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!

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

A Brief Review of
Real Church: Does It Exist? Can I Find It?
Larry Crabb.
Hardback: Thomas Nelson, 2009.
Buy now:  [ ChristianBook.com ]

An Ultra-brief Review of
Cuss Control:
The Complete Book On How to Curb Your Cursing.
James O’Connor.
Paperback: iUniverse, 2006.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

“The End of Preservation?”

A Review of
The Once and Future New York:
Historic Preservation
and the Modern City.
by Randall Mason.

 Reviewed by Brent Aldrich.

The Once and Future New York:
Historic Preservation and the Modern City.
Randall Mason.
Paperback: U of Minn. Press, 2009.
Buy now:   [ Amazon ]

Belonging to a church community that has been rooted in one place in Indianapolis for over one hundred years, it is almost daily evident what William Faulkner had in mind when writing, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Stories are told and retold through the lens of our particular place and people, tied in many ways to a larger context of geography. Through these acts of remembering, attached to a specific place, we participate in developing – albeit not as intentionally – as what Randall Mason calls a “memory infrastructure.” Mason’s new book The Once and Future New York: Historic Preservation and the Modern City explores the roots of modern historic preservation back to the decades around 1900, suggesting that the creation of this memory infrastructure is the impetus for preservation:

Memory sites were not an end in themselves. They were envisioned as means to an end – a way to reform urban society and shape civic identity by exposing citizens to a memory-rich environment. Reformers and civic leaders sought stability to counter the gathering sense of cultural dislocation and the loss of memory in this period, and historical memory lent this appearance of stability to culture (239).

    Focusing on the histories of three locations in New York – St. John’s Chapel, City Hall Park, and the Bronx River Parkway – Mason establishes preservation as a discipline with a history of its own, and one tied in many ways to supporting the further development of cities: “[Preservationists] lobbied not against development but for a different kind of development: not to halt change, but to modify or design it, to produce a ‘Greater New York’ at once more beautiful, more efficient, and more clearly rooted in its own past” (xv). The ways in which the “memory infrastructure” is developed in each case study is telling of the complexities with which preservation is practiced.

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“Toward A Historical, Christian
Intellectual Infrastructure”

A Review of
God, Philosophy, Universities:
A Selective History of
the Catholic Philosophical Tradition.
by Alasdair MacIntyre.

 Reviewed by Mark Eckel.

God, Philosophy, Universities:
A Selective History of
the Catholic Philosophical Tradition.
Alasdair Macintyre.
Hardback: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009.
Buy now:   [ Amazon ]

What good is philosophy anyway?  Those not interested in the life of the mind often sidestep discussions that probe human ways of thinking.  Yet the Church, celebrating philosophy as from the hand of the personal, eternal Creator (Prov. 8), should honor the “love of wisdom” more than anyone.  Indeed, for Christian higher education, proper thinking about how we learn and live is essential in training future generations.  Alasdair MacIntyre’s masterwork After Virtue has now been augmented in his newest work God, Philosophy, Universities as character education is given here a historical, Christian intellectual infrastructure.

Philosophy is “of crucial importance for human beings in every culture . . . philosophy aids in answering the seminal questions: “Who am I?,” “Why am I here?,” and “What happens after life?” (165). This basic formation of thought must be accessible for the common person.  MacIntyre’s chapter on Augustine, for instance, clearly shows the importance and benefits within the limits of philosophy.  While pursuit of wisdom in itself cannot give adequate knowledge of God nor lead us to Truth, “the project of understanding is not only one for those engaged in teaching, studying, and enquiring within universities.  Every one of us, in our everyday lives, needs in a variety of ways to learn and to understand” (69).  For the Christian “the ends of knowing and of loving God” are a pastoral guide for “plain persons” so that:

By developing habits of obedience to the natural law, habits that are also expressed in the exercise of the virtues, we direct ourselves toward the achievement not only of the common goods of social life, but also of our individual good, that good by the achievement of which our lives are perfected and completed (89).

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A Brief Review of
GREAT PRAYERS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
by Walter Brueggemann.
Paperback: WJK Books, 2008.
Buy now: [ ChristianBook.com ]

Reviewed by Kent Ellett.

Walter Brueggemann in his Great Prayers of the Old Testament has, with typical exegetical attentiveness, offered the church a very practical and accessible entry into the debate about the openness of God.   Brueggemann argues that the “common, ubiquitous practice” of prayer—the inevitable assumptions that accompany any impassioned cry for help—simply must ignore the Enlightenment rationalism that reduces prayer into a purely subjective or psychological exercise.  “New age” spiritualism which thinks of prayer as a psycho-spiritual “transaction” of the self with the self can’t seem to dispel the impulse to pray to a God that is “other.”  Following Barth, Brueggemann insists, “God does not act the same way whether we pray or not. Prayer exerts an influence on God’s action, even upon his existence…God is not deaf, but listens: more than that, he acts.”

          As Brueggeman surveys 12 Old Testament prayers from Abraham to Job, one cannot escape the fact that the biblical assumptions about prayer come crashing into the endlessly problematic god of classical theism.  Divine impassibility may philosophically support some rigid notions of divine sovereignty and dependability, but rarely can one derive such notions from straight-forward exegesis.  The doctrine of divine impassibility makes all talk of “relationship with God” an anthropomorphic sham.  And neither the Bible nor the human heart can tolerate it.

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A Brief Review of
The Bird Catcher, A novel by Laura Jacobs.

Hardback: St. Martins, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

Reviewed by Brittany Sanders.

After reading the synopsis on The Bird Catcher’s dustjacket, I presumed that Laura Jacobs’ promised story of a New York City window dresser with a penchant for bird-watching would portray a woman who was either pretentiously cosmopolitan, refined yet boring, or both. I was pleasantly disappointed when the title character turned out to be an intriguing introvert named Margaret Snow, who is neither unabashedly urban nor an erudite snob. A true lover of natural beauty, Margaret’s passion for birding somehow coexists (and perhaps delicately offsets) her career as a designer of department store windows, leaving her equal parts artist and biologist.

    Told with understated compassion and painful realism, Margaret’s story of purpose, loss, and self re-discovery catches one off guard. It is well-paced, well-written, and fearless – sometimes a bit too much so. The several intimate sex scenes, though not irrelevant to the plot, provide an unnecessary amount of detail, distracting from and tarnishing what is otherwise an impressive display of narrative control. But what works against Jacobs also works for her, as this same fearlessness lends an appealing authenticity to her fictional heroine’s thoughts and actions. Margaret admits, “She felt tricked by ego, tricked by sex, and tricked by her own inexperience, which led her to believe that her body’s hunger was also her heart’s.” Lines like this reveals Jacobs’ wisdom, even when her narrative tact might be in question.

    Lest one think the title is some clever metaphor, be prepared for several chapters devoted to Margaret’s graphic, step-by-step taxidermy projects, as her fascination with birds morphs from lifelong hobby to consuming obsession to a remarkable (and illegal) artistic zenith. Within this progressive mania, as the details of her personal life slip out in poignant vignette-like moments, one realizes just how much Margaret has lost. As she recalls a friend saying, “I’m not sure that’s true . . . that you can only destroy something once.” But this dark truth is countered with the words of Margaret’s husband, Charles: “Poets never stop singing . . . no matter what you take from them.”

    It becomes clear that Jacobs is not afraid of the ugliness of grief, maybe because she believes in the end it will not win; its reign will be usurped by hope and song. Almost akin to skinning birds, she seems to accept—even revel—in the messy process required to create a beautiful mount. In that way, perhaps The Bird Catcher is both metaphorical and literal. Either way, Jacobs’ novel trudges through the emotional spectrum with brave, deliberate steps. If you can handle meticulous details of eviscerated birds and broken human hearts, The Bird Catcher delivers a memorable, authentic story.

New York at Night
Amy Lowell

A near horizon whose sharp jags
Cut brutally into a sky
Of leaden heaviness, and crags
Of houses lift their masonry
Ugly and foul, and chimneys lie
And snort, outlined against the gray
Of lowhung cloud. I hear the sigh
The goaded city gives, not day
Nor night can ease her heart, her anguished labours stay.
Below, straight streets, monotonous,
From north and south, from east and west,
Stretch glittering; and luminous
Above, one tower tops the rest
And holds aloft man’s constant quest:
Time! Joyless emblem of the greed
Of millions, robber of the best
Which earth can give, the vulgar creed
Has seared upon the night its flaming ruthless screed.
O Night! Whose soothing presence brings
The quiet shining of the stars.
O Night! Whose cloak of darkness clings
So intimately close that scars
Are hid from our own eyes. Beggars
By day, our wealth is having night
To burn our souls before altars
Dim and tree-shadowed, where the light
Is shed from a young moon, mysteriously bright.
Where art thou hiding, where thy peace?
This is the hour, but thou art not.
Will waking tumult never cease?
Hast thou thy votary forgot?
Nature forsakes this man-begot
And festering wilderness, and now
The long still hours are here, no jot
Of dear communing do I know;
Instead the glaring, man-filled city groans below!

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!

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

A Brief Review of
Saints in Limbo, a novel by River Jordan.

Paperback: Waterbrook, 2009.
Buy Now: [ ChristianBook.com ]

Reviewed by Jonathan Schindler.

“We never keep to the present. . . . We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is.” —Blaise Pascal, Pensées.

    One year after her husband’s death, Velma True receives a strange birthday present from a supernatural storyteller: a dazzling rock that allows her to physically relive her memories. Though she longs to escape her situation, by traveling through her memories, Velma learns that while regret tethers her to her past, hope releases her to live in the present.

    The storyteller finds Velma on her front porch outside Echo, Florida, almost literally tied to her house. Since her husband’s death, she has attached different colored threads to her porch, each corresponding to a different task she must do around her yard, but no thread extends beyond her own fence. She doesn’t leave her house, and she spends her days remembering.

    Surrounding Velma are characters equally longing and equally trapped. Her son, Rudy, is a failure, hiding his loneliness and regret behind sexual relationships. Sara, a retired schoolteacher, is slowly losing the one thing she values: her mind. Rose loves Rudy despite his carousing, but fears he’ll never see her as anything but his bartender. Annie feels like her orphan namesake, traveling to Echo to find any clue to who she is.

    And lurking behind them is Old Slink, who will do whatever it takes to get hold of what Velma was given.

    In Saints in Limbo, River Jordan paints a vivid picture of being caught in the middle of what was, what is, and what can be. Velma, who wanted a large family but only had one child, regrets that Rudy, who is throwing his life away, is all she has. Though others have discarded any hopes in his potential, she is reminded continually that his life is not over—there is still time for him to change. As the storyteller says to her, “You’re caught right in the middle . . . of who you are and who you could be. . . . Saints in limbo. . . . That’s what you all are.”

    Saints in Limbo is a genre stew, combining elements of romance, fantasy, allegory, and thriller, tying them together with the front-porch, rocking-chair style of the South. Jordan successfully walks a fine line between fantasy and reality, creating a believable world in which the supernatural and the everyday regularly crisscross. River Jordan’s Echo and the characters who populate it are solid enough that they continue to speak even after the book is closed.

    In Saints in Limbo, River Jordan displays the hurting and hoping resultant from our being “saints in limbo” and shows that no matter how old one is, or how desolate a case may seem, it is never futile and never too late to hope.