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Hanukkah Books: A Treat for Everyone
This year’s assortment of new releases for Hanukkah is not too different from one of Hanukkah’s favorite treats, latkes. Some are big, some small, some thinner, some fatter, but all are tasty and worth having, including a superbly intricate pop-up book, the story of a boy with an autistic brother, a new tale about Engineer Ari, two photograph books new in paperback, a title featuring the Golem, new lyrics for a traditional Hannukah song, and a retelling of the classic story of the holiday.
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Christian Children's Series Sells One Million
Concordia Publishing House, the publishing arm of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, has announced that its bestselling children's series, God, I Need to Talk to You About... has reached the 1 million mark in sales. The series, for readers ages 4–7, launched in 1984 with eight titles.
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Christian Fiction for African-Americans: A Dilemma
Along with the general popularity of the Christian and inspirational fiction genre, the visibility of African-American authors who write Christian-themed stories has increased. But some authors and editors complain that the category can present a dilemma. While African-American readers often actively search out Christian fiction, readers of other backgrounds may reject books with a blatant religious slant. And some black writers looking to attract nonblack readers feel stuck in a double bind, noting that often those readers are not only turned off by the “Christian fiction” label but sometimes feel uncomfortable looking for titles in the African-American section of the book store.
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Academic Religion Meetings Reunite, Publishers Rejoice
Thousands of religion scholars descended on San Francisco Nov. 19-22 for the annual meetings of their largest professional groups, the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature, and publishers were relieved to once again be part of a combined book exhibit, instead of having to staff and ship to separate meetings.
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Editor’s Note
We’ve just returned from the annual meetings of the two largest learned societies for scholars of religion and biblical studies, and the love of the writing, making, selling, and buying books was much on display. Academic publishing is as challenged as publishing in general, and in some ways more so, with the added complications of classroom use. Everyone—publishers, professors, students—is scratching their heads about how or whether e-books will change what they do (though no one believes the printed book will vanish anytime soon). Right now there are only questions, and lots of them. The answers are somewhere down the road, as technical innovation and creative publishing continue to alter the landscape.
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It Is Written: News in Bibles and Sacred Texts
Saint Benedict publishes NABRE as its first e-book; Common English Bible Blog Tour spans the holidays; Cook is updating The Toddler’s Bible; Zondervan’s NIV Once-a-Day Bible releases.
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December 2011 Christian Bestsellers: Adult, Children's, Bibles
Sarah Young bounces back to #1; Billy Graham on aging debuts at #3; Rosenberg’s latest Middle East novel comes in at #5; the first Christmas books of the season; Bible storybooks for kids; and Bibles for all ages in all colors, shapes, and sizes.
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Short Takes
Abingdon hires new publicity manager, releases Advent app; Eerdmans promotes Dykstra; Munce Group celebrates 20 years; Baker fiction titles selected by LJ; IVP recognized as a green business; Richard Foster draws 225 to signing; Worthy acquires new book from John Hagee; Christy nominations open; Pilgrim Press has new publisher; Zondervan releases One Thousand Gifts app; Concordia wins Baldrige Award; two Master Books honored.
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Religion in Review
Urging attention in an age of distraction; a church runs a sexperiment; facing down the rhino to find the life you want; Buddhist wisdom for the pursuit of happiness; can the Divine Feminine save the world?; evangelicals weren’t always right-wingers; a history of Inquisitions; bar-hopping with the Buddha; do we get three free sins?; learning to be still in the midst of life’s losses; intimacy with God through the five senses; Joseph Smith on death and Heaven; for kids, parables and Tim Tebow; plus Web exclusive reviews.
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Julia Scheeres: The Untold Story of Jonestown
Journalist Julia Scheeres stumbled into writing her new book quite by accident. Following up her remarkable memoir, Jesus Land (2005), which described the confinement and terrors of growing up in a conservative Christian family in a small Indiana town, Scheeres was writing a satirical novel about a charismatic preacher who takes over a fictional Indiana town. As she was writing she remembered that Jim Jones was from Indiana; she Googled him and discovered that the FBI had just released 50,000 pages of documents that were found in Jonestown after the massacre.
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Douglas A. Knight: Wrong about Job
Job may be the epitome of Biblical distress, but he did not suffer in silence, says Douglas A. Knight, professor of Jewish studies at Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science. He tells RBL, “People today think of Job as patient. He was not. That Job was only in two chapters. The rest of the book he was asking questions and demanding of God to give an account of why he is suffering when he did nothing wrong.”
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N.T. Wright: On Jesus and Writing
RBL caught up with prolific Bible scholar N.T. Wright after he finished some morning talks at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and before an interview with another magazine. He had spoken at the mega-church Willow Creek in suburban Chicago the day before. The former bishop of Durham, now research professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of St. Andrews, has three new books this fall: Revelation for Everyone (Westminster John Knox, Oct.); Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters (HarperOne, Nov.); and The Kingdom New Testament (HarperOne, Nov.), Wright’s own translation.
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New Era Opens on Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The International Bonhoeffer Society and Fortress Press earlier this month (Nov. 13-15) marked the upcoming completion of the translations of the entire Dietrich Bonhoeffer corpus into English, with a celebration and conference at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The conference, Bonhoeffer for Coming Generations, coincided with the release in English of Theological Education Underground: 1937-1940, volume 15 of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works.
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Stunned Reaction To HarperCollins’s Acquisition of Thomas Nelson
Last week HarperCollins announced it was acquiring Thomas Nelson Publishers, a move that stunned many in the industry, since Harper already owns Nelson’s biggest competitor, Zondervan. The two are the largest Christian publishers in the world, and although they have definite differences—Zondervan is more narrowly focused on the Christian market and on materials for churches, while Nelson publishes more broadly, in categories such as business and personal finance—they are direct competitors in the Bible market.
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Editor’s Note
The annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature—the largest learned societies in the field—are upon us, and publishers of academic religion books are gearing up for what is their most important event of the year. They’ll be presenting and selling their books (see our preview in the October 10 issue of PW) to scholars and scouting for new authors and projects; we’ll be looking for trends and hot topics, as well as talking to publishers about some of the challenges in academic publishing these days. Look for our coverage of the meetings in the November 23 issue of RBL. And stay tuned for our picks of the best religion books of the year. We’ll unveil them in the November 7 issue of PW.
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Short Takes
Recent media magnet Robert Jeffress is on Bill Maher's show; David C. Cook releases a film series featuring author Ed Dobson; Baylor author is interviewed by the New York Times; Joel Rosenberg tops 2.5 million in sales; veteran Tyndale publicist retires; Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Awards are open for nominations.
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It Is Written: News in Sacred Texts
A handwritten and illuminated Bible is completed after fifteen years; Nelson’s Expanded Bible debuts; N.T. Wright translates the New Testament; a new translation of the I Ching from Tuttle; Monkfish offers key Buddhist text.
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Religion in Review
Billy Graham offers wisdom on the challenges and opportunities of aging; philosopher Alvin Plantinga looks at theories that have challenged religion; examining how religion shaped American leftists; spirit medicine to heal the planet; creating a meaningful marriage; a look at Ten Popes Who Shook the World; the truth about Real Marriage; an NPR reporter seeks God; children’s books on angels and prayer; a novel of medieval England; plus Web exclusive reviews of books for adults and children.
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T.J. Wray: What the Bible Says about Heaven and Hell
The afterlife has inspired any number of interpretations, but what the Bible actually says about Heaven and Hell may come as a surprise, says T.J. Wray, associate professor of religious studies at Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I. “There is no Satan the Hebrew Bible,” Wray points out. She adds that though Satan is clearly present in the New Testament, he is not quite the figure of popular imagination. “Most of our ideas about Hell and the Devil come from later works,” she says, offering Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno as obvious examples. “Many times works outside the Bible begin to bleed inside the narrative.” Peeling away layers of non-biblical interpretations and concentrating on the actual text form the core of Wray’s popular college courses. That approach is also central to her new book, What the Bible Really Tells Us: The Essential Guide to Biblical Literacy (Rowman & Littlefield, Oct.).
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Craig Harline: A Conversion in the Family
It was back in 2000 that Craig Harline found the journal of a young man named Jacob Rolandus, who would become the main subject of his new book, Conversions: Two Family Stories from the Reformation and Modern America (Yale, Sept.). In other words, he’s been thinking about Jacob Rolandus for a long, long time. “The way I’ve always worked is to go into archives to look for interesting documents to do with religious history and rather obscure people,” explains Harline, a professor of history at Brigham Young University since 1992. “When I found Jacob’s journal and it was so long and detailed I got interested. Part of it was in code and that always makes it interesting, too.”
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