Richard D. Brown

In Opening Heaven's Door, explore with Richard D. Brown a Christian life of humor, meaning, meditation, and path as the daylight dims and the Heavenly Sun rises. Join him when he interacts with God's Kingdom and sees the light-hearted side of life and how it can lift the feelings of others. Feel the closeness as he shares the depths and importance of meaning in life. In Opening Heaven's Door, fill an empty soul with an awareness of God working in your life. Sharing a celebration of love through moving prose and pensive thoughts, Richard brings forth a sense of hope and nearness to God. Crafted by a natural storyteller, and written in an engaging, page-turning style, filled with wit and wisdom, Opening Heaven's Door will not disappoint. Discover how spiritual reflection and interaction with God's world can open a door to God's kingdom on earth and in Heaven. Embrace His work in your life and the lives of others. Richard D. Brown is an author of over two hundred scientific and government publications, and three books. He was the first Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences and cited as a "leading environmental scientist" by the U.S. General Accounting Office. He taught at Indiana State University and presented testimony at Congressional hearings. He received "Citizen of the Year" and with his wife Peg "Volunteer Family of the Year" awards. This book is an outgrowth of his inspirational book Windows to Heaven.

From a distinguished historian, a detailed and compelling examination of how the early Republic struggled with the idea that “all men are created equal” How did Americans in the generations following the Declaration of Independence translate its lofty ideals into practice? In this broadly synthetic work, distinguished historian Richard Brown shows that despite its founding statement that “all men are created equal,” the early Republic struggled with every form of social inequality. While people paid homage to the ideal of equal rights, this ideal came up against entrenched social and political practices and beliefs. Brown illustrates how the ideal was tested in struggles over race and ethnicity, religious freedom, gender and social class, voting rights and citizenship. He shows how high principles fared in criminal trials and divorce cases when minorities, women, and people from different social classes faced judgment. This book offers a much-needed exploration of the ways revolutionary political ideas penetrated popular thinking and everyday practice.

In 1796, as revolutionary fervor waned and the Age of Reason took hold, an eighty-five-year-old Massachusetts doctor was convicted of bestiality and sentenced to hang. Three years later and seventy miles away, an eighty-three-year-old Connecticut farmer was convicted of the same crime and sentenced to the same punishment. Prior to these criminal trials, neither Massachusetts nor Connecticut had executed anyone for bestiality in over a century. Though there are no overt connections between the two episodes, the similarities of their particulars are strange and striking. Historians Doron S. Ben-Atar and Richard D. Brown delve into the specifics to determine what larger social, political, or religious forces could have compelled New England courts to condemn two octogenarians for sexual misbehavior typically associated with much younger men. The stories of John Farrell and Gideon Washburn are less about the two old men than New England officials who, riding the rough waves of modernity, returned to the severity of their ancestors. The political upheaval of the Revolution and the new republic created new kinds of cultural experience-both exciting and frightening-at a moment when New England farmers and village elites were contesting long-standing assumptions about divine creation and the social order. Ben-Atar and Brown offer a rare and vivid perspective on anxieties about sexual and social deviance in the early republic.

In Windows to Heaven, walk with Richard D. Brown through mortal peril, private meditations and unexpected encounters with God, in diverse settings as the desert, jungle, forest, streams, arctic ice, even the White House. Join him as he interacts with God from childhood on a small Indiana farm, to the Marine Corps, graduate school, career, then children and grandchildren while shaping his life and the lives of others. In Windows to Heaven, find joy, inspiration, and spiritual adventure through experiences, such as - Standing on a precipice at the mouth of a bear cave. - Facing evil in the Marine Corps and on ghetto streets. - Interacting with Congress on Ecological policy. - Encountering an angel in deep woods. - Accompanying a grandson when he learned of Christ's suffering on the Mount. - Facing cancer and walking through that valley to victory. - Sharing a celebration of love through moving song and prose ... and many more Crafted by a natural storyteller, and written in an engaging, page-turning style, filled with wit and wisdom, Windows to Heaven, will not disappoint. Discover how spiritual reflection and interaction with God's creation can open windows to God's kingdom on earth and His work in your life and the lives of others. Richard D. Brown is an author of over 200 scientific and government publications, including two books. He was the first Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences and cited as a "leading environmental scientist" by the U.S. General Accounting Office. He taught at Indiana State University and presented testimony at Congressional hearings. His three chief loves are God, his family and friends, and God's creation, as echoed in his childhood "pact" with God, "I will live life according to your commands if you'll help me to make a positive difference in your creation."

In 1806 an anxious crowd of thousands descended upon Lenox, Massachusetts, for the public hanging of Ephraim Wheeler, condemned for the rape of his thirteen-year-old daughter, Betsy. Not all witnesses believed justice had triumphed. The death penalty had become controversial; no one had been executed for rape in Massachusetts in more than a quarter century. Wheeler maintained his innocence. Over one hundred local citizens petitioned for his pardon--including, most remarkably, Betsy and her mother.Impoverished, illiterate, a failed farmer who married into a mixed-race family and clashed routinely with his wife, Wheeler existed on the margins of society. Using the trial report to reconstruct the tragic crime and drawing on Wheeler's jailhouse autobiography to unravel his troubled family history, Irene Quenzler Brown and Richard D. Brown illuminate a rarely seen slice of early America. They imaginatively and sensitively explore issues of family violence, poverty, gender, race and class, religion, and capital punishment, revealing similarities between death penalty politics in America today and two hundred years ago. Beautifully crafted, engagingly written, this unforgettable story probes deeply held beliefs about morality and about the nature of justice.

This volume presents a survey of the rich heritage of the city of Massachusetts, showing how it has long exerted an influence disproportionate to its size. The authors argue that the experiences of the people of Massachusetts have been emblematic of larger themes in American history.

One of the leading scholars dealing with early communication history in America, Richard Brown discusses how information moved through eighteenth and nineteenth-century American society, principally through the expansion of the printed word and its change from the property of the learned and wealthy into a mass-audience market.