Books

Is our people's God jealous of your people's God? Should religion unite us or divide us? Is our view of your God driven by theology, or is it shaped by whether we want to trade with you or take your land? Why can't we all just get along, anyway?

Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON

"The Evolution of God," your new book on the history of religion, strikes me as a welcome antidote to the stream of books by atheists that have become best sellers in recent years. Doesn't it seem as if atheism has become its own form of fundamentalism?

In 1914, in defiance of his middle-class landowning family, a young white man named James Morgan Richardson married a light-skinned black woman named Edna Howell. Over more than twenty years of marriage, they formed a strong family and built a house at the end of a winding sandy road in South Alabama, a place where their safety from the hostile world around them was assured, and where they developed a unique racial and cultural identity. Jim and Edna Richardson were… more

In The House At The End Of The Road, W. Ralph Eubanks tells the story of his white grandfather, James Morgan Richardson, and black grandmother, Edna Howell. Jim and Edna married around 1914, in defiance of his middle-class family.

Join us as journalist Nick Schmidle, who was deported from Pakistan in January 2008 after writing a controversial New York Times Magazine article entitled

Mark Arax is a great reporter. He has an ear for a good story. He knows where the action is, and the remarkable level of detail he captures tells us he's as tenacious and unrelenting as the most hard-boiled noir detective. He's also clearly an obsessive character, particularly enthralled by dashed dreams and hopeless causes, and in "West of the West" -- 10 loosely knit essays and an epilogue -- it's sometimes not clear where his story ends and California's… more

In To Live or to Perish Forever Nicholas Schmidle takes readers to Pakistan's rioting streets, to Taliban camps in the North-West Frontier Province, and on many surprising adventures as he provides a contemporary history of this country long riven by internal conflict. With the intimacy and good humor available only to the most fearless and open-eyed reporters, Schmidle narrates this turbulent period of Pakistan's recent history, a time when Americans began to realize that Pakistan's fate is inextricably linked with… more

... a richly textured and highly readable exploration of the inner Roosevelt, presented with analytical acuity and flashes of originality; and “The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century,” by Steve Coll, an epic tale extending far beyond ...

McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld is the dark, riveting journey through the panoply of criminal organizations flourishing in an increasingly globalized world, reaching from the sex trade in Bulgaria and internet fraud in Nigeria to the ‘caviar mafia’ in Central Asia and marijuana markets in British Columbia.