From the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, Peyman Vahabzadeh (Victoria): Measure and Democracy in the Age of Politics of Fright; Matthew Abraham ( DePaul): Confronting the Politics of Evasion in an Age of Fright: Democracy, Religious Enthusiasm, and the State; Mario Costa ( Drew): "A Love as Strong as Death": Reconstructing a Politics of Christian Love; Daniel M. Bell, Jr. (LTSS): The Politics of Fear and the Gospel of Life: Jason C. Bivins (NC State): The Religion of Fear: Conservative Evangelicals, Identity, and Antiliberal Pop; William Little (Victoria): The Return of the Sacred Man: Politics, Fundamentalism and Fright; Simon Wood (Nebraska): Islamic Fundamentalism Revised: Ruhollah Khomeini, Mawlana Mawdudi, and the Fundamentalist Paradigm; Rubina Ramji (Ottawa): Women’s Bodies and Islam: Individual Freedoms in a World of Fundamentalisms; and a review of Theology and the Political: The New Debate, ed. Creston Davis, John Milbank, and Slavoj Zizek.
From Dissent, pragmatist hope: A review of Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth by Robert B. Westbrook and Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself: Interviews with Richard Rorty, ed. by Eduardo Mendieta. Richard Rorty tried to rescue analytic philosophy from essentialist abstraction. In doing so, he alienated many peers but won readers across the intellectual world, writes Carlin Romano. A review of Truth and Realism, ed. Patrick Greenough and Michael P. Lynch. Big ideas: A review of The Heart of Things: Applying Philosophy to the 21st Century by AC Grayling; Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein; The Meaning of Life by Terry Eagleton; and A Guide to Philosophy in Six Hours and Fifteen Minutes by Witold Gombrowicz.
A review of Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense by Scott McCredie (and more). When does your brain stop making new neurons? A. Infant; B. 42 Years Old; C. 53 Years Old. According to a controversial theory, electricity is just a side effect of how nerves really operate: by conducting high-density waves of pressure that resemble sound reverberating through a pipe. Unwanted Thoughts: Trying hard not to think about something almost guarantees that it will pop up in your consciousness. A review of I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter. A review of Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics by Gino Segre (and more). Stephen Hawking, whose brilliant mind and robotic voice inspired millions of people to buy his hit book, A Brief History of Time, plans to do it again - but this time for children.
