Jack Miles, the former LAT Book Review editor and Pulitzer Prize winner for God: A Biography (and current senior adviser to the president of the J. Paul Getty Trust) reviews two books on Jesus and Americans' claim on him in today's Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. One of the books, Jesus in America: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero, National Obsession, was written by USC professor Richard Wightman Fox; the other is by Stephen Prothero of Boston University.

Living in a place where Spanish is now the universal second language and formed as I have been — I am an ex-Jesuit — by the Catholic tradition, I expect to turn more often to Fox’s than to Prothero’s book in the years to come, though both books will have a permanent place in my library.

Also in the Journal, Steve Getzug calls on Frank McCourt, the new Dodgers owner, to add more kosher fare at the stadium:

This is not about doing away with the legendary Dodger Dog. No way. It’s simply about expanding a menu choice for the thousands of the more observant Jewish Dodger fans included among the 650,000 Jews who call Los Angeles home.

A movement to bring a kosher hot dog alternative to Dodger Stadium is gathering steam, although we would prefer, when the kosher dogs come, that they be grilled.