Religion & Theology

In The Rare Book Room

Collecting Books of Hours

Books of Hours are private devotional books that were enormously popular with wealthy Catholics in the fifteenth century. Despite their strongly religious origin, the books served more as status symbols and fashion accessories than paths to heaven, a fact testified to in the large number of copies that survive in exceptional condition.

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Editor's Picks

A Book of Silence

Sara Maitland

After a noisy upbringing as one of six children, and adulthood as a vocal feminist and mother, Sara Maitland began to crave silence. Over the past five years, she has spent periods of silence in the Sinai desert, the Australian bush, and the Isle of Skye. She interweaves these experiences with the history of silence through fairy-tale and myth, Western and Eastern religious traditions, the Enlightenment and psychoanalysis, up to the ambivalence towards silence in contemporary society. Maitland has built a hermitage on an isolated Scottish moor, and the book culminates powerfully with her experiences of silence in this new home.

The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

Robin S. Sharma

An internationally bestselling fable about a spiritual journey, littered with powerful life lessons that teach us how to abandon consumerism in order to embrace destiny, live life to the full and discover joy. This inspiring tale is based on the author's own search for life's true purpose, providing a step-by-step approach to living with greater courage, balance, abundance and joy. It tells the story of Julian Mantle, a lawyer forced to confront the spiritual crisis of his out-of-balance life: following a heart attack, he decides to sell all his beloved possesions and trek to India. On a life-changing odyssey to an ancient culture, he meets Himalayan gurus who offer powerful, wise and practical lessons that teach us to:- Develop joyful thoughts - Follow our life's mission - Cultivate self-discipline and act courageously - Value time as our most important commodity - Nourish our relationships - Live fully, one day at a time

The Case for God: What Religion Really Means

Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong argues that historically atheism has rarely been a denial of the sacred itself but has nearly always rejected a particular conception of God. During the modern period, the Christians of the West developed a theology that was radically different from that of the pre-modern age. Tracing the history of faith from the Palaeolithic Age to the present, Armstrong shows that until recently there was no warfare between science and religion. But science has changed the conversation. She suggests that if we draw creatively on the insights of the past, we can build a faith that speaks to the needs of our troubled and dangerously polarized world.