Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America - Hardcover

Hedges, Chris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743255135 ISBN 13: 9780743255134

Publisher: Free Press, 2005

Synopsis

A veteran war correspondent and award-winning author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning shares examples from his personal life and career to discuss how specific American social groups can benefit from an adherence to the Ten Commandments. 60,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

Why should all Americans –not just Christians and Jews -- care about the Ten Commandments? Chris Hedges, a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times and Harvard Divinity School graduate, believes that the commandments keep us from committing evil. They hold our communities together. "They lead us to love, the essence of life," he writes.

Adapted from his series of articles for the New York Times comes these thoughtful essays on why we need these ancient laws -- and what happens when we abandon them. A Phish band groupie provides a springboard for a discussion of idolatry. A Long Island whiskey bar becomes a laboratory for understanding "You shall not bear false witness." Honoring the Sabbath, he shows through the observances of one busy family, may be the antidote to popular culture. The story of the havoc wreaked on one child’s life vividly illustrates the reason for the commandment, "You shall not commit adultery." Throughout his essays, he deftly weaves his own experiences into the narrative, as well as references from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic book on good and evil, The Brothers Karamazov.

Hedges believes that the commandments hold out to us the possibility of love -- and love means living for others. The commandments are guideposts that bring us back to the right path, he writes. They call us to sacrifice. Compellingly, he urges us to abandon the culture of self; to live "not by exalting our life but by being willing to lose it." --Cindy Crosby

About the Author:

Chris Hedges was a foreign correspondent for nearly two decades for The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and National Public Radio. He was a member of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for The New York Times coverage of global terrorism, and he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Hedges is the author of the bestseller American Fascists and National Book Critics Circle finalist for War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He is a Senior Fellow at The Nation Institute and a Lannan Literary Fellow and has taught at Columbia University, New York University and Princeton University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0743255135
• ISBN 13: 9780743255134
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224