Bøger af H R Swardson

An introduction to Christianity making use of The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost. Goes into nearly everything-theology, story, history, ethics, mindset, rules, rituals, conflicts-from takeoff points in the poems. Explains things that puzzle people about this religion. Shows differences between old and new, Medieval and Renaissance, Catholic and Protestant. Shows the origins of problems and reviews solutions. Presents the technical side of Christianity, with diagrams of the universe, a chart of the Great Chain of Being, and graphs of Adam and Eve's Fall. Assumes little previous knowledge. Christianity for not-quite dummies. Expect simple treatment of the following: sin, salvation, atonement, love, God, homosexuality, sexism, hierarchy, the Problem of Evil, will, justice and mercy, obedience, freedom, otherworldliness, reason and passion, baptism, Christian paradox, dualism, heresy, angels, sainthood, innocence, the Logos, death, allegory, the soul, and Platonism. Among others.

Herman Wouk famously called the World War II Navy "a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots." Whatever the sneer in it, his statement was true. In America all you had to work with were idiots and to get victory out of them you had to be a genius. The Navy started in 1939 with 160,000 men. It had to have 3,300,000 men and women, a total reached in 1945. In 1940, when the draft began, those who would make up the difference were civilians - fully American individuals, accustomed to their freedom, innocent of military organization, half of them inlanders who had never seen an ocean. In the business of war they were babies. And the war they were entering was a war of unprecedented complication and high technology. Standing, pre-trained armies, as in Europe, immediately had a great advantage over them. Populations accustomed to obeying warriors, as in Japan, had an advantage. Any nation with a strong military tradition had an advantage. America, lacking these advantages, could make up for them in just one way, through good schooling. And quick learning. In this book I try to give readers an idea of how it went. My method is to insert fictional characters, as representative types, into historical situations. Ensign Peterson and his shipmates are representative types. The USS Hannafee is representative of an attack transport. The ships around her are (with a few exceptions) real. All commanders and their dilemmas are real, though some of their thoughts have been inferred. Operations (but not training or special operations) are real; individual responses are imagined by the author, out of experience and inference. LCDR R. C. Steere, Admiral Hewitt's weather officer, is real. The narrator and commentator is an invented World War II veteran of broad experience who has studied the history of the War. He is speaking mainly to his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Commentary in italics comes from a more distant observer with academic training.

The great poets of the past, we find in this book, deliver more wisdom about love and marriage than anyone writing today: Christian love without any Puritan undertow, love closer to the Romans than to the Victorians, love still represented by Eros - what Spenser and Milton and Herrick show us on the way to deeper and deeper insights into both Christianity and love. With the wit and profundity of a seasoned university teacher Swardson treats inhibition, animality, spirituality, the higher eroticism, seduction, fornication, guilt, the double standard, purity, male chastity, gender equality, spontaneity, anonymity, cynicism, and idealism. He explores courtly love, the concept of the soul, the vocabulary of sin, same-sex marriage, post coital depression, the Playboy philosophy, and YMCA culture. He exposes the "missionary-position" slander and defines "the Christian lover." He gives advice on how to rise above culture and your own DNA. All from points in the poems. Addressed to young people.