Books

Books

Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic

by Nora Gallagher

Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic, by Nora Gallagher

May 10, 2013

In November 2009, the vision in Nora Gallagher’s right eye went blurry. For the next two years Gallagher went from specialist to specialist trying to find out what was wrong. In the process she learned how illness can strip away not only the illusion of control, but also one’s faith, hope, and very identity. Naturally, she wrote about it.

The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline

by Elesha J. Coffman

The culture of the mainline

May 09, 2013 by David A. Hollinger

For Elesha Coffman, the pre-1960 Century is a window on the gap between an educated elite and a mass population of churchgoers.

On the Muslim Question

by Anne Norton

On the Muslim Question, by Anne Norton

May 08, 2013 reviewed by Steven Young

The “Jewish question” was long a topic of concern in post-Enlightenment political thought. Jews were the unassimilated other that called into question the impartiality, universal rationality and secularism of modern political theory and practice.

Flight Behavior

by Barbara Kingsolver

Flight Behavior, by Barbara Kingsolver

May 06, 2013 reviewed by Trudy Bush

On her way to a desperate assignation, an unhappy wife and mother is stopped in her tracks by a miracle: a mountain ablaze with color and motion, a fire without heat or sound. “Unearthly beauty had appeared to her, a vision of glory to stop her in the road.” Dellarobia thinks that “the burning trees were put here to save her.”

Through the Eye of a Needle

Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD

by Peter Brown

Discovering the poor

May 02, 2013 by Walter Brueggemann

Peter Brown considers the fourth-century church's radicality concerning wealth—and its readiness to adapt as circumstances seemed to require.