by Stephen Cox ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 15, 2014
An uncomplicated, evenhanded work. From hymns to architecture to personalities, American Christianity is simply...
An optimistic, nonpolemical snapshot of the plethora of Christian denominations in America.
“Something strange always happens” in American churches, Cox (Literature and Humanities/Univ. of California, San Diego; Changing and Remaining: A History of All Saints' Church, San Diego, 2011, etc.) writes in this broad yet colloquial study. Churches want to harken back to the past, in tradition or orthodoxy, but continually strain toward revolution and renewal—hence the vitality of both the still-unfinished largest cathedral in the world, St. John the Divine in New York City, and one of most humble structures, the Taylor Prayer Chapel, in Farmersburg, Ind., a tiny church that is also modeled after a medieval cathedral. Both churches marvelously offer “a place where Christian experience can happen.” This is the spirit that Cox traces throughout his work, as messy and disorganized as it may be: Since the breakdown of the state church system in the 18th century, adherence to a church has grown from 17 percent in 1776 to 62 percent in 1980, with the gains going less to mainline Protestant denominations (Episcopal, Methodist) and more to smaller, evangelical sects like Pentecostals, Southern Baptists and “born-again believers.” Socioeconomic factors can only go so deep, writes the author—e.g., explaining the huge growth of black churches after the Civil War or the devastating effects of the Depression. Cox sees the religious landscape of America inhabited by a rich history of eccentrics, inspired by the revolutionary words of Scripture, who “found oil” among legions of believers. “The wall of separation” between church and state as identified by Thomas Jefferson did not, however, keep churches from assuming a political mantle, as evidenced in their important lobbying for abolition, women’s equality and prohibition.
An uncomplicated, evenhanded work. From hymns to architecture to personalities, American Christianity is simply “unpredictable.”Pub Date: April 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-292-72910-0
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Univ. of Texas
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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.
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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by Tom Clavin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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