{"title":"Jeffrey Bilbro","description":"\u003cp\u003eExplore the insightful works of Jeffrey Bilbro, delving into culture, technology, and the enduring power of place. Perfect for readers seeking thoughtful reflections on modern life and meaningful connections.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"liberating-arts-book-jeffrey-bilbro-9781636080673","title":"The Liberating Arts","description":"A new generation of teachers envisions a liberal arts education that is good for everyone.   Why would anyone study the liberal arts? It’s no secret that the liberal arts have fallen out of favor and are struggling to prove their relevance. The cost of college pushes students to majors and degrees with more obvious career outcomes.   A new cohort of educators isn’t taking this lying down. They realize they need to reimagine and rearticulate what a liberal arts education is for, and what it might look like in today’s world. In this book, they make an honest reckoning with the history and current state of the liberal arts.   You may have heard – or asked – some of these questions yourself:     Aren’t the liberal arts a waste of time? How will reading old books and discussing abstract ideas help us feed the hungry, liberate the oppressed and reverse climate change? Actually, we first need to understand what we mean by truth, the good life, and justice. Aren’t the liberal arts racist? The “great books” are mostly by privileged dead white males. Despite these objections, for centuries the liberal arts have been a resource for those working for a better world. Here’s how we can benefit from ancient voices while expanding the conversation. Aren’t the liberal arts liberal? Aren’t humanities professors mostly progressive ideologues who indoctrinate students? In fact, the liberal arts are an age-old tradition of moral formation, teaching people to think for themselves and learn from other perspectives. Aren’t the liberal arts elitist? Hasn’t humanities education too often excluded poor people and minorities? While that has sometime been the case, these educators map out well-proven ways to include people of all social and educational backgrounds. Aren’t the liberal arts a bad career investment? I really just want to get a well-paying job and not end up as an overeducated barista. The numbers – and the people hiring – tell a different story.  In this book, educators mount a vigorous defense of the humanist tradition, but also chart a path forward, building on their tradition’s strengths and addressing its failures. In each chapter, dispatches from innovators describe concrete ways this is being put into practice, showing that the liberal arts are not only viable today, but vital to our future.    ***   Contributors include Emily Auerbach, Nathan Beacom, Jeffrey Bilbro, Joseph Clair, Margarita Mooney Clayton, Lydia Dugdale, Brad East, Don Eben, Becky L. Eggimann, Rachel Griffis, David Henreckson, Zena Hitz, David Hsu, L. Gregory Jones, Brandon McCoy, Peter Mommsen, Angel Adams Parham, Steve Prince, John Mark Reynolds, Erin Shaw, Anne Snyder, Sean Sword, Noah Toly, Jonathan Tran, and Jessica Hooten Wilson","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49555040338193,"sku":"GOR013731757","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50169877790993,"sku":"CIN1636080677VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50262769697041,"sku":"CIN1636080677G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50989076250897,"sku":"NIN9781636080673","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52682347315473,"sku":"NLS9781636080673","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1636080677.jpg?v=1750800032"},{"product_id":"reading-the-times-a-literary-and-theological-inquiry-into-the-news-book-jeffrey-bilbro-9780830841851","title":"Reading the Times  A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eChristianity Today\u003c\/i\u003e Book Award\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The Gospel Coalition Book Awards Honorable Mention\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eForeword\u003c\/i\u003e INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalist\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e ECPA Top Shelf Book Cover Award\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"Reading the morning newspaper is the realist's morning prayer.\"--G. W. F. Hegel\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWhenever we reach for our phones or scan a newspaper to get \"caught up,\" we are being not merely informed but also \u003ci\u003eformed\u003c\/i\u003e. News consumption can shape our sense of belonging, how we judge the value of our lives, and even how our brains function. Christians mustn't let the news replace prayer as Hegel envisioned, but neither should we simply discard the daily feed. We need a better understanding of what the news is forand how to read it well.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eJeffrey Bilbro invites readers to take a step back and gain some theological and historical perspective on the nature and very purpose of news. In \u003ci\u003eReading the Times\u003c\/i\u003e he reflects on how we pay attention, how wediscern the nature of time and history, and how we form communities through what we read and discuss. Drawing on writers from Thoreau and Dante to Merton and Berry, along with activist-journalists such as Frederick Douglass and Dorothy Day, Bilbro offers an alternative vision of the rhythms of life, one in which we understand our times in light of what is timeless. Throughout, he suggests practices to counteract common maladies tied to media consumption in order to cultivate healthier ways of reading and being.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWhen the news sets itself up as the light of the world, it usurps the role of the living Word. But when it helps us attend together to the work of Christ--down through history and within our daily contexts--it can play a vital part in enabling us to love our neighbors. \u003ci\u003eReading the Times\u003c\/i\u003e is a refreshing and humane call to put the news in its place.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49577918660881,"sku":"GOR012320067","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50096296067345,"sku":"CIN0830841857VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50984651129105,"sku":"NIN9780830841851","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52105240346897,"sku":"CIN0830841857G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52347118059793,"sku":"NLS9780830841851","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52864297337105,"sku":"GOR012079956","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0830841857.jpg?v=1754202518"},{"product_id":"liberating-arts-book-jeffrey-bilbro-9781636080796","title":"The Liberating Arts","description":"A new generation of teachers envisions a liberal arts education that is good for everyone.   Why would anyone study the liberal arts? It’s no secret that the liberal arts have fallen out of favor and are struggling to prove their relevance. The cost of college pushes students to majors and degrees with more obvious career outcomes.   A new cohort of educators isn’t taking this lying down. They realize they need to reimagine and rearticulate what a liberal arts education is for, and what it might look like in today’s world. In this book, they make an honest reckoning with the history and current state of the liberal arts.   You may have heard – or asked – some of these questions yourself:     Aren’t the liberal arts a waste of time? How will reading old books and discussing abstract ideas help us feed the hungry, liberate the oppressed and reverse climate change? Actually, we first need to understand what we mean by truth, the good life, and justice. Aren’t the liberal arts racist? The “great books” are mostly by privileged dead white males. Despite these objections, for centuries the liberal arts have been a resource for those working for a better world. Here’s how we can benefit from ancient voices while expanding the conversation. Aren’t the liberal arts liberal? Aren’t humanities professors mostly progressive ideologues who indoctrinate students? In fact, the liberal arts are an age-old tradition of moral formation, teaching people to think for themselves and learn from other perspectives. Aren’t the liberal arts elitist? Hasn’t humanities education too often excluded poor people and minorities? While that has sometime been the case, these educators map out well-proven ways to include people of all social and educational backgrounds. Aren’t the liberal arts a bad career investment? I really just want to get a well-paying job and not end up as an overeducated barista. The numbers – and the people hiring – tell a different story.  In this book, educators mount a vigorous defense of the humanist tradition, but also chart a path forward, building on their tradition’s strengths and addressing its failures. In each chapter, dispatches from innovators describe concrete ways this is being put into practice, showing that the liberal arts are not only viable today, but vital to our future.    ***   Contributors include Emily Auerbach, Nathan Beacom, Jeffrey Bilbro, Joseph Clair, Margarita Mooney Clayton, Lydia Dugdale, Brad East, Don Eben, Becky L. Eggimann, Rachel Griffis, David Henreckson, Zena Hitz, David Hsu, L. 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Yet the present industrial economy prioritizes a technical, self-centered way of relating to the world that often demands and rewards busyness over thoughtful observation, independence over relationships, and replacing over repairing. Such a system is both unsustainable and results in destructive, far-reaching consequences for our society and land. In  Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry's Sustainable Forms, Jeffrey Bilbro combines textual analysis and cultural criticism to explain how Berry's literary forms encourage readers to practice virtues of renewal. While the written word alone cannot enact change, Bilbro asserts that Berry's poetry, essays, and fiction can inspire people to, as Berry writes, \"practice resurrection.\" Bilbro examines the distinct, yet symbiotic, features of these three genres, demonstrating the importance of the humanities in supporting tenable economies. He uses Berry's pieces to suggest the need for more robust language for discussing conservation, ecology, and the natural -- and regenerative -- process of death. Bilbro additionally translates Berry's literature to a wider audience, putting him in conversation with philosophers and theologians such as Ivan Illich, Willie Jennings, Charles Taylor, and Augustine. The lessons that Berry and his work have to offer are not only for those interested in cultivating the land, but also for those who cultivate their communities and live mindfully. In short, these lessons are pertinent to all who are willing to make an effort to live the examined life. Such formative work is not dramatic or quick, but it can foster the deep and lasting transformation necessary to develop a more sustainable culture and economy.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51008272662801,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008275972369,"sku":"NIN9780813179421","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813179424.jpg?v=1750882566"},{"product_id":"words-for-conviviality-book-jeffrey-bilbro-9781481319829","title":"Words for Conviviality","description":"The industrialization of print technologies in early nineteenth-century America transformed print culture in ways that parallel the transformation wrought by the digital revolution. Understanding how a previous era was shaped by the assumptions print technology engendered may enable us to recognize more clearly how our verbal habits and practices are formed and deformed by our enmeshment in digital technologies.When powerful new verbal media come along, our options are not limited to naive optimism or resigned pessimism. And some of the most helpful guides in charting a path toward genuinely convivial modes of reading are the literary authors who lived through the antebellum industrialization of print. Those authors sought to understand the effects of technologies such as the telegraph and the steam-powered rotary printing press through the most fundamental tool that language provides: metaphor. Evocative metaphors are a potent way to raise cultural awareness regarding the hidden affordances and subtle nudges that are latent within dominant communications technologies.  The argument of  Words for Conviviality follows a pilgrimage with three stages and considers a set of metaphors that such authors deployed to answer three underlying questions: What does industrial print tempt optimistic readers to imagine themselves as? What does it lead its victims to fear they will become? And what alternative metaphors might ground more convivial reading? The metaphors of hope that Jeffrey Bilbro discusses suggest that to wield textual technologies well, we need to develop cultural practices and institutions that strengthen our relationships with one another and our commitment to a common good. Instead of developing new technologies to solve the problems that technologies have caused, the authors considered here propose developing better readers—readers more attuned to the power of the textual technologies they use and better able to imagine and practice healthy, convivial forms of discourse. These authors obviously did not eschew industrialized print, and they did not simply give up on the technologies of their day. Rather, they developed metaphors that might inspire us to beat textual swords into plowshares.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53338194379025,"sku":"NGR9781481319829","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781481319829.jpg?v=1774356444"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-jeffrey-bilbro.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}