The “riveting” story of Erasmus, Martin Luther, and the rivalry between the reformer and the dissident: “An impressive, powerful intellectual history.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) At a time when Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael were revolutionizing Western art and culture, Erasmus of Rotterdam was helping to transform Europe’s intellectual and religious life, developing a new design for living for a continent rebelling against the hierarchical constraints of the Roman Church. When in 1516 he came out with a revised edition of the New Testament based on the original Greek, he was hailed as the prophet of a new enlightened age. Today, however, Erasmus is largely forgotten, and the reason can be summed up in two words: Martin Luther. As a young friar in remote Wittenberg, Luther was initially a great admirer of Erasmus and his critique of the Catholic Church, but while Erasmus sought to reform that institution from within, Luther wanted a more radical transformation. Eventually, the differences between them flared into a bitter rivalry, with each trying to win over Europe to his vision. In Fatal Discord, Michael Massing seeks to restore Erasmus to his proper place in the Western tradition. The conflict between him and Luther, he argues, forms a fault line in Western thinking—the moment when two enduring schools of thought, Christian humanism and evangelical Christianity, took shape. A seasoned journalist who has reported from many countries, Massing here travels back to the early sixteenth century to recover a long-neglected chapter of Western intellectual life, in which the introduction of new ways of reading the Bible set loose social and cultural forces that helped shatter the millennial unity of Christendom and whose echoes can still be heard today in the cultural differences between America and Europe. “A sprawling narrative around the rift between the two men, laying out the sociological, political and economic factors that shaped both them and Europe’s responses to them.” —The New York Times

New York Times Notable Book of 2018 Library Journal Best Book of 2018 "[2017] saw a profusion of books about Martin Luther to mark the 500th anniversary of his posting the 95 Theses. Massing widens the lens wondrously, bringing in Erasmus, the great humanist foe of Luther, and showing how their rivalry set the course for much of Western civilization. Reviewing the book, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein applauds this 'inspired approach: ' 'Massing, a journalist, has produced a sprawling narrative around the rift between the two men, laying out the sociological, political and economic factors that shaped both them and Europe's responses to them, and tracing their theological disputes back to the earliest days of Christianity," she writes. "Though a massive amount of material is marshaled, Massing's journalistic skills keep the story line crisply coherent.'"--New York Times Now in paperback, a deeply textured dual biography and fascinating intellectual history that examines two of the greatest minds of European history--Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther--whose heated rivalry gave rise to two enduring, fundamental, and often colliding traditions of philosophical and religious thought. Erasmus of Rotterdam was the leading figure of the Northern Renaissance. At a time when Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael were revolutionizing Western art and culture, Erasmus was helping to transform Europe's intellectual and religious life, developing a new design for living for a continent rebelling against the hierarchical constraints of the Roman Church. When in 1516 he came out with a revised edition of the New Testament based on the original Greek, he was hailed as the prophet of a new enlightened age. Today, however, Erasmus is largely forgotten, and the reason can be summed up in two words: Martin Luther. As a young friar in remote Wittenberg, Luther was initially a great admirer of Erasmus and his critique of the Catholic Church, but while Erasmus sought to reform that institution from within, Luther wanted a more radical transformation. Eventually, the differences between them flared into a bitter rivalry, with each trying to win over Europe to his vision. In Fatal Discord, Michael Massing seeks to restore Erasmus to his proper place in the Western tradition. The conflict between him and Luther, he argues, forms a fault line in Western thinking--the moment when two enduring schools of thought, Christian humanism and evangelical Christianity, took shape. A seasoned journalist who has reported from many countries, Massing here travels back to the early sixteenth century to recover a long-neglected chapter of Western intellectual life, in which the introduction of new ways of reading the Bible set loose social and cultural forces that helped shatter the millennial unity of Christendom and whose echoes can still be heard today. Massing concludes that Europe has adopted a form of Erasmian humanism while America has been shaped by Luther-inspired individualism.

Roman.

THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Sparkling with mystery, humor and the uncanny, this is a fun read. But beneath its effervescent tone, more complex themes are at play.” —San Francisco Chronicle In his wildly entertaining debut novel, Hank Green—cocreator of Crash Course, Vlogbrothers, and SciShow—spins a sweeping, cinematic tale about a young woman who becomes an overnight celebrity before realizing she's part of something bigger, and stranger, than anyone could have possibly imagined. The Carls just appeared. Roaming through New York City at three a.m., twenty-three-year-old April May stumbles across a giant sculpture. Delighted by its appearance and craftsmanship—like a ten-foot-tall Transformer wearing a suit of samurai armor—April and her best friend, Andy, make a video with it, which Andy uploads to YouTube. The next day, April wakes up to a viral video and a new life. News quickly spreads that there are Carls in dozens of cities around the world—from Beijing to Buenos Aires—and April, as their first documentarian, finds herself at the center of an intense international media spotlight. Seizing the opportunity to make her mark on the world, April now has to deal with the consequences her new particular brand of fame has on her relationships, her safety, and her own identity. And all eyes are on April to figure out not just what the Carls are, but what they want from us. Compulsively entertaining and powerfully relevant, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing grapples with big themes, including how the social internet is changing fame, rhetoric, and radicalization; how our culture deals with fear and uncertainty; and how vilification and adoration spring for the same dehumanization that follows a life in the public eye. The beginning of an exciting fiction career, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a bold and insightful novel of now.

This volume includes the texts of Erasmus's 1524 diatribe against Luther, De Libero Arbitrio, and Luther's violent counterattack, De Servo Arbitrio. E. Gordon Rupp and Philip Watson offer commentary on these texts as well. Long recognized for the quality of its translations, introductions, explanatory notes, and indexes, the Library of Christian Classics provides scholars and students with modern English translations of some of the most significant Christian theological texts in history. Through these works--each written prior to the end of the sixteenth century--contemporary readers are able to engage the ideas that have shaped Christian theology and the church through the centuries.

In 1978, Newell moves from a rural Alabama town to New Orleans, hoping to change his life, as he explores his homosexuality and the dark side of life in the city, in an evocative novel about the gay subculture of the late 1970s. Reprint.

The English explorer Henry Hudson devoted his life to the search for a water route through America, becoming the first European to navigate the Hudson River in the process. In Fatal Journey, acclaimed historian and biographer Peter C. Mancall narrates Hudson's final expedition. In the winter of 1610, after navigating dangerous fields of icebergs near the northern tip of Labrador, Hudson's small ship became trapped in winter ice. Provisions grew scarce and tensions mounted amongst the crew. Within months, the men mutinied, forcing Hudson, his teenage son, and seven other men into a skiff, which they left floating in the Hudson Bay. A story of exploration, desperation, and icebound tragedy, Fatal Journey vividly chronicles the undoing of the great explorer, not by an angry ocean, but at the hands of his own men.

Michael Massing describes the American press coverage of the war in Iraq as "the unseen war," an ironic reference given the number of reporters in Iraq and in Doha, Qatar, the location of the Coalition Media Center with its $250,000 stage set. He argues that a combination of self-censorship, lack of real information given by the military at briefings, boosterism, and a small number of reporters familiar with Iraq and fluent in Arabic deprived the American public of reliable information while the war was going on. Massing also is highly critical of American press coverage of the Bush administration's case for war prior to the invasion of Iraq: "US journalists were far too reliant on sources sympathetic to the administration. Those with dissenting views—and there were more than a few—were shut out. Reflecting this, the coverage was highly deferential to the White House. This was especially apparent on the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction .... Despite abundant evidence of the administration's brazen misuse of intelligence in this matter, the press repeatedly let officials get away with it." Once Iraq was occupied and no WMDs were found, the press was quick to report on the flaws of pre-war intelligence. But as Massing's detailed analysis demonstrates, pre-war journalism was also deeply flawed, as too many reporters failed to independently evaluate administration claims about Saddam's weapons programs or the inspection process. The press's postwar "feistiness" stands in sharp contrast to its "submissiveness" and "meekness" before the war—when it might have made a difference.

National Theatre, Edmund Plohn, manager, The Theatre Guild presents Ina Claire in George Kelly's new comedy "The Fatal Weakness," with Jane Seymour, Howard St. John, directed by the author, setting designed and lighted by Donald Oenslager, costumes supervised by Bianca Stroockm production under the supervision of Lawrence Langner and Theresa Helburn.