July 2008

Forgotten Ellis Island: The Extraordinary Story of America's Immigrant Hospital

By Lorie Conway
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Details: 185 pages, hardcover, c. 2007, $26.95

Description: A century ago, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, one of the world's greatest public hospitals was built.  Massive and modern, the hospital's twenty-two state-of-the-art buildings were crammed onto two small islands, man-made from the rock and dirt excavated during the building of the New York subway.  As America's first line of defense against immigrant-borne disease, the hospital was where the germs of the world converged.

The Ellis Island hospital was at once welcoming and foreboding—a fateful crossroad for hundreds of thousands of hopeful immigrants.  Those nursed to health were allowed entry to America.  Those deemed feeble of body or mind were deported.

Three short decades after it opened, the Ellis Island hospital was all but abandoned.  As America after World War I began shutting its border to all but a favored few, the hospital fell into disuse and decay, its medical wards left open only to the salt air of the New York Harbor.

With many never-before-published photographs and compelling, sometimes heartbreaking stories of patients (a few of whom are still alive today) and medical staff, Forgotten Ellis Island is the first book about this extraordinary institution.  It is a powerful tribute to the best and worst of America's dealings with its new citizens-to-be.

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The Power of Stories: A Guide for Leading Multi-Cultural Congregations

By Jacqueline J. Lewis
Publisher: Abingdon Press
Details: 154 pages, paperback, c. 2008, $14

Description: Most congregational leaders find it difficult to resist the dominant cultural expectation that different cultural and ethnic groups should stick to themselves–especially when it comes to church.  But some congregational leaders have learned the secrets of breaking out of these expectations to bring together communities of faith that model God's radical inclusiveness. What makes the difference?

Jacqui Lewis explains that it resides in the stories these leaders tell: stories about who they themselves are, and what the communities they lead are about.  These leaders are able to embrace the multiple, complex stories within these diverse communities, hearing in the many voices a particular echo of the living voice of the gospel.  In this book, Lewis shares with the reader examples of congregational leaders who have successfully overcome the challenges of leading multicultural congregations, and the lessons that can be learned from them.

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The Epidemic: A Global History of AIDS

By Jonathan Engel
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Details: 388 pages, hardcover, c. 2006, $28.95

Description: From the Castro bath houses to AZT and the denial of AIDS in South Africa, this sweeping look at AIDS cover the epidemic from all angles and across the world.  The story of AIDS is one of the most compelling human dramas of our time, both in its profound tragedy and in the extraordinary scientific efforts made in order to find treatments and a cure.  For gay Americans it has been the story of the past generation, redefining the community and the community's sexuality.  For the third world, AIDS has created endless devastion, with the worst yet to come; AIDS is expanding quickly into India, Russia, China, and elsewhere while still ragin in sub-Saharan Africa.  Writing with vivid immediacy, Engel allows us to relive the short but tumultuous history of a modern scourge.

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