false 110829 0 0 421378 0767910095 9780767910095 8 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174591776m/421378.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174591776s/421378.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/421378.American_Exorcism_Expelling_Demons_in_the_Land_of_Plenty 3.83 30 The Exorcist seared Linda Blair's head-spinning, vomit-spewing rendition of demonic possession into the popular consciousness. The movie's popularity, according to sociologist and anthropologist Michael W. Cuneo, tapped into Americans' deepest spiritual anxieties and helped spawn a "booming business" for Catholic, Protestant, and freelance exorcists that shows no signs of slowing. American Exorcism: Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty begins with a cultural history of exorcism from the 1960s to the present day. Then the book offers a wealth of case studies, based on the author's firsthand observation of dozens of contemporary exorcisms performed by New Age entrepreneurs and clerics of Christian traditions. But Cuneo's explanation of exorcism's popularity--that the rite allows believers to absolve themselves of responsibility for problems, including "depression, anxiety, substance addiction, or even a runaway sexual appetite," by offering assurance that "Indwelling demons are to blame"--seems merely a pretext for his scathing judgment of the whole phenomenon. "Personal engineering through demon expulsion: a bit messy perhaps, but relatively fast and cheap, and morally exculpatory. A thoroughly American arrangement." Cuneo's judgment may or may not be correct, but his research appears sloppy ("widely quoted" sources go unidentified, and sweeping cultural observations are unsubstantiated by footnotes). And his prose is littered with smug double-entendres such as "The pop culture industry cast its spell, so to speak, and an obliging nation fell into line." In both its argument and style, American Exorcism is every bit as lazy and sensationalistic as the phenomenon it purports to criticize. --Michael Joseph Gross]]> 110829 3.70 57 15 2001 273834 0312936753 9780312936754 1 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173324168m/273834.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173324168s/273834.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/273834.Almost_Midnight_An_American_Story_of_Murder_and_Redemption 3.43 7
It wouldn't work out that way. Darrell Mease would end up on the front lines of the Vietnam War and would come home a drug addict. Over the personally tumultuous, drifting decades that followed, he'd make a new name for himself in the Ozarks: as a tough drug dealer. Then, in 1987, he gunned down a 69-year-old meth kingpin, his wife, and their 20-year-old paraplegic grandson. After a desperate cross-country escape, he was captured, hauled back to Missouri, and sentenced to death for his crimes.

In jail, Mease experienced a religious conversion, and he made a shocking prediction: he would be saved by miraculous intervention.

No one believed it would happen. But it did.

On January 27, 1999, Pope John Paul II visited St. Louis and spoke to Missouri's then-governor, Mel Carnahan. It was the same date that authorities had set for Mease's execution. The pope asked that he be spared. Carnahan agreed.
</div>]]> 110829 3.70 57 15 2004 190247 0195113500 9780195113501 0 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172551493m/190247.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172551493s/190247.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/190247.The_Smoke_of_Satan_Conservative_and_Traditionalist_Dissent_in_Contemporary_American_Catholicism 3.67 3 The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism is a crisp, witty, thorough, and fresh study of the inner workings of the Catholic right. Sociologist Michael W. Cuneo concentrates on three groups: anti-abortion activists, Catholic separatists (who believe that the American Church revoked its authority regarding true Catholicism by distorting the intentions of Vatican II), and mystics and apocalypticists. As Cuneo explains, these groups believe that "the Catholic church in the United States has strip-malled its liturgical life, compromised its doctrine, and squandered its moral capital. Once defiant and blessedly haughty, the church is now a cheap floozy, cozying up to the modern world, smiling, winking, desperate for flattery and approval." In analyzing each of these groups and their distinctive methods of protest against the purported corruption of the American Church, Cunea provides fascinating anecdotes based on wide reading and firsthand encounters. All of them, it seems, pose variations of one essential question--and it is surely one of the most vexing questions at this point in American Christian history: what, exactly, constitutes an ultimate authority worth trusting? --Michael Joseph Gross]]> 110829 3.70 57 15 1997 6580835 0802067581 9780802067586 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6580835-catholics-against-the-church 0.0 0 110829 3.70 57 15 1989 944629 0802027261 9780802027269 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/944629.Catholics_Against_the_Church_Anti_Abortion_Protest_in_Toronto_1969_1985 0.0 0 110829 3.70 57 15 1989