Reviewed Elsewhere [Vol. 1, #25]
Walter Brueggemann poignantly reviews
two recent books on faith and violence
for The Christian Century.
http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=481
“ Either the world is growing more violent or, because of more intense media coverage, we are increasingly aware of the violence that is all around us. Either way, violence—global and local, irrational and that committed as “rational” policy—presses upon us. Violence is also deeply rooted in biblical tradition, a fact that has been largely covered over by the niceties of high-minded theology and well-intentioned morality and piety. In our present circumstances, however, attention must be paid. Among the noteworthy books on biblically rooted violence, these two statements are relatively accessible and will evoke the critical conversation that is required. …”
Read the full review:
http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=4815
Bruce Chilton.
Abraham’s Curse.
Hardcover. Doubleday. 2008.
Buy now from: [ Doulos Christou Books $20 ] [ Amazon ]
Jeremy Young.
The Violence of God and the War on Terror.
Paperback. Seabury. 2008.
Buy now from: [ Doulos Christou Books $19] [ Amazon ]
The Toronto Star Reviews
Jeffrey Symynkywicz’s
The Gospel According to Bruce Springsteen.
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/447061
“To millions, he’s ‘the Boss,’ the American heartland’s blue-jeaned troubadour who finds nobility in the grind of daily life.
In dozens of rock anthems, including Born to Run, Glory Days and Born in the U.S.A., Bruce Springsteen has for 35 years chronicled lost souls, haunted war vets, gritty workers, and highways jammed with broken heroes. But he has also advanced themes of redemption, hope and keeping the faith.
It’s been a rich vein of spiritual motifs, leavened by, as Publisher’s Weekly has noted, a lover’s quarrel with an America Springsteen loves and fumes against. To be sure, the politically progressive 58-year-old singer/songwriter, once heralded as a kind of messianic saviour of rock `n’ roll, has given voice to society’s dispossessed. But his work of late has been bleak, brooding and introspective, even grieving.
But the Boss as spiritual guidepost? …”
Read the full review:
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/447061
Jeffrey Symynkywicz.
The Gospel According to Bruce Springsteen.
Paperback. WJK Press. 2008.
Buy now from: [ Doulos Christou Books $14 ] [ Amazon ]
The NY Times Reviews
Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale
and Why We Bought It.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/books/review/Margonelli-t.html
“To paraphrase an old axiom: You don’t buy water, you only rent it. So why did Americans spend nearly $11 billion on bottled water in 2006, when we could have guzzled tap water at up to about one ten-thousandth the cost? The facile answer is marketing, marketing and more marketing, but Elizabeth Royte goes much deeper into the drink in “Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It,” streaming trends cultural, economic, political and hydrological into an engaging investigation of an unexpectedly murky substance. Partway through her undoctrinaire book, Royte, a lifelong fan of tap water, refills her old plastic water bottle, reflecting that “what once seemed so simple and natural, a drink of water, is neither. All my preconceptions about this most basic of beverages have been queered.” And by the end of the book she will have discarded the old plastic bottle too, but not the tap.
“Bottlemania” is an easy-to-swallow survey of the subject from verdant springs in the Maine woods to tap water treatment plants in Kansas City; from the grand specter of worldwide water wars, to the microscopic crustaceans called copepods, whose presence in New York’s tap water inspired a debate by Talmudic scholars about whether the critters violated dietary laws, and whether filtering water on the Sabbath constituted work. (Verdict: no and no.) …”
Read the full review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/books/review/Margonelli-t.html
Elizabeth Royte. Bottlemania:
How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It.
Hardcover. Bloomsbury. 2008.
Buy now from: [ Doulos Christou Books $20 ] [ Amazon ]
