Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies

The spring issue (vol. 53, nos. 1-2) of Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies is beginning to take shape quite nicely. I will have more details as articles move through the review process and are accepted. Here for now are just some of the books we are having reviewed:

Daniel Galadza reviews Stefano Parenti, A Oriente e Occidente di Costantinopoli. Temi e problemi liturgici di ieri e di oggi (2010), a collection of articles by Parenti, a professor of liturgy at the Pontificio Ateneo Sant'Anselmo in Rome and co-editor of the oldest Byzantine euchologion, Barberini gr. 336. Galadza notes that this collection helps to "answer fundamental problems troubling liturgical scholars for the last century."

Galadza also reviews a new book on the Liturgy of St. James first noted here.

Robert Klymasz, the Zurawecky Research Fellow at the Centre for Ukrainian Canadian Studies at the University of Manitoba, reviews Myrna Kostash, Prodigal Daughter: A Journey to Byzantium, calling it a book whose journey leaves the reader "humbled, enlightened, and refreshed." 

Michael Plekon reviews Antoine Arjakovsky, En attendant le Concile de l'Eglise Orthodoxe. (For my own thoughts on this book, see the lengthy review here.) Plekon notes that this book "witnesses that he [Arjakovsky] is...a wonderful theologian of the Christian life in the 21st century."

Bradley Daugherty reviews Allen Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage, saying of it that it will "become a standard work and necessary reading for those seeking to understand the bishop of Carthage and his milieu."


Brenda Llewellyn Ihssen reviews John Renard, Islam and Christianity: Theological Themes in Comparative Perspective, calling it an "articulate and eloquent rendering of the major features of the theological language of Islam and Christianity."

North America's greatest Dante scholar, Anthony Esolen, reviews E.D. Karampetsos, Dante and Byzantium.

Michael Lower of the University of Minnesota reviews Thomas Asbridge, The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land. Asbridge's scholarship has attracted a great deal of attention recently, especially in Britain. Lower says that anyone interested in the Crusades "can learn a great deal from this book," which he further calls "a wonderful achievement."


Peter Galadza reviews Thomas Pott, Byzantine Liturgical Reform: A Study of Liturgical Change in the Byzantine Tradition. In a long, critical review, Galadza notes that the book is not without several problems, but that it raises crucial issues in a groundbreaking way and it "will become a classic work on Eastern Christian liturgical reform."


Myroslaw Tataryn reviews Chris Hann and Hermann Goltz, eds., Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective, saying of this collection that it is "very readable, well organized, and highly recommended for its refreshing and thorough perspectives on contemporary Eastern Christianity."

Prodigal Daughter

The University of Alberta Press has just sent me a copy of what looks to be a fascinating new book:

Myrna Kostash, Prodigal Daughter: A Journey to Byzantium (U of A Press, 2010), 337pp.

Kostash, an Edmonton-based writer and author of such earlier works as All of Baba's Children, here provides what looks to be a charming mélange of memoir, travelogue, and spiritual-cultural commentary. Flipping through it, I am put in mind of William Dalrymple's From the Holy Mountain: A Journey among the Christians of the Middle East or Victoria Clark's Why Angels Fall

About this book the publisher tells us:

A deep-seated questioning of her inherited religion resurfaces when Myrna Kostash chances upon the icon of St. Demetrius of Thessalonica. A historical, cultural and spiritual odyssey that begins in Edmonton, ranges around the Balkans, and plunges into a renewed vision of Byzantium in search of the Great Saint of the East delivers the author to an unexpected place—the threshold of her childhood church.

An epic work of travel memoir, Prodigal Daughter sings with immediacy and depth, rewarding readers with a profound sense of an adventure they have lived. This book will appeal to readers interested in Ukrainian-Canadian culture, the Eastern Church, and medieval history, as well as to fans of Kostash's bold creative nonfiction.

I look forward to seeing this discussed on here and reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies.