Amazon recently added some extra functionality to their Associate bookstore program, so yesterday I began upgrading the DMI Bookstore. I put together a display page showing LDS New Testament books, given that the Sunday School curriculum in 2007 covers the New Testament. The three on the top line are all new books: a new biography of Paul; an illustrated volume by three LDS scholars entitled Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament, which Deseret has been promoting heavily so you have probably seen the cover; and the new paperback edition of Sisters at the Well, stressing the role of women in the life and teachings of Jesus. The new store also provides customized pages for specific titles linked from the bookstore (click on one of the links above to check it out). Very nice.
I also changed the home page to display all of the books either reviewed or discussed in a post here at DMI over the last few months, and I'll keep it updated. Oh, and I added an Amazon ad box on the left sidebar (and pushed the Google box in the right sidebar down about three clicks so it's not quote so obtrusive). I'm mostly just curious what products the Amazon algorithm will display. The LDS wedding dress links I've seen posted were a real surprise, for example.
I can add as many "category pages" as I want -- the LDS New Testament books page was a dry run. Any requests? The sky's the limit, given that Amazon is rapidly becoming the bibliographic equivalent of the Server Under the Mountain. Think of the category page as a sort of visual blogroll for books. The only limitations are: (1) older books don't generally have a thumbnail image to display; and (2) the smaller publishers, including many LDS publishers, don't upload their cover images to Amazon. So, for example, I think one of the best LDS New Testament books is Sydney B. Sperry's Paul's Life and Letters, but there's no image (and it's out of print) so I didn't put it on my LDS NT books page. If there's a book you think should be on the list that I missed, let me know the title and ISBN.
THe side bar full of accounting books is somewhat bizarre... It really threw me off as I tried to figure out the relationship to Mormonism these books had.
Posted by: Matt W. | Jan 14, 2007 at 07:44 PM
I guess the Amazon algorithm thinks there are lots of Mormon accountants!
I added a page on Sociology of Mormonism this morning. This seems to be a hot field at the moment.
Posted by: Dave | Jan 15, 2007 at 10:49 AM
I've got the Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament book and its been a pretty decent resource to supplement the Sunday School manual for my SS lessons.
Posted by: Matt Thurston | Jan 16, 2007 at 03:26 PM
Matt, I'd agree it's a very nice resource. No real surprises in the material (basic Introduction to the New Testament stuff) except that a good chunk of it would never get through Correlation. When material published by Deseret Book (!!) is "too hot to handle," it's obvious that Correlation has run amok.
Posted by: Dave | Jan 16, 2007 at 05:21 PM
I wish it would site it's sources. What recent scholarship says Herod "only killed" 10 or 20 babies?
Dave, what evidence do you have that correlation would be against it?
Posted by: Matt W. | Jan 16, 2007 at 05:41 PM
Matt, not a signed letter from the Guru of Correlation, just my sense from reading a couple of the chapters. One sees material one would never find in a manual or CES publication, such as the statement that Paul didn't write many of the "Pauline" epistles (generally preceeded by the formulaic phrase, "many scholars believe that ...").
Posted by: Dave | Jan 17, 2007 at 09:03 AM