Blogroll

Book Review: Jesus Land (2005)

Over the last decade the slogan “What Would Jesus Do?” has become a motto of many Christians. Sadly, it preceded the time period covered in Jesus Land, a harrowing memoir by Julie Scheeres. But, then again, maybe it would have made no difference.

Jesus Land is a story of racism, religion and dysfunction in a […]

Book Review: The Year of Magical Thinking (2005)

I’d be the first to admit that I’m about as far from the literati as you can get. That said, while Joan Didion probably helps define that class and her National Book Award winning The Year of Magical Thinking has plenty of literary references, its scope goes far beyond that.

The Year of Magical Thinking […]

Book Review: Hunger: An Unnatural History (2005)

Somehow, somewhere America’s version of giving thanks became stuffing ourselves with food and then collapsing into an easy chair to watch football. Sharman Apt Russell’s Hunger: An Unnatural History provides an excellent counterpoint to that mindset. Before you start backing away, this isn’t book about famine in the third world (although that is unquestionably part […]

Book Review: The Da Vinci Fraud (2005)

Despite my antipathy of organized religion, I have always been fascinated by and read several works on New Testament research and scholarship. Robert Price’s The Da Vinci Fraud uses the opportunity presented by Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code as a framework to try to engage a wider audience in a discussion of the origins […]

Book Review: Radicals in Robes (2005)

I received Cass R. Sunstein’s Radicals in Robes after Harriett Miers was nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court. I completed it less than 48 hours before “Miers asked Bush” to withdraw her nomination after having been skewered by the right wing of Bush’s base. Though Sunstein wasn’t writing specifically about Miers or the nomination process, […]