“The gorgeousness of a modern magic tradition is that we get to curate it to suit us exactly,” according to this flexible and creative outing from memoirist Tea (Modern Tarot). After ditching her childhood Catholicism in 1980s Boston and embracing queerness and feminism, the author developed a “fully bespoke” witchcraft practice influenced by (mostly European) “mythology and history,” pop culture, and “queer ancestry.” Encouraging readers to shape their own witchcraft practice “to suit who you are,” Tea offers a broad array of eclectic practices, including spells honoring different goddesses (one asks the Polish goddess Leda for “increased femme magic, strong femme protection”); “kitchen witchery” that uses food as a tool for practice (walnuts are “sacred to the planet Jupiter, handy for spells looking to bring about good fortune and jolly times”; sage is “helpful for grounding after you’ve been wounded or shaken”); and darker hex magic that can be valuable if not used for “petty, vindictive” aims (the author’s own hexes are directed “toward the larger sociopolitcal ills we face”). Tea constructs an appealing notion of magic as an empowering spiritual alternative to patriarchial religious systems, and includes valuable sections on using magic to engage in social change. Wannabe witches will be delighted. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

McNutt (Calvin Meets Voltaire), a professor of biblical studies at Wheaton College, sketches an uneven portrait of the woman who first witnessed Christ’s resurrection and whose legacy has been transformed and warped across history. The author traces how biblical interpreters in the Middle Ages in most of Europe cast Mary as a penitent prostitute “saved by her fervent love of Jesus” (though in France she was lauded as the first apostle and garnered popularity surpassing that of “the almost ethereal Virgin Mary”); how female Protestant reformers in 16th-century Europe drew on her example for permission to preach the gospel; and how during the 19th century, as her associations with prostitution returned, evangelicals headed a “Magdalenist” movement to “rehabilitate” prostitutes. McNutt’s rigorous textual analysis provides a revealing window into the ways societies stereotyped—and overlooked—scriptural women according to shifting cultural and social mores, though her use of Mary’s example to comment on present-day Christianity feels underbaked (“Mary Magdalene can serve as a model of steady faith in Christ, even when our churches fail us and hurt us”). The result is a shaky reconstruction of an oft-forgotten figure. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

Zen priest Masuno (Don’t Worry) touts the merits of living a more unencumbered life in this wise and succinct guide. Contending that letting go is nothing less than a “survival skill” in an age of information overload, Masuno shares brief lessons on letting go at work (set aside one’s feelings in order to “get along with... adversaries”; accept personal weaknesses rather than working fruitlessly to overcome them); in personal relationships (observe rather than automatically intervening in others’ problems; accept that it’s impossible to fully know another person—“when you don’t understand, let it go” is the key to a happy marriage) and on social media (maintain “a certain distance” so as not to engage in “futile battles”). Masuno has a knack for turning a phrase to make familiar advice memorable—learning from one’s mistakes, he writes, is a way to “remake how we carry the past with us”—even if truisms like “worrying over little things... only makes your life more difficult” might elicit eye rolls. Still, the stressed will find much to appreciate. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

“God-inspired humility is the road to everything you really need” in life, according to this energetic guide from pastor Veach (Help! I Work With People). Dismantling misconceptions about humility—that it involves self-effacement or shame—he contends that thinking less about oneself can improve relationships, inspire personal growth, and facilitate a closer relationship with God. Veach advises readers to identify their prideful moments (“red flags” include dominating converations or judging others quickly) and adopt a “humility mindset” by “becoming aware of your ego and then asking yourself, ‘How would humility view the situation I’m in right now?’ ” (Instead of “expecting your spouse to align to your ideas” during an argument, for example, one can “adopt a humility mindset and work together to find a third option.”) Veach makes a persuasive case that humility is a natural outgrowth of religious devotion—“there are eight billion people out there who matter deeply to God, so they should matter to you”—though the mechanics of achieving such a mindset are less clear, seeming to rely purely on willpower and good intentions. Believers will be inspired to live a more service-oriented life, even if they’re not quite sure how to get there. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

Glinter (editor of Have I Got a Story for You), a senior editor at the Yiddish Book Center, delivers a discerning biography of the longtime head of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. Born in 1902 in what is now southern Ukraine, Schneerson (1902–1994) was ordained as a rabbi in 1924 and traveled across Europe to pursue a secular education before settling in New York City. In 1950, Schneerson succeeded his father-in-law as head of the Chabad movement, transforming the small Hasidic group into a “worldwide empire” by directing outreach efforts toward less observant Jews; opening Hasidic girls’ schools to stem the tide of women leaving Orthodox Judaism; and deploying Hasidic “emissaries” to encourage Jews to perform ritual commandments, like lighting Sabbath candles, in public. Glinter gives equal due to the hypocrisies that crowd the rabbi’s legacy, including his support for “illberal dictators” such as Augusto Pinochet, who might indirectly aid his outreach mission, exemplifying, according to the author, “a kind of theocratic opportunism rather than a support of the democratic values he claimed to celebrate.” Glinter also explores the divisive campaign to have Schneerson proclaimed as the Messiah that began in the 1980s and continues today. That effort was the extension of a decades-long trend of obscuring his reality as a person, argues Glinter—a reality that the author scrupulously captures, warts-and-all. It’s a valuable complement to Joseph Telushkin’s Rebbe. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

Journalist Brod (They Just Seem a Little Weird) provides an entertaining if thin biography of the fabulist who founded the Church of Satan and claimed, among other things, to have been born with a tail. Born Howard Stanton Levey (he changed his name in his teens), Anton Szandor LaVey (1930–1997) grew up in Chicago and was drawn from an early age to the “fantastical and the macabre”—he read Dracula by age six and was soon schooling himself in hypnotism—and developed a scorn for traditional religion. Launched in 1966, the Church of Satan “rejected the Holy Trinity... and allowed its congregants to indulge in their lust for life”; its scripture was a manifesto LaVey published in 1969, which blended the “rational self-interest of Ayn Rand with the godless self-realization of Nietzsche.” The church soon spread across the U.S., though its popularity is hard to quantify—LaVey claimed that by 1970 it boasted between seven and ten thousand members, a number he almost certainly fabricated. Brod’s portrayal is appealingly colorful and eccentric, if somewhat underdeveloped—he spends little time examining LaVey’s legacy or his movement’s cultural significance. The result is an energetic yet superficial portrait of a bizarre figure in American history. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

Former National Institute of Health director Collins (The Language of Life) interweaves sociopolitical commentary, popular science, and theology in this smart study. Citing how distrust of Covid vaccines cost an estimated 230,000 American lives even as the scientific community celebrated “one of the greatest medical achievements in human history,” Collins describes an America so deeply fractured by hyperpartisan politics that it can be repaired only by returning to the “solid ground” of truth, science, faith, and trust. Unpacking each value, he writes that faith is vital to bridging “division and animosity” and offers truths beyond science’s reach, while the scientific community must learn from its stumbles in communicating with the public during the pandemic to address such pressing social issues as climate change. Suggestions include repairing seemingly “irreconcilable” differences through a focus on shared values—family, freedom, love—rather than statistics. Despite some wearying truisms (people should respect each other, because there is “nothing more un-American than hating fellow Americans”), the author’s expertise and lucid writing impress. This has plenty to offer. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this perceptive account, political scientist Han (Prisms of the People) traces the evolution of a racial justice organization founded in 2016 at a Cincinnati megachurch. Sparked by the “outpouring of support” for pastor Chuck Mingo’s sermons on racial injustice, the Undivided program developed as a six-week curriculum that examined “personal prejudice” as well as systemic racism, with participants split into small, mixed-race discussion groups. Han follows three of those participants through and after the program: Jess, a white recovering heroin addict, who began working at a prison ministry and spreading antiracist messages to friends and family; Grant, a white, conservative man with a Black brother, who grappled with the disparate parts of his identity; and Sandra, a Black woman who got divorced from her white husband after he began to chafe against her participation in Undivided and eventually found his way to white nationalist communities online. In the process, the author movingly links the expected finding—that meaningful social change begins in communities in which people are rooted and interconnected—with a Christian concept of grace that, for Undivided’s participants, “manifested itself as the courage to fight for one another’s dignity.” Rigorously researched and richly nuanced, this deserves wide readership. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Grace is hiding in plain sight, writes Baird (Phosphorescence) in this effervescent outing. While undergoing cancer treatment during the pandemic, Baird embarked on a search for the phenomenon—which she describes as a fleeting, hard-to-define instance of “undeserved” beauty, kindness, or clarity—and found it in unexpected places: swimming with whale sharks in Australia, the small kindnesses of nurses at treatment appointments, and seeing a luminous pink moon the night after her mother died, which put the author in mind of her mother’s “presence... gentle and strong.” Taking a broader perspective on grace, Baird describes how Australian First Nations members invited Australians to join a “makarrata”—a “coming together after a struggle”—and how some grieving families forgive their loved one’s killers despite the almost unimaginable pain involved (Danny Abdallah, whose three kids were killed by a drunk driver in 2020, notes that “forgiveness is not a single action... it has been more than two years and I must choose to forgive myself and the driver every day—to not retreat into hatred”). Baird’s ability to find wonder in the everyday is especially poignant, as when she considers the donor who made a blood transfusion she received after a surgery possible: “When I came to, I felt stronger, and I wondered whose blood it was that was now racing through my veins, injecting me with life.” Even cynics will be moved. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Music writer McKittrick (Gimme All Your Lovin’) delivers a forgettable retrospective of rockabilly revival group the Stray Cats. Singer Brian Setzer, bassist Lee Rocker, and drummer Slim Jim Phantom began playing together in the late 1970s at working-class bars on Long Island, developing a sound that was “far more country, less polished, wilder” than most of the era’s music. After struggling to attract interest from record labels, they moved to London in 1980 and garnered a dedicated following before returning stateside and hitting the U.S. charts with 1981’s “Stray Cat Strut.” The low ceiling of the rockabilly genre precipitated their 1984 breakup, however, as the band became convinced that even popular rockabilly artists such as Eddie Cochran had a limited shelf life. They eventually reunited and broke up several more times (they got back together again in 2018 and remain active). Despite the book’s serviceable background on rockabilly—a genre that grew from country and R&B in the 1950s, and briefly counted Elvis Presley among its early stars—McKittrick’s static prose and beat-by-beat rehashing of individual concerts sap the narrative of momentum and fail to build a convincing case for the importance of the Stray Cats. This paint-by-numbers band biography falls short. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2024 | Details & Permalink