He references that one several times...think it may be next on my list. I really enjoyed his style. Ancestor's Tale is nonfiction, but they way he explains his scientific theories is with this series of Canterbury-Tales-esque stories...i.e., "The Redwood's Tale" and "The Grasshopper's Tale." And he traces from humans backwards through time, hitting all the points where evolutionary lineages converge...or rather, where they originally diverged. I'm doing a poor job explaining it, but it's fascinating and amazingly creative.
This just came from Amazon yesterday. As I have been called a "South Park Conservative" (I am not sure if that is a complement), I saw this mentioned on Instapundit so I ordered it. I was expecting a book about modern libertarian conservatism, but the book deals more with the rise of alternative conservative media (talk radio, blogs, conservative publishers and Fox). It is more entertaining than reasoned analysis, though it is heavily footnoted.
The same can be said of so many books. I really hated Of Mice and Men when I read it in 10th grade, and now it is worth the time.
Took this one out from the library based on what I had read here. Just started this and was really enjoying it. Was laughing out loud as I read, so my 14 year old son stole the book off my reading table and won't give it back until he is done. (he is already half way through, he has more time to read then I do) thanks for the recommendations
Just finished this: Enjoyable but not a gut buster. Just started Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping by Patrick Radden Keefe. One thing I've already discovered, it's not good bed time reading, entirely to lively and thought-provoking for that.
This is a book I highly recommend: It really changed the way I think about God, religion, the afterlife, and how science relates to them. Dr. Rizzi does a fantastic job in detailing how you don't have to be an atheist and accept scientific theories at the same time.
ooooh that sounds really good...I went to a methodist college and was surprised at how the fact that it doesn't have to be science or religion was never a problem. They merged them quite well. The existence of evolution was never debated. It was just considered a fact. I mean my degree is in Biology, my minor is psychology, but religious history fascinates me so I ended up taking so many religious courses that I was only a couple of classes short of minoring in that as well (which you can't do but you get the point).
I am a Catholic. Granted, there was that little thing involving Galileo and later Pio Nono's "Errors" but for the most part we accept both.
So instead I started this for bed-time reading: The story of a yuppie housewife (15th century style) with a penchant for ostentatious piety. Fortunately, she a pretty good memory, and late in her life she dictated her autobiography. Memoires of a Midieval Woman is a retelling of the original, with frequent quotes in 15th Century English. The editor/author, Louise Collis, is an entertaining writer herself and has an amusingly clear-eyed view of her subject.
The medieval woman book sounds interesting. I was just a tad confused by your post, though. Is it a book that is supposed to look like an autobiography, but it is actually historical fiction, or is it actually an autobiography with some notes, etc. added?
The midieval woman, Margery Kemp, wrote (dictated actually; she was illiterate) her autobiography sometime around 1450. Between the archaic language and Kemp's status as an unreliable narrator, a modern scholar, Louise Collis, decided to use Kemp's book as the core of an extended look at everyday life in 15th Century Europe. She uses other sources to add detail to Kemp's account and editorializes throughout.
Tons of end-of-semester portfolios for Freshman composition. Next week, as a relief, I think I'll either read Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit or a couple Douglas Adams books.
The portfolios were for the most part cogent and well-argued, so I opted for the Douglas Adams option. Half-way through Restaurant as we speaked, having never read any but the first in the 5-book trilogy.
The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes. The story of the founding of the land of sunshine and sharks, Australia.
copping the 700th post (maybe time to start Volume III?) with this one, which I got at my public library. She's probably the best writer on western religions I can think of, and this is her autobiography that picks up with the years after she left the convent in 1968.