Left Behind, pp. 10-15 I like Ezekiel. Even by the standards of Old Testament prophets, the guy was pretty over-the-top. Lots of prophets accused the faithless nation of "promiscuity" and "whoredom," but Ezekiel took it a step further: "Every prostitute receives a fee, but you give gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come [...]

Left Behind, pp. 8-9 Here in reality, the "road map" peace plan is stumbling and staggering and likely to fall apart. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat seem determined to undermine the plan in any way possible. Its two-state solution, and its stated goal of an independent Palestinian state in what [...]

Jimmy Breslin, God bless him, isn't just a great newspaperman, he's a pretty good theologian too. Breslin writes of a tragedy — an infant strangled in the night in a fall from a bunk bed. Part of the reason that Breslin has been so good for so long is that he writes with an expansive [...]

Left Behind, pp. 6-8 Buck Williams is, as mentioned, the Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time: At thirty, Cameron Williams was the youngest ever senior writer for the prestigious Global Weekly. The envy of the rest of the veteran staff, he either scooped them on or was assigned to the best stories in the world. [...]

Left Behind, pp. 6&7 It's a dangerous thing for a writer to introduce a fictional character who is, the reader is told, the Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time. The pitfall here is the same as if you introduce a character by telling readers he is "the absolute funniest person who ever lived." You can [...]

Thanks to "david" in Atrios' comments, I found this essay by Joan Didion in The New York Review of Books. Didion's frightening question is how much the kind of thinking found in the Left Behind books influences the decisions of President George W. Bush, proud evangelical Christian, doubter of Darwin, and courter of the fundamentalist [...]

Left Behind, pg. 6 Here we meet LaHaye and Jenkins' second protagonist: Buck Williams. I grew up in Jersey, so I'm a long-time admirer of Buck Williams. The man was a rebounding machine — dominating the NBA boards for a decade, pulling down more than 13,000 rebounds (No. 12 on the all-time list). Williams is [...]