A friend sent me a book review from the Wall Street Journal the other day. It was for a new book by Alain de Botton with the jaw breaking title, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion. Botton’s argument is that atheists should consider appropriating
I received a package in the mail yesterday. I wasn’t expecting anything, so I put my ear to it to listen for ticking sounds. Hearing none, I tore the wrapping and discovered a friend had sent me a book I’d wanted to read for some time: Why Does the World Exist? by Jim Holt. Holt w
Several times I’ve gloated about finding a wonderful book for a $1, but the other day I received one for free. I met the author, Suzanne Jauchius, at a small gathering of writers where she introduced herself as a psychic. Her book, You Know Your Way Home, is memoir about the challen
To write that language is a tool by which we either clarify or dissemble is almost too obvious to proclaim. Still, to confuse one purpose with the other can produce high comedy. Recently the news wires carried a story about a poll printed in the Onion showing that Iran’s president,
Karen King, a historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School stirred up a hornet’s nest a few weeks ago when she announced she’d discovered a 2nd century papyrus which contained a reference to “Jesus’ wife.” The tiny fragment is barely legible and incomplete so K
I’ve just finished Elizabeth Kostova’s The Swan Thieves, a book I first mentioned in my blog of 9/28/12. I wrote at the time that the novel had failed to receive the acclaim of her first work, The Historian, but that that knowledge hadn’t dissuaded me from buying it. I’m gla
I’ve mentioned before that Bernard Berenson, American art historian (1865-1959) bemoaned that our culture in the 20th century was galloping toward rampant mediocrity. Given that harsh assessment, I wonder what he would say about the 21st. I suspect he would concur with the opinion o
Recently, NPR reported that a Muslim cleric in Semnan, Iran complained he was knocked down and kicked by a woman whom he’d chastised because of her appearance. “I don’t know what happened,” he said. “All I could feel was the kicks of this woman who was insulting me and attac
While many working folks line up to demonstrate against Wall Street and the increasing wealth of 1% of our population, the rich are not without their defenders. As Nina Easton writes in her September article “Stop Beating Up the Rich,” for Fortune Magazine, the truth about the dwi
An article by Virginia Heffernan in Yahoo. News caught my attention the other day: “Lady Firsters: Why the new sex segregation is great for women.” (9/20/12) The essay struck me as the joyful crowing of an empowered young woman and a part of me was happy, being a war horse of the