Joking for Jesus, The Courage to Love, Body Meets Soul, Rethinking War.
Culture Watch
Finding connections between the past, present, and future at Occupy Wall Street.
How blind commitment to 'free trade' throws working people under the bus.
Clooney's new movie, The Ides of March, serves as a thoughtful and entertaining mirror for next year's presidential election.
'Does the bullet know Christian from Muslim? Does the bullet choose?'
A Time to Plant: Life Lessons in Work, Prayer, and Dirt by Kyle T. Kramer.
The round-up on late-summer cinema, including: Solaris, The Tree of Life, and Super 8.
Why, despite mutual suspicions, Christianity and comics go together like paper and ink.
Life Stories
Alison Owings interviewed members of 16 tribal nations for the oral history Indian Voices: Listening to Native Americans, capturing intimate, engaging perspectives from long-overlooked communities. An inspiring antidote to the ignorance many non-Indigenous people may unwittingly hold about contemporary Native American lives. Rutgers University Press
Springsteen has always understood that the rock-and-roll story is about freedom.
The Dream is Freedom: Pauli Murray and American Democratic Faith, by Sarah Azaransky.
How strange sightings, the Cold War, and the national security state add up to a truth we'll never know.
The award for most surprisingly profound film of 2011 might go to Bridesmaids. This story of a woman trying to figure out her path in the midst of witness
Lauren F. Winner reviews The Furnace of Affliction: Prison and Religion in Antebellum America, by Jennifer Graber. UNC Press.