From Gary Chartier

Jean-Pierre Changeux and Paul Ricoeur. What Makes Us Think: A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher Argue about Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain. Reprint ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. 354 pages.

Just what the title says: a surprisingly readable discussion of complex issues in philosophy and science that draws the reader into its authors’ conversation.

Stephen R. L. Clark. Biology and Christian Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 332 pages.

This examination of the intersection between religion and science (it’s broader than the title might suggest) by a brilliant and idiosyncratic Christian philosopher is proof that philosophical prose can be graceful and literate—simply put, fun to read—as well as intellectually challenging.

Peter Conradi. Iris Murdoch: A Life. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. 512 pages.

A compelling intellectual biography of a first-rate novelist and philosopher that demonstrates that a flawed person can radiate love and goodness into the lives of others.

David Ray Griffin. Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 264 pages.

A new and highly appealing take on an old conundrum that shows how an idiosyncratically Christian view, shaped by process philosophy, might help to resolve one of the most fundamental of all physical puzzles.

Daniel Lazare. The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution is Paralyzing Democracy. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1996. 393 pages.

An engaging history (and prehistory) of the U.S. Constitution and its role in American political life that argues persuasively that the sacred text of our civil religion needs to be overhauled or replaced.

J. R. R. Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings. Collector’s ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974. 1,216 pages.

Rereading this classic (and, in its author’s view, deeply Christian) work after twenty years, I find that Tolkien’s prose has the power to send chills down my spine.

From James Hayward

Barbara Kingsolver. The Poisonwood Bible. New York: Harperperennial Library, 1999. 566 pages.

A powerful novel about religion, power, abuse, and human resiliency set in the context of an American fundamentalist missionary family’s experiences in Africa.

John McPhee. Annals of the Former World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. 696 pages.

This magisterial, Pulitzer Prize winning volume recounts McPhee’s travels back and forth across the United States with various geologists and his reflections on its topography and geology around the fortieth parallel.

Del Ratzsch. Science and Its Limits: The Natural Sciences in Christian Perspective. Downer’s Grove, Il: InterVarsity, 2000. 191 pages.

A prominent philosopher of science at Calvin College, Ratzsch provides an excellent synopsis of the limitations and strengths of arguments that Christians use in regard to creation/evolution, intelligent design, postmodernism, and so forth.

Terry Tempest Williams. Leap. New York: Pantheon Books, 2000. 338 pages.

A strange but brilliant extended essay by a Mormon naturalist/feminist/writer about good and evil and the pleasures of life based that is based on Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych The Garden of Delights.

From Nancy Lecourt

Barbara Ehrenreich. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001. 221 pages.

A middle-aged woman writer with a Ph.D. becomes a waitress, a dishwasher, a housekeeper, and a Walmart employee to see whether it is really possible to live on minimum wage. It isn’t.

Mary Rose O’Reilly. Radical Presence: Teaching as Contemplative Practice. Portsmouth, N.H.: Boynton Cook, 1998. 50 pages.

Reflections on life and teaching that asks the question: What spaces can we create in the classroom that will allow students freedom to nourish an inner life?

Philip Pullman. The Golden Compass. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. 399 pages.

First in a trilogy of astounding fantasy-adventures that involve parallel universes peopled by a fascinating array of characters, which includes talking bears, witches—both good and bad—and angels. Not for the timid.

Eric Schlosser. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. 356 pages.

Muckraking at its best. A blistering exposé of the way fast food has altered our nation’s environment, work, life, and health—especially of children.

© 2002 Spectrum/AAF