Month: October 2021 (Page 1 of 2)

Here is a selection of print and ebooks and streaming videos added to the catalogue in the past week.

 A documentary history of the Book of Mormon /Larry E. Morris. A Documentary History of the Book of Mormon transcribes and annotates a wide variety of primary source documents related to the origins of the long-ridiculed narrative that launched a new world religion.

A soldier’s play: a play /by Charles Fuller. A black sergeant cries out in the night, “They still hate you,” then is shot twice and falls dead. Set in 1944 at Fort Neal, a segregated army camp in Louisiana, Charles Fuller’s forceful drama–which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 and has been regularly seen in both its original stage and its later screen version–tracks the investigation of this murder. “A Soldier’s Play” is more than a detective story: it is a tough, incisive exploration of racial tensions and ambiguities among blacks and between blacks and whites that gives no easy answers and assigns no simple blame.

 Addicted to lust: pornography in the lives of conservative Protestants /Samuel L. Perry Once confident of their victory over pornography in society at large, conservative Protestants now fear that “porn addiction” is consuming even the most faithful. How are they adjusting to this new reality? And what are its consequences in their lives?

Antonin Artaud; man of vision, by Bettina L. Knapp. With a pref. by Anais Nin. This is a book which is essential to a deeper knowledge of Antonin Artaud’s work. Too much emphasis has been placed on the sensational aspects of his own life dramatization, on his madness. At last Dr. Bettina Knapp has given us a balanced analysis, interpretation and biography of Artaud, blending her familiarity with French literature, French theater with an acute psychological insight and a woman’s natural gift for interrelating the work and the human being, thus bringing us closer to his inferno with more empathy,

 Controversial new religions /edited by James R. Lewis and Jesper Aa. Petersen. The general public views new religions with a mixture of curiosity, amusement, and anxiety, sustained by lavish media emphasis on oddness and tragedy rather than familiarity and lived experience. This book looks at those groups that have generated the most attention.

Grace: a play /Doug Lucie. A hugely entertaining look at the hypocrisy of evangelism and a savage attack on the Americanization of the British way of life. It’s a triumph

 Live from Stratford-upon-Avon. King Lear /William Shakespeare ; director, Gregory Doran ; producer, Zoë Donegan ; screen director, Robin Lough ; producer, John Wyver King Lear has ruled for many years. As age overtakes him, he divides his kingdom amongst his children. Misjudging their loyalty, he soon finds himself stripped of all the trappings of state, wealth and power that had defined him.

 Live from Stratford-upon-Avon. Othello /William Shakespeare ; directed by Iqbal Khan ; producer, Zoe Donegan ; screen director, Robin Lough ; producer, John Wyver ; Picture House Entertainment. Othello is the greatest general of his age. A fearsome warrior, loving husband and revered defender of Venice against its enemies. But he is also an outsider whose victories have created enemies of his own, men driven by prejudice and jealousy to destroy him. As they plot in the shadows, Othello realises too late that the greatest danger lies not in the hatred of others, but his own fragile and destructive pride.

 Live from Stratford-upon-Avon: The taming of the shrew /William Shakespeare ; a Royal  Shakespeare Company presentation. We turn Shakespeare’s fierce, energetic comedy of gender and materialism on its head to offer a fresh perspective on its portrayal of hierarchy and power, directed by Justin Audibert.

NOVA. A to Z. The first alphabet /written and directed by David Sington ; produced by Hugh Sington ; a NOVA production by DOX Productions/Films a Cinq for NOVA/WGBH Boston. The incredible story of writing can finally be told. 

Practicing what the doctor preached: at home with Focus on the Family /Susan B. Ridgely. James Dobson is well-known to the secular world as a crusader for the Christian right. But within Christian circles he is known primarily as a childrearing expert; millions of American children have been raised on his message. Practicing What the Doctor Preached looks at how Dobson’s rigid, authoritarian teachings are put into practice by actual families, often in surprisingly flexible ways.

 Protestants and American conservatism: a short history /Gillis J. Harp. In this sweeping history, Gillis Harp traces the relationship between Protestantism and conservative politics in America from the Puritans to Palin. Harp argues that, while conservative voters and activists have often professed to be motivated by their religious faith, in fact the connection between Christian principle and conservative politics has generally been remarkably thin. Ultimately, Harp claims, there is very little that is distinctly Christian about the modern Christian Right.

 Proverbs: a commentary based on Paroimiai in Codex Vaticanus /by Al Wolters.  Wolters gives a meticulous philological commentary on the text of Proverbs as found in the important fourth-century Codex Vaticanus, together with a careful transcription of the Vaticanus Greek text and a fresh English translation thereof. The focus of the commentary is on the semantic and grammatical aspects of the Greek, relying primarily on general Greek usage rather than on the underlying Hebrew, and drawing on a broad array of lexicographical and grammatical resources, as well as a detailed examination of twelve previous translations of LXX Proverbs. In the process, many new interpretations of the often difficult Greek are proposed.

 Return of the trickster /Eden Robinson. “The third and final book of the brilliant and captivating Trickster Trilogy. Jared, now 18, wakes up in a hospital bed, feeling like hell. Some of the people he loves–the ones who are deaf to magic–assume he fell off the wagon after a tough year of sobriety and went on a bender to end all benders. The truth for Jared, who has spent two years running from it, is so much worse. He finally knows for sure that he will never be normal because he is the son of Wee’git, a Trickster, and a Trickster himself. Soon Jared is at the centre of an all-out war. A horrible place to be for the sweetest Trickster there’s ever been, one whose first instinct is not mischief and mind games but to make the world around him a kinder, safer, place.

 Spillover: Zika, Ebola & beyond /producer, director & writer, James Barrat ; a Tangled Bank Studios, LLC production in association with Barrat Media, LLC. Throughout the last few decades, diseases that spill over from animals to humans have been on the rise. What’s behind their increase, and can we do anything to combat these dangerous foes? Join scientists as they investigate the rise of spillover viruses like Zika, Ebola and Nipah, and learn what science can do to anticipate and prevent epidemics around the world.

 The beauty of Jesus Christ: filling out a scheme of St Augustine /Gerald O’ Collins, S.J. This book offers a working description of beauty. It draws on the Scriptures, both Old and New Testament, to illustrate how the beauty of Christ manifested itself at every stage of his story.

 The Bible and the believer: how to read the Bible critically and religiously /Marc Zvi Brettler, Peter Enns, and Daniel J. Harrington The Bible and the Believer enlists one Jewish, one Catholic, and one Protestant biblical scholar who explain and illustrate how to read the Hebrew Bible/Tanakh/Old Testament critically and religiously in light of their own religious traditions.

 The finger of the scribe: how scribes learned to write the Bible /William M. Schniedewind. Schniedewind explores the unexpected cache of inscriptions discovered at a remote, Iron Age military post called Kuntillet ‘Ajrud to assess the question of how scribes might have been taught to write. Here, far from such urban centers as Jerusalem or Samaria, plaster walls and storage pithoi were littered with inscriptions. What emerges is a very different picture of how writing might have been taught, as opposed to the standard view of scribal schools in the main population centers.

 The forgotten creed: Christianity’s original struggle against bigotry, slavery, and sexism /Stephen Patterson. The first Christian creed said nothing about Christ, God, or salvation. Instead it told the followers of Jesus who they were: Children of God. Among them, distinctions of race, class, and gender would count for nothing. The Forgotten Creed is the story of that first, forgotten creed and its remarkable vision of human solidarity.

 The hiddenness of God /Michael C. Rea. This study addresses the problem of divine hiddenness which concerns the ambiguity of evidence for God’s existence, the elusiveness of God’s comforting presence, the palpable and devastating experience of divine absence and abandonment, and more.

The London theatre 1811-1866: selections from the diary of Henry Crabb Robinson; edited by Eluned Brown.

 The revolution of alphabets /directed and produced by Sang-ho Han. An investigation of the development of ancient writing.

 The sorrows of Frederick and Holy ghosts /Romulus Linney. Sorrows of Frederick is a psychological drama that portrays Frederick the Great as a man of immense intellectual gifts who succombs to the perversion of power. Holy ghosts is a comic southern folk drama focusing on an anguished husband, his runaway wife and a snake-handling religious cult.

The TEAM makes a play /a film by Paulette Douglas. This documentary, directed by 5 time Emmy Award winner Paulette Douglas, captures a rare inside look at the TEAM’s three year collaborative journey creating their multi-award-winning new production Mission Drift, an epic saga exploring the true meaning of American Capitalism.

 Tradition: understanding Christian tradition /Gerald O’Collins, SJ.  Particular traditions can call for scrutiny and reform. Tradition: Understanding Christian Tradition proposes various criteria (e.g. the message of the Scriptures and spiritual experience) for discerning and evaluating specific traditions. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, the risen Christ himself is the central Tradition (upper case) at the heart of all Christian traditions. The Spirit remains the primary bearer of the Church’s tradition; the secondary agents of tradition include not only ordained ministers but also all the baptized faithful. In the history of Christianity, tradition has interpreted and actualized the Scriptures, but has also been interpreted and challenged by them. An appendix explains the insights coming from specialists in the study of collective memory; their work also sheds light on the workings of Christian tradition.

 Trickster drift /Eden Robinson. As the son of a Trickster, Jared is a magnet for magic, whether he hates it or not–he sees ghosts, he sees the monster moving underneath his Aunt Georgina’s skin, he sees the creature that comes out of his bedroom wall and creepily wants to suck his toes. He also still hears the Trickster in his head, and other voices too.

War feels like war /directed by Esteban Uyarra. This is an account of the brutalities of 21st century war, told through the eyes of independent journalists. The film documents the lives of reporters and photographers who subverted military media control to get access to the real Iraq War. The film records their frustration, fear, shock and horror as they fight their way to Baghdad. Through its main and subsidiary characters, the film reveals the addictive nature of modern war reporting – how it affects journalists personally and how hard it then is to return to a normal life back home. It also paints a unique picture of the paradoxes of modern war reporting: the organized media circus may offer a continuous stream of action pictures for 24 hour satellite tv, but these tell us little about the chaos and the pain of war.

 Why are there differences in the gospels?: what we can learn from ancient biography /Michael R. Licona ; foreword by Craig A. Evans. Licona turns to Greek classicist Plutarch for an answer, assessing differences that appeared when Plutarch told the same story more than once in his Lives. He suggests the differences in the Gospels often resulted from their authors employing the same compositional devices used by Plutarch.