Roth's debut novel, "Divergent," features a strong female protagonist living in a dystopian society who chooses to rebel against the "norm." In this society, when teens reach the age of 16, they are forced to choose between five different groups each with its own virtue (Amity, Dauntless, Candor, Erudite, or Abnegation) in which they will live for the rest of their lives. But Beatrice Prior is not willing to make this decision and, instead, makes a choice that upsets everything her world has been built on. While her society maintains that an individual can have only one of these five characteristics, and must live in accordance with it, Beatrice wants more. Beatrice also holds a secret that she has been warned could mean her death if revealed, but which might save the people she loves. This is an action-packed novel that you won't want to put down, and the good news is that once you are done, you will have two more novels in the trilogy to look forward to.
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
