The First Jewish–Roman War (66–73/74 CE) was the first of three major Jewish rebellions against the Roman Empire. Fought in the province of Judaea, it was bloodily supressed and resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple. After the client kingdom of Judaea was annexed as a Roman province in 6 CE, tensions grew due to harsh governance and social, ethnic, and religious divisions. Open revolt erupted after the Roman governor Gessius Florus looted the temple in Jerusalem and killed many civilians. Early rebel successes included the defeat of Cestius Gallus at Bethoron, but Roman forces under Vespasian and later his son Titus reconquered the province. Jerusalem fell in 70 CE after a devastating siege, and the last resistance ended with the fall of Masada. The war profoundly reshaped Jewish history and religion, accelerated the separation between early Christianity and Judaism, strengthened the Flavian dynasty, and set the stage for the later catastrophic Bar Kokhba revolt. (Full article...)

Alan Kent Haruf (1943–2014) was an American writer born and raised in Colorado. He wrote six novels and several short stories set on the High Plains. As a young man Haruf enrolled in the Peace Corps in lieu of military service before receiving a master's degree from the University of Iowa. He initially struggled to establish a career as a writer. Haruf spent years teaching English at a high school and at universities. His writing was first published in 1984 when he was 41. Commercial success eluded him until the publication of Plainsong in 1999, which became a bestseller. Throughout Haruf's career, critics praised his spare and elegant prose, authentic portrayals of rural life, and attention to the beauty found in ordinary things, although he was occasionally criticized for redundancy. A Colorado magazine, 5280, wrote that Haruf is "widely considered Colorado's finest novelist", and the Dublin Review of Books called his work "both uniquely American and profoundly universal". (Full article...)

The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village is a 2001 non-fiction book by the historian Eamon Duffy. It concerns Morebath, England, during the English Reformation of the 16th century. Using the churchwarden's accounts maintained by Sir Christopher Trychay, the vicar of Morebath's parish, Duffy recounts the religious and social implications of the Reformation in a small conservative Catholic community through the reign of Henry VIII, during the violent 1549 Prayer Book Rebellion, and into the Elizabethan era. Trychay's accounts – first reprinted in 1904 – had been used in other scholarly works and were first encountered by Duffy in 1992. Duffy's work depicts both Morebath and Trychay through their strong early resistance to the Reformation to their eventual adoption of new religious norms under the Protestant Elizabethan Religious Settlement. In 2002, the work won the Hawthornden Prize and the book was shortlisted for both the Samuel Johnson Prize and British Academy Book Prize. (Full article...)