This Week's Acquisitions
- Mary Ann Cruse, Bessie Melville; Or Prayer-Book Instructions Carried out into Life (General Protestant Episcopal Sunday School Union, 1866). Children's novel (sequel to The Little Episcopalian) explaining the necessity of reading the Prayer Book alongside the Bible in order to maintain proper spiritual discipline; includes some discussions of missionary work among Native Americans. More about Cruse, a Southern novelist, here. (eBay)
- Hans the Miser. A Tale of Central Germany. To Which Is Added, Perkin and Lucette. The Envious Girl Reformed. Divine Providence (Sadlier, n.d.). Four (very) short Catholic tales. (eBay)
- Colum McCann, Transatlantic (Random House, 2013). Triple-plot novel set in 1845 (Frederick Douglass goes to Ireland), 1919 (Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown pioneer transatlantic flight), and 1998 (George Mitchell negotiates Irish peace talks). (BOMC)
- Frances Wright, Reason, Religion, and Morals (Prometheus, 2004). Reprint of the lectures that Wright delivered in the USA in the late 1820s. For more about Wright, emphasizing her contacts with Thomas Jefferson, see here. (Amazon [secondhand])
- Peter J. Bowler, Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons: Evolution and Christianity from Darwin to Intelligent Design (Harvard, 2009). Brief survey of Christian support for and attacks on Darwinian evolutionary theory from the nineteenth century to the present. (Amazon [secondhand])
- Sujit Sivasundaram, Nature and the Godly Empire: Science and Evangelical Mission in the Pacific, 1795-1850 (Cambridge, 2011). Role of scientific inquiry in shaping missionary practice, as well as ways in which alternative views of nature energized local criticism thereof. (Amazon)