compiled by David Breeden

Bad for Us: The Lure of Self-Harm. John Portmann. (Beacon Press 2004) BF637.S37 P67 2004.

Why do we choose self-destructive behavior? From affairs to raves, Portmann considers why we do just what we ought not.

Embodied Care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Feminist Ethics. Maurice Hamington. (U of Illinois Press 2004) BJ1475 .H37 2004.

Based in Merleau-Ponty's reconsideration of mind-body dualism, Hamington argues that ethics must be based in a consideration of the body.

The Twilight of Atheism: the Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World. Alister McGrath. (Doubleday 2004) BL2747.3 .M355 2004.

Theologian Alister McGrath looks at the freedom atheism offered eighteenth-century Europe, tracing the rise of the idea through its mid-twentieth century high-water mark and its sudden collapse as the millennium approached.

In Search of the Good Life: The Ethics of Globalization. Rebecca Todd Peters. (Continuum 2004) BR115.G59 P48 2004.

Social ethicist Rebecca Todd Peters examines the popularity of the concept of globalization after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and its sudden ominous critique on September 11th 2001. Peters argues that we are left today with four very different, and finally mistaken, views of what globalization means to human society.

Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Martha C. Nussbaum. (Harvard UP 2006) HM671.N87 2006.

Nussbaum argues that John Locke's concept of the social contract, bolstered by John Rawls into our own time, cannot address social justice today. A cutting-edge look at social ethics.

The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition. Huston Smith. (HarperSanFrancisco 2005) BR121.3 .S65 2005.

After a lifetime of work in world religions, Smith turns his formidable knowledge and folksy explication on his own religious tradition. Arguing that both the conservatives and the liberals miss the point, Smith examines first millennium-Christianity and critiques the post-modern age.

Roots for Radicals: Organizing for Power, Action, and Justice. Edward T. Chambers with Michael A. Cowan. (Continuum 2003) HN90.C6 C455 2003.

As head of Industrial Areas Foundation, Edward T. Chambers is one of the most successful grass-roots organizers in our time. Part memoir, part political theory, this is a rousing view from the disciple of Saul Alinsky. Why lead when you can incite?

God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It. Jim Wallis. (HarperSanFrancisco 2005) BR526 .W265 2005.

This bestseller from evangelical minister and public theologian Jim Wallis asks a simple question: Why can't liberals talk about values? Wallis believes social justice should be on the front burner of the national agenda.

The Woman in the Shaman's Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion and Medicine. Barbara Tedlock. (Bantam Books 2005) BL2370.S5 T43 2005.

Anthropologist and shaman Barbara Tedlock believes that the role of women in shamanism has been suppressed. Drawing on diverse sources and weaving her own story through the text, Tedlock presents a compelling case for a hidden tradition.

This is a compendium of three books considering in turn the life and times of Gautama Buddha, the Dhammapada, or founding text of Buddhist thought, and the broader philosophical impact of Buddhism in a post-modern context.

Cremation in America. Fred Rosen.  (Prometheus Books 2004) GT3331 .U6 R67 2004.

Banned by early Christians as sacrilegious, cremation has enjoyed a slow but steady increase in popularity since the late-nineteenth century in the Untied States. Part social history, part expose, this book takes a hard look at the business of death in America.

God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist. William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. (Oxford UP 2004); BT103.C73 2004

Professor Craig and Professor Armstrong filled auditoriums in the United Kingdom with their lively debates about ethics, science, and resurrection. In this book the two preserve the insight and wit of their live interchanges but deepen the focus for the printed text.