A somewhat depressing but knowledgeable account of how the Bible lumbers on in America, not as widely read but still...
How the Bible continues a downward slide in use and comprehension in both society and the church.
Former Newsday and New York Times religion editor Briggs (Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American Nuns, 2006, etc.) explores the place held by Christian Scripture in modern America. “After centuries of highlighting the printed Word,” writes the author, “the specter of Bibleless Christianity, or something close to it, looms on the horizon.” Briggs assumes an American Christianity that, until the 1960s, placed a great deal of emphasis on Bible reading and study and a culture immersed in scriptural literacy. From that height, the Bible’s role in America has plummeted by comparison. Though Bibles still sell well, they are not widely read. Briggs explains at length that Bibles are still purchased as gifts in high numbers and that digital versions of the Bible are downloaded by the millions. However, fewer churches are encouraging, let alone expecting, regular Bible reading. The author also spends time exploring the trend away from biblical literalism in American Christianity and how that has affected Bible use. In a related vein, he looks at the continuing divide between academia and clergy in how the Bible is read, interpreted, and taught. Increasingly, academics have studied the Bible not as a sacred work but as a piece of literature to be examined using critical principles. This does little to assist the preacher or the people in the pews who hope to glean life lessons, hope, and ethical direction from the text. Briggs also explores the role that the digital age has had on Bible reading and distribution. A commendable mark of Briggs’ work is his ever present use of anecdotal stories. Though on their own they cannot fully form an argument about nationwide Scripture use, they do put needed faces on the trends that the author describes.
A somewhat depressing but knowledgeable account of how the Bible lumbers on in America, not as widely read but still precious to a core of believers.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8028-6913-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Eerdmans
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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 Yorkerstaff 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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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