Trade Books for Courses :: Trade Books For Courses: Religion Religion Books

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American Jesus

How the Son of God Became a National Icon

Stephen Prothero Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks

A Chicago Tribune Best Nonfiction Book

"[Prothero presents] a cultural history of Jesus as American image and icon [in] vivid, engrossing detail . . . Within his narrative, ostensibly a popular and often entertaining account of the rendering of Jesus in song, story, and spirituality, [the author] has embedded a fairly detailed history of American religion itself."—R. Scott Appleby, The New York Times

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Hardcover : $24.99 Buy	Surviving the Dragon A Tibetan Lama's Account of 40 Years under Chinese Rule Arjia Rinpoche, Forward by His Holiness the Dalai Lama Rodale Books On a peaceful summer day in 1952, ten monks on horseback arrived at a traditional nomad tent in northeastern Tibet where they offered the parents of a...

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A Novel

Marilynne Robinson Picador

"It is a book unsparing in its acknowledgement of sin and unstinting in its belief in the possibility of grave. It is at once hard and forgiving, bitter and joyful, fanatical and serene. It is a wild, eccentric radical work of literature that grows out of the broadest, most fertile, most familiar native literary tradition. What a strange old book it is.”—The New York Times Book Review

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L.A. Times Book Prize - Winner
National Book Awards - Finalist

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What Do Muslims Believe?

The Roots and Realities of Modern Islam

Ziauddin Sardar Walker & Company

"Just over 100 pages of tightly formatted highlights of the history, significance and practice of the [faith] and concludes with suggestions for further study . . . well-indexed . . . offer[s] more than facts . . . In describing how Muslims are expected to follow the daily life practices of the Prophet by how they eat, dress, even clean their teeth, Sardar adds that among his followers, 'the Prophet's generosity and forgiveness, compassion and civility, his strong sense of justice and equality, his passion for thought and learning are often conspicuous by their absence.'"—Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA Today

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The Argumentative Indian

Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity

Amartya Sen Picador

"[A] profoundly wise and engaging collection of essays . . . While the pieces in The Argumentative Indian are, as one would expect, enjoyably erudite and full of intriguing insights, they are not written in academic language . . . The book is formed from a series of elegantly written historical and moral-philosophical essays which together cohere to form a single original argument: that India is and has always been 'a joint construction in which members of different communities were involved.'"—William Dalrymple, The New York Review of Books

Trade Paperback : $11.00 Buy	Buddhism and Zen Nyogen Senzaki and Ruth Strout McCandless; With a Foreword by Robert Aitken North Point Press Written for the neophyte who has no prior knowledge of the subject, Buddhism and Zen defines basic terms, translates key words, and answers the ten most...

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Rumspringa

To Be or Not to Be Amish

Tom Shachtman North Point Press

"Mr. Shachtman's wonderfully rich portrait and history of the Amish as a people and a faith helps to show why one of the strictest religious communities in America is better at holding a flock than some of the most liberal."—Donna Freitas, The Wall Street Journal

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How We Believe, 2nd Edition

Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God

With a New Afterword; Michael Shermer Holt Paperbacks

"Well-researched, comprehensive, and persuasive. How We Believe is especially notable in stressing the great power of narration as the vehicle of complex thought . . . The humanistic, evolutionary explanation may in fact be ready to break out of the intellectually remote domain in which it has been developed and too long hemmed-in."—Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University, author of Consilience

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Why Darwin Matters

The Case Against Intelligent Design

Michael Shermer Holt Paperbacks

"Shermer lays out the case for evolution cogently, if not in great detail, in Why Darwin Matters. He then does what many scientists are unwilling to do: He engages and answers the arguments of people who don't accept evolution. He does this with care and respect but without any false even-handedness . . . With zest but without gloating, Shermer takes on the arguments against evolution and mows them down."—David Brown, The Washington Post Book World

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Trade Paperback : $15.99 Buy	When Men Become Gods Mormon Polygamist Warren Jeffs, His Cult of Fear, and the Women Who Fought Back Stephen Singular St. Martin's Griffin Features an all-new chapter for this edition New York Times bestselling author Stephen Singular provides an inside look at the Mormon polygamist sect that...

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The Bhagavad Gita

A New Translation

George Thompson North Point Press

"George Thompson's new translation is a gift to teachers, students and seekers. The prose is lucid, lively, and admirably literal. The key metaphors are skillfully rendered, the core teachings precisely delineated; most important, the philosophical and spiritual radiance of the original shines through."—Carol Zaleski, Professor of World Religions, Smith College

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The Western Church in the Middle Ages

John A. F. Thomson Bloomsbury USA

From its origins in the ancient world as a rival to traditional paganism, Christianity has grown to become one of the most widely practiced religions in the world. Western Church in the Middle Ages explores how the Church took over spiritual control of Western Europe in the Middle Ages to become the very foundation of life—setting a moral agenda for all of society and dominating its intellectual pursuits.

Trade Paperback : $17.00 Buy	Faith at War A Journey on the Frontlines of Islam, from Baghdad to Timbuktu Yaroslav Trofimov Picador "This book deserves a wide readership. The Muslims don't understand us, we don't understand them. Faith at War goes a long way toward solving the second part of that dismal equation."—Philip Caputo, The New York Times Book Review

Trade Paperback : $14.95 Buy	The Empty Mirror Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery Janwillem van de Wetering St. Martin's Griffin A small and admiral memoir that records the experiences of a young Dutch student who spent a year and a half as a novice monk in a Japanese Zen Buddhist...

Trade Paperback : $15.99 Buy	Afterzen Experiences of a Zen Student Out on His Ear Janwillem van de Wetering St. Martin's Griffin In Afterzen, van de Wetering provides unorthodox solutions to a collection of classical koans found in Walter Nowick's The Wisteria Triangle. Van de Wetering...

Trade Paperback : $19.99 Buy	Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit 101 Best-Loved Psalms, Gospel Hymns & Spiritual Songs of the African-American Church Gwendolin Sims Warren Holt Paperbacks For over 200 years in African-American churches throughout the country, gospel and spiritual music have offered solace and been a source of celebration,...

Trade Paperback : $26.00 Buy	A Portrait of Egypt A Journey Through the World of Militant Islam Mary Anne Weaver Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks For centuries Egypt has been a citadel of Islamic learning and thought, and since the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty in 1979, it has been of...

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Blue Windows

A Christian Science Childhood

Barbara Wilson Picador

From Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christian Science, to Deepak Chopra, Americans have struggled with the connection between health and...

Lambda Literary Awards - Winner - Lesbian Biography

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Awards

Trade Paperback : $20.99 Buy	Before the Flood The Biblical Flood as a Real Event and How It Changed the Course of Civilization Ian Wilson St. Martin's Griffin In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken...

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How Jesus Became Christian

Barrie Wilson, Ph.D. St. Martin's Griffin

"Wilson, professor of religious studies at Toronto's York University . . . helpfully surveys the political, social and religious contexts of ancient Palestine, demonstrating that the religion of James, the brother of Jesus, was much closer to the religious practice of Jesus himself, but that the followers of Paul suppressed Jesus' teachings in favor of their own leader . . . Wilson's instructive book introduces important questions about early Christianity for those unfamiliar with the debates about the historical Jesus."—Publishers Weekly

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Taking Back Islam

American Muslims Reclaim Their Faith

Edited by Michael Wolfe and the Producers of Beliefnet Rodale Books

Winner of the Wilbur Award for Best Religion Book

"This intelligent, thoughtful collection of writings from dozens of contributors is the thinking person's guide to Islam in a post-9/11 America. It is only fitting that a major world religion be represented by multiple voices. Wolfe gathers excerpts from postings to the Beliefnet Web site, as well as brief essays from established authorities such as Karen Armstrong, practitioners like Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), and new voices such as Asma Hasan and Aasma Khan . . . The book works well for both Muslim and non-Muslim readers. It is both an exploration of contemporary Islam (Has it been hijacked by extremists? Is it violent? Can Islamic states be democratic?) and a call for Muslims to reclaim their faith by mobilizing the moderate, seemingly silent, majority . . . An eye-opening survey of the minds and passions of progressive Muslims in the United States [that] offers hope for greater interfaith understanding."—Publishers Weekly

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