Pentecostalism

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Sandra Macpherson

In this unconventional study of the 18th century novel, Macpherson (English, the Ohio State University) argues that accident and injury, rather than volition and intention, are key elements in the early realist novel's view of personhood and belonging. She offers fresh readings of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, demonstrating that the liberal counter-tradition which she explores emerges from 18th century novels based on questions about agency and from contemporary developments in laws of 'strict liability.'

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James Patterson and Peter Kim

Results of a private survey regarding American thoughts and feelings on such topics as sex, crime, punishment, rape, the death penalty, etc.

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Richard Rorty

In this book Rorty argues that thinkers such as Nietzsche, Freud, and Wittgenstein have enabled societies to see themselves as historical contingencies, rather than as expressions of underlying, ahistorical human nature or as realizations of suprahistorical goals. This ironic perspective on the human condition is valuable on a private level, although it cannot advance the social or political goals of liberalism. In fact Rorty believes that it is literature not philosophy that can do this, by promoting a genuine sense of human solidarity. A truly liberal culture, acutely aware of its own historical contingency, would fuse the private, individual freedom of the ironic, philosophical perspective with the public project of human solidarity as it is engendered through the insights and sensibilities of great writers. The book has a characteristically wide range of reference from philosophy through social theory to literary criticism. It confirms Rorty's status as a uniquely subtle theorist, whose writing will prove absorbing to academic and nonacademic readers alike.

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Mary E. Abrums

Tells the stories of a group of African-American women who belong to a small storefront church in central Seattle, describing how they have endured poverty, racism, and the challenges of raising their children.