The relationship between Nazi Germany and the Catholic Church is a much-studied and controversial topic. The prevailing popular view is of a church that was, at best, characterised by muted opposition to Hitler's totalitarian regime; and at worst by self-serving acquiescence with the Nazi agenda and ideals. But in this fine and accessible study, Robert Krieg succeeds in showing that the truth is much more nuanced and complex.

Examining the thought and teachings of five leading Catholic theologians in the period between the two world wars, he shows that they held a wide spectrum of convictions. Anti-modernists like Karl Eschweiler and Joseph Lortz reconciled National Socialism and Catholicism, believing that Hitler's dictatorship was better than parliamentary democracy in a pluralist society. Krieg demonstrates that their views were rooted in an antipathy to secularising, individualistic modernism (as evidenced by the failed Weimar Republic), which they saw as a form of rebellion against God that only strong government - both political and ecclesiastical - could overcome. A more romanticised view of the nature of faith and its role vis-à-vis the political process led Karl Adam to conclude that Nazism could bring about a new society of cultural, ethical and racial unity in which more `whole' human beings would be able to respond effectively to God's grace.

By contrast, and more positively, the author shows how Romano Guardini stressed the inviolable dignity of every human individual, and was also prepared to engage in a critical dialogue with modernism. For him, a proper understanding of Christian flourishing rested upon each person's ability to freely accept or reject God. Similarly Engelbert Krebs' work highlighted what he saw as the `ethical' orientation of Christian faith - its essential components of justice for industrial workers, women and Jews leading him eventually into critical opposition to the Nazi regime.

This is a fine introduction, then, to the diversity of German Catholic thought at a critical time, as it struggled to move away from the `perfect society' model of church that had hitherto prevailed towards something more workable for the modern age. It's also, by the way, a very handy sketch of the historical backdrop against which this anguished debate was played out. And although it doesn't cover their thought in detail, it also introduces some of the other notable figures in the Catholic hierarchy who did speak out against the Nazis, at great personal cost - men like Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich, and bishops Kaller and Ehrenfried. Well-written and absorbing, this is an excellent introduction to a complex and multi-faceted subject.

Though it went to press in the early days of the current global recession, this well-researched account of the growing gap between rich and poor in Britain will still serve as a fine manifesto for fairer, more equitable tax and public spending policies - should a future Government be enlightened enough to adopt them.

Presenting some staggering figures (taxes that 'Sunday Times Rich List 2007' figures owe: some £12 billion; total `tax evasion' for 2008: up to £41 billion), Walker and Toynbee aim their fire at city bonuses, the `non-doms', and the remuneration advisers who have overseen a widening of the earnings ratio for the top and bottom 20% of earners respectively from 15:1 to 75:1 in the last twenty years. They review, too, some excellent Government-funded initiatives to end child poverty; to improve prospects for single parents returning to work; and to help the long-term unemployed back to work. The authors pretty much destroy the myth that there is a huge, feckless and work-shy underclass, arguing for a range of policies - including a living wage somewhat above the National Minimum Wage - designed to tap into a willingness to work and contribute to taxes among those currently disenfranchised. All of this, they maintain, is essential if we are to reduce social tension and its prime cause, inequality. This book contains sensible policies, sensibly and cogently argued. Walker and Toynbee are sometimes frustratingly short of firm evidence of the economic case for what they propose - but these are for the most part policies for the long haul: we can perhaps excuse the fact that the evidence is not as conclusive as we would like it to be. Overall, though, this is a lucid, convincing, and highly relevant contribution to current debates about the way ahead for Britain.

With the planet's environment apparently going down the tubes, you might wonder how the tale of a small Christian organisation could be `a story of hope for God's earth', as this book's subtitle proclaims. But this little gem most definitely is that - and a lot more besides. 'Kingfisher's Fire' is actually the second instalment of the story of A Rocha, a small outfit that's passionate about conservation, whose work seeks to embody simple `gratitude to a loving Creator' as a springboard for responding to the environmental challenges we face.

But if you're looking for one of those books that gives you a long list of lifestyle changes to `save the planet' that you then (guilt-ridden) fail to make, this isn't it. Instead, it's a book that will introduce you to visionary French eco-nuns and the Golden-rumped elephant shrew; tell you of a puzzled small-town mayor and a couple of insightful Marxist birdwatchers; and muse on storm petrels in Portugal as well as a Christian 'elder statesman' in Lebanon's Aamiq wetlands.

And amidst the anecdotes - by turns gripping, amusing, gentle and poignant - there are bright shafts of wisdom: about the need for a serious Christian theology of creation that, hand in hand with some thorough and credible conservation science, is capable of doing justice to a world fearfully and wonderfully made; about the redemption of all of creation - and our (small) place in it; and about the value of communities - rather than heroic individualism - that incarnate Christian values while working for the renewal and restoration of particular places on God's earth. Not a programme to change the (whole) world, then - just the story, engagingly told, of faithful witness through care for a creation made in love. It's a story in which A Rocha's work and its worship are hard to distinguish. And - maybe, just maybe - a story of Christians finding themselves part of the solution. Highly recommended.

Christians will find this short exposition of a rationale for Christian environmental concern both welcome and possibly a little frustrating. Among its strengths: a careful theological underpinning for the practical environmental concern that author Dave Bookless advocates; and a very proper attention to the impact that a creation-care perspective should have on worship and mission (unusual), as well as on discipleship and lifestyle, with some detailed agendas for action in each area.

But the theology is a bit uneven: it's very good on how hoping for a completely new earth to replace this worn-out one may well be a pious (and dangerous) illusion; but I felt it short-changed the reader on some really big issues in the area where science and theology don't really mesh - such as how predation can be a sign of the Fall when it's clearly been a part of life for far longer than humanity has. In this respect, the book could perhaps have done with importing some non-Western Christian perspectives - for example, Eastern orthodoxy's stress on the creation as still capable of reflecting God to humanity and drawing it upwards. Despite these quibbles, though, I'd still rate it as worthwhile reading for people of faith looking for inspiration to act on climate change.

There are some great poems in this intriguingly structured collection. In the first sequence, Dharker vividly captures changed perceptions in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 and July 7th 2005, where `Firm' and `Platform' conjure undertones of suspicion and threat from hitherto unremarkable scenes (watching from a tall building as a plane approaches, observing people with packages at railway stations). Such poems constantly undermine the appeals to trust and to the need to see the other's perspective in poems like 'Mine. Yours'. In the later poems, there's a welcome change of tone - the enjoyment of fleeting moments, the sense of being spared for another day as though all life hangs in a delicate balance in `Carving'; moments of redemption (`the grace of the familiar, the blessed, the everyday') in `Myth'; and the lovely pair of poems `Sari' and `Where her sari hangs', so strongly reminiscent of Richard Wilbur's 'Love calls us to the things of this world' in their use of clothes, not yet put on for the day, to summon us up, and call us to be part of the workaday world, the world where we grow `accustomed to travelling on the faultline of daily miracles' (`Halfway').

The counterbalancing effect of these later poems serves to give an excellent sense of movement from the earlier feelings of profound disturbance towards a sort of rest after frenzied travel, albeit a rest that is fleeting, half-glimpsed, never final or secure. This is why the collection as a whole works so effectively, in my view. Strongly recommended.

This is the story of how the debt-advice charity Christians Against Poverty got started. And the author's passion for getting individuals out of debt (as well as for evangelism) comes across clearly. But sadly, what dominated the book for me was the bizarre way the charity seemed to be run, and the way founder John Kirkby refused - to the point of arrogance at times, it seemed - to take advice from his trustees about the (frequently) unstable financial position. CAP seems to have been in debt for most of its first few years in existence, and staff were regularly 'invited' to e-mail their salary 'requests', presumably a way of pressuring them into not asking for the full amount they were due. At one stage, when staff hadn't been paid for a couple of months, Kirkby actually asked them for loans, backing his request with an illustration: the generosity of the boy in the 'feeding of the crowds' story in the gospels, who acts as a catalyst for others to become generous in sharing what they have. I found this quite manipulative.

I was also disappointed that, for all the loving concern for individuals in debt, Kirkby makes no attempt to grapple with the structural problems underlying the issue - the social inequalities, pressure advertising in a consumer society, recklessly easy access to credit, and so on. His approach is, as the well-worn image has it, like fishing people out of the river, but not wandering upstream to enquire who is pushing them, and why... Interesting, then, as far as it goes - but for me, that's not nearly far enough.

A tale of clashing liberal and conservative ideals, with Africa's poverty and colonial legacy as backdrop, ought to be entertaining stuff. And so it is, for about three-quarters of its length, as weary proponent of serious population control (or more straighforwardly put, a cull) Calvin Piper spars with earnest birth control project worker Eleanor Merritt. Into the mouths of these complex and evolving characters, Shriver puts some serious and thought-provoking, if often somewhat tongue-in-cheek, arguments about how best to deal with `the population issue'.

But then, with the advent of the Quietus project for mass extermination, and a conference assassination, things take on the slightly surreal air of a James Bond adventure. And although things end both farcically enough and with a kind of catharsis for the two main characters, you can't escape the feeling that somehow the author got bored with her creations, and began to tinker with them as marionettes rather than plotted characters. This spoils the overall effect of what is otherwise an entertaining, nicely-structured and engaging read. In summary then: OK, but rather lacking in its execution.

A series of academic essays about how the practice of vegetarianism does, should or might interplay with theology. There are no definitive answers to the question `should I eat meat ?', though on the whole the articles tend towards, at the very least, either advocating a serious reduction in meat-eating or espousing a `good meat' diet.

Among the many good things about the book is the tremendous variety of perspectives on offer. From a biblical and historical perspective, Nathan MacDonald, David Grumett, and later David Brown, offer an analysis of how food played a much more prominent role in earlier Jewish (OT) and Christian (NT and even medieval) cultures than it does now, serving as a cultural identifier. David Horrell finds no cast-iron case for biblical vegetarianism, though does discern in the Scriptures a Christology shaped by regard for `the other' and for the flourishing of the whole creation. For David Clough, there is a need to rediscover, post-Darwin, the particularity of the non-human animal alongside Christianity's traditional emphasis on the human.

Teresa Shaw reviews ancient perspectives on vegetarianism and heresy to remind us of the importance of not reducing debates to a simplistic `either/or', while John Wilkins reminds us that, in the ancient world, vegetarianism as a spiritual choice was probably limited to a privileged few philosophers, Plutarch among them, as Michael Beer recounts. Sam Calvert and James Gregory describe particular Victorian `niche' approaches to faith-based vegetarianism.

The best sections in the book are, in my view, on current food debates and the theology of vegetarianism. Daniel Dombrowski argues that marginal cases (`babies -v- chimps') don't hinder a view that pain is a morally relevant issue when discussing animal suffering, while Erika Curdworth analyses clearly and memorably the way language can obscure what we do to animals when our `anthropogenic, gendered society' turns them into meat. Both Rachel Muers and Christopher Southgate, from different perspectives, discuss better/worse food choices in an imperfect world (Muers more convincingly so, in my view). In the collection's best article, Michael Northcott argues for a view of Jesus' `eucharistic meals' with outcasts and others as a political rejection of a two-tier eating system that cut ordinary people off from God in the ancient food economy. He sees the `no meat' communion meal at Corinth as being of a piece with this, representing a rejection of the idolatry-based ancient food economy where all meat had first been sacrificed to idols. Northcott concludes that the modern industrial meat economy is similarly idolatrous, arguing for the recovery of Jesus' `anti-imperial asceticism' if we are to regain the true, revolutionary meaning of the Eucharist as a real, not just a token, meal.

A dense but rewarding collection. One small criticism: it really could have benefited from an index of the main ideas and thinkers discussed in the various articles.

This is a `commentary' on the book of Colossians unlike any other, and exceptionally accessible. It's one of an increasing number of books from North American authors that draw out the implications of rival claims to our total loyalty that (on the one hand) Jesus Christ and (on the other) the surrounding dominant culture of society ('empire') can be seen as making. Written by two extremely able communicators, it uses a range of very creative methods to illustrate the argument Colossians puts forward - including postmodern `antagonists' of varying hues, contemporary targumim (expanded paraphrases of a scriptural text), and a dramatic re-staging of the first church `reading' of particular sections of the letter to try and convey how they might originally have been received.

The result is a vivid and mostly convincing analysis of this ancient letter (quite possibly written by Paul), and a testimony to its continuing, powerful relevance as a call to countercultural Christian living. Although operating with a somewhat flawed model of how the death/resurrection of Jesus (why is it never his life...?) restores human relationships with God, it makes for an intriguing and fresh presentation of Colossians for today.

An extremely thorough fresh attempt at getting the so-called `quest for the historical Jesus' `adequately right for the here and now', as the author (quoting John Dominic Crossan) puts it. After a very clear introductory review of where the quest (or rather quests, since there have been at least three clear phases) has brought us over the last two hundred or so years, Herzog begins to mine the four canonical Gospel portraits of Jesus for hints and suggestions `folded into' their final form. From this, he unpacks a cogent analysis of Jesus as a prophet, fully contextualised into the Second Temple Judaism of his time. He then analyses what form, redaction, literary and social-science criticism can bring to the picture, giving a very good introductory overview of what each of them is about as he does so. Herzog particularly emphasises the role of social-science criticism in helping us understand aspects of context such as ruling elites and client kings in Galilee, and Jesus' relationship to temple, Torah and the land. There's a fascinating account of the politics of Jesus' `show-trial', and an end-piece on the resurrection as a non-literal metaphor.

Does Herzog's account resurrect the quest ? In a modest way that doesn't claim to have all the answers, yes. He concludes that there is `more than enough' material available from the intersecting Gospel accounts, and from other contemporaneous sources, to encourage further reconstruction of the historical Jesus `from one age to the next' (255). Wisely and cautiously, he doesn't claim a solution - merely `fleeting glimpses' of the character who, two thousand years on, still calls us. But for all its modesty, this is a masterful account, full of accessible scholarship, and engagingly written.