Journey to the Common GoodBy Walter Brueggemann (Westminster John Knox, 2010)In this compact study, biblical theologian Walter Brueggemann traces a remarkably similar pattern of cause and effect between the crises in today’s world—chronic war-making, ecological destruction, economic injustices—and the defining events in Jewish tradition.Brueggemann’s central focus is the Exodus-Sinai story, visite

The Ides of MarchDirected by George Clooney (Columbia Pictures, 2011)As the title suggests, George Clooney’s cynical drama about a presidential campaign is a tale of loyalties and betrayals, both personal and political, and of the hollow victories achieved through these various treasons.In the days and weeks leading up to the Democratic primary in Ohio, each of the three central characters espouse

How to Go From a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in 95 Difficult StepsBy Christian Smith (Cascade Books, 2011)Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions argued that scientific inquiry depended on frameworks of assumptions that he called “paradigms.” Periodically, the process of inquiry uncovers “anomalies” in those frameworks that lead to their being overturned.In How