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Poynteronline’s Book Babes wonder how much significance lies in editor Sam Tanenhaus’ decision not only to review a spiritual memoir in The New York Times Book Review, but even to open the review on the cover. Granted, various readers may consider either decision equally blasphemous to the Times’ orthodoxies.
You might think more journalists would like to interview Randall Sullivan about his latest book, The Miracle Detective, or to review it. The irony in his life is rich: a writer for Rolling Stone and Men’s Journal, author of a book investigating the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., and the son of atheists looks into possible apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Medjugorje and winds up a believer.
Will the release of a paperback edition of “The Da Vinci Code” be a sign of the End Times? Will everyone who refuses to read Dan Brown’s anti-Bible masterwork be automatically raptured?
It’s difficult to decide who is more insufferable when Deborah Solomon of The New York Times Magazine interviews former nun Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God and, most recently, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness.
This week’s Time makes it official: the Socrates Café movement has trickled down to Middle America. You have to respect Christopher Phillips, founder of the Society for Philosophical Inquiry. He met and fell in love with his wife, Cecilia, when she was the only person to show up for one of his earlier cafés. Now they travel the country and live out of suitcases to spread the concept of everyday people gathering to discuss big questions.
Reason‘s Web editor, Tim Cavanaugh, reaches wryly contrarian conclusions in his review of The Atheist: Madalyn Murray O’Hair by Bryan F. Le Beau. Cavanaugh builds his case with such delicious pacing that cutting to his money paragraphs almost demands a spoiler alert.
