Bishop Payne Library

Dear Patrons,

Welcome to the Bishop Payne Library web site, your portal to our theological research services. Contact our library staff through the Ask a Librarian service or call us at (703)461-1733.

Here are short-cut links to key sections of our website:
1) Library catalog
2) electronic databases (remote access for VTS students, faculty, staff and Board members)
3) information about borrowing privileges
4) Washington Theological Consortium reciprocal borrowing among seminaries
5) Virginia Seminary Archives
6) the African American Episcopal Historical Collection
7) the Yattendon Hymnal online and the Alumni ENews Announcement

Mitzi Budde
Head Librarian & Professor

Prof's Picks

The Rev. Roger A. Ferlo, Ph.D., associate dean and director of the Institute for Christian Formation and Leadership and professor of Religion and Culture, recommends the following books as part of the Bishop Payne Library's monthly series highlighting a faculty member's "picks":

Malcolm X : a Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
(Penguin, 2011) An evocative and sobering biography of one of the most complex figures in American life, whose embrace of mainstram Islam before his life was cut short by an assassin's bullet in Harlem provides a telling contrast to current presuppositions and prejudices about Islam in America. Marable, who died just weeks before the publication of this ground-breaking book, brilliantly distinguishes Malcolm the man from Malcolm the myth, and in so doing offers not only a biography of a single figure, but a breakthrough political, social and religious history of African Americans in the second half of the twentieth century.

Whispering City : Modern Rome and Its Histories by R.J.B. Bosworth (Yale, 2011)
Bosworth is an Australilan historian whose earlier work on Mussolini's Italy lay the groundwork for this evocative and beautifully written historiacl metitation on Rome as a holy city, beginning with surprising insights about imperial Rome, and ending with a searing chapter on "the Catholic and Imperial empire of Pius XII," followed by a conclusion in which he describes the Vatican's current embrace of "eternity globalized." A masterwork by a master historian.

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2011)
One of the world's most influential psychologists, Kahneman's analysis of the brain's "two systems" of decision-making upends most of our most cherished beliefs about ho we make our moral choices. Endlessly engaging and endlessly fascinating, this book will have the same future impact as Freud's Interpreation of Dreams, and is a lot more fun to read.

Just a reminder that Alums retain borrowing privileges with the Bishop Payne Library and can request these as well others in the catalog be sent at no cost. Alums do pay the shipping costs for the books’ return.

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