Slaughterhouse Five

Juanita Bynum

No More Sheets

Dylan Thomas

A Child's Christmas in Wales CD: And Five Poems

First recorded in February of 1952, this remastered recording of Dylan Thomas reading A Child's Christmas in Wales recalls all of the sights, smells, and sounds of a long-ago Christmas. Thomas's wonderful recollection of this holiday in the seaside town of his youth is captured in this vivid performance. Also included are five poems selected and read by Dylan Thomas, including arguably his most well-known Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night . Includes: A Child's Christmas in Wales Fern Hill Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night In the White Giant's Thigh Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait Ceremony After a Fire Raid

Karen Armstrong

The History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest

"Strange as it may seem, the idea of 'God' developed in a market economy in a spirit of aggressive capitalism," Karen Armstrong asserts in her fascinating work A History of God. Armstrong considers herself a "historian of ideas," and with this broad view she gives a compelling account of the correspondences among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the historical, philosophical, intellectual, and social developments through the ages that both shaped them and were shaped by them. Religion is "highly pragmatic," Armstrong finds. Any particular idea of God must work for the people who develop it. Consequently, as the times have changed, so have our ideas about God. "Understanding the ever-changing ideas of God in the past and their relevance and usefulness in their time," she says, "will help us to develop a new concept for the future." Today an increasing number of people have difficulty with the idea of a God that behaves as a larger version of themselves. Armstrong sees this as inevitable, and welcomes believers to a notion of God that "works for us in the empirical age."