Prison is a strange land, a land of deep heartache and sadness. Over two million people are serving prison time in America. Millions more are carrying the mark of prison as those who were formerly incarcerated, including large numbers of men and women who have been released on parole. In the midst of such human misery, when "loosened tongues" are freed to sing of God's redemptive love, grief is diminished and the prison loses its power.

Salvatore tells the story of C.L. Franklin, father of Aretha, alongside the rise of gospel, blues, and soul music, with a cast of characters including Martin Luther King, Jr., B.B. King, Art Tatum, Coleman Young, Jesse Jackson, Clara Ward, Mahalia Jackson, and many others.

Singing in a Strange Land is a book of imaginative journey, religious resources, and suggestions for action designed especially for North American Christians to pray with poor and marginalized, and to act for justice on their behalf. Its underlying theme is orthodox: that spirituality and action for justice are necessarily interconnected in the Christian faith. Seven imaginative narratives elicit a sense of the connections that both bind people socially and create and maintain conditions that foster poverty and marginalization. Biblical reflections and prayers from world religions provide a sound basis upon with readers can begin to pray with those who fall outside the mainstream.

Experiences of the author during her sojourn among the natives on a rubber plantation in Liberia.

Music and song are important parts of worship, and hymns have long played a central role in Protestant history. This book explores the ways in which Protestants use hymns to clarify their identity and define their relationship with America and Christianity.

Across the United States, Jews come together every week to sing and pray in a wide variety of worship communities. Through this music, made by and for ordinary folk, these worshippers define and re-define their relationship to the continuity of Jewish tradition and the realities of American life. Combining oral history with an analysis of recordings, The Lord's Song in a Strange Land examines this tradition incontemporary Jewish worship and explores the diverse links between the music and both spiritual and cultural identities. Alive with detail, the book focuses on metropolitan Boston and covers the full range of Jewish communities there, from Hasidim to Jewish college students in a transdenominational setting. It documents a remarkably fluid musical tradition, where melodies are often shared, where sources can be as diverse as Sufi chant, Christmas carols, rock and roll, and Israeli popular music, and where the meaning of a song can change from one block to the next.

A prizewinning historian pens this biography of C.L. Franklin, the greatest African-American preacher of his generation, father of Aretha, and civil rights pioneer.