Good God! (And Other Follies) takes a critical and satirical look at the wave of religiosity now sweeping the country. From faith-based initiatives to bans on stem cell research, from public postings of the Ten Commandments to attacks on evolution, American godliness has apparently never had it so good. Much of this behavior and even more of the God-talk accompanying it, whether fueled by passionate faith, cultural resentment, or political opportunism, is intellectually absurd. This book points out some of the features of the absurdity and moves beyond them back to the underlying fallacies," contradictions, and, at times, sheer nonsense that beset not only Christianity, but also Judaism and Islam as well. Book jacket.

This remarkably illuminating portrait of Tennessee Williams lifts the veil on the heart and soul of his artistic inspiration: the unspoken collaboration between playwright and actor. At a low moment in Williams’s life, he summoned to New Orleans a young twenty-year-old writer, James Grissom, who had written him a letter asking for advice. After a long, intense conversation, Williams sent Grissom on a journey on his behalf to find out if he or his work had mattered to those who had so deeply mattered to him. Among the more than seventy women and men with whom Grissom talked were giants of American theater and film: Lillian Gish, (“the escort who brought me to Blanche”), Jessica Tandy (the original Blanche DuBois on Broadway), Eva Le Gallienne (“She was a stone against which I could rub my talent and feel that it became sharper”), Maureen Stapleton, Julie Harris, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando, John Gielgud, and many more. Follies of God provides dazzling insight into how Williams conjured the dramatic characters and plays that so transformed American theater.

It's not that the dignified and rarefied old Episcopal Church quit believing in God. It's that the God you increasingly hear spoken of in Episcopal circles is infinitely tolerant and given to sudden changes of mind - not quite the divinity you thought you were reading about in the scriptures. Episcopalians of the twenty-first century, like their counterparts in other churches of the so-called American mainline - such as Methodists and Presbyterians - seem to prefer a God that the culture would be proud of, as against a culture that God would be proud of. While they work to rebrand and reshelve orthodox Christianity for the modern market, exponents of the new thinking are busy reducing mainstream Christian witness to a shadow of its former self. Mortal Follies is the story of the Episcopal Church's mad dash to catch up with a secular culture fond of self-expression and blissfully relaxed as to norms and truths. An Episcopal layman, William Murchison details how leaders of his church, starting in the late 1960s, looked over the culture of liberation, liked what they saw, and went skipping along with the shifting cultural mood - especially when the culture demanded that the church account for its sins of heterosexism and racism. Episcopalians have blended so deeply into the cultural woodwork that it's hard sometimes to remember that it all began as a divine calling to the normative and the eternal.

This original NCL collection brings together Leacock’s comic masterpieces, the many varieties of his remarkable humour. In one story a young man is seized by fear as he attempts to open his first bank account. In another, Lord Ronald, the beloved of Gertrude the Governess, “flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.” In a third, the Mariposa Belle sinks in the shallow waters of Lake Wissanotti. Completing these timeless comedies are two of Leacock’s own essays on humour.

This original NCL collection brings together Leacock’s comic masterpieces, the many varieties of his remarkable humour. In one story a young man is seized by fear as he attempts to open his first bank account. In another, Lord Ronald, the beloved of Gertrude the Governess, “flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.” In a third, the Mariposa Belle sinks in the shallow waters of Lake Wissanotti. Completing these timeless comedies are two of Leacock’s own essays on humour.

An empirical investigation of financial crises during the last 800 years.

The Blue Salon and Other Follies vividly recounts the 1930s childhood of Vernon Katz in Lippe, Germany. Through the eyes of an observant young boy, the author reveals how Jewish life in a country town gradually eroded as the Nazis came to power. With a dry wit, the author recaptures his childhood and family life through light-hearted anecdotes and pictures, as well as dramatic events, including his mothers escapes from imprisonment and death by the Nazis. The title, The Blue Salon and Other Follies refers to the inability of Vernon Katzs parents in the early years of Nazi rule to comprehend the dangers that lie ahead. Rooted in German soil and having built a successful brush factory together, they think it is all a passing phase. Fifteen months after Hitlers rise to power, when a tribute to Vernon Katz father appears in a German business journal, his mother joyfully redecorates the house and creates the luxurious blue salon. When the Nuremberg Laws are enacted, the situation darkens. Vernon Katz, at age ten, is stoned, persecuted and terrified by his Nazi teachers. Ultimately, on Kristallnacht, the authors father is imprisoned at the Buchenwald concentration camp. The family doctor sends Mrs. Katz to a mental institution to protect her from the Gestapo. As the Nazis grow even more insidious, the family must take desperate measures to try to save themselves. The Blue Salon and Other Follies lovingly recreates small-town Jewish life in Germany before World War II and dramatically depicts the persecution, struggles and ultimate survival of one Jewish family. A literary gem and an unforgettable read,The Blue Salon and Other Follies will make you laugh and cry. It is a universal coming-of-age tale in which a boy fights adversity with courage and humor.