Every now and then, The Revealer receives some books for review that none of us are ever going to read. Well, actually we’re never going to read most of the books we get for review, but we’re talking about those books that seem worthy, and admirable, and absolutely tedious. Not academically; morally. If it has a blurb from Archbishop Tutu — it does — then we already know what it says, we more or less agree, we’ll send a few dollars along, and please, please let us move on to juicier fruit. Put Down Your Sword: Answering the Gospel Call to Creative Nonviolence looks like one of these books. It may or may not be, but we’ll never know; we’ll never read it. It’s morally tedious not because it’s not good, or because the truths of nonviolence don’t bear repeating, but because, well, we get it. Then again, we don’t. Father John Dear, the author, lives a life of prophetic witness; we don’t. If we got it, we would. So ok, we crack it open… “A few months ago, PBS News asked President Bush about the future of Iraq. ‘The future of Iraq is Colombia,’ he grinned.” Damn! He said that? Better keep reading. And what do we find? An explosive frontline account of the U.S. dirty war in Colombia — “Plan Colombia” — which both presidential candidates promise to replicate on a massive scale in Mexico. Plan Mexico. In Colombia, the Catholic Church is fighting on both sides. Father Dear knows which side he’s on, but he’s not strident about it. Instead, he tells us how the poor organize; how the poor resist; how the poor understand what America is doing and how American media helps it happen. Damn! Moral of the story: Don’t judge a book by it’s painfully earnest jacket copy. Which means, sigh, we probably have to give A Voice for Earth: American Writers Respond to the Earth Charter, just in, a chance…

–Holly Berman