New & Noteworthy

Jamming Against Violence

Thousands of teens are learning directly from Nobel Peace laureates about working for peace through PeaceJam, an eight-year-old education-and-action program. Learn about it in PeaceJam: How Young People Can Make Peace in Their Schools and Communities and in a documentary of the same name. Teens study the lives of Nobel laureates, attend conferences led by the laureates, and develop service projects in their own communities. Said one: "I learned that you don't have to be a big person to make a big difference." Jossey-Bass

Glory, Glory, Glory

Folks from the Library of Congress hauled their recording equipment all over the South to record church choirs, solo singers, blues artists, and preachers - and Goodbye, Babylon is the stunning result. Six CDs hold 135+ songs and 25 sermons that cover the years 1902-60, performed with all the passionate pentecostal fervor you could imagine. Includes a 200-page book with notes about each recording. Dust-to-Digital

Prophetic Poet

Radical Southerner, poet, songwriter, labor organizer, preacher - Don West made his mark everywhere his Indian Chief motorcycle took him. No Lonesome Road, edited by Jeff Biggers and George Brosi, gives life to the man who liked "the plain Jesus," founded the Appalachian South Folklife Center, and created bridges between artists and organizers. The book includes West's poems, essays, radio speeches, short stories, and other writings. University of Illinois Press

Painted Sermons

Vincent Van Gogh was far more than the tortured artist of popular sentiment. In The Shoes of Van Gogh: A Spiritual and Artistic Journey to the Ordinary, Cliff Edwards (with reflections by Henri Nouwen) shows the more complex man - a spiritual guide of sorts who wrote about his "innate love for the church and everything connected with it." Van Gogh hoped to preach the gospel to the poor; failing that, he took up his paintbrush and painted those the rest of the world had forgotten. Crossroad