Through A Screen Darkly

Why it is a mistake to let commercial entertainment serve as America's de facto ambassador to the world

Winner of the 2022 Gradiva® Award for Best Book – Historic Moment for Reflection! This book offers real-time, intimate reflections on Dr. Friedberg’s patients as they struggle with COVID-19 and its disruptive, dispiriting fallout. Through a Screen Darkly identifies the psychological distress caused by the pandemic, examining how the particular elements of COVID-19 – its ability to be spread by those who seem not to have it, its intractability, the long-term uncertainty that it engenders – leave even relatively stable people shaken and unsure of the future. The book examines how, amidst radical uncertainty and the prospect of massive social change, such people learn to become resilient. The main theme of the book is that, of necessity, we learn to adapt. Though we still can only see "darkly," we can call on the resources that we have, as well as those we can reasonably acquire, so as to retain a sense of our dignity and purpose. Through a Screen Darkly examines what is possible now as the pandemic runs its course. It makes no predictions of how all this will ultimately play out, but offers a time capsule of how people have coped with a disease that landed suddenly and that we still do not fully understand. Offering a series of intense encounters with worried, traumatized people, this book will be invaluable to in-training and practicing psychiatrists, as it points to the several possible directions for our national, psychological recovery from the pandemic.

In the style of a cinematic travel journal, film columnist and critic Jeffrey Overstreet of Christianity Today and lookingcloser.org leads readers down paths less traveled to explore some of the best films you’ve never seen. Examining a feast of movies, from blockbusters to buried treasure, Overstreet peels back the layers of work by popular entertainers and under-appreciated masters. He shares excerpts from conversations with filmmakers like Peter Jackson, Wim Wenders, Kevin Smith, Scott Derrickson, producer Ralph Winter, and stars like Elijah Wood, Ian McKellan, Keanu Reeves and the cast of Serenity, drawing “war-stories” from his encounters with movie stars, moviemakers, moviegoers and other critics in both mainstream and religious circles. He argues that what makes some films timeless rather than merely popular has everything to do with the way these artists—whether they know it or not—have captured reflections of God in their work. Through a Screen Darkly also includes a collection of reviews, humorous anecdotes and on-the-scene film festival reports, as well as recommendations for movie discussion groups and meditations on how different films echo the myriad ways in which Christ captured the attention and imagination of culture.

A New York Times–bestselling series: A murder mystery set on Italy’s secretive island of Murano, renowned for its world-famous glass. On a luminous spring day in Venice, Commissario Brunetti and his assistant play hooky from work to help a friend, Marco Ribetti, arrested during an environmental protest. They secure his release, only to be faced by the fury of the man’s father-in-law, Giovanni De Cal, a cantankerous glass factory owner who has been heard in the bars of Murano making violent threats about Ribetti. Brunetti’s curiosity is piqued, and he finds himself drawn to Murano to investigate. Is De Cal the type of man to carry out his threats? Then one morning the body of De Cal’s night watchman is found. Over long lunches, on secret boat rides, in quiet bars, and down narrow streets, Brunetti searches for the killer . . . “One of the best of the international crime writers.” —Rocky Mountain News “[A] superlative series.” —The New York Times Book Review

When thieves find an abandoned child lying in a monster’s footprint, they have no idea that their wilderness discovery will change the course of history. Cloaked in mystery, Auralia grows up among criminals outside the walls of House Abascar, where vicious beastmen lurk in shadow. There, she discovers an unsettling--and forbidden--talent for crafting colors that enchant all who behold them, including Abascar’s hard-hearted king, an exiled wizard, and a prince who keeps dangerous secrets. When Auralia’s gift opens doors from the palace to the dungeons, she sets the stage for violent and miraculous change in the great houses of the Expanse. Auralia’s Colors weaves literary fantasy together with poetic prose, a suspenseful plot, adrenaline-rush action, and unpredictable characters sure to enthrall ambitious imaginations.

From Queen Latifa to Count Basie, Madonna to Monk, Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music traces popular music back to its roots in jazz, blues, country, and gospel through the rise in rock 'n' roll and the emergence of heavy metal, punk, and rap. Yet despite the vigor and balance of these musical origins, Martha Bayles argues, something has gone seriously wrong, both with the sound of popular music and the sensibility it expresses. Bayles defends the tough, affirmative spirit of Afro-American music against the strain of artistic modernism she calls 'perverse.' She describes how perverse modernism was grafted onto popular music in the late 1960s, and argues that the result has been a cult of brutality and obscenity that is profoundly anti-musical. Unlike other recent critics of popular music, Bayles does not blame the problem on commerce. She argues that culture shapes the market and not the other way around. Finding censorship of popular music "both a practical and a constitutional impossibility," Bayles insists that "an informed shift in public tastes may be our only hope of reversing the current malignant mood."

Cherry Trevelyan meets with heartbreak and romance when she leaves a Utopian community to live in the outside world.

Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, Fred takes on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D--which Arctor takes in massive doses--gradually splits the user's brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn't realize he is narcing on himself. Caustically funny, eerily accurate in its depiction of junkies, scam artists, and the walking brain-dead, Philip K. Dick's industrial-grade stress test of identity is as unnerving as it is enthralling.

The Root Of Evil The ominous Rumblings of thunder—dark thunder, was how retired head of police Al Watt thought of it—had started thirty years before on the night that Sand was killed. A good man, that Sand, and when he died, the forces of darkness had taken root in Willowdale, Colorado. Now the isolated little town, nestled in the Rockies, was about to give birth to an evil beyond imagining...a reign of terror so insatiable that Al Watt could do nothing to stop it. Child Prodigy Something bad was going to happen. Eleven-year-old Howie Ingram could feel it in his bones. Of course no one ever listened to Howie Ingram, the twerp. All they did was make fun of him for being so smart he was already high school and college courses. Howie tried not to care. Except now he really needed someone to listen to him when he told them about the townspeople turning into zombies and the strange noises coming in over the sir waves. And the distant sound of thunder. He and his computer didn't stand much of a chance, alone, against a force as powerful and primitive as Satan himself...

Book 4 of the Auralia Thread series The king is missing. His people are trapped as the woods turn deadly. Underground, the boy called Rescue has found an escape. Hopes are failing across The Expanse. The forests, once beautiful, are now haunted and bloodthirsty. House Abascar's persecuted people risk their lives to journey through those predatory trees. They seek a mythic city - Abascar's last, best hope for refuge - where they might find the source of Auralia's colors. They journey without their king. During a calamitous attempt to rescue some of his subjects from slavery, Cal-raven vanished. But his helper, the ale boy, falling through a crack in the earth, has discovered a slender thread of hope in the dark. He will dare to lead a desperate company up the secret river. Meanwhile, with a dragon's help, the wandering mage Scharr ben Fray is uncovering history's biggest lie - a deception that only a miracle can repair. Time is running out for all those entangled in The Auralia Thread. But hope and miracles flicker wherever Auralia’s colors are found.