Böcker av Bill Moyers

A Celebration of Poets and Their CraftColeman BarksLorna Dee CervantesMark DotyDeborah GarrisonJane HirshfieldStanley Kunitz Kurtis LamkinShirley Geok-Lin LimPaul MuldoonMarge PiercyRobert Pinsky

"Poets live the lives all of us live," says Bill Moyers, "with one big difference. They have the power--the power of the word--to create a world of thoughts and emotions other can share. We only have to learn to listen."In a series of fascinating conversations with thirty-four American poets, The Language Of Life celebrates language in its "most exalted, wrenching, delighted, and concentrated form," and its unique power to re-create the human experience: falling in love, facing death, leaving home, playing basketball, losing faith, finding God. Listening to Linda McCarriston's award-winning poems about a child trapped in a violent home, or to Jimmy Santiago Baca explaining how words changed his life in prison, or to David Mura describing his Japanese American grandfather's experience in relocation camps, or to Sekou Sundiata stitching the magic of his childhood church in Harlem to the African tradition of storytelling, or to Gary Snyder invoking the natural wonder of mountains and rivers, or to Adrienne Rich calling for honesty in human relations, all testify to the necessity and clarity of the poet's voice, and all give hope that from such a wide variety of racial, ethnic, and religious threads we might yet weave a new American fabric."'Listen,' said the storytellers of old, 'listen and you shall hear,'" explains Bill Moyers. The Language Of Life is a joyous, life-affirming invitation to listen, learn, and experience the exhilarating power of the spoken word.

This is a print on demand book and is therefore non- returnable. Distinguished historian William Estep offers in this book a lively account of the persons and events that influenced the shaping of the First Amendment. Estep shows specifically how evangelical dissenters laid the groundwork necessary for the triumph of religious freedom in America -- something that has often been ignored. Incredibly, says Estep, some Christians today appear determined to reinterpret if not eliminate the First Amendment and its historically revolutionary provision for the separation of church and state. But those who envision America as a church-state where Puritan ideals and concepts should rule misconstrue the amendment's original intent -- to "free citizens from the overweening power of a church-controlled state." The book includes an ample bibliography and an appendix of rarely seen documents pertaining to the struggle for religious liberty. A wide audience -- including students, ministers, and general readers across the religious spectrum -- will appreciate this absorbing historical account.