Books

Dry Bones Rattling is a study of the community-organizing work of the Industrial Areas Foundation I A F in Texas and the Southwest The title comes from the story of Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones the broken and dispirited community of Israel As Ezekiel prophesied the bones rattled and

According to Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith it may be heretical to hold that church teaching can learn from experience If so this collection of essays is filled with heresy In the Vatican approach one begins with Catholic teaching Exper

Gail Buckley rsquo s synopsis of African American involvement in the armed forces adopts as its thesis Harriet Beecher Stowe rsquo s declaration in 1855 that blacks have always fought magnanimously and heroically for their country despite its violations of their civil rights To demonstrate Stowe rs

You Americans I was once reprimanded in Paris have little spirituality todayyou have only psychology Americans should not dismiss this scolding too quickly Kevin Gillespie rsquo s informal history of American Catholics and their embrace of psychology helps to put this issue in some perspective O

Empire Statesman begins appropriately enough by evoking the 1928 September night when a flaming cross greeted Alfred E Smith then governor of New York as his presidential campaign train entered Oklahoma When Smith is remembered today if at all it is for the virulent nativist outburst encount

The trial of Slobodan Milosevic dramatizes the new worldwide demand for accountability for public officials who violate internationally recognized human rights That demand is behind the international court and may soon be ratified by enough votes to make it operational worldwide These momentous ev

Dorothee Soelle is well known for her seminal book on suffering Entitled simply Suffering it provoked much-needed discussion on the relation of theology to suffering In the winter years of a long career as a theologian as an activist in peace and ecological movements as an opponent of every for

When I learned that the subject of Garry Wills rsquo s latest book was Renaissance Venice my initial reaction was a mixture of surprise disappointment and pleasure Surprise because it seemed to stray far beyond his usual field of interest and expertise however broad that may be Disappointment

At first reading I thought Ronald Hill rsquo s tack toward poverty somewhat puzzling coming from someone whose specialty is social science and public policy I had expected many more statistical tables and analytic categories Basically through a compilation of data from those he interviewed and

Slowly over the past 25 years in the United States the old belief in free will has been replaced by a pseudo-scientific belief in determinism Faulty genes bad brain chemistry neurotransmitters gone bonkersthese are some of our postmodern excuses In American Exorcism however Michael Cuneo does