Women in Wisdom Tradition: Review of Carol Fontaine, Smooth Words: Women, Proverbs and Performance in Biblical Wisdom

Smooth Words is a well-researched and entertaining, if somewhat uneven, book on women in the Wisdom tradition in ancient Israel. Fontaine, a faculty member at a small Protestant seminary in Newton, MA, writes with her students constantly in mind, her interactions with them informing her scholarship throughout the book. She is also in dialogue with other scholars in the fields of Wisdom literature and feminist scholarship, a dialogue that gives the book academic rigor and depth.

The other Gulf oil crisis - in Southwest Asia

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a rude reminder of the risks inherent in an economy dependent upon petroleum. But there's a quieter crisis in the other gulf - the Persian Gulf - that should call Americans' attention to the even more severe consequences of relying upon imported oil. The costs of using the military to protect the transport of oil from the most turbulent part of the world should convince our country's policymakers to increase investments in researching and developing affordable, American-made clean-burning alternative fuels. But, first, we have to understand the real causes, costs and consequences of importing 12.9 million barrels of oil per day, which make up nearly 60 percent of U.S. oil consumption at a total direct cost of roughly $300 billion per year.