Books

Lourdes at 150: a pilgrims' guide, reviewed

In Lost in the Cosmos Walker Percy recounts an incident when the great neuroscientist Sir John Eccles was greeted by boos and hisses at a Harvard lecture Eccles had committed the unpardonable sin of claiming that human self-consciousness was not reducible to the biochemistry of the brain The host

There has been a great deal of anecdotal speculation about religious proclivities and spiritual seeking among so-called Generation X the children of the baby boomers Robert Wuthnow a professor of sociology and director of the Center for the Study of American Religion at Princeton University take

Of all the dizzying questions devised 8220 How did language begin 8221 has to rank near the top Humans plainly learn to speak by imitation but back in the beginning who was there to imitate We can 8217 t talk without a vocabulary and syntax 8212 but where did they come from All the earli

Forgiveness & the Nickel Mines school shooting: 'Amish Grace,' reviewed

Professor Akbar Ahmed a genial Pakistani scholar trained in Britain and now established at Washingtons American University as holder of the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies took a study trip with three undergraduates through much of the Muslim world in the spring semester of 2006 Journey Into

In his provocative new book The Stillborn God the historian Mark Lilla tackles the centuries-old debate about the nexus between politics and religion After 1 500 years during which religion and government were inextricably intertwined political philosophers began to question the wisdom of that

Ignore the Robin-Leach-like subtitle this is not an ogling survey of mega-moneyed celebrities Robert Frank writes a weekly column and daily blog called The Wealth Report for The Wall Street Journal and he offers us an informative guided tour around an astonishing American landscape Most of its i