Resplendent Faith is a richly illustrated compendium of the typical objects found within medieval church treasuries and includes a discussion of their form and function and their significance in the medieval religious service. Fliegel places this survey of the medieval liturgical treasury within its broad historical framework and considers the art representative of the most significant sacral objects produced during the Middle Ages. Supported by exquisite illustrations as well as a glossary and bibliography, Resplendent Faith will appeal to art historians, those interested in the history of religion and liturgical practices, and nonspecialists who appreciate medieval art or religious icons and reliquaries.

Resurrection of the Wild: Meditations on Ohio’s Natural Landscape wins the 2020 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay by this year’s judges—Jelani Cobb, Daniel Menaker, and Judith Thurman!

Each year in the United States, hundreds of religious buildings and schools become vacant or underutilized as congregations and populations merge, move, or diminish. These structures are often well located, attractive, eligible for tax credits, and available for redevelopment. In this practical and innovative handbook, authors Simons, DeWine, and Ledebur have compiled a step-by-step guide to finding sustainable new uses for vacant structures. The reuse of these important buildings offers those charged with revitalizing them an opportunity to capture their embodied energy, preserve local beloved landmarks, and boost sustainability. Rehabbing presents an opportunity for developers to recoup some value from these assets. Neighbors and other stakeholders also enjoy benefits as the historic structures are retained and the urban fabric of communities is preserved.

Samuel Shem’s The House of God is widely regarded as one of the most influential novels about medical education in the twentieth century. Decades after being published, this satire still raises issues of how interns and residents are trained and how patients experience their treatment. Return to The House of God is a scholarly and creative response to the best-selling novel, exploring its impact on medical education, residency training, and the field of literature and medicine.

Revelations captures the spirit of the African American worship experience through arresting images of congregants’ facial expressions and body language, their colorful uniforms and dress, and the solemnity of their worship. The images of baptisms, weddings, funerals, Sunday services, and special celebrations are at once serene and exaltant, pensive and inspirational. Revelations honors not only the spiritual dimension of the African American church but the pride and dignity that prevails within the churchgoing family.

While numerous studies on C. S. Lewis’s literary achievements have been published in the past several years, The Rhetoric of Certitude brings much-needed attention to Lewis’s nonfiction prose, identifying his unique style and explaining why his writing has remained popular while that of so many of his contemporaries has not. In this thorough examination of Lewis’s religious essays and literary criticism, author Gary L. Tandy argues that Lewis’s style evolved from a “purposeful rhetorical stance” that unites his nonfiction prose, a style that was informed by his ideas on language, communication, and style, as well as his view of Christianity, and can be most accurately described as a rhetoric of certitude.

In this fresh examination of seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century American captivity narratives, author Lorrayne Carroll argues that male editors and composers impersonated the women presumed to be authors of these documents. This “gender impersonation” significantly shaped the authorial voice and complicated the use of these texts as examples of historical writing and as women’s literature. Carroll contends that gender impersonation was pervasive and that not enough critical attention has been paid to male intervention in female accounts. Rhetorical Drag examines the familiar territory of captivity narratives, including versions of Hannah Duston’s captivity, and widens it by analyzing numerous examples, placing each in a deeply historicized context.

The arrival of the Shakers in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana in the decades after 1805 saw a substantial escalation in the movement. In Richard McNemar, Music, and the Western Shaker Communities, Carol Medlicott and Christian Goodwillie reconstruct a vast repository of early Shaker hymns, using them to uncover the dramatic history of Shakerism’s bold expansion to the frontier. With newly discovered tunes for more than one hundred Shaker hymns, this volume illuminates a little-known dimension of American folk hymnody.

In the fall of 1864, the Civil War’s outcome rested largely on Abraham Lincoln’s success in the upcoming presidential election. As the contest approached, cautious optimism buoyed the President’s supporters in the wake of Union victories at Atlanta and in the Shenandoah Valley. With all eyes on the upcoming election, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant conducted a series of large-scale military operations outside Richmond and Petersburg, which have, until now, received little attention.

Many Americans associate the House of David with its bearded barnstorming baseball teams of the 1920s and ’30s. Others may recall the sex scandal associated with the group, a scandal that gave newspapers during the first years after World War I some added spice. Still, others may know it as a religious communal society founded in 1903, which has a few adherents today.