The author recounts his participation in a family effort to buy and run a Korean convenience store for his in-laws, a pursuit that raised issues about work and family while he shuttled between two divergent cultural arenas.
Now a National Bestseller! Evangelicals are losing the culture war. What if it’s their fault? In 2016, writer and filmmaker Ben Howe found himself disillusioned with the religious movement he’d always called home. In the pursuit of electoral victory, many American evangelicals embraced moral relativism and toxic partisanship. Whatever happened to the Moral Majority, who headed to Washington in the ’80s to plant the flag of Christian values? Where were the Christian leaders that emerged from that movement and led the charge against Bill Clinton for his deception and unfaithfulness? Was all that a sham? Or have they just lost sight of why they wanted to win in the first place? From the 1980s scandals till today, evangelicals have often been caricatured as a congregation of judgmental and prudish rubes taken in by thundering pastors consumed with greed and lust for power. Did the critics have a point? In The Immoral Majority, Howe—still a believer and still deeply conservative—analyzes and debunks the intellectual dishonesty and manipulative rhetoric which evangelical leaders use to convince Christians to toe the Republican Party line. He walks us through the history of the Christian Right, as well as the events of the last three decades which led to the current state of the conservative movement at large. As long as evangelicals prioritize power over persuasion, Howe argues, their pews will be empty and their national influence will dwindle. If evangelicals hope to avoid cultural irrelevance going forward, it will mean valuing the eternal over the ephemeral, humility over ego, and resisting the seduction of political power, no matter the cost. The Immoral Majority demonstrates how the Religious Right is choosing the profits of this world at the cost of its soul—and why it’s not too late to change course.
This warm and funny tale of an earnest preppy editor finding himself trapped behind the counter of a Brooklyn convenience store is about family, culture and identity in an age of discombobulation. It starts with a gift, when Ben Ryder Howe's wife, the daughter of Korean immigrants, decides to repay her parents' self-sacrifice by buying them a store. Howe, an editor at the rarefied Paris Review, agrees to go along. Things soon become a lot more complicated. After the business struggles, Howe finds himself living in the basement of his in-laws' Staten Island home, commuting to the Paris Review offices in George Plimpton's Upper East Side townhouse by day, and heading to Brooklyn at night to slice cold cuts and peddle lottery tickets. My Korean Deli follows the store's tumultuous life span, and along the way paints the portrait of an extremely unlikely partnership between characters with shoots across society, from the Brooklyn streets to Seoul to Puritan New England. Owning the deli becomes a transformative experience for everyone involved as they struggle to salvage the original gift—and the family—while sorting out issues of values, work, and identity.
ABOUT THE BOOK “This is a country that loses a prime minister and that is so vast and empty that a band of amateur enthusiasts could conceivably set off the world’s first non-governmental atomic bomb on its mainland almost four years would pass before anyone noticed. Clearly, this is a place worth getting to know.” In a Sunburned Country is Bill Bryson’s seventh book on travel. Published just five years after his much-celebrated travelogue of Great Britain, Notes from a Small Island, the book takes on a much bigger topic: Australia. The book was published just before the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, and some later editions have an appendix chronicling Bryson’s time spent as a spectator. Yet, the focus of the book is on Bryson’s several trips to the massive island over the course of a year. Bryson finds himself hopping back and forth between various points in Australia, his home in New England, and a few other international locales. He never strays for long though, and much of the book is spent in the car and at dozens of hotels, pubs, and attractions along Australia’s 23,000 mile coastline. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Next we meet Alan Howe, an old friend from London. Along with his wife, Carmel, Howe takes Bryson on several adventures to natural wonders, many of which are quite near his vacation home in the hills. After journeying with Howe for a few days, Bryson again strikes out on his own and heads north towards Brisbane. In the midst of his travels, he digresses into a chapter about Australia’s native people—the Aborigines. The history is unbelievable. The Aborigines are an incredibly ancient tribe who still astound scientists today. After a short time walking the beaches of the Gold Coast and extolling the history of the area, Bryson departs, returns home for a time, then returns for the final leg of his trip. In part three, “Around the Edges,” Bryson careens towards the wilder parts of the country. He is accompanied by Allan Sherwin, a friend from London. The most exciting leg of his journey begins as he travels to Great Barrier Reef and braves the sharks and waves native to the area. Buy a copy to keep reading!
It all starts when Ben Ryder Howe's wife, whose parents emigrated from Korea, decides to repay her debt to them by buying them a deli to run. Howe, an editor at "The Paris Review," reluctantly agrees to help in the venture. By day, Howe commutes to "The Paris Review" offices in George Plimpton's apartment overlooking the East River, and at night heads to Brooklyn to slice cold cuts, peddle lottery tickets and Colt 45, and sell coffee in 8-ounce blue and gold cups bearing the logo "We are happy to serve you!" The book follows the store's lifespan, starting a few months before the purchase and ending with the family's agonized decision to get out. Along the way, Howe allows digressions into the past, painting a cacophonous group portrait of two families -- from the Brooklyn ghetto to Seoul to Brahmin New England. The deli is where these cultures meet as Howe juxtaposes the two groups, outsiders versus insiders, new talent versus old money, the deli with "The Paris Review." Owning the deli becomes a transformative experience for everyone involved as they struggle to keep the deli -- and themselves -- from bankruptcy while sorting out issues of class, intermarriage values, work and personal identity.
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