Augustine

After having the promise of post-pandemic hope seemingly pulled out from under the world like a cheap rug, most of us could do with a balm. Songwriters Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine deliver the goods in the form of a truly comforting diversion. Stevens, of course, loves a concept album: He's made them about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Michigan and Illinois, and his mother's tragic life and death. This time, he teams with lo-fi California singer-songwriter De Augustine, who has made two albums for Stevens' Asthmatic Kitty label. The theme is philosophical musings on movies, ranging from Old Hollywood (All About Eve) to monster flicks (The Thing), horror (Hellraiser III, Night of the Living Dead), modern classics (She's Gotta Have It, Silence of the Lambs; the album is dedicated to director Jonathan Demme who died in 2017), even action (Point Break).

Named One of the Top 100 Books and One of the 5 Best Books in Religion for 2019 by Publishers Weekly

This book probes beneath modern scientific and sentimental concepts of the heart to discover its past mysteries. Historical hearts evidenced essential aspects of human existence that still endure in modern thought and experience of political community, psychological mentality, and physical vitality. Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle revises ordinary assumptions about the heart with original interdisciplinary research on religious beliefs and theological and philosophical ideas. Her book uncovers the thought of Aristotle, William Harvey, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvinas it relates to the heart. It analyzes Augustine’s outlaw heart in cultural deviance from biblical law; Aquinas’s problematic argument for the permanence of the natural law in the heart; and Calvin’s advocacy for an affective heart re-created by the Spirit from its fallen nature. This book of cultural anatomies is the climax of her dozen years of publications on the heart.