Weekly Book List, November 21, 2014

Combines cultural criticism and historical ecology in a study of how America has been shaped by fossil fuels; topics include coal in the works of Eugene O'Neill, Upton Sinclair, Sherwood Anderson, and Stephen Crane. First full publication of the diary of Tweddell, a Canadian soldier who served with British forces in the Second Anglo-Boer War. Traces the life of an African-American woman who was denied admission to the University of Oklahoma Law School in 1946 and became the litigant and later litigator, with Thurgood Marshall, of an NAACP lawsuit that went to the U.S. Supreme Court. Topics include celibacy among early Christians as a form of "queer Christianity," a Christological reading of BDSM, and gay rights and religious rights in a controversy over same-sex marriage.