Daughters of Another Path: Experiences of American Women Choosing Islam

Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

Saba Mahmood · 260 pages

"Politics of Piety is a groundbreaking analysis of Islamist cultural politics through the ethnography of a thriving, grassroots women's piety movement in the mosques of Cairo, Egypt. Unlike those organized Islamist activities that seek to seize or transform the state, this is a moral reform movement whose orthodox practices are commonly viewed as inconsequential to Egypt's political landscape. Sab

In the Land of Believers: An Outsider's Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical Church

Gina Welch · 333 pages

Ever since evangelical Christians rose to national prominence, mainstream America has watched them with a nervous eye, but our understanding hasn't gone beyond the caricatures. Who are evangelicals, really? To find out, Gina Welch, a young secular Jew ("born atheist") from Berkeley, joined Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church. Over the course of nearly two years, Welch immersed herself in th

Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement

Kathryn Joyce · 258 pages

Provides an intimate view of the patriarchy movement. They believe the "biblical" woman wears modest, feminine dress and avoids not only sex but also dating before marriage. She doesn't speak in church, or try to have authority over men. She is a submissive wife who bolsters her husband in his role as spiritual and earthly leader of the family.

Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate

Leila Ahmed · 304 pages

Explores the historical roots of the debate about women in Islamic societies by tracing the developments in Islamic discourses on women and gender up to the present. The book describes the gender systems in place in the Middle East both before and after the rise of Islam.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion

Jonathan Haidt · 473 pages

A groundbreaking investigation into the origins of morality, which turns out to be the basis for religion and politics. The book explains the American culture wars and refutes the "New Atheists."

Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America

Jeff Chu · 353 pages

A writer for Time magazine, after coming out to his parents as a gay man, documents his personal journey, from Brooklyn to California, to discover the God forbidden to him because of his sexuality and understand what the diverse followers of Christ believe about homosexuality. An intellectual, emotional, and spiritual pilgrimage that reveals a nation in crisis.

Infidel

Ayaan Hirsi Ali · 353 pages

"Ultimately a celebration of triumph over adversity, Hirsi Ali's story tells how a bright little girl evolved out of dutiful obedience to become an outspoken, pioneering freedom fighter. As Western governments struggle to balance democratic ideals with religious pressures, no story could be timelier or more significant.--From publisher description."--From source other than the Library of Congress

When God Was a Woman

Merlin Stone · 265 pages

Here, archaeologically documented is the story of the religion of the Goddess. Known by many names, she reigned supreme in the Near and Middle East. How did the change in women's roles come about? By documenting the wholesale rewriting of myth and religious dogmans, Stone details an ancient conspiracy that laid the foundation for one of culture's greatest shams--the legend of Adam and fallen Eve.

God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter

Stephen R. Prothero · 388 pages

Rumspringa: To Be or Not to Be Amish

Tom Shachtman · 286 pages

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

Jon Krakauer · 399 pages

Jon Krakauer's literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. In UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN, he shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders. At the core of his book is an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they receive

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Reza Aslan · 336 pages

Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher walked across the Galilee gathering followers to establish the "Kingdom of God." He was tortured and executed as a state criminal. Within decades, his followers would call him God. Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history's most influential and enigmatic characters by examining Jesus through the lens

Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women

Geraldine Brooks

The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism

Karen Armstrong · 442 pages

"In The Battle for God, Karen Armstrong shows us how and why fundamentalist groups came into existence and what they yearn to accomplish.". "We see the West in the sixteenth century beginning to create an entirely new kind of civilization, which brought in its wake change in every aspect of life - often painful and violent, even if liberating. Armstrong argues that one of the things that changed

god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Christopher Hitchens · 307 pages

In the tradition of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris's recent bestseller, The End of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloq

Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society

Fatema Mernissi, fTm@ lmrnysy · 197 pages

The Fire Next Time

James Baldwin · 120 pages

**From Amazon.com:** A national bestseller when it first appeared in 1963, *The Fire Next Time* galvanized the nation and gave passionate voice to the emerging civil rights movement. At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document. It consists of

The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World

Nawal El-Saadawi · 282 pages

Beschrijving van allerlei aspecten van het vrouw-zijn in Islamitische landen en van de man-vrouw verhouding tegen de achtergrond van het sociale, politieke religieuze leven

Fear and Trembling/Repetition

Soren Kierkegaard · 464 pages

The two books comprised in this volume are in greater demand than any other works of Kierkegaard. This preference is a credit to the public taste, for Kierkegaard himself called them "the most perfect books I have written," though in this commendation he included The Concept of Dread, and later stretched it to include Training in Christianity.

Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion

Sara Miles · 299 pages

Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake-Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia

Dennis Covington · 240 pages

It is Scottsboro, Alabama, in the fall of 1991. A snake-handling preacher by the name of Glendel Buford Summerford has just tried to murder his wife, Darlene, by snakebite. At gunpoint, he forces her to stick her arm in a box of rattlesnakes. She is bitten twice and nearly dies. The trial, which becomes a sensation throughout southern Appalachia, echoes familiar themes from a troubled secular wor

Return of the Pharaoh: Memoir in Nasir's Prison

zynb lGzly · 214 pages

Jews, God and History

Max I. Dimont · 472 pages

The author tells us that twenty years of reading went into the creation of Jews, God and History. Conscientious scholarship is evident in this informative record of Jewish history from its inception 4000 years ago to the present. Mr. Dimont traces the nomadic Jewish tribes from their settlement in the ""Promised Land"" to their ultimate dispersion. He describes the Jewish ""age of reason"" under t

The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam

Fatema Mernissi · 240 pages