Prove All Things
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.
Sustainable Balance in Work and 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.
Answering the New Atheists
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.
Out of Poverty: What Works?
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?”
God and Your Brain
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.
Go Outside and Play!
With most American schools either enjoying or approaching Thanksgiving break, many parents wonder how to keep children occupied while they cook, clean and prep for the holiday. Perhaps this is the ideal time to revisit some classic advice from award-winning journalist Richard Louv.
Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design
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.'
Keep on Trek'n
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?
End of the Line
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.
The End of the World, Continued
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.
Prewired
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.
Randy Pausch: Living Life in the Face of Death
Book Review: The Last Lecture. Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow. Hyperion. April 18, 2008. 224 pages.
Media Exposed
Book Review: Flat Earth News. Nick Davies. 2008. Chatto & Windus, London. 408 pages. An award-winning reporter exposes falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media.
Disaster Capitalism
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.
Everything Old Is New Again
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.
Customers as Commodities
Consuming Life by Zygmunt Bauman. 2007. Polity Press, Cambridge, U.K. 168 pages. 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.
Morality and The Golden Compass
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.
A Quest to Free the World of Slavery
Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves. Kevin Bales. 2007. University of California Press Berkley and Los Angeles, California. 261 pages.
Child Rearing: Off to Nurturing School
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 by Michele Borba.
Islamist Extremism—Bred Not Inherited?
Breeding Bin Ladens: America, Islam, and the Future of Europe. Zachary Shore. John Hopkins University Press. Baltimore, Maryland. 240 pages.
Cookie-Cutter Kids: Flaws of the Social-Trends Parenting System
Nurture the Nature: Understanding and Supporting Your Child’s Unique Core Personality. Michael Gurian. 2007. John Wiley & Sons, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. 368 pages. Most parents desperately want the best for their children, but a clear vision of what constitutes the best is hard to come by.
Repercussions of Revenge
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Ishmael Beah. 2007. Sarah Crichton Books, New York.
Reconciling God and Science
God's Universe. Owen Gingerich. 2006. Harvard University Press, Belknap Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Happiness: The Means or the End?
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.
The World of Il Duce
Mussolini by R. J. B. Bosworth; Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship by R. J. B. Bosworth.
Mussolini's Ostrich
My Father, Il Duce by Romano Mussolini.
An Appeal to Save the Earth
The Creation: An Appeal to Save the Earth by E. O. Wilson.
The Birds Is Coming!
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.
Another Jesus
The Last Week by John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg; The Jesus Dynasty by James Tabor.
Decision Time
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.
The Incredible Shrinking World
The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman; Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph E. Stiglitz; In Defense of Globalization by Jagdish Bhagwati.
Extreme Makeover: God
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.
The Da Vinci Con
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.
Fact, Fiction and The Da Vinci Code
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.
Off to Work
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.
Enough Is Enough
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.
Murky Media
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.
Holes in History
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.
Disconnected Relationships
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 Global Order
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.
Mind the Peace
The Invention of Peace by Michael Howard.
Assault of the Gender Benders
On Men: Masculinity in Crisis by Anthony Clare; The Sex-Change Society: Feminised Britain and the Neutered Male by Melanie Phillips.
A Theory of Everything
Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology edited by Hilary Rose and Steven Rose.
The Amazing Technicolor Agriculture Revolution
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).
Pathways to Peace?
Wilson’s Ghost by Robert McNamara and James Blight; Does America Need a Foreign Policy? by Henry Kissinger.
Artificial Intelligence: A Virtual Reality?
When Things Start to Think by Neil Gershenfeld; Wired Life by Charles Jonscher; The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil.
Just Six Numbers
Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe by Martin J. Rees.
What's Behind the Information Age Curtain?
The Rise of the Network Society by Manuel Castells; The Power of Identity by Manuel Castells; End of Millennium by Manuel Castells.
Martin Luther: Prophet of God?
Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death by Richard Marius; Martin Luther's Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development by Bernhard Lohse.
A Second Genesis
Remaking Eden by Lee M. Silver; The Biotech Century by Jeremy Rifkin; Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters by Matt Ridley.
Emerging From the Mire
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.
Hitler: Evil Unprecedented
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.
Intelligent Designs
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.
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