This book shaped my young mind as college student some years ago. I am purchasing another copy to read it again. This book gives a clear explanation of what it means to live out a christian life in a culture that is counter to christ's ideals. The book certainly doesn't advocate isolationism but rather active involvment in transforming the world around us. It is an eye opening and well thought out book for christians in the 20th century and beyond.

This book is a penetrating critique of modernism, the prevailing ethos in which we live. It calls Christians to be aware of the presuppositions of the world around us and to renew our minds by seeking after Christlikeness.

Middleton's book, Colonial America, is not your typical 'textbook.' He paints a fascinating panorama of this country's tenuous beginnings and carries the story up to, but does not include, the Revolution. There is sufficient detail so the reader can easily see why the Revolution was looming, but not so many details that one goes to sleep wading through them. This book reads like a novel and I heartily recommend it to anyone remotely interested in the early history of the United States.

This audio drama contains four short stories by great authors such as Henry James and Oscar Wilde. In my opinion, Wilde's Canterville Ghost is the best of the four. The special sound effect are both scary and humourous. Wilde's weird sense of humor about a British old ghost meets his match of an American family is perfectly interpreted in audio form by the producer of this audiobook.

Middleton and Walsh demonstrate a solid knowledge of the postmodern (poststructuralist) critique of truth. And they are correct is asserting that this critique must be dealt with as Christians, not dismissed. I would even join them in agreeing that truth, though it may exist, cannot be known without the uncertainty generated by our contextualized perspectives on truth.

However, I disagree with the step that Middleton and Walsh take in casting the claims of Christianity as therefore preferable over other claims because of the salutary benefits of Christian claims. In other words, the inaccessibility of truth may result in power-backed claims to truth winning out over the truth claims of the weak simply because it's all about power, but I don't agree that Christianity should therefore get positive points because it is the religion of the weak and marginalized.

That's rhetoric, or sophistry. Christianity deserves an audience for its claims because many of its claims reflect the completely legitimate conclusions to be drawn from a real story that began long ago and continues today. That is the story of the relationship between God and man. This story is recounted by many people - by Jewish leaders during Seder meals, by the Biblical authors, by Brian McLaren in his recent book The Story We Find Ourselves In, and so on.

Each of these people bring their perspectives to their retelling of the story, but the story exists in external reality just as much as your computer screen does. The story must be engaged with - to completely deny the story requires doubting consciousness and thereby doubting the presence of reality. And that's a legitimate conclusion, as long as your honest about its implications for your life.

The humility that a poststructuralist brings to discourse over the stories that comprise reality, a humility generated by awareness of one's perspective, is what animates a postmodern approach to Christian theology. Middleton and Walsh's approach is animated by the rhetorical strategies of those who seek to capitalize on the newfound inaccesibility of truth by portraying their truth claim as more beneficial or salutary than others.

Walsh and Middleton, famed for their work on The Transforming Vision, have continued in their endeavor to wrestle with Christian faith in light of our present culture.

By starting off with an excellent overview of how we came to be in the state we now know as "postmodernity", Walsh and Middleton write a scathing attack on modernity. The reader becomes relived when we can appreciate that in fact there are many good things to which we may bid farewell in modernity. The concept of the autonomous, objective self is replaced by cultural and worldview lenses. Here is where Walsh and Middleton are strongest and where this is in many ways a continuation of The Transforming Vision - they employ the concept of the "Wordview" to show that Christianity is also one among many worldviews.

How this worldview is enacted in culture is the second part of the book. Ultimately, it is not just a "view" but a perspective that is told through stories - narratives. The Christian story is a narrative through which we continue to live out.

This is where the more dubious idea of the "biblical metanarrative" is described in the book. Postmodernity is precisely a rejection of ANY metanarrative, particularly the modern metanarrative of the objective, autonomous human who can manipulate nature and know truth objectively. And it is a metanarrative that has often co-opted Christian faith over the past few hundred years. While Walsh and Middleton acknowledge that this is true, they nonetheless make a case that the best way to express the Christian faith is to live out the biblical metanarrative of the faith in our culture. I find their argument that a maetanarrative can be proclamed as normative to not be entirely convincing. They argue that by its nature of being an inclusive, non-human centred narrative that it can appeal to the postmodern mind. I do not see how this is going to be convincing as a normative claim.

With that said, it is one of the better books to wrestle with the philosophies of our age. And I applaud them for it.

I loved reading this book. It begins with a review of modernity, and explains how it is based on "the progress myth." Essentially the notion that science will win out. It accepts the pitfals of this position and then develops the postmodern response. The authors then point out that postmodernity is also based on a flawed myth. Orthodox christianity is developed as an alternative- based on a true myth. Much better than a call to return to the good old days.

This volume is an uneven affair but a valuable contribution to the oft-neglected examination of popular music. While many academicians lament the dwindling attention and support given to cultured music-- i.e. classical, and to some extent to jazz-- these same musicologists and ethnomusicologists are missing the vitality of the current world. Music has genuinely become a soundtrack to our lives, bursting forth from all kinds of sources and in so many venues. Try conducting daily life in markets, stores, restaurants, cafes, even streets without being exposed to contemporary pop music. The authors of the pieces in "Reading Pop" have in fact realized the ubiquity of pop music and address its role in modern life.

There are interesting data contained in many of these essays. The many elements that make some pop music memorable are explored. This includes the music and/or lyrics of such artists as Randy Newman, Prince, James Brown, Peter Gabriel, and Bruce Springsteen, among others. Theories about what is important in contemporary popular music are put forth; the ideas are valuable. There is an informative and well-written chapter about torch singers by John Moore. Also included is a "Method Of Analysis" chapter by Philip Tagg. It looks at musicology and compares modes of folk, pop and art music transmission. Tagg provides a checklist of features that might be analyzed in pop music, and gives examples of how these features might be described in rich and meaningful ways. Tagg unfortunately falls prey to his own jargon.

Actually, most of the book suffers from a particularly virulent case of "academ-ese." Esoteric jargon from the ivory tower suffuses the prolix writing. The sentences are structured in knotted prose, running on and on in complex clauses and sub-clauses that are too often difficult to disentangle. The obnoxious reliance on trendy phrases and supposedly clever writing devices-- heavy uses of slash marks and words with some syllables parenthesized: these are pretentions that reflect poor style and bad habits.

Four sentences illustrate this problem, sentences from the editor's own introduction to the book: "Interestingly, if any emergent analytic paradigm may be represented as currently possessing the potential for dominance, it is, in my view, 'dialogics.' Congruent with theories of discourse, mediation, and (post)modern ethnography, its recent prominence is nevertheless associated with a more specific influence, that of Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin's materialist seminology posits-- against structural formalisms and sociological and economic reductionisms alike-- that meaning is always both socially and historically situated, and generically specific. Heteroglot networks of discursive conventions resulting from never-ending, historically contingent exchanges create a kind of giant intertextuality, operating both between utterances, texts, styles, genres, and social groups, and within individual examples of each."

One can only imagine the bloated egos or inferiority fears that fuel such composition. Because of the way it is written, this volume really serves only those with recent training in musicology-- other readers are apt to become too frustrated with the authorial style. Too bad for these writers-- their ideas make a contribution, but the ideas are apt to fall on a limited audience.

I have been made to read this book for my A level lit class and I would like to express the complete and utter boredom whilst reading this so called brilliant play. I would like to wish all the poor A level students who, like me, are made to read this.

One thing i know is that I better get a good grade for going through this absolute and utter boredom.

If you did enjoy the book then maybe you could explain to me what you found so enjoyable!

I was made to read this as part of my a level Literature class. I am sending this warning to all who intend to read it! My Advice is : DON'T! No offence to the author or anyone who actually liked the book but it was a complete waste of time! ...

Good luck to those who, like me, are forced to read it!