Drees, Willem B. Religion, Science, and Naturalism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Print.

I originally wanted to write my paper about something regarding Christianity and the changes it has undergone throughout history. When searching for books I used to keywords “Christianity” and “history” and when I couldn’t find anything that I found interesting I searched “Christianity” and “America”. With this I found a book called “The Catholic Ethic in American Society” but upon reading the back cover I didn’t find information that would be helpful for writing my essay. I looked around for more book titles in the same section of the library and found “Religion, science, and naturalism” which I thought might be interesting.

Upon reading the preface of this book I found that it was based mostly on how the principles of science interact with those of different religions in society and how people have changed their views on religion over time as science has progressed. This made me want to write my paper on the relationship between Christianity and science and how those ideals have changed over time. I also intend on focusing more on evolution and religion and how society deals with the conflicting views on those topics, since that’s something that is a pretty common debate in the modern day.

I will use this book to start off my research so that I can get a general idea on religion, science, and naturalism and then find more books in the library so that I can go more in depth on Christianity and on more specific topics. I think it will be a good source because it is an easy book that can help me in the beginning of the essay writing process for my paper topic.

Sasson, Vanessa R., ed. Little Buddhas-Children and Childhoods in Buddhist Texts 
     and Traditions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Print.

The study of children and Buddhism was never something I thought about until I saw Vanessa Sasson’s book “Little Buddhas.” After reading the summary on the back cover of the book, I became interested in the everyday life of Buddhist children and how they learn, grow, and develop in Buddhist culture as compared to other religions.

Through the library catalogue I searched the key work Buddhism and found a few titles that I thought sounded interesting. I thought that a lot of the books that were about Buddhism in America were interesting. I found them in the upper level of library, but when I got there I saw “Little Buddhas” and after reading the summary and thinking about what I would be most interested in reading about and writing a paper about, I decided to choose this book instead of “Race and Religion in American Buddhism.”

Through the various readings about Buddhism this semester, we have learned about Buddhist culture, traditions, rituals, and beliefs, but I thought it would be interesting to expand my knowledge on Buddhism by learning about what it’s like to grow up in a Buddhist culture and how it differs from growing up with different religious backgrounds or other specific religions.

From reading the table of contents of this book, I found that this book covers most of the traditions, rituals, and teachings of Buddhism that we covered in class and through our readings but focuses on children’s roles in these aspects of Buddhism. learning this about the book  was the point at which I decided I would like to choose it as my shelfie because it would be helpful in expanding my knowledge on Buddhism in a different way than our previous readings did.

Although “Little Buddhas” is a long book and I did not get the chance to read every chapter, it seems as thought it would be a very good source to use for a research paper if I decide to write my essay on the topic of children and Buddhism. I don’t know any specifics on the topic but I know that this book would be a good guide on learning them and I could gain a lot of knowledge on the culture of Buddhism as a whole by reading it.