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The glorious, glowing, full moon is shining on my head through the window over my bed. She says, “you are halfway there: halfway through the month of Ramadan!”

Both the good and bad in our species come from our primate background, says primatologist Frans de Waal, author of The Age of Empathy.

When he’s not writing bestselling books, Vincent Bugliosi is a legendary prosecuting attorney. As such, he is certainly well acquainted with the legal policy of presumption of innocence. His newest book, Divinity of Doubt, a treatise on agnosticism, would have been much better if Bugliosi had taken this principle into account in the context of his arguments for, and against, God.

There’s a 40-year interval between Stephen Levine’s previous book of poetry and his latest—that’s quite a span. Though his books of prose have found over a million readers, this newest book flies under the radar. Why? One is the still-marginal place of poetry in American culture. For book publishers, the “poetry marketplace” (a kind of oxymoron, since poetry operates largely outside the cash nexus), is largely fueled by writing programs in academia. True, Coleman Barks’ renditions of medieval Sufi poet Rumi captivated a national audience, for a spell. But America’s own living, devotional, mystic poets find a much smaller audience, and slip through the cracks of critical discourse.

Twilight wars in the Middle East, Japan’s nuclear catastrophe, Deepwater Horizon, worldwide crop failures, massive die-offs of long-established species: it’s all so very scary.

It’s Easter weekend, and French vandals armed with hammers have given further reason for contemplating the crucifixion, or at least its representation.

But even while the language and the tone of anti-gay evangelical groups is beginning to shift, the reality is that while the language of anti- bullying has been adopted by groups like Focus on the Family, the theological and ideological currents that produce the reality of anti- gay bullying remain unquestioned.

The polarization of American Jews has increased with each large-scale eruption of fighting between Israel and Palestinians. With each escalation there has been a shift of pro-two-state solution activists to the left; at the same time, though, the right becomes strengthened and entrenched.

A recent book by an eminent Israeli has caused a sensation in Israel as it calls on Jews to move past the Holocaust, which has rendered them oblivious to the suffering of others. Though Burg is firmly rooted in the tradition of Israeli apostates, his thesis overlooks several critical phenomena.

“We love the Bible,” the game’s creators claim, “we just have a funny way of showing it.”