The Healing Power of Faith: Science Explores Medicine's Last Great Frontier

Koenig, currently the director of Duke University's Center for the Study of Religion, Spirituality and Health, has spent more than 20 years studying ""the impact of people's religious life on their physical and emotional health,"" spurred by his belief in faith's ""healing power."" Each chapter is illustrated with lively and persuasive anecdotal accounts of people belonging to diverse religious communities--including fundamentalist, conservative and liberal Christians, as well as Jews--and suffering from health problems related to simple stress, marital difficulties, depression, obesity, alcohol and drug addiction, chronic illnesses, heart disease, AIDS and cancer. Though Koenig often hedges his claims even as he's making them, his book as a whole drives home the words of one of his patients: ""When you have religious faith, you live with constant reminders of hope."" Although it suffers from repetition and fails to answer any of the deeper questions about the nature of suffering, Koenig's volume offers powerful examples of how religious faith has enabled some to endure and even triumph in the midst of woe. Agent, Boston Literary Group. (Apr.)