These 10 books offer surprising new perspectives on Judaism and Christianity, in terms that make sense to a traditional understanding of what these religions actually are. The personal essays and memoirs in this group share a central concern with the tension between religious language and the belief it purports to describe... Each of these books is like a patient, skillful teacher--communicating the essence of a discipline, then pushing it just a little bit further, into a place no one has been before.

1. Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith
   by Kathleen Norris
   Seeker, feminist, and poet Kathleen Norris speaks to the great internal barricade that many spiritual seekers experience when they return to their childhood roots of Christianity: the language blocks the way.

2. The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels
   by Thomas A. Cahill
   Long before the Irish saved civilization, a family of visionary vagabonds was busy inventing Western culture. Bestselling author Thomas Cahill examines the enormous impact Jews have had on the modern world in "The Gifts of the Jews."

3. Kaddish
   by Leon Wieseltier
   Leon Wieseltier's "Kaddish" is a completely new kind of book. It is not quite philosophy, autobiography, history, or Midrash, but it blends all of these genres into a narrative of Wieseltier's grief during the year following his father's death.

4. An Introduction to the New Testament
   by Raymond E. Brown
   In "An Introduction to the New Testament," author Raymond E. Brown, a Catholic priest, ignores the swirl of conflict surrounding the Bible as historical artifact, concentrating instead on the message it contains.

5. The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus
   by John Dominic Crossan
   John Dominic Crosson, the leading contemporary scholar on the historical Jesus, aims to teach readers how our habits of worship have created false gods. Though "The Birth of Christianity" weighs in at almost 600 pages of text, you'll probably want to read every word.

6. Meditations from a Movable Chair
   by Andre Dubus
   "Meditations from a Movable Chair" is a rare and wonderful thing--a book written out of love, whose richness of heart is expressed by an exacting and challenging mind.

7. The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium
   by Walter Wink
   In "The Powers That Be," theologian Walter Wink finds violence at the core of worldly institutions and points the way toward their redemption.

8. The Word According to Eve: Women and the Bible in Ancient Times and Our Own
   by Cullen Murphy
   Cullen Murphy suggests that feminism is the fifth biblically inspired intellectual revolution (following the rise of Judaism, the creation of Christianity, the splintering of the Reformation, and the showdown between biblical authority and Enlightenment rationalism).

9. Beside Still Waters
   by Gregg Easterbrook
   Maybe you're a good Christian, or a good Jew, or a good atheist. The balanced, vigorous, loving thoughts contained in "Beside Still Waters" can help you become something better than all of those, and necessary for being any of them: a good person.

10. The Life of Thomas More
    by Peter Ackroyd
    Whitbread Award-winning biographer Peter Ackroyd masterfully introduces us to one of the great figures in England's history in "The Life of Thomas More." Learn why More--a lawyer, humanist, and saint--came to be known as "a man for all seasons."

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