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The editors' independent streaks are occasionally reflected in their selection of essays. "Right Crosses" includes pieces on both sides of the war in Kosovo as well as stories by people who would not identify themselves as conservatives. The "Left Hooks" half has several articles critical of dogmatic leftism. But both parts of the book chafe against the reality that avid political junkies are going to pick up this book hoping that their preferred half knocks the stuffing out of its ideological opposite.

For his part, Caldwell both acknowledges and deplores this polarization: "The terms left and right are unlikely to lose their descriptive force, in the coming years. But if they grow a little bit less useful, we'll probably be lucky."

Jeremy Lottis a senior editor for the Report, a Canadian magazine of news and opinion.

Copyright © 2003 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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Books & Culture Corner appears Mondays at ChristianityToday.com. Earlier Books & Culture Corners include:

Encounters of the Gods | Christianity and Native American religion in early America. (Jan. 20, 2002)

Books Present, Books Past, and Books to Come | Plus: A new format for this column. (Jan. 13, 2002)

Double Indemnity Meets Dead Souls | A conversation with novelist Richard Dooling. (Jan. 6, 2003)

Books of the Year | The top ten. (OK—make that twelve.) (Dec. 30, 2002)

Entertain Us | Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the rapture of distress. (Dec. 16, 2002)

Boys Will Be Boys | A new book by a leading Christian feminist scholar inadvertently reveals the flawed assumptions underlying much talk about "flexibility" in gender roles. (Dec. 9, 2002)

Street Cred | Dave Eggers: The portrait of an artist as a … what? (Dec.2, 2002)

Epicurus'—and Darwin's—Dangerous Idea | How we became hedonists. (Nov. 18, 2002)

Weird Science? | A Darwinian debate continues. (Nov. 11, 2002)

Of Moths and Men Revisited | A Darwinian debate. (Nov. 4, 2002)

Angels in Heaven | A game that's more than a game. (Oct. 28, 2002)

Number One with a Bullet | America's foist family as a tool for evangelism. (Oct. 21, 2002)

Train Up a Child | Helping children to become intimately familiar with Scripture. (Oct. 14, 2002)

Acting Like Those 'Evangelicals' | Guilty as charged? (Sept. 30, 2002)

Ugly Evangelicals | Is this us? (Sept. 23, 2002)

Herbie Goes Bananas | The rise and fall and rise and fall and rise of the VW Beetle. (Sept. 16, 2002)

So Far, So Near | A graduate of Murree Christian School in Pakistan, the site of a deadly assault by Islamic terrorists in August, reflects on his growing-up years, on what has changed in the interim, and on the beleaguered Christian community in Pakistan (Sept. 9, 2002)

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