Word: christian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Consider: Brown's novel proposed an alternate history of Christianity, wherein a bitter schism took place shortly after Jesus' death, between the mean patriarchal faction who concealed Jesus' marriage and the nice faction consisting of startlingly liberal first-wave feminists. In other words, The Da Vinci Code recasts the history of Christianity into something that looks a lot more like the history of ... Islam, wherein an early schism took place between the Sunnis and the Shi'ites. Could the book's passionate following in a predominantly Christian America express a secret, even unconscious sympathetic identification with Islam? Or a repressed...
...Unlike the first two Langdon novels, The Lost Symbol (Doubleday; 509 pages) doesn't deal with the history of the Christian church. The mythology Langdon is decoding is that of the Freemasons (whose motto ordo ab chao, order out of chaos, could be Brown's). Langdon is summoned - dude is always getting summoned - to Washington, D.C., by a mysterious phone call that he thinks is coming from his old friend and mentor Peter Solomon, head of the Smithsonian. Langdon thinks he's going to give a speech at a Smithsonian fundraiser at the Capitol building. But when he shows...
...make this a resounding but - it would be irresponsible not to point out that the general feel, if not all the specifics, of Brown's cultural history is entirely correct. He loves showing us places where our carefully tended cultural boundaries - between Christian and pagan, sacred and secular, ancient and modern - are actually extraordinarily messy. Langdon points out, for example, that the U.S. Capitol "was designed as a tribute to one of Rome's most venerated mystical shrines," the Temple of Vesta, and that it prominently features a painting of George Washington in the guise of Zeus. ("That hardly fits...
...angry to cry.' ?Christian Lacroix, designer, on his company's financial troubles...
...look from the Christian Dior fall-winter 2009 ready-to-wear collection...