Tobias Winright Reviews
Two Recent Books on Criminal Justice
For THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY.

http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=6938

As an undergraduate student 25 years ago, I found myself behind bars—not as an inmate but as a correctional officer. One of the youngest members of a large metropolitan sheriff’s department on the west coast of Florida, I worked full-time at the maximum-security jail in order to pay for college. Those four years working in the slammer schooled me, and they raised a number of questions for me as a Christian, especially about the death penalty and the use of force. I am continuing to unlearn certain attitudes and assumptions I held then, including some about punishment itself.

By vividly putting into words much of what I have personally pondered about prisons and punishment, these two books should help American readers—Christian or not, possessing firsthand experience with incarceration or not—to step back and take an honest look at what is happening in our current practice of large-scale imprisonment. Each book also asks why we insist on continuing down this punitive path.

…

Read the full review:
http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=6938

Good Punishment?
Christian Moral Practice and U.S. Imprisonment
James Samuel Logan
Paperback: Eerdmans, 2008.
Buy now: [ CBD ]

Changing Paradigms:
Punishment and Restorative Discipline
Paul Redekop
Paperback: Herald Press, 2007.
Buy now: [ CBD ]

Millions heard the sound of freedom in the Beatles’ music. Elijah Wald hears a death knell. In the songs of the Fab Four, he argues, pop music completed its decades-long transformation from a kingdom of democratic dance and authorless song to a lonesome land of private pleasures and isolated audiences. The result was segregation along lines of race as well as taste: In the late ’60s, as white rock sought introspection in albums and black pop chased good times on singles, an “increasing divide between rock and soul, listening music and dance music,” developed. Wald writes that the Beatles destroyed rock ’n’ roll by leading “their audience off the dance floor, separating rock from its rhythmic and cultural roots,” and “point[ing] the way toward a future in which there need be no unifying styles.”

…

Read the full review:
http://bookforum.com/review/4002

How the Beatles Destroyed Rock n Roll:
An Alternative History of American Popular Music
by Elijah Wald
Hardback: Oxford UP, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

I recently read Will Samson’s latest book Enough: Contentment in an Age of Excess. When I first started the book, I half-expected it to be a diatribe against modern culture, focusing on the sins of our excess. While the book does mention those excesses, what I found instead was a call to live into true church community. Will encourages us to say “enough” to the consumeristic tendencies that have overtaken our personal lives, our churches, or friendships, and our theology and return to a Christ-centered practice instead.

…

Read the full review:
http://www.the-next-wave-ezine.info/issue126/index.cfm?id=49&ref=ARTICLES_REVIEWS_664


Enough: Contentment in An Age of Excess.
Will Samson.
Paperback: David C. Cook, 2009.
Buy now: [ CBD ]

The Englewood Review will be giving away a book from Doulos Christou Press via Twitter.com every Thursday at 11AM (ET) this summer.

Here are the contest rules:

1. You must follow us on Twitter @ERBks
2. At 11AM (ET) each Thursday,  I’ll announce the start of the contest, with a question to which you must reply
3. The fifth person to reply to our question will win that week’s book!

Registration Now Open!!!

THROUGH THE CONSUMING FIRE:
ECONOMIC FAITHFULNESS IN AN AGE OF CONSUMERISM
COMMUNITY – CONTENTMENT – CREATIVITY
Friday Nov. 13 and Saturday Nov. 14
Englewood Christian Church
57 N. Rural St. Indianapolis
Main Speakers:
Shane Claiborne   –   Will Samson    –  Kelly Johnson

The website is now up and registration is open!
http://www.englewoodcc.com/consumingfire/  

Consumerism is one of the greatest challenges facing the church in North America today.  Ultimately, consumerism is a form of self-indulgence that does great harm to our brothers and sisters around the world and indeed to all of Creation.  At the Through the Consuming Fire conference, we will explore what economic faithfulness would look like – particularly as shaped by denying ourselves, taking up our cross and following Jesus. 

Facebook Invite and More details:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=73979927805&ref=share#/event.php?eid=70646854370

“Freshness: An Easily-manipulated
and Always-Changing Concept?”

A Review of
Fresh:
A Perishible History.
by Susanne Freidberg.

 Reviewed by Ragan Sutterfield.

Fresh:
A Perishible History.
by Susanne Freidberg.
Hardcover: Belknap Press, 2009.
Buy now:  [ Doulos Christou Books $23 ] [ Amazon ]

Fresh food is in.  With Michelle Obama’s organic garden on the White House Lawn, Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food on the New York Times Best Seller Lists, and a major documentary Food, Inc making its way across the country this weekend, it is easy to feel like the moment for a new food revolution has arrived at last.  And in many ways it has—what has been a rising protest against the culture of fast food and TV dinners seems to be coming to a head, even as global corporations try to rebrand their genetically modified seeds as “sustainability solutions” for “local food systems” to fit in with the new sentiments.

Of course things are never as simple as they appear, and the calls by people like Alice Waters and Michael Pollan to eat local, sustainably produced food are wrought with complexities.  Susanne Freidberg’s Fresh: A Perishable History goes a long way in illustrating those complexities and the many ways in which the movement toward local, sustainably produced food is tied up in much of the same global food system as the “corporate” food it intended to oppose.

(more…)

“Conversations out in
the Grain Field”

A Review of
Small-Scale Grain Raising
2nd Edition.
by Gene Logsdon.

 Reviewed by Mary Bowling.

Small-Scale Grain Raising
2nd Edition.
by Gene Logsdon.
Paperback: Chelsea Green, 2009.
Buy now:  [ Doulos Christou Books $25 ] [ Amazon ]

Small-scale Grain Raising is a textbook, but it doesn’t read like a textbook. Chelsea Green has brought this classic text back into print following thirty years of demand for the out-of-print first edition. A lot has happened in the last thirty years that would influence how a book like this could be revised. New scientific research is always in the works on hybridizing and improving every species of edible plant imaginable, but that’s not all. In the last thirty years, information of any and all sorts has become readily available to anyone, anywhere at the touch of a button. So why bother with a textbook? Aren’t informational books of this type obsolete by now?

Gene Logsdon has recognized trends in information technology and assumed people will use them freely. In his afterword he says, “Today there is no pure information in the field of small-scale grain raising, or anything else, that is not done to death on the Internet. So I deleted some of the ‘facty’ stuff, as I call it, that you can easily find at the click of a computer mouse. It actually made the book better, it seems to me, because that kind of information is so boring.”  And he’s right. It’s not that this book isn’t informative; it is – very. It’s just that it’s not as dull as most garden-variety textbooks. (more…)

By Brent Aldrich, Chris Smith and Ragan Sutterfield.

Independence is overrated and more than that it is a myth.  We are all utterly interdependent beings from birth to death.  We could not survive without microbes that help build our soil and the plants and trees that create oxygen and offer us food; we would never become mature adults without teachers and mentors; our cities would be full of disease if we didn’t have people who collect our garbage.  More than Independence Day we need an Interdependence Day to celebrate our dependence upon one another and the earth, and our ultimate dependence upon God.  We invite you to participate in a counter holiday on July 4th, a day on which we are declaring our interdependence.  Below you will find 40 recommendations for ways to celebrate Interdependence Day.  Most of all express thanks to those who make your life possible.

Happy Interdependence Day!

40 Ways to Celebrate Our Interdependence

1. Shop only at locally-owned merchants or restaurants.
2. Write a note of appreciation to a mother; thank her for raising a child.
3. Look through your clothes.  Learn about one of the countries where they were manufactured and commit to doing one thing to improve the lives of the people who live and work there.
4. Take a digital recorder out into your neighborhood and do “field recordings” of your neighbors showing off their talents (singing, playing instruments, telling jokes/stories).  Make a cd of these recordings and distribute it freely in your neighborhood.
5. Gather some neighbors, walk around your neighborhood and do asset-mapping, noting key places in the local economy: local businesses, restaurants, parks, community gardens. Make a map that highlights these assets and distribute it freely in your neighborhood.
6. Learn where your utilities come from—the source of your electricity, gas, and water.
7. Dig up a bucket of soil from your garden or yard, examine it, noticing all of the elements of organic matter, sand, clay, and the organisms that make your daily meals a possibility.
8. Host or plan a neighborhood produce exchange, where gardeners can barter the fruits (and vegetables) of their labors with one another.
9. Spend the 4th of July baking cookies or bread.  Give your baked goods to the person who delivers your mail or picks up your trash the next time you see them.
10. Host a rain-barrel making party and teach your neighbors how to make and use rain-barrels to recycle rain water.     (more…)

In our continuing effort to fund the publication and free distribution of The Englewood Review, we are going to be collaborating more intentionally with Christian Book Distributors.  Primarily, we will be offering you the opportunity to buy bargain books from CBD that we think of are interest.  Buying books this way is a win / win / win proposition.  You get great books for a great price,  CBD gets the sale and we get an excellent referral fee from CBD.  These books make great gifts (perhaps for Fathers’ Day!)

This week’s bargain books (Click to learn more/purchase):

• With the Grain of the Universe by Stanley Hauerwas (Hardback) $0.99 !!!
• Teaching that Transforms by Debra Dean Murphy (Paperback)  $0.99!!!
•  Myth of A Christian Nation by Greg Boyd (Hardback)   $3.99 !!!

Monday, June 22 beginning at 2PM ET, The Englewood Review of Books will engage Will Samson in a Twitter conversation about his recent book ENOUGH: CONTENTMENT IN AN AGE OF EXCESS (David C. Cook, 2009).In order to follow this twinterview live, you will need follow both:

@ERBks and @WASamson

I will kick off the twinterview at 2 PM ET on June 22, and having a set number of questions, the interview will continue until all the questions are answered.

If you don’t use twitter, the interview will eventually be published on the ERB website.

Help us spread the word:

• Tweet about it, encouraging people to follow both @ERBks and @WASamson
• Announce it on your blog or Facebook profile…

You won’t want to miss this special event!!!

AND WATCH FOR MORE TWINTERVIEWS THIS SUMMER ON @ERBKS !!!

“Woof of the Sun”
Henry David Thoreau
(1817-1862)

Woof of the sun, ethereal gauze,
Woven of Nature’s richest stuffs,
Visible heat, air-water, and dry sea,
Last conquest of the eye;
Toil of the day displayed, sun-dust,
Aerial surf upon the shores of earth,
Ethereal estuary, frith of light,
Breakers of air, billows of heat,
Fine summer spray on inland seas;
Bird of the sun, transparent–winged
Owlet of noon, soft-pinioned,
From hearth or stubble rising without song;
Establish thy serenity o’er the fields.

A Brief Review of
COOKING GREEN by Kate Heyhoe.
Paperback: DeCapo/Lifelong Books, 2009.
Buy Now: [ Amazon ]

Reviewed by Chris Smith.

From Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation to Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle to Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, the last decade has been chock full of books challenging us to more eco-friendly eating.  However, relatively little has been written on how to improve our processes of HOW we cook the food we eat.  Kate Heyhoe’s recent book Cooking Green aims to address this oft-ignored question.  Heyhoe offers us a here a unique book that is half ideas for greening your kitchen and half “green basics recipes.” Heyhoe begins the book by crafting the term “cookprint” in reference to “the impact you make on the planet when you cook” (1).  The cookprint of a meal, although not given a rigorous scientific definition, is useful for getting us to think about all of the ecological choices that go into its preparation from the selection of food to its transportation and storage to the ways in which it is prepared.  Heyhoe spans the breadth of her definition of cookprint, as she offers suggestions for improving how we cook.  She begins by looking at the appliances that we use in the kitchen, and focuses especially on ovens and cooktops (a.k.a., ranges), devoting a chapter to each, and summarizing in this basic rule: “The simplest way to shrink a cookprint is to reach for cooktop recipes first rather than oven ones” (67).  The chapter “What to Buy” is an excellent guide to sorting through the many ecological dilemmas to sort through at the grocery store or farmers’ market.   The latter half of the book packs many tasty recipes into relatively few pages; Heyboe’s focus here is the everyday, basic foods that when prepared properly help to lower a meal’s cookprint.  These recipes represent a broad array of cuisines from Mexican (“Frijole Fundido, Rapido”) to Oriental (“Stir-fried Vietnamese Chicken with Passively Blanched Snow Peas”) to Italian (“Short-cut, Passive Lasagna”), and many more.  Heyboe also includes a fine section of meat-free main dishes.  Cooking Green is an essential book, one that you will want to read, re-read and use frequently as a resource guide in the kitchen.  Here’s to lowering our cookprints!

THE NY TIMES Reviews the New Documentary
FOOD, INC.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/movies/07seve.html

MOVIES about food used to make you want to eat.

The decade that spanned the mid-1980s to mid-1990s was particularly fruitful. It took heroic resolve to walk out of the Japanese spaghetti western “Tampopo” and not head directly to a ramen bar.

Cooks spent entire months trying to recreate “Babette’s Feast” and dreamed of rolling out pasta with Stanley Tucci in “Big Night.”

By the time Ang Lee’s “Eat Drink Man Woman” came out in 1994, moviegoers had come to expect food films filled with glistening dumplings, magical dessert and technically perfect kitchen scenes.

But that was then, before Wal-Mart started selling organic food and Michelle Obama planted a vegetable garden on the White House lawn. Before E. coli was a constant in the food supply, before politicians tried to tax soda and before anyone gave much thought to the living conditions of chickens.

Into this world comes “Food, Inc.,” a documentary on the state of the nation’s food system that opens in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco on Friday.

“Food, Inc.” is part of a new generation of food films that drip with politics, not sauces. It’s eat-your-peas cinema that could make viewers not want to eat anything at all.

Read the full review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/movies/07seve.html

 Tim Gallagher, editor of the Cornell Ornithology Lab’s Living Bird magazine, spent decades glassing the cypress swamps and bayous of eastern Arkansas, looking for the ivory bill woodpecker—a bird presumed to be extinct. Pulitzer Prize-nominee Scott Weidensaul tramped South America, searching for the elusive cone-billed tanager. Every year, people spend thousands of dollars voyaging to Antarctica to see penguins and unusual water birds.

Hacking through jungles, freezing in Arctic seas … it seems there are no remote areas that passionate birders won’t venture to in hopes of seeing something exciting. But writer John Yow finds he can see plenty of interesting birds by journeying no farther than his back porch deck chair amid 40 acres of northwestern Georgia woods. Yow is a self-confessed “armchair birder,” which he defines as a person “too lazy to get up and ‘go birding.’ “

In his charming The Armchair Birder: Discovering the Secret Lives of Familiar Birds, Yow shares folklore, life habits, and enjoyable personal anecdotes about 42 species of birds that are commonly seen in and around the backyard. As he puts it, “What I do, mostly, is hang feeders and watch the birds that come to me.” When he spies a new species, he is, as Keats says, “some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken.”

…

Read the full review:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/columns/bookoftheweek/birdingfromthebackporch.html

THE ARMCHAIR BIRDER:
DISCOVERING THE SECRET LIVES OF
FAMILIAR BIRDS.
John Yow.
Hardcover: Univ of NC Press, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

You can read this book or wait for the movie, but the book is worth the effort. This story is too textured, too filled with layers of light and dark, for Hollywood to capture its complexity.

In January of 2007, New York Times reporter Warren St. John wrote about the Fugees, a team of soccer-playing misfits from a dozen war-ravaged countries transplanted to the small Georgia town of Clarkston. The article prompted a huge response — tons of donated cash and equipment, plus a book contract for St. John and a movie deal that financed a team bus and a new school, the Fugees Academy.

The film will undoubtedly portray the Fugees’ extraordinary coach, Luma Mufleh, a native of Jordan, as a tough-but-tender soul who forges an adorable group of multi-colored young athletes into a cohesive unit and teaches them the Meaning of Life and the Joys of Diversity. And it’s all true. Watch for the scene when two players say pre-game prayers in their own languages (the Christian speaks Swahili, the Muslim Albanian).

But the book also conveys the larger context in which these kids play games and say prayers. Clarkston became a dumping group for relief agencies looking to relocate refugees from Burundi and Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. There was good public transportation and plenty of affordable housing, but throwing kids from 50 different countries into an all-white high school was crazy, “and the result was a raw and exceptionally charged experiment in getting along.”

…

Read the full review:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/17/AR2009041701377.html

Outcasts United: A Refugee (Soccer) Team, An American Town.
Warren St. John.
Hardcover: Spiegel & Grau, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]