Overview
Book reviews by Professor John "Jack" Becker.
JUN 27, 2007 • Article
"To Be Read" Book Review Column: Dave Eggers. "What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng; A Novel."
Autobiography or novel, this is the harrowing story of Deng's flight from the holocaust in Sudan, under constant threat of bombings, beasts, and human murderers, ...
MAR 20, 2007 • Article
"To Be Read" Book Review Column: Christopher Tyerman, "God's War: A New History of the Crusades"
Tyerman lays out the New Testament tradition at the beginning of his treatise on the Crusades, raising the immediate question: how did Crusaders manage to ...
OCT 1, 2004 • Article
"To Be Read" Book Review Column: Ian Buruma, Avishai Margalit. "Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies." Rashid Khalidi. "Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East"
Should we have gone to war with Iraq? Having gone, were we at all prepared for the reception we got? What do we need to ...
JUN 1, 2004 • Article
"To Be Read" Book Review Column: Andrew Greeley, "The Catholic Revolution: New Wine, Old Wineskins, and the Second Vatican Council"
Andrew Greeley reappears now at a moment when I, and I suspect others, really need him, addressing a question that has been bothering me for ...
MAR 1, 2004 • Article
"To Be Read" Book Review Column: Anne Matthews, "Wild Nights: Nature Returns to the City"
This is an environmental jeremiad with a difference. No complaining here, no direct appeal for a harmony between humankind and nature. Matthews’s eye is ...
JAN 1, 2004 • Article
"To Be Read" Book Review Column: Stephen Jay Gould, "Rocks of Ages. --The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox"
It seems a good idea to distinguish science and religion as two separate, mutually non-interfering teaching authorities. Popular science writer Stephan Jay Gould (1941-2002) suggested ...
DEC 8, 2003 • Article
"To Be Read" Book Review Column: David Sloan Wilson, "Darwin's Cathedral"
Religion, I think most of us would say, isn't about much if it isn't about belief in a personal God... Religion is founded on the ...
NOV 3, 2003 • Article
"To Be Read" Book Review Column: Andrew Bacevich, "American Empire," Amy Chua, "World on Fire"
Bacevich argues that America is an empire on the basis of the events of recent decades. His narrative argument is nicely complemented by Chua’s ...
OCT 1, 2003 • Article
"To Be Read" Book Review Column: Roger Scruton, "The West and the Rest"
Scruton contrasts the structure of Western political life with Islam. Islam then becomes his paradigm for “the rest.” In the West, he says, religion and ...
SEP 1, 2003 • Article
"To Be Read" Book Review Column: Jonathan Bate, "The Song of the Earth," Lawrence Buell, "Writing for an Endangered World"
Is there an environmental role for nature writing whose aim is primarily esthetic? Is there a role, in other words, for esthetic experience in the ...