More Reviews
The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy and the World by Jeremy Rifkin, The False Promise of Green Energy by Andrew P. Morriss, William T. Bogart, Roger E. Meiners and Andrew Dorchak., Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind by Brian Fagan.
Book Review: The Book of Books by Melvyn Bragg
Book Reviews: The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow; The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene; The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality by Richard Panek
In The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water, journalist Charles Fishman reintroduces the reader to life’s most precious resource—water.
For as long as people have thought and written about the future, the worry that we will overstep our ability to control the use of our material knowledge has been a recurring literary theme.
Book Reviews: Armageddon Science: The Science of Mass Destruction by Brian Clegg; The Vanishing of a Species? A Look at Modern Man’s Predicament by a Geologist by Peter Gretener; and Time’s Up: An Uncivilized Solution to a Global Crisis by Keith Farnish.
Book Reviews: Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis, by Anatole Kaletsky; On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System, by Henry M. Paulson; Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance, by Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm
Book Reviews: The Passionate Mind Revisited: Expanding Personal and Social Awareness by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad; Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe by Robert Lanza, with Bob Berman; The Case for God by Karen Armstrong.
To have a long and healthy life is something most of us hope for: not only for ourselves but for others. National Geographic writer and explorer Dan Buettner’s 2008 book, The Blue Zones, is his attempt to move beyond wishful thinking to find out what it takes to achieve the universal aim of a long and prosperous life.
Save the World and Still Be Home for Dinner by Will Marré describes a way of life that we commit to when we redefine our worldview about the sustainability of the earth’s resources as well as the sustainability of our relationships.
Book Reviews: The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture. Darrel W. Ray. 2009. IPC Press, Bonner Springs, Kansas. 241 pages. How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings From a Leading Neuroscientist. Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman. 2009. Random House, Ballantine Books, New York. 368 pages.
Wanting to eradicate poverty on a global scale, Paul Polak started International Development Enterprises (IDE) in 1981 to address two questions: “What makes poor people poor?” And “what can they do about their poverty?”
Book Review: No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers by Michael Novak. 2008. America’s Secular Challenge: The Rise of a New National Religion by Herbert London. Reason, Faith, and the Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate by Terry Eagleton.
Is there a correlation between physical and emotional health and communion with nature? How important is it for kids to spend a significant amount of time in unstructured outdoor play? Have modern kids been separated from nature? These questions form the focus of the book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.
Signature in the Cell is Dr. Stephen C. Meyer's comprehensive statement of the case for Intelligent Design. It merits reading by both amateur and professional investigators who share a vested interest in the outcome of the curious case of the mystery molecule and the origin of life.
The launch window of the 11th Star Trek movie and the coming summer blockbuster season is now open. As ticket buyers line up around the globe over the next fortnight, skeptics of the franchise continue to wonder: what exactly is the attraction?
Book Reviews: Thank God for Evolution; The Dominant Animal; Hot, Flat and Crowded. Not only are economic, financial and industrial downturns causing international distress, but the prescribed cure—stimulating increased manufacturing (and with it, energy use and consumption)—creates its own set of debilitating consequences for which there may be no bailout.
Almost 60 years after Robert Wise’s antinuclear original, the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still challenges us to change our impact on the global environment.
Book Review: Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals About Morality by Laurence Tancredi; The Ethical Brain by Michael S. Gazzaniga; Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong by Marc Hauser. In the familiar social species called Homo sapiens, social rules are usually considered more than mere animal behavior. In fact, the idea of a moral basis for behavior is uniquely human.
Book Review: The Last Lecture. Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow. Hyperion. April 18, 2008. 224 pages.
When we read the news, we expect the papers to tell us what they see. This may have been the case decades ago, according to Guardian journalist Nick Davies, but is no longer true.
Book Review: The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma by Marc W. Kirschner and John C. Gerhart. The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism by Michael J. Behe.
Book Review Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. Klein’s left-leaning political ideals are well known, and her book has received its fair share of criticism, mostly from those who object to her aggressive tone. The Shock Doctrine does suffer from overstatement, and at times it seems her probing enthusiasm stretches too far to fit examples to her thesis.
New Line Cinema’s early December release of The Golden Compass follows the timing of other fantasy fiction film releases of recent years. The golden compass of the film’s title is a kind of truth-teller, a portal of gold-dust visions for the one who can decipher its symbols.
Book Review Consuming Life by Zygmunt Bauman. 2007. Polity Press, Cambridge, U.K. The notion of customer, according to Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, has changed dramatically. Today the customer has become the commodity; it is now the customer, the person, that is being bought and sold.
Book Review Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves. Kevin Bales. 2007. University of California Press Berkley and Los Angeles, California. 261 pages.
Book Review: Nurture the Nature: Understanding and Supporting Your Child’s Unique Core Personality by Michael Gurian, Right From Wrong: Instilling a Sense of Integrity in Your Child by Michael Riera and Joseph Di Prisco, Raising Kids with Character: Developing Trust and Personal Integrity in Children by Elizabeth Berger, and Building Moral Intelligence: The Seven Essential Virtues That Teach Kids to Do the Right Thing. Michele Borba.
Book Review Breeding Bin Ladens: America, Islam, and the Future of Europe. Zachary Shore. John Hopkins University Press. Baltimore, Maryland. 240 pages.
Book Review: Nurture the Nature by Michael Gurian. Most parents desperately want the best for their children, but what is "the best"?
The trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone of former Liberian president Charles Taylor has begun in The Hague. It follows the recent release of a book by one of the victims of the war, former child soldier Ishmael Beah.
Book Review: God's Universe by Owen Gingerich
Listening to the debate stirred up by Richard Dawkins and other atheists in their attacks on God and religion, you would think that science and religion are completely incompatible, and that no respectable scientist could possibly believe in God or be religious. But the facts speak otherwise.
Book Review: The Secrets of Happiness: Three Thousand Years of Searching for the Good Life by Richard Schoch; The Science of Happiness: How Our Brains Make Us Happy—and What We Can Do to Get Happier by Stefan Klein; Making Happy People: The Nature of Happiness and Its Origins in Childhood by Paul Martin.
Benito Mussolini and life in Italy under his dictatorship. Vision reviews two books by R.J.B. Bosworth: Mussolini and Mussolini’s Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship.
The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu, by Mike Davis; False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear, by Marc Siegel, M.D.; Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic, by Marc Siegel, M.D.
Book Reviews
Another Jesus
Spring 2006 Issue
“After two thousand years of theological anti-Judaism and even racial anti-Semitism derived from this story, it is time to read it again and get it right, to follow it closely and understand fully its narrative logic.”
Definition of materialism.
The following disturbing extracts are from a treatise titled The Jews and Their Lies, written by Martin Luther toward the end of his life.
Ideas that the authors feel influenced Luther's theological development.
Book Review Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond; Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy by Matthew R. Simmons; The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy by Peter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills.
My Father Il Duce: A Memoir by Mussolini's Son
Romani Mussolini. 2006. Kales Press, Carlsbad, CA. 163 pages.
On the heels of R.J.B. Bosworth's latest volume on the subject, yet another version of Italy emerges in Romano Mussolini's recounting of events-this one the Italy of Il Duce's private home life. Though not the most neutral biographer, his youngest son does offer a few new insights into Mussolini's life, albeit revisionist ones.
Book Review: Blood, Sweat and Tears: The Evolution of Work by Richard Donkin; The Working Life: The Promise and Betrayal of Modern Work by Joanne B. Ciulla; Beyond the Bottom Line: The Search for Dignity at Work by Paula M. Rayman.
Is human life the result of many coincidences and random chance? Or is it instead the fine-tuning of the laws that govern it which have led to our existence?
Wilson’s Ghost by Robert McNamara and James Blight; Does America Need a Foreign Policy? by Henry Kissinger.
Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists by Joel Best; It Ain't Necessarily So: How Media Make and Unmake the Scientific Picture of Reality by David Murray, Joel Schwartz,and S. Robert Lichter; Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News by Bernard Goldberg.
What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? by William G. Dever; The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman; The Lost Testament: From Eden to Exile: The Five-Thousand-Year History of the People of the Bible by David Rohl.
An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America by Gary Cross; Dematerializing: Taming the Power of Possessions by Jane Hammerslough; The High Price of Materialism by Tim Kasser.
Remaking Eden by Lee M. Silver; The Biotech Century by Jeremy Rifkin; Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters by Matt Ridley.
Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything by James Gleick; Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam; Refrigerator Rights: Creating Connections and Restoring Relationships by Will Miller, with Glenn Sparks; The Connection Gap: Why Americans Feel So Alone by Laura Pappano.
The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman; On the Edge: Living With Global Capitalism by Will Hutton and Anthony Giddens (editors); No Logo by Naomi Klein; The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy by Noreena Hertz.
Book Review: On Men: Masculinity in Crisis by Anthony Clare; The Sex-Change Society: Feminised Britain and the Neutered Male by Melanie Phillips.
Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply by Vandana Shiva; The Land Was Everything: Letters from an American Farmer by Victor Davis Hanson; The New Agrarianism: Land, Culture, and the Community of Life by Eric T. Freyfogle (editor).
The Invention of Peace by Michael Howard.
The Rise of the Network Society by Manuel Castells; The Power of Identity by Manuel Castells; End of Millennium by Manuel Castells.
Book Reviews: When Things Start to Think by Neil Gershenfeld; Wired Life by Charles Jonscher; The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil.
Darwin's Black Box—The Biochemical Challenge toEvolution by Michael J. Behe; Nature's Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe by Michael J. Denton; The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities by William Dembski.
Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology edited by Hilary Rose and Steven Rose.
Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code: A Historian Reveals What We Really Know About Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine by Bart D. Ehrman.
One of the curious characteristics of our age is an absence of any accepted yardstick against which to measure what people choose to believe.
Before the prologue of The Da Vinci Code, author Dan Brown informs readers that they should regard certain details of his novel as factual.
Cracking The Da Vinci Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Facts Behind Dan Brown’s Bestselling Novel by Simon Cox; The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in The Da Vinci Code by Carl E. Olson and Sandra Miesel; The Truth Behind The Da Vinci Code: A Challenging Response to the Bestselling Novel by Richard Abanes; Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind The Da Vinci Code edited by Dan Burstein; Breaking The Da Vinci Code: Answers to the Questions Everyone’s Asking by Darrell L. Bock
Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death by Richard Marius; Martin Luther's Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development by Bernhard Lohse.
Book Review: Earth Odyssey by Mark Hertsgaard; The Carbon War: Dispatches From the End of the Oil Century by Jeremy Leggett; Natural Capitalism: The Next Industrial Revolution by Paul Hawken, Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins.
Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil by Ron Rosenbaum; Hitler, 1889 - 1936: Hubris by Ian Kershaw;Hitler: The Pathology of Evil by George Victor.
Book Review The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman; Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz; In Defense of Globalization by Jagdish Bhagwati.
American Jesus by Stephen Prothero; Jesus in America by Richard Wightman Fox; God Is Not . . . Religious, Nice, One of Us, an American, a Capitalist edited by D. Brent Laytham.