The Bible, A Biography

Karen Armstrong lite, again. She tries to cover too much ground, too much time, in such a short book. The heart of the book is showing how the different writings became the book that we know as the Bible and then how different times and people have read and interpreted the Bible.

The best part of the book, I think, is her take on how the religion of the temple became the religion of the book, first in Josiah's remodeling of the temple when Hilkiah suddenly "found" the lost books of Moses, then in the Babylonian captivity, finally with the destruction of the temple by the Romans.

Armstrong carefully maintains that the different strands really represent a rewriting and a reinterpretation of the religion that wasn't really codified until much, much later. The same is true of the Jesus movement that gained momentum when the temple was destroyed and then was codified as part of the state religion after Constantine's conversion.

The rest of the book is about the different ways that the Bible has been read and interpreted, and Armstrong is at pains to show that literalism and "inerrancy" is really a huge mistake that misunderstands what the Bible and historical context is all about. She returns to her long standing thesis that when the mythos side of man's psyche is undervalued or ignored, it will often crop back up in grotesque and strident forms, as has happened since the Enlightenment.

Author: Armstrong, Karen

Date Published: 2007

Length: 212 pp

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Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton is probably the least favorite of the "founding fathers/brothers," but probably the most influential in establishing the American government and the American economy. If Chernow is to be believed, Hamilton almost single-handedly established the executive branch of the government, and then fought like crazy to keep Adams and Jefferson from dismantling what he had accomplished.

Chernow also makes clear that Hamilton's greatness came because Washington was able to keep him in check. When the two went their separate ways, Hamilton became a curmudgeon and really kind of lost a lot of his perspective. He also became a bundle of contradictions, as seen in his increasing religiosity, his affair with Mariah Reynolds, and even his duel with Aaron Burr--he refused to shoot to kill--all the while condemning dueling, especially after his eldest son was killed in a duel. 

A fairly poignant story about his wife Eliza, who was faced with his debts and with raising the family alone after Hamilton was killed. Chernow really does turn Hamilton's critics, especially Jefferson, Madison, and Adams, into buffoons and hypocrites, and at times I felt like he had become Hamilton's publicist and apologist over 200 years after the fact.

Author: Chernow, Ron

Date Published: 2004

Length: 36hr 58min

Narrator: Brick, Scott

The Hobbit

This was a delightful listen on the way to Durango and back, but I'm not really sure why it seemed so important in 1968. Maybe that will come when I reread or listen to the Trilogy as well. Was it Bilbo's growth--the newfound confidence and competence when pressed to it--that he found greatness of soul. And yet he was also such an everyman, preferring the ordinariness and the orderliness and the familiarity of his home life. And while luck and magic certainly played such a large part of his success, he was also able to discover and parlay his own talents into a heroic adventure. It's the classic hero's journey a la Joseph Campbell. And maybe that's what I needed to hear on my own quest for adventure and greatness at age 19.

Author: Tolkien, J. R. R.

Date Published: 1937

Length: 11hr 4min

Narrator: Inglis, Rob

To The Lighthouse

I have to confess that I have been afraid of Virginia Woolf. I have put off re-reading her for a long time now as I feared getting bogged down in stream of consciousness and never getting through it, kind of like Ulysses. But after listening to the first half of the book, to the point where Mrs. Ramsey begins to climb the stairs after the dinner party, casting her glance back down upon the dining room, knowing that it is the past and behind her, I wondered if perhaps it is the greatest novel of all time.

Woolf does such a marvelous job of capturing our minds, moving easily from one character to another, and does it in complete, understandable sentences. Even though the whole tradition of dressing and preparing for a formal dinner every night is such a foreign concept to me, I feel like Woolf has essentially captured the way we think, moving from thought to impression to feeling, quickly and easily, maintaining ironic distance to the events for each of the characters. Mrs. Ramsey is certainly the center of the universe, and it is she that pulls everything together as the psychic center of the novel, but even she has such an ironic distance to her role that it shadows every thing else in the book.

The second half of the book doesn't work quite so well for me, but with Mrs. Ramsey gone, perhaps that's as it should be. The book does come to a satisfying conclusion as Ramsey, Cam and James finally do reach the lighthouse--with all the wonderful symbolism of the sea and the light--as Lily Briscoe finishes the last stroke of her painting: "There, I've had my vision." Perhaps it's all about life persevering in spite of it all, the resurgence of all those feelings and ideas over a span of so many years, like re-infusing the house with life to ward off the eventual decay and destruction that beset it during years of neglect and absence. And yet, "No happiness lasts" is Mrs. Ramsey's verdict. In any case, the book is a tour de force that demands and will reward rereading and reflection.

Author: Woolf, Virginia

Date Published: 1927

Length: 7hr 45min

Narrator: Leishman, Virginia

Freedom for the Thought that We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment

Billed as a biography of the first amendment, the book is really a riff on some of the major themes and cases that have defined freedom of speech. Surprising that the first amendment wasn't really enshrined in American jurisprudence as we know it until the mid 20th century and later.

The first amendment had not been the absolute guarantor of free speech until the supreme court began definite it so, especially under justices Holmes, Brandeis, Frankfurt, Black. It was Homes who formulated the "clear and present danger" clause that has blocked so much espionage and sedition legislation and who also formulated the phrase "freedom for the though we hate." It has been judicial activism--coupled with the 14th amendment--that has enshrined the First Amendment, especially in cases like Near vs. Minnesota in 1927 and NY Times vs. Sullivan in 1964 that defined the standards of libel and public figure.

But Lewis is not an absolutist for the first amendment. In particular, he believes in limits when free speech impinges on the right to privacy for non public figures, and in some cases of protecting a report's sources when national security and clear public interest in involved, especially in present days when so many people claim to be journalists for electronic publications. "For one thing, it is plainly wrong to quote anonymous sources in pejorative comments on individuals." Lewis also has trouble with the supreme court's decisions on campaign finance, using the first amendment as a way of allowing unlimited campaign contributions that have made elections so expensive.

Author: Lewis, Anthony

Date Published: 2007

Length: 5hr 49min

Narrator: Lovejoy, Stow