Greenville County

What causes people to join-- and more importantly, stay in-- extreme groups? The answer, Montell believes, has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. She argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear-- and are influenced by-- every single day. Montell exposes the verbal elements...

"The author identifies the historical, philosophical, and technological influences that have shaped present-day identity politics and teaches believers how to shift their modern understanding of personhood to a biblical perspective"--

We have a strong instinct to belong to small groups defined by clear purpose and understanding—"tribes." This tribal connection has been largely lost in modern society, but regaining it may be the key to our psychological survival.
Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians-but Indians almost never did the same. Tribal society has been exerting an almost...

Fans takes the reader on a journey through a constellation of fandoms, and along the way demonstrates some fundamental truths about the human condition. Part behavioural study, part entertainment, at its heart the book is a story of collectives, of what happens to us when we interact with people who share our passions. The human brain is wired to reach out, and while our groupish tendencies can bring much strife (religious intolerance, racism, war,...

American Heathens is the first in-depth ethnographic study about the largely misunderstood practice of American Heathenry (Germanic Paganism). Jennifer Snook - who has been Pagan since her early teens and a Heathen since eighteen - traces the development and trajectory of Heathenry as a new religious movement in America, one in which all identities are political and all politics matter. Snook explores the complexities of pagan reconstruction in today's...

We have a strong instinct to belong to small groups defined by clear purpose and understanding --"tribes." This tribal connection has been largely lost in modern society, but regaining it may be the key to our psychological survival. Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians--but Indians almost never did the same. Tribal society has been exerting an almost gravitational...

"A history of a quintessentially American place - the rural and small town heartland -- that uncovers deep yet hidden currents of connection with the world"--

In his 2020 book American Rule, Jared Yates Sexton took a hard look at our nation's history: namely, the abuses committed by those in power, and the comforting myths that provided them cover and shaped the way we view ourselves up to the present. His approach and the narrative he uncovered proved worryingly relevant, as Americans have struggled with an identity crisis in an increasingly divided public square. Now, in The Midnight Kingdom, Sexton applies...

Thompson, a Georgia native, asserts that the South has drawn on its oldest tradition: an ability to adapt and transform itself. She spent years traveling through the region and discovered a South both amazingly similar and radically different from the land she knew as a child. The new South is ahead of others in absorbing waves of Latino immigrants, in rediscovering its agrarian traditions, in seeking racial reconciliation, and in reinventing what...

A gripping and nuanced history of the German people from the Second World War to the present day, including hugely revealing new primary source material on every aspect of its transformation.