Holy Kindle, Batman! Recent Books on Religion for the Kindle (29 Apr 2010)

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is. - Albert Camus.

Selecting new nonfiction books on religion for the Kindle can be problematical. Many readers have strongly-held religious beliefs. One person's religious classic is another's foolish drivel. Here I attempt a middle ground, choosing recently-published books on matters spiritual which I hope will appeal to a wide audience of Kindle readers.

Christianity, by Diarmaid MacCulloch. Viking. Print Length: 1184 p. CHURCH HISTORY. Amazon customer rating. 4 stars (9 reviews). Kindle edition: $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"Once in a generation a historian will redefine his field, producing a book that demands to be read-a product of electrifying scholarship conveyed with commanding skill. Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity is such a book. Breathtaking in ambition, it ranges back to the origins of the Hebrew Bible and covers the world, following the three main strands of the Christian faith...to all corners of the globe, filling in often neglected accounts of conversions and confrontations in Africa and Asia. And we discover the roots of the faith that galvanized America, charting the rise of the evangelical movement from its origins in Germany and England. This book encompasses all of intellectual history - we meet monks and crusaders, heretics and saints, slave traders and abolitionists, and discover Christianity's essential role in driving the enlightenment and the age of exploration, and shaping the course of World War I and World War II." - Amazon.
MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University, author of The Reformation, and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The Language God Talks: On Science and Religion, by Herman Wouk. Little, Brown and Company. Print Length: 192 p. SCIENCE AND RELIGION. Amazon customer rating. 4 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition: $10.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"At age 94, Wouk embarks on an autobiographical journey through his monumental writings (The Caine Mutiny; The Winds of War; War and Remembrance), people he has met in his life, world events, and books he has read (including the Talmud) to weave a testament of faith. Throughout the book, he returns to his friendship with Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, whose work as a scientist on the atomic bomb and life as a humanist challenge the author's Orthodox Jewish beliefs. Along the way the reader meets other scientists and their accomplishments and also some of Wouk's fictional characters. What most impresses Wouk is the big bang (the first three minutes) and the small bang (the universe giving birth to the mind) so that humans could comprehend God. Ever so faithful to his Jewish heritage, he discusses how research in the scientific and secular world strengthened his faith..." - Publishers Weekly.

God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World - and Why Their Differences Matter, by Stephen Prothero. HarperCollins. Print Length: 400 p. COMPARATIVE RELIGION. Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition: $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"At the dawn of the twenty-first century, dizzying scientific and technological advancements, interconnected globalized economies, and even the so-called New Atheists have done nothing to change one thing: our world remains furiously religious. For good and for evil, religion is the single greatest influence in the world. We accept as self-evident that competing economic systems (capitalist or communist) or clashing political parties (Republican or Democratic) propose very different solutions to our planet's problems. So why do we pretend that the world's religious traditions are different paths to the same God? We blur the sharp distinctions between religions at our own peril, argues religion scholar Stephen Prothero, and it is time to replace naÏve hopes of interreligious unity with deeper knowledge of religious differences... To claim that all religions are the same is to misunderstand that each attempts to solve a different human problem. For example:
–Islam: the problem is pride / the solution is submission
–Christianity: the problem is sin / the solution is salvation
–Confucianism: the problem is chaos / the solution is social order
–Buddhism: the problem is suffering / the solution is awakening
–Judaism: the problem is exile / the solution is to return to God.
Prothero reveals each of these traditions on its own terms to create an indispensable guide for anyone who wants to better understand the big questions human beings have asked for millennia - and the disparate paths we are taking to answer them today." - Amazon.
Prothero is a professor of religion at Boston University and author of Religious Literacy.

Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death, and Atheism, by Mary Eberstadt. Ignatius Press. Print Length: 150 p. APOLOGETICS/ HUMOR. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (5 reviews). Kindle edition: $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"With modern humor rivaling that of the media-lampooning Onion, found on college campuses all over America, A. F. Christian's open letters to the spokesmen of the New Atheism explain her reasons for rejecting God and the logical consequences of that choice. Along the way she offers pithy advice to famous atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, in the hope of helping them win over more Christians. Amid the many current books arguing for or against religion, social critic and writer Mary Eberstadt's The Loser Letters is truly unique: a black comedy about theism and atheism that is simultaneously a rollicking defense of Christianity. In her loveable and articulate tragic-comic heroine, A.F. Christian, Dawkins, Hitchens and the other "Brights" have met their match." - Amazon.
Eberstadt is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and consulting editor to Policy Review.

Life in Year One: What the World Was Like in First Century Palestine, by Scott Korb. Riverhead. Print Length: 256 p. HISTORY. Amazon customer rating: 3 stars (25 reviews). Kindle edition: $10.52. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"What was it like to live during the time of Jesus? Where did people live? Who did they marry? And what was family life like? How did people survive? These are just some of the questions that Scott Korb answers in this engaging new book, which explores what everyday life entailed two thousand years ago in first-century Palestine, that tumultuous era when the Roman Empire was at its zenith and a new religion - Christianity - was born. Culling information from primary sources, scholarly research, and his own travels and observations, Korb explores the nitty-gritty of real life back then-from how people fed, housed, and groomed themselves to how they kept themselves healthy. He guides the contemporary reader through the maze of customs and traditions that dictated life under the numerous groups, tribes, and peoples in the eastern Mediterranean that Rome governed two thousand years ago, and he illuminates the intriguing details of marriage, family life, health, and a host of other aspects of first-century life. The result is a book for everyone, from the armchair traveler to the amateur historian. With surprising revelations about politics and medicine, crime and personal hygiene, this book is smart and accessible popular history at its very best." - Amazon.


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