Gomes, Peter in The Books Store

In his introduction, Henry Louis Gates Jr. describes Gomes as "a cross between Cotton Mather and Martin Luther King Jr. [Gomes], clearly, was a man of words, but a man of words with a difference." The Harvard preacher gives us no less--words that make a difference--in his compilation of 40 sermons, each built upon the Christian calendar, taking us from Advent to Christmas. (The number is no accident, 40 being an important biblical number: the great flood lasted for 40 days, the children of Israel wandered for 40 years; Jesus fasted for 40 days. ) The range of sermons--from "The Art of Impatient Living" to "Growing Up" to "Acts of Reconciliation"--offer biblical wisdom in a modern context, using current references such as Donald Trump, artist George Segal, and Julia Child. Political and social history, humor, and wit infuse the sermons making them relevant and interesting to today's audience. Gomes offers his readers a pathway to the Bible, opening to them the happiness and inspiration it can bring to their daily lives. --Jenny Brown

When William James went to the University of Edinburgh in 1901 to deliver a series of lectures on "natural religion," he defined religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine." Considering religion, then, not as it is defined by--or takes place in--the churches, but as it is felt in everyday life, he undertook a project that, upon completion, stands not only as one of the most important texts on psychology ever written, not only as a vitally serious contemplation of spirituality, but for many critics one of the best works of nonfiction written in the 20th century. Reading The Varieties of Religious Experience, it is easy to see why. Applying his analytic clarity to religious accounts from a variety of sources, James elaborates a pluralistic framework in which "the divine can mean no single quality, it must mean a group of qualities, by being champions of which in alternation, different men may all find worthy missions." It's an intellectual call for serious religious tolerance--indeed, respect--the vitality of which has not diminished through the subsequent decades.