History Of Grace

History and Theology of Grace

Full of Grace

In this elegant edition, Merritt, author and editor of more than 20 books, chronicles how youth is rendered in photographs, as well as other art and literature, over the course of the last 150 years. Highlights include hand-colored photos from Lewis Carroll (including an image of his muse, young Alice Liddell) and masterpieces by Richard Avedon, Andre Kertesz, Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe and Nan Goldin. Cutting no corners, Merritt tackles the usual suspects (children at play, children at rest, children and dogs) as well as the difficult issues: hunger and poverty, embodied in the chilling Great Depression work of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans; war, including opposing quotations from Adolf Hitler and Anne Frank; and political oppression, as in Carl Iwasaki's shot of Linda Brown in her segregated Kansas classroom prior to her landmark case against the Board of Education. These sobering images are set beside thorough, concerned discussion of critical issues facing children today: AIDS, over-population and famine among them. The text, broken into modes of perception-"the innocent child," "the child assailed," "the child alone," etc.-is peppered with quotes from the likes of Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Rainer Marie Rilke, Jack London, William Wordsworth, Victor Hugo and Herman Hesse. An eclectic, captivating study, this is a fine volume for anyone who works with children or children's welfare issues. 350 four-color and duotone photographs.

Alias Grace

In this astonishing tour de force, Margaret Atwood takes the reader back in time and into the life and mind of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the nineteenth century. In 1843, at the age of sixteen, servant girl Grace Marks was convicted for her part in the vicious murders of her employer and his mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Grace herself claims to have no memory of the murders. As Dr. Simon Jordan – an expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness – tries to unlock her memory, what will he find? Was Grace a femme fatale – or a weak and unwilling victim of circumstances? Taut and compelling, penetrating and wise, Alias Grace is a beautifully crafted work of the imagination that vividly evokes time and place. The novel and its characters will continue to haunt the reader long after the final page.