New & Noteworthy

Four July 2014 culture recommendations from our editors
Life with Purpose

In Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good, Steven Garber writes eloquently of the challenge "to see with the eyes of the heart, to see oneself as responsible for the way the world is and isn't" without succumbing to cynicism. IVP Books

Saved Songs

Just months before civil war erupted in Syria, a small group of Syria Sufi musicians known as NAWA were recorded peforming nearly lsot melodies, songs, and poems on Ancient Sufi Invocations and Forgotten Songs from Aleppo. This is the first album in a planned four-part Sacred Voices of Syria series. Cowbell/Lost Origins

Workers Speak

The oral histories gathered in Invisible Hands: Voices from the Global Economy, compiled and edited by Corinne Goria, give a too rare chance to hear from manual laborers around the world and learn of the dangers and abuse they face daily. Voice of Witness

Peaceful Courage

The historical novel Jacob's Choice, by Ervin R. Stutzman, follows Jacob Hochstetler, an Amish settler in the 1700s who endures the killing of family members and captivity in the midst of the French and Indian War, all putting his pacifist beliefs to the test. Based on actual events. Herald Press

This appears in the July 2014 issue of Sojourners