This memoir records the story of the author's personal journey toward a life of university teaching and probes that story in reflective essays on a variety of subjects. One group of essays has to do with the characteristic activities and institutional setting of a professor. Other essays explore ways of experiencing the world as mysterious, beautiful, and tragic. One piece offers a rather somber account of current ways in which the American experiment in democracy is in peril. Scraps of what looks like an intellectual autobiography are scattered over the pages of the narrative, recalling the puzzles that gave rise to a number of writing projects. In a way this is a book of paradoxes and antitheses. Janus-like, it faces toward the past and the future. It offers generalized convictions and specific observations, treats both the ordinary themes of life experience and tangled esoterica, and presents both the experiences of an individual and an analysis of educational institutions. As a whole, the book invites readers to join the author in "thinking about things."

This memoir records the story of the author's personal journey toward a life of university teaching and probes that story in reflective essays on a variety of subjects. One group of essays has to do with the characteristic activities and institutional setting of a professor. Other essays explore ways of experiencing the world as mysterious, beautiful, and tragic. One piece offers a rather somber account of current ways in which the American experiment in democracy is in peril. Scraps of what looks like an intellectual autobiography are scattered over the pages of the narrative, recalling the puzzles that gave rise to a number of writing projects. In a way this is a book of paradoxes and antitheses. Janus-like, it faces toward the past and the future. It offers generalized convictions and specific observations, treats both the ordinary themes of life experience and tangled esoterica, and presents both the experiences of an individual and an analysis of educational institutions. As a whole, the book invites readers to join the author in "thinking about things."

The "summer sermons" have been delivered in the Presbyterian Church of Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania, over a period of fifteen years. When someone first arrives in Eagles Mere for the summer, people ask how their "winter" has been--winter meaning the whole time that has elapsed since the previous summer. In the author's case, "winter" means Nashville, Tennessee, where he has lived since 1965 when he joined the faculty of Vanderbilt Divinity School, retiring after thirty-eight years. "Winter Thoughts" consists of autobiographical reflections on three topics: lives, theologies, and politics. The lives are those of Peter and Eva Hodgson. The longest section, "Theologies," describes the various influences and directions the author's work has taken in systematic and historical theology. "Politics" reflects on the decline of the liberal democratic consensus. The whole is loosely held together by an underlying question: How is God efficaciously present in history without violating the fabric of history?

A comparative study of genetic testing for breast and ovarian cancer in the United States and Britain that shows the importance of national context in the development and use of science and technology even in an era of globalization. In Building Genetic Medicine, Shobita Parthasarathy shows how, even in an era of globalization, national context is playing an important role in the development and use of genetic technologies. Focusing on the development and deployment of genetic testing for breast and ovarian cancer (known as BRCA testing) in the United States and Britain, Parthasarathy develops a comparative analysis framework in order to investigate how national “toolkits” shape both regulations and the architectures of technologies and uses this framework to assess the implications of new genetic technologies. Parthasarathy argues that differences in the American and British approaches to health care and commercialization of research led to the establishment of different BRCA services in the two countries. In Britain, the technology was available through the National Health Service as an integrated program of counseling and laboratory analysis, and was viewed as a potentially cost-effective form of preventive care. In the United States, although BRCA testing was initially offered by a number of providers, one company eventually became the sole provider of a test available to consumers on demand. Parthasarathy draws lessons for the future of genetic medicine from these cross-national differences, and discusses the ways in which comparative case studies can inform policy-making efforts in science and technology.