The Faith of a Heretic
by Walter Kaufmann Stanley CorngoldOriginally published in 1959, The Faith of a Heretic is the most personal statement of the beliefs of Nietzsche biographer and translator Walter Kaufmann. A first-rate philosopher in his own right, Kaufmann here provides the fullest account of his views on religion. Although he considered himself a heretic, he was not immune to the wellsprings and impulses from which religion originates, declaring it among the most vital and radical expressions of the human mind. Beginning with an autobiographical prologue that traces his evolution from religious believer to "heretic," the book touches on theology, organized religion, morality, suffering, and death--all examined from the perspective of a "quest for honesty." Kaufmann also subjects philosophy's faith in truth, reason, and absolute morality to the same heretical treatment. The resulting exploration of the faiths of a nonbeliever in a secular age is as fresh and challenging as when it was first published.<P><P>In a new foreword, Stanley Corngold vividly describes the intellectual and biographical milieu of Kaufmann's provocative book.
The Faith of Ashish
by Kay Marshall StromVirat and Latha named their son Ashish, for he is the light and glory of their world. Yet a simple drink of water from the wrong cup changes them forever. Virat, Latha, and Ashish are Untouchables in 1905 India, members of a caste who must never contaminate the world of the other, higher, castes. When Ashish is in desperate need of a doctor, Virat risks everything to save his son and ventures into the dangerous realm of the high caste. There, the strength of a father's love, the power of a young British nurse, and the faith of a child change the lives around them.
The Faith of Ashish
by Kay Marshall Strom"His name is Ashish. His name is Blessing. The boy is my blessing." Virat and Latha named their son Ashish, for he is the light and glory of their world. Yet a simple drink of water from the wrong cup changes them forever. Virat, Latha, and Ashish are Untouchables in 1905 India, members of a caste who must never contaminate the world of the other, higher, castes. When Ashish is in desperate need of a doctor, Virat risks everything to save his son and ventures into the dangerous realm of the high caste. There, the strength of a father's love, the power of a young British nurse, and the faith of a child change the lives around them. "Kay Strom has penned a high-powered suspense novel using her extensive overseas research and her experiences in third world countries. A master in creating the unexpected." - DiAnn Mills, Christy Award winner and author of Pursuit of Justice, The Fire in Ember, and Under a Desert Sky "Author Kay Marshall Strom, in her professional yet heart-rending style, has penned another story that will open the eyes and change the lives of her readers. This is an exquisitely written tale of hope and faith in the midst of difficulties born out of superstition and bondage. I am already anxiously awaiting the sequel!"- Kathi Macias, award-winning author of more than 30 books, including the popular Extreme Devotion series "Do not miss this historical, inspirational novel by Kay Marshall Strom. It will touch your heart." - FreshFiction.comThe Faith of Ashish by Kay Marshall Strom -->
Faith of My Fathers (Chronicles of the Kings #4)
by Lynn AustinMemorable Bible-Era Fiction From Award-Winning Author <p><p> King Manaseh and his friend Joshua were nurtured together in the faith of their godly fathers. but anger toward God smolders in Manasseh's heart after his father's unexpected death, and his insecurity makes him easy prey for the false claims of sorcery and divination. <p>When Joshua stands up for the truth, the battle lines are drawn, and Joshua must flee his life of privilege. Unable to understand why his boyhood friend has turned against him, and why he must stand alone in the face of such opposition, Joshua comes perilously close to losing his faith. <p>Can Joshua rescue the faithful remnant from Manasseh's persecution? Has it all gone too far. . or will he rediscover his father's God? Faith of My Fathers is a riveting story of intrigue, deception, danger, and suspense.
Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir
by John Mccain Mark SalterJohn McCain is one of the most admired leaders in the United States government, but his deeply felt memoir of family and war is not a political one and ends before his election to Congress. With candor and ennobling power, McCain tells a story that, in the words of Newsweek, "makes the other presidential candidates look like pygmies." John McCain learned about life and honor from his grandfather and father, both four-star admirals in the U.S. Navy. This is a memoir about their lives, their heroism, and the ways that sons are shaped and enriched by their fathers. John McCain's grandfather was a gaunt, hawk-faced man known as Slew by his fellow officers and, affectionately, as Popeye by the sailors who served under him. McCain Sr. played the horses, drank bourbon and water, and rolled his own cigarettes with one hand. More significant, he was one of the navy's greatest commanders, and led the strongest aircraft carrier force of the Third Fleet in key battles during World War II. John McCain's father followed a similar path, equally distinguished by heroic service in the navy, as a submarine commander during World War II. McCain Jr. was a slightly built man, but like his father, he earned the respect and affection of his men. He, too, rose to the rank of four-star admiral, making the McCains the first family in American history to achieve that distinction. McCain Jr.'s final assignment was as commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific during the Vietnam War. It was in the Vietnam War that John McCain III faced the most difficult challenge of his life. A naval aviator, he was shot down over Hanoi in 1967 and seriously injured. When Vietnamese military officers realized he was the son of a top commander, they offered McCain early release in an effort to embarrass the United States. Acting from a sense of honor taught him by his father and the U.S. Naval Academy, McCain refused the offer. He was tortured, held in solitary confinement, and imprisoned for five and a half years. Faith of My Fathers is about what McCain learned from his grandfather and father, and how their example enabled him to survive those hard years. It is a story of three imperfect men who faced adversity and emerged with their honor intact. Ultimately, Faith of My Fathers shows us, with great feeling and appreciation, what fathers give to their sons, and what endures.From the Hardcover edition.