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LOWER THAN THE ANGELS

A HISTORY OF SEX AND CHRISTIANITY

Well written and thoroughly researched, this comprehensive volume unveils a fascinating history.

Wide-ranging study of human sexuality in the Christian context.

Noted church historian MacCulloch presents a lengthy and thorough study of the role of sex throughout Christian history. “Sex” is perhaps a limiting term, in that MacCulloch explores gender, marriage, family, celibacy, feminism, and so much else that is directly and indirectly connected to the term “sex.” The author begins by explaining how the Christian faith grew into its own identity, both informed by and in opposition to Judaism, and how a theology of sex and gender roles developed in early centuries. It did not take long for Christian leaders to conclude that sexual activity was an impediment to personal holiness, and this opinion (which has its own complex origins) soon overtook Christendom’s worldview. By the time of the Crusades, a celibate clergy held a hierarchical mantel of holiness and power over lesser, married laity. The Protestant Reformation and then the Enlightenment would revolutionize these views in some ways, but a male-dominated church remained the norm, no matter what its views on sex and marriage. As culture became increasingly secular from the 18th century onward, changes occurred not only in allowed or normative sexual activity but also in the role of women, continuing on into modern times. MacCulloch admirably covers both Eastern churches and the more dominant Roman Catholic and Protestant viewpoints, but either way in many cases his history of sex also mirrors a history of Europe. As such, he notes that views on, and theologies of, sex have been extraordinarily varied and even contradictory through time and across geography. MacCulloch is to be commended for largely avoiding the salacious and titillating; quite the opposite, his treatment of sexual history is decorous to a fault.

Well written and thoroughly researched, this comprehensive volume unveils a fascinating history.

Pub Date: April 15, 2025

ISBN: 9781984878670

Page Count: 752

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025

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KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Awards & Accolades

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  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2017


  • New York Times Bestseller


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Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.

During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

Pub Date: April 18, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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