Williams’s new book, just published by IVP Academic, is Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic: Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity. Her experience as a historian of the classical world gives her a distinctive perspective on the much-debated subjects outlined in her title, as does her choice to become a “stay-at-home mom” (and a homeschooler to boot: the horror!). She moves without strain from the plight of widows in fourth-century B.C. Athens (she focuses on one in particular, a foreigner, lacking protectors) to our own time: “Modern America,” she observes, “has become a land of uprooted people.”
When Williams writes about “uprooted people,” she knows firsthand what she is talking about; she was still a girl when her family left Russia, settling in the U.S. only years later, after living in Israel for some time. I find her range, her balance, immensely cheering at a moment when there is so much huffing and puffing.
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