BOOKS: Worth Mentioning

* The Martyr. Readers who were moved by Larry Woiwode’s essay in CT’s sister publication Books & Culture, “A Martyr Who Lives” (Mar./Apr. 1996), will want to find a copy of “Christianity for the Twenty-first Century: The Prophetic Writings of Alexander Men” (Continuum, 226 pp.; $19.95, paper), edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Ann Shukman. This anthology of writings by the martyred Russian priest includes the lecture he gave on the night before he was killed.

* The Female Impersonator. Gilbert Meilander is a bold man. In “Letters to Ellen” (Eerdmans, 93 pp.; $9, paper), he assumes the voice of a mother writing to her daughter in college. He accomplishes this audacious feat not by mimicry–not one real-life mother in a thousand writes letters like this–but by creating a charmingly stylized voice that invites suspension of disbelief. The letters (most of which first appeared in the “Christian Century”) come equipped with thematic titles; they range widely, from “Lenten Discipline” to “Passing Exams,” from “Uncompulsive” to “Neg-ative About Affirmation.” Warning! If you buy one copy, you’ll end up buying several more to give to friends.

* The Ironist. Martin Marty has completed the third volume of a projected four in his magisterial chronicle Modern American Religion. In this latest installment, “Under God, Indivisible: 1941-1960” (University of Chicago Press, 548 pp.; $34.95, hardcover), Marty continues to write history in the ironic mode (see, for example, his account of the founding of CHRISTIANITY TODAY). Here the governing irony is that even as the national mythology proclaimed an unprecedented consensus, America was about to fragment into the tribes of the ’60s. Look for a full review in a future issue of CT.