Reviewing a book ten years after publication is usually too late, but for Blue Ribbons and Burlesque: A Book of Country Fairs, by Charles Fish (Woodstock, Vermont: The Countryman Press, 1998.), it seems early still. Wanting somehow to capture the “magic” of the New England country fairs of his boyhood, Fish took photographs in 1969 and 1970 that remained as negatives in his attic for twenty-five years. Fish’s black and white photography provides “visible reminders” of a past that is almost entirely extinct as it once existed, yet the images allow the author to conjure the spectacle of animals, food, rides, strippers, freaks, machines and crowds – ritual elements of community that make the fairs nothing less than “a time of year, almost a season.”

When God selected a chosen people, he picked poor slaves in Egypt. When God called the early church, most of the members were poor folk. When God became flesh, he came as a poor Galilean. Are these facts isolated phenomena or part of a significant pattern?

Thirty-one years ago! Where has the time gone? As I thumbed through my paperback copy of the first edition last week, I came across this passage...

Yesterday, I introduced the co-author of Jesus for President, Shane Claiborne, who is a phenomenon with no equivalent outside of the born again Christian subculture. He openly and unambiguously opposes capitalism and “empire,” and because the source of his politics is the Bible he has an exploding audience in the American evangelical church — especially the white, upper-middle class church.

Shane’s first book, Irresistible Revolution is being read at this moment by probably thousands of little bible study groups around the country. Jesus for President, written with Chris Haw, is already a best seller. Both books are part of a greater mass audience theological trickle-down of 2,000-year-old themes that have been making a come back among Christian intellectuals for sometime...

Shane Claiborne has an exciting new book out called Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals, this one co-authored with co-conspirator Chris Haw. It’s a beautifully designed, reframing of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation — sort of an activist introduction to a thing called Narrative Theology, which is all the rage among Christian Revolutionaries.

Last year, Shane gave me my single best piece evidence for convincing skeptics that something absolutely incredible is going on inside the church.

First, I show them this picture (Shane, the speaker, is one of those specs down on stage). Some kind of right-wing Christian rally, right? It’s looks like they’re all on their feet reading something together off those screens. How fascist...

As a big movie fan, I always get annoyed at people who say that movies are only a bad influence on people. In my head, I keep wanting to tell them that they just watch the wrong movies.

One of the movies that really influenced me was Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List".

It not only gave me a real sense of the horrors of the Holocaust, it got me interested in the idea of the difference a courageous individual can have to the people he or she comes in contact with.

At around the mid 1990s, I got interested in learning more about other rescuers and hearing how they got the courage and the values to risk their lives for those who were despised by the general public.

It seems like everyone wants to try things out for a year these days, and then write a book on it: Maria Headley said yes to every date request for a year; A.J. Jacobs lived Biblically for a year. Author Barbara Kingsolver chose (with her family) to live a year focused on food -- specifically, the food that was produced near her home.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (Harper Collins, May 2007) took me on a journey through the food seasons so brilliantly described that while reading it, I could practically smell the dirt!

Kingsolver's premise is that so much of the food that Americans consume is from somewhere other than where they live. This uses up precious fossil fuels, causes the destruction of farmland (and its inhabitants), and generally leaves us with sub-par food, so that not only do we not know where food is supposed to really come from, but we don't know what it really tastes like!

Although presidents and politicians often seek to occupy the limelight during Black History Month, celebrities really are not central to its importance or its purpose. Black History Month is meant to be about everyday citizens and their rightful places in our nation's future and especially its past.

It all started when one young educator who is now revered as the Father of Black History, Dr. Carter G. Woodson, was dismayed to discover that the history of his own people had been largely left out of the history books written about his country. Carter Godwin Woodson was born in 1875. He didn't begin any formal education until his late teens because he had labored as a child in the coal mines of Virginia. However, once he began studying, he never stopped. He eventually became the second African American to receive a Ph.D. in history from Harvard.

After completing his doctorate, Dr. Woodson dedicated his life to two Herculean tasks...

Ken Follett weaves a marvelous tale set in 12th century England in his The Pillars of the Earth. Drop in for a moment to witness justice denied to a laboring girl and to see what happens when, just in time, relief arrives.

Next, two young men dragged a whole sack of wool up to the counter. The merchant examined it carefully. "It's a full sack, but the quality's poor," he said. "I'll give you a pound."

Aliena wondered how he could be so sure the sack was full. Perhaps you could tell with practice. She watched him weigh out a pound of silver pennies.

Some monks were approaching with a huge cart piled high with sacks of wool. Aliena decided to get her business done before the monks. She beckoned to Richard, and he dragged their sack of wool off the cart and brought it up to the counter.

In this compelling, optimistic book, Myers calls for a new social contract between the older and younger generations, based on their mutual interests and the moral responsibility of each generation to provide for children and the elderly.

Combining a rich scholarly perspective with keen insight into contemporary political dilemmas, Immigrants and Boomers creates a new framework for understanding the demographic challenges facing America and forging a national consensus to address them.

"We've got some difficult days ahead," civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., told a crowd gathered at Memphis's Clayborn Temple on April 3, 1968.

"But it really doesn't matter to me now because I've been to the mountaintop... And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land."

These prophetic words, uttered the day before his assassination, challenged those he left behind to see that his "promised land" of racial equality became a reality; a reality to which King devoted the last twelve years of his life.

Kings own words are commemorated here in the only major one-volume collection of this seminal twentieth-century American prophet's writings, speeches, interviews, and autobiographical reflections. A Testament of Hope contains Martin Luther King, Jr.'s essential thoughts on nonviolence, social policy, integration, black nationalism, the ethics of love and hope, and more.