Dostoevsky

Title: Dostoevsky: Language, Faith & Fiction
Author: Rowan Williams
Publisher: Baylor University Press
ISBN: 9781602583733

From the publisher: Rowan Williams explores the intricacies of speech, fiction, metaphor, and iconography in the works of one of literature's most complex, and most complexly misunderstood, authors. Williams' investigation focuses on the four major novels of Dostoevsky's maturity (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Devils, and The Brothers Karamozov). He argues that understanding Dostoevsky's style and goals as a writer of fiction is inseparable from understanding his religious commitments. Any reader who enters the rich and insightful world of Williams' Dostoevsky will emerge a more thoughtful and appreciative reader for it.

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti

Title: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti
Author: Milton Rokeach
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 9781590173848

From the publisher: On July 1, 1959, at Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan, the social psychologist Milton Rokeach brought together three paranoid schizophrenics: Clyde Benson, an elderly farmer and alcoholic; Joseph Cassel, a failed writer who was institutionalized after increasingly violent behavior toward his family; and Leon Gabor, a college dropout and veteran of World War II.

The men had one thing in common: each believed himself to be Jesus Christ. Their extraordinary meeting and the two years they spent in one another’s company serve as the basis for an investigation into the nature of human identity, belief, and delusion that is poignant, amusing, and at times disturbing. Displaying the sympathy and subtlety of a gifted novelist, Rokeach draws us into the lives of three troubled and profoundly different men who find themselves “confronted with the ultimate contradiction conceivable for human beings: more than one person claiming the same identity.”

Here If You Need Me

Title: Here If You Need Me
Author: Kate Braestrup
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 9780316066310

From the publisher: When the oldest of Kate Braestrup's four children was ten years old, her husband, a Maine state trooper, was killed in a car accident. Stunned and grieving, she decided to pursue her husband's dream of becoming a Unitarian minister, and eventually began working with the Maine Game Warden Service, which conducts the state's search and rescue operations when people go missing in the wilderness.

Louisa says: The range and depth of this book surprised me. Braestrup writes with sincerity, humour, honesty and quiet compassion, not shying away from areas often ignored such as the practicalities of death. Her anecdotes illuminate some of the challenges faced by Maine state troopers and the sensitivity, strength and courage needed for chaplaincy.

A View Of The Ocean

Title: A View Of The Ocean
Author: Jan de Hartog
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 978-0-375-42470-0

From the publisher: The internationally best-selling novelist, playwright Jan de Hartog, author of The Captain and The Peaceable Kingdom, moves and inspires us with this simple, elegant story of his mother and himself.

She was a quiet, unassuming woman married to a giant of a man, a famous Protestant theologian and pastor, simple, bighearted and big-muscled, who moved through life with gusto and the commotion of a wagon train and who, but for God, might have become a pirate or a general. He adored his wife and didn’t like anyone else around to claim her attention. Their sons saw him as a monster of egocentricity, a tyrant, a blustering bully; to her he was a sensitive, shy, helpless man with a mission. She believed in him from the moment they met, and under the wings of her faith in him as a philosopher, he became one.

During their thirty years of marriage this woman’s only concern was to enable her husband to hearken to “the voice of God.”

After his death she discovered somewhere deep inside a core of drop-forged steel. She rose to the challenge of widowhood and, continuing his work, took his place in the world. The full splendor of this tiny, frail woman’s character, intelligence, and courage became evident during her World War II internment in a Japanese camp in the Dutch East Indies, when she managed to arrange a cease-fire between the Dutch Army and Indonesian guerillas.

After her release from prison camp, she returned to Amsterdam, and resumed her simple life, offering spiritual advice to those seeking solace. Finally, she was faced with the ultimate test of her spirit: a diagnosis of a cancer too far advanced for treatment.

De Hartog tells us how his mother’s blazing courage through it all inspired his own spiritual awakening as he found, in her final months, the strength, the power, and the acceptance to see her through to the end.

This I Believe

Title: This I Believe
Editors: Jay Allison & Dan Gediman
Publisher: Henry Holt
ISBN: 978-0-8050-8658-4

From the publisher: Based on the National Public Radio series of the same name, This I Believe features eighty contributors — from the famous to the unknown — completing the thought that the book’s title begins. Each piece compels readers to rethink not only how they have arrived at their own personal beliefs but also the extent to which they share them with others.

Featuring many renowned contributors — including Isabel Allende, Colin Powell, Gloria Steinem, William F. Buckley Jr., Penn Jillette, Bill Gates, and John Updike — the collection also contains essays by a lawyer; a part-time hospital clerk; a woman who sells yellow pages advertising; and a man who serves on a parole board.

The result is a stirring and provocative trip inside the minds and hearts of a diverse group of people whose beliefs — and the incredibly varied ways in which they choose to express them — reveal the human spirit at its best.