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Implementing the Endangered Species Act on the Platte Basin Water Commons
by David M. FreemanWater users of the Platte River Basin have long struggled to share this scarce commodity in the arid high plains, ultimately organizing collectively owned and managed water systems, allocating water along extensive stream systems, and integrating newer groundwater with existing surface-water uses. In 1973, the Endangered Species Act brought a new challenge: incorporating the habitat needs of four species-the whooping crane, piping plover, least tern, and pallid sturgeon-into its water-management agenda. Implementing the Endangered Species Act on the Platte Basin Water Commons tells of the negotiations among the U.S. Department of the Interior, the environmental community, and the states of Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska that took place from the mid-1970s to 2006. Ambitious talks among rival water users, environmentalists, state authorities, and the Department of the Interior finally resulted in the Platte River Habitat Recovery Program. Documenting how organizational interests found remedies within the conditions set by the Endangered Species Act, describing how these interests addressed habitat restoration, and advancing sociological propositions under which water providers transcended self-interest and produced an agreement benefiting the environment, this book details the messy process that took place over more than thirty years. Presenting important implications for the future of water management in arid and semi-arid environments, this book will be of interest to anyone involved in water management, as well as academics interested in the social organization of common property.
Implementing the Endangered Species Act on the Platte Basin Water Commons (G - Reference, Information And Interdisciplinary Subjects Ser.)
by David M. FreemanWater users of the Platte River Basin have long struggled to share this scarce commodity in the arid high plains, ultimately organizing collectively owned and managed water systems, allocating water along extensive stream systems, and integrating newer groundwater with existing surface-water uses. In 1973, the Endangered Species Act brought a new challenge: incorporating the habitat needs of four species-the whooping crane, piping plover, least tern, and pallid sturgeon-into its water-management agenda. Implementing the Endangered Species Act on the Platte Basin Water Commons tells of the negotiations among the U.S. Department of the Interior, the environmental community, and the states of Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska that took place from the mid-1970s to 2006. Ambitious talks among rival water users, environmentalists, state authorities, and the Department of the Interior finally resulted in the Platte River Habitat Recovery Program. Documenting how organizational interests found remedies within the conditions set by the Endangered Species Act, describing how these interests addressed habitat restoration, and advancing sociological propositions under which water providers transcended self-interest and produced an agreement benefiting the environment, this book details the messy process that took place over more than thirty years. Presenting important implications for the future of water management in arid and semi-arid environments, this book will be of interest to anyone involved in water management, as well as academics interested in the social organization of common property.
Implementing the Every Child Matters Strategy: The Essential Guide for School Leaders and Managers
by Rita CheminaisImplementing the Every Child Matters Strategy is a comprehensive resource for senior leaders, managers of Every Child Matters (ECM) and teachers responsible for leading the government’s ECM strategy in primary and secondary schools and other education settings such as Academies, Sixth Form Colleges, short stay schools, Children’s Centres and Early Years settings. Featuring step-by-step advice, photocopiable checklists and templates, with suggestions for further activities in relation to implementing and embedding the government’s ECM strategy in schools/education settings, this practical guide will enable readers to: understand the concept and principles of Every Child Matters and translate those into developing an ECM policy for their school/setting know their role in moving ECM policy, practice and provision forward understand the importance of ECM well being for effective learning embed ECM through school improvement planning, target setting, tracking pupils well being outcomes and efficient resource deployment identify effective strategies to promote productive partnership working to improve ECM outcomes for children and young people understand the OFSTED inspection requirements for pupils ECM well being. An invaluable resource for those professionals strategically leading ECM in their own education setting, it offers practical guidance, recommended management approaches, models of good practice and signposting to further sources of information on how best to ensure ECM is woven and embedded throughout the school/setting. Frameworks and checklists are downloadable from: http://www.routledgeteachers.com/resources/fulton
Implementing the Government Performance and Results Act for Research: A Status Report
by Institute of MedicineAs requested by Congress and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), this report assists federal agencies in crafting plans and reports that are responsive to the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), OMB Guidance, and agency missions. Using a case study approach, the report identifies best practices used by individual agencies to evaluate the performance and results of their science and technology programs. The report takes into account individual agencies' missions and how science and technology programs and human resource needs are factored into agency GPRA plans. Specific applications of recommendations are included from COSEPUP's earlier report entitled Evaluating Federal Research Programs: Research and the Government Performance and Results Act.
Implementing the Precautionary Principle: Approaches from the Nordic Countries, EU and USA
by Nicolas De SadeleerFrom fisheries to persistent organic pollutants to climate change itself, no other environmental principle in environmental law has produced as much controversy as the precautionary principle. Unlike a preventive approach in which action is taken provided that the threats to the environment are tangible, with a precautionary approach, authorities are prepared to tackle risks for which there is no definitive proof that the damage will materialize. The ramifications of this increasingly apparent approach are profound and cut across all areas of risk assessment and management, environmental law, policy and regulation in every major sector. However, to date little thought has been dedicated to the implementation of the precautionary principle in a wide array of environmental circumstances. This authoritative handbook addresses the legal aspects of how the precautionary principle is implemented in different sectors, and examines its successes, failures, strengths and weaknesses. Sectors and subjects covered include chemicals, GMOs, marine pollution, fisheries and nature conservation, and the book draws on cases in the EU, in the USA, and Nordic countries, where the use of precaution has been gathering momentum. Ultimately, the book provides an indispensable appraisal of the question - increasingly important in the era of human-induced climate change - of whether the precautionary principle is relevant, indeed essential, to avert major environmental and health risks, and how and when it can be used successfully. Published with MARIE CURIE ACTIONS
Implementing the Responsibility to Protect: A Future Agenda (Global Politics and the Responsibility to Protect)
by Cecilia Jacob Martin MenneckeThis book examines core thematic approaches to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and analyzes case studies regarding the implementation of this important global norm. The volume analyzes this process at international, regional and local levels, and identifies an urgent need to progress from conceptual debates towards implementation in practice, in order to understand how to operationalize the preventive dimension of the R2P. It argues that R2P implementation necessarily entails the efforts of actors across governance levels, and that it is more effective when integrated into existing sites of practice aimed at strengthening human rights and accountability for populations in atrocity risk situations. The book addresses R2P implementation in the context of agendas such as resilience, gender, development cooperation, human rights, transitional justice, peacekeeping and civil-military relations. It details progress and challenges for implementation in the United Nations, regionally in Africa, Europe and Southeast Asia, and through national atrocity prevention architectures. The volume provides readers with a breadth of understanding in terms of both the development and current status of the R2P norm, and practical tools for advancing its implementation. This book will be of much interest to students of the Responsibility to Protect, Human Rights, Peace Studies, and International Relations in general.
Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals in Nigeria: Barriers, Prospects and Strategies (Routledge Contemporary Africa)
by Eghosa O. Ekhator Servel Miller Etinosa IgbinosaThis book explores Nigeria’s progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, presenting key country-specific lessons, as well as providing innovative solutions and practices which are transferrable to other emerging economies. Despite all of Nigeria’s potential, and substantial oil revenues, poverty remains widespread and the country faces many challenges. The contributors to this book provide comparative historical and contemporary analysis of the main challenges for achieving progress in the SDGs, and make recommendations for the most effectives ways of developing, adopting, disseminating and scaling them. Starting with the conceptualisation and evolution of the SDGs, the book goes on to consider the goal on ending poverty, and the urgent need to combat climate change and its impacts. The book also reflects on the role of business and taxation, and the cultural and societal dimensions of the SDGs, including education, gender, and the role of the church. Overall, the book focuses on knowledge/implementation gaps and the role of collaborative partnerships and disruptive technologies in implementing the framework in general. This book will be of interest to scholars, policy makers and practitioners of sustainable development and African studies, as well as those with a particular interest in Nigeria.
Implementing the Whole Curriculum for Pupils with Learning Difficulties (Routledge Revivals)
by Richard Rose; Ann Fergusson; Caroline Coles; Richard Byers; David BanesFirst published in 1994, Implementing the Whole Curriculum for Pupils with Learning Difficulties explores practical ways of addressing the curriculum for pupils with learning difficulties. It draws upon the experience of classroom teachers in developing their practice within and beyond the National Curriculum. It provides examples of ways in which pupil’s personal and social development may be fostered through pupil self-advocacy, pupil participation, pupil directed learning and group work. This book is an essential read for teachers and educationists.
Implicating Empire: Globalization and Resistance in the 21st Century World Order
by Stanley Aronowitz Heather GautneyOver the past several years, while visible protests against the World Bank and the I. M. F. made front-page news, there has been a growing field of scholarship that looks at the role of globalization for national and international state identities. The first truism of globalization--that we live in an increasingly interconnected world, one in which it is impossible to separate the fate of one nation from that of the others--was dramatically illustrated on September 11, 2001, when the seemingly distant effects of a civil war in Afghanistan so murderously interrupted life in the United States. Implicating Empire is the first book to look at four crucial dimensions of globalization: first, its role vis-à-vis the current war; second, the impact of globalization on domestic U. S. policy; third, how globalization will necessarily alter national security, both in its definition as well as how it is pursued, and, finally, the future of globalization. Including original essays by Stanley Aronowitz, Ahmed Rashid, Tariq Ali, Manning Marable, Michael Hardt, and Ellen Willis, among others, Implicating Empire will set the agenda for how globalization is debated--and resisted--in the future.
Implications of Modern Decision Science for Military Decision-Support Systems
by Paul K. Davis Jonathan Kulick Michael EgnerA selective review of modern decision science and implications for decision-support systems. The study suggests ways to synthesize lessons from research on heuristics and biases with those from "naturalistic research." It also discusses modern tools, such as increasingly realistic simulations, multiresolution modeling, and exploratory analysis, which can assist decisionmakers in choosing strategies that are flexible, adaptive, and robust.
Implications of the Euro: A Critical Perspective from the Left
by Mark Baimbridge Philip Whyman Brian BurkittTo date, critical analysis of the EMU project has largely been advanced from the centre-right spectrum of British politics. Comparable questions from the centre-left have failed to find a coherent voice. Although, the European fault-line cannot be characterized as a neat Left-Right issue there are noticeable divisions in opinion across British business, the trade union movement and within the Labour Party. Offering a unique insight into this key debate from the ‘centre-left’, eurosceptic view point, this book provides a rigorous analysis of all the salient economic and political issues of concern, such as: * the economics of a single currency* employment and social implications* sovereignty* political determination. The arguments presented in this volume highlight the emergence of a coherent alternative to deepening economic integration as a platform to build a just and equitable society. Contributions are drawn from leading academics, trade union leaders and prominent politicians, both from the Labour Party and the wider progressive Left in British politics. This informative and thought provoking book will be indispensable reading for students and practitioners in economics, politics and international relations, as well as those interested in this highly contentious topic.
Implications of the Reykjavik Summit on Its Twentieth Anniversary: Conference Report
by George P. Shultz Sidney D. DrellDrawn from presentations at the Hoover Institution's conference on the twentieth anniversary of the Reykjavik summit, this collection of essays examines the legacy of that historic meeting between President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. The contributors discuss the new nuclear era and what the lessons of Reykjavik can mean for today's nuclear arms control efforts.
Implosion: The End of Russia and What It Means for America
by Ilan BermanCrises-political, social, and economic-run rampant within Mother Russia's borders. Russian troops infiltrate the Crimean peninsula, the UN Security Council attempts to mediate concerning the conflict with Ukraine, and the United States pledges aid to former Soviet satellites-and civil war teeters on the brink of eruption. In the wake of the Sochi Olympics, it is Russia that is skating on thin ice, and Vladimir Putin's autonomous regime looks shakier by the minute. Ilan Berman shows the future of the country as grim and on the fast track to complete ruination. Is the end in sight for this former superpower? In Implosion, Berman explains why Russia's collapse is imminent and how this nation's ultimate demise will vitiate the United States.
Import Competition and Response
by Jagdish N. BhagwatiThese papers, by a number of leading international-trade theorists, present
Import Safety
by Cary Coglianese Adam M. Finkel David ZaringOn World Food Day in October 2008, former president Bill Clinton finally accepted decade-old criticism directed at his administration's pursuit of free-trade deals with little regard for food safety, child labor, or workers' rights. "We all blew it, including me when I was president. We blew it. We were wrong to believe that food was like some other product in international trade." Clinton's public admission came at a time when consumers in the United States were hearing unsettling stories about contaminated food, toys, and medical products from China, and the first real calls were being made for more regulation of imported products. Import Safety comes at a moment when public interest is engaged with the subject and the government is receptive to the idea of consumer protections that were not instituted when many of the Clinton era's free-trade pacts were drafted.Written by leading scholars and analysts, the chapters in Import Safety provide background and policy guidance on improving consumer safety in imported food, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and toys and other products aimed at children. Together, they consider whether policymakers should approach import safety issues through better funding of traditional interventions--such as regulatory oversight and product liability--or whether this problem poses a different kind of governance challenge, requiring wholly new methods.
Imported Oil and U.S. National Security
by Keith Crane Stuart E. Johnson Michael Toman Andreas Goldthau Thomas LightIn 2007, the United States imported 58 percent of the oil it consumed. This book critically evaluates commonly suggested links between these imports and U.S. national security and assesses the economic, political, and military costs and benefits of potential policies to alleviate imported oil?related challenges to U.S. national security.
Importing EU Norms
by John Leslie Annika Björkdahl Natalia Chaban Annick MasselotThis interdisciplinary work presents a conceptual framework and brings together constructivist and rationalist accounts of how EU norms are adopted, adapted, resisted or rejected. These chapters provide empirical cases and critical analysis of a rich variety of norm-takers from EU member states, European and non-European states, including the rejection of EU norms in Russia and Africa as well as adaptation of EU practices in Australia and New Zealand. Chapters on China, ASEAN and the Czech Republic demonstrate resistance to EU norm export. This volume probes differences in willingness to adopt or adapt norms between various actors in the recipient state and explores such questions as: How do norm-takers perceive of the EU and its norms? Is there a 'normative fit' between EU norms and the local normative context? Similarly, how do EU norms impact recipients' interests and institutional arrangements? First, the authors map EU norm export strategies and approaches as they affect norm-takers. Second, the chapters recognize that norm adoption, adaption, resistance or rejection is a product of interaction and a relationship in which interdependence, asymmetry and power play a role. Third, we see that domestic circumstances within norm-takers condition the reception of norms. This book's focus on norm-takers highlights the reflexive nature of norm diffusion and that nature has implications for the EU itself as a norm exporter. Anyone with an interest in the research agenda on norm diffusion, normative power and the EU's normative dialogue with the world will find this book highly valuable, including scholars, policy makers and students of subjects including political science, European studies, international relations and international and EU law.
Importing Transnational Education: Capacity, Sustainability and Student Experience from the Host Country Perspective
by Christopher Hill Vangelis Tsiligiris William LawtonThis book explores the impacts of transnational education (TNE) from the perspectives of institutions and countries that primarily act as hosts. The authors describe and analyse TNE across a wide geographical area comprised of both established and emerging TNE host countries, from Europe to Southeast Asia to less-discussed countries such as Nepal and Uzbekistan. Complementing the 2018 volume Exporting Transnational Education: Institutional Practice, Policy and National Goals, the book is organised into three principal themes: the impacts of TNE on capacity building, the sustainability of such developments, and the impacts on the student experience in host countries. As TNE is a dynamic and fast-moving area of international higher education, this book will appeal to scholars and administrators of international and transnational education.
Imposed Rationality and Besieged Imagination: Practical Life and Social Pathologies (Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations #9)
by Gustavo PereiraSocial pathologies are social processes that hinder how individuals exercise their autonomy and freedom. In this book, Gustavo Pereira offers an account of such phenomena by defining them as a cognitive failure that affects the practical imagination, thus negatively interfering with our practical life. This failure of the imagination is the consequence of the imposition of a type of practical rationality on a practical context alien to it, caused by a non‑conscious transformation of the individuals’ set of beliefs and values. The research undertaken provides an innovative explanation in terms of microfoundations based on the mechanism of “availability heuristic”, by which the diminished exercise of the imagination turns the intuitively available or prevailing rationality into the one that regulates behaviour in inappropriate contexts. Additionally, this incorrect regulation results in a progressive distortion of the shared sense of the affected practical contexts, which becomes institutionalized. Consumerism, bureaucratism, moralism, juridification, some forms of corruption and the particular Latin American case of “malinchism” can be interpreted as social pathologies insofar as they imply such distortion. This way of conceptualizing social pathologies integrates the traditional sociological macro‑explanation manifested through the negative consequences of the processes of social rationalization with a micro‑explanation articulated around the findings of cognitive psychology such as availability heuristic. Understanding social pathologies as a cognitive failure allows us to identify the introduction of normative friction as the main way to counteract their effects. One of the potential effects of normative friction, as a specific form of cognitive dissonance, is the intense exercise of the imagination, thus operating as a condition of possibility for the exercise of autonomy and reflection. Democratic ethical life, understood as a shared democratic culture, as well as social institutions and narratives, are the privileged social spaces and means to trigger reflective processes that can counteract social pathologies through a reflective reappropriation of the meaning of the shared practical context. An extraordinary contribution by a Critical Theorist to the return of the concept of imagination today. It takes up the challenge once taken by Kant to think about imagination as the pivotal activity not only of knowledge and experience, but above all, for action. The author claims that imagination makes criticism possible (pathologies) and it allows us to envision alternative views into the path for social transformation. Without imagination nothing is possible. María Pía Lara, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, Mexico
Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870–1920
by Eileen J. FindlayFeminists, socialists, Afro-Puerto Rican activists, and elite politicians join laundresses, prostitutes, and dissatisfied wives in populating the pages of Imposing Decency. Through her analyses of Puerto Rican anti-prostitution campaigns, attempts at reforming marriage, and working-class ideas about free love, Eileen J. Suárez Findlay exposes the race-related double standards of sexual norms and practices in Puerto Rico between 1870 and 1920, the period that witnessed Puerto Rico's shift from Spanish to U.S. colonialism. In showing how political projects and alliances in Puerto Rico were affected by racially contingent definitions of "decency" and "disreputability," Findlay argues that attempts at moral reform and the state's repression of "sexually dangerous" women were weapons used in batttles between elite and popular, American and Puerto Rican, and black and white. Based on a thorough analysis of popular and elite discourses found in both literature and official archives, Findlay contends that racialized sexual norms and practices were consistently a central component in the construction of social and political orders. The campaigns she analyzes include an attempt at moral reform by elite male liberals and a movement designed to enhance the family and cleanse urban space that ultimately translated into repression against symbollically darkened prostitutes. Findlay also explores how U.S. officials strove to construct a new colonial order by legalizing divorce and how feminist, labor, and Afro-Puerto Rican political demands escalated after World War I, often focusing on the rehabilitation and defense of prostitutes. Imposing Decency forces us to rethink previous interpretations of political chronologies as well as reigning conceptualizations of both liberalism and the early working-class in Puerto Rico. Her work will appeal to scholars with an interest in Puerto Rican or Latin American studies, sexuality and national identity, women in Latin America, and general women's studies.
Imposing Sanctions on Violent Non-State Actors to Restore International Peace and Security: A Systematic Analysis of the Conditions under which UN Targeted Sanctions Work (Innovative Konfliktforschung – Innovation in Conflict Research)
by Christopher HuberIn the last decades, violent non-state actors (VNSAs) such as rebel and terrorist organizations have proved their capacity to break international law. The international community, particularly the United Nations (UN), has reacted to this development by redirecting its conflict resolution efforts to these non-state entities. This has turned targeted sanctions into one of the most vital and indispensable foreign policy tools available to the UN Security Council in combating terrorism and contributing to the peaceful resolution of (intra-state) conflicts. Despite the UN Security Council’s growing tendency to sanction VNSAs, there has been little research analyzing the effects of UN targeted sanctions on these non-government actors. This book seeks to fill this gap and shifts the focus on non-state actors by ascertaining the general mechanisms through and conditions under which UN targeted sanctions imposed on VNSAs tend to be effective. The tripartite empirical analysis combining quantitative and qualitative research methods demonstrates that the state-centric understanding of how sanctions work is not simply applicable to the effective sanctioning of violent non-state actors such as rebel and terrorist movements.
Imposing Standards: The North-South Dimension to Global Tax Politics (Cornell Studies in Money)
by Martin HearsonIn Imposing Standards, Martin Hearson shifts the focus of political rhetoric regarding international tax rules from tax havens and the Global North to the damaging impact of this regime on the Global South. Even when not exploited by tax dodgers, international tax standards place severe limits on the ability of developing countries to tax businesses, denying the Global South access to much-needed revenue. The international rules that allow tax avoidance by multinational corporations have dominated political debate about international tax in the United States and Europe, especially since the global financial crisis of 2007–2008.Hearson asks how developing countries willingly gave up their right to tax foreign companies, charting their assimilation into an OECD-led regime from the days of early independence to the present day. Based on interviews with treaty negotiators, policymakers and lobbyists, as well as observation at intergovernmental meetings, archival research, and fieldwork in Africa and Asia, Imposing Standards shows that capacity constraints and imperfect negotiation strategies in developing countries were exploited by capital-exporting states, shielding multinationals from taxation and depriving nations in the Global South of revenue they both need and deserve.Thanks to generous funding from the Gates Foundation, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellopen.org) and other repositories.
Impossible Engineering: Technology and Territoriality on the Canal du Midi (Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology)
by Chandra MukerjiThe Canal du Midi, which threads through southwestern France and links the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, was an astonishing feat of seventeenth-century engineering--in fact, it was technically impossible according to the standards of its day. Impossible Engineering takes an insightful and entertaining look at the mystery of its success as well as the canal's surprising political significance. The waterway was a marvel that connected modern state power to human control of nature just as surely as it linked the ocean to the sea. The Canal du Midi is typically characterized as the achievement of Pierre-Paul Riquet, a tax farmer and entrepreneur for the canal. Yet Chandra Mukerji argues that it was a product of collective intelligence, depending on peasant women and artisans--unrecognized heirs to Roman traditions of engineering--who came to labor on the waterway in collaboration with military and academic supervisors. Ironically, while Louis XIV and his treasury minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert used propaganda to present France as a new Rome, the Canal du Midi was being constructed with unrecognized classical methods. Still, the result was politically potent. As Mukerji shows, the project took land and power from local nobles, using water itself as a silent agent of the state to disrupt traditions of local life that had served regional elites.Impossible Engineering opens a surprising window into the world of seventeenth-century France and illuminates a singular work of engineering undertaken to empower the state through technical conquest of nature.
Impossible Knowledge: Conspiracy Theories, Power, and Truth (Conspiracy Theories)
by Todor HristovConspiracy theorists claim impossible knowledge, such as knowledge of the doings of a secret world government. Yet they accept this impossible knowledge as truth. In effect, conspiracy theories detach truth from knowledge. Knowledge without power is powerless. And the impossible knowledge claimed by conspiracy theorists is rigorously excluded from the regimes of truth and power – that is not even wrong. Yet conspiratorial knowledge is potent enough to be studied by researchers and recognized as a risk by experts and authorities. Therefore, in order to understand conspiracy theories, we need to think of truth beyond knowledge and power. That is impossible for any scientific discipline because it takes for granted that truth comes from knowledge and that truth is powerful enough to destroy the legitimacy of any authority that would dare to conceal or manipulate it. Since science is unable to make sense of conspiracy theories, it treats conspiracy theorists as individuals who fail to make sense, and it explains their persistent nonsense by some cognitive, behavioral, or social dysfunction. Fortunately, critical theory has developed tools able to conceive of truth beyond knowledge and power, and hence to make sense of conspiracy theories. This book organizes them into a toolbox which will enable students and researchers to analyze conspiracy theories as practices of the self geared at self-empowerment, a sort of political self-help.
Impossible People: Christian Courage and the Struggle for the Soul of Civilization
by Os GuinnessECPA 2017 Christian Book Award Finalist The church in the West is at a critical moment. While the gospel is exploding throughout the global south, Western civilization faces militant assaults from aggressive secularism and radical Islam. Will the church resist the seductive shaping power of advanced modernity? More than ever, Christians must resist the negative cultural forces of our day with fortitude and winsomeness. What is needed is followers of Christ who are willing to face reality without flinching and respond with a faithfulness that is unwavering. Os Guinness describes these Christians as "impossible people," those who have "hearts that can melt with compassion, but with faces like flint and backbones of steel who are unmanipulable, unbribable, undeterrable and unclubbable, without ever losing the gentleness, the mercy, the grace and the compassion of our Lord." Few accounts of the challenge of today are more realistic, and few calls to Christian courage are more timely, resolute—and hopeful. Guinness argues that we must engage secularism and atheism in new ways, confronting competing ideas with discernment and fresh articulation of the faith. Christians are called to be impossible people, full of courage and mercy in challenging times.