As the cold North Wind begins to blow into our communities, we wrap up our last outdoor chores for the year and seek shelter inside as summer winds to an end. The extra hours inside provide a great time for reading individually and as a family. Listed below are several recommended books that we have particularly enjoyed over the past few months. We hope you will find something useful for your future reading. Please be sure to share your favorite books from the past quarter in our comment section.
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Kathryn Butler Between Life and Death: A Gospel-Centered Guide to End-Of-Life Medical Care (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), 178 pages.
Those involved in ministry have a unique vantage point from which to see the effects of modern medical advances on the people under our care. However, are all these technologies ethical? Should certain life-prolonging measures be avoided? As Kathryn Butler explains in her new book, “When faced with the grief and uncertainty of life-threating disease, fear may drive us to resist death at all costs” (36). I appreciate Butler’s desire to foster careful and nuanced conversation on end-of-life medical care, which is a daunting task. Many approaches to the end of life are often obscured by complex medical terminologies and moral dilemmas, making it difficult for patients and their families to honor God in these precious moments. Guidance in these areas should be thoughtfully articulated in a way that will allow people to understand best how to honor God in their final moments.
—Recommended by Zachery Maloney
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David B. Calhoun, In Their Own Words: The Testimonies of Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, and John Bunyan (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2018), 232 pages.
A dear friend gave me this book, and I’ve been so blessed by it. David Calhoun’s In Their Own Words is a powerful reminder of the grace of God in the lives of His people. Calhoun’s work is somewhat unique in the sense that it provides biographical information of each figure, as well as large sections of personal testimony from these men.
I found the section on Bunyan particularly moving. Bunyan was a poor dissenting English preacher who spent many years of his adult life imprisoned for continuing to preach without government sanction. This was distressing not only to Bunyan as a prisoner in poor conditions, but also to his family who were left in deep poverty. Still, Bunyan had no choice but to write and preach of God’s grace even if it cost him dearly. Bunyan was overwhelmed by the grace of God in Christ. Hear these words from Bunyan, which epitomize his conviction and the value of Calhoun’s book:
To see a prince entreat a beggar to receive alms would be a strange sight; to see a king entreat the traitor to accept mercy would be a stranger sight than that; but to see God entreat a sinner, to hear Christ say, “I stand at the door and knock,” with a heart full and a heaven full of grace to bestow upon him that opens, this is such a sight as dazzles the eyes of angels (222).
—Recommended by Jesse Owens
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Saul Cornell, The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788-1828 (Chapel Hill, NC: North Carolina University Press for the Omohundro Institute, 1999), 307 pages.
Most Americans who paid attention in their United States history classes in high school or college have at least a passing knowledge of the Federalist Papers, written in defense of the proposed United States Constitution during the battle for ratification. However, as Saul Cornell argues, the Anti-Federalists who fought to defeat the Constitution are also significant contributors to our political framework and discourse in America. Their concerns about the centralized and powerful government that the Constitution proposed were persuasive, and the election for the Constitution’s ratification was closer than we often realize.
After the delegates ratified the Constitution, the Anti-Federalists became the opposition party within the government, their efforts leading to the adoption of the Bill of Rights, as well as to the formation of Thomas Jefferson’s and James Madison’s Democratic Republican Party. Perhaps Cornell’s insightful and wide ranging analysis of Anti-Federalism is most important for showing how the Anti-Federalist position has remained active in American politics even to the present.
—Recommended by Phillip T. Morgan
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Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001), 284 pages.
Theodore Dalrymple is an English doctor and author who has written dozens upon dozens of articles about miscellaneous topics. This book collates many of those articles, which extol traditional morality and criticize liberal-progressive morality in reference to many of the socio-economic challenges we see in the modern West. He tackles issues like substance abuse, violence, and welfare dependency. Dalrymple does not engage in pie-in-the-sky games but rather in on-the-ground street-level polemics. He speaks from a place of hands-on experience gained over the course of decades. His writing is not highly specialized or technical but approachable and straightforward to readers of all sorts.
—Recommended by Matthew Steven Bracey
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Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, The World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 880 pages.
This was the first Charles Dickens novel I read without any previous notion of the plot or characters, and it has become one of my favorites. Dickens’s powers of keen social observation and biting satire (for example, social climbers who are chiefly concerned with looking the high society “part” are aptly named Mr. and Mrs. Veneering) are on full display in this novel, which is at once touching, intriguing, and exciting. It follows the fates of several characters, all bound up in the death of John Harmon, heir of an immense fortune. The novel also features Lizzie Hexam, who is, in my opinion, one of Dickens’s best female characters.
—Recommended by Christa Thornsbury
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Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (New York: Penguin, 2008), 310 pages.
Tim Keller’s books have been often recommended by our contributors, and I now add another title to that list: The Reason for God. Though this bestseller of Keller’s has been in print for over ten years, I’d never read it in its entirety. I was able to correct that this summer. Keller does a masterful job surveying and responding to seven of the most common objections to Christianity in the first part of the book. He follows that with seven chapters (and an epilogue) in which he provides affirmative reasons for Christian belief. Keller is characteristically lucid, concise, evangelical, and conversant with both Christian sources and secular authors who help illustrate his ideas or serve as representatives of the ideas he seeks to refute. Another unique feature of this book is that it tends to steer clear of explicit bias regarding specific apologetic methodologies, offering readers of many stripes something from which they can benefit whether they minister in an urban setting like Manhattan or not.
—Recommended by W. Jackson Watts
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Thomas S. Kidd, Who Is an Evangelical? The History of a Movement in Crisis (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019), 191 pages.
Who is an evangelical? That is a complex question. Thomas Kidd attempts to answer the question historically by tracing the roots of American evangelicalism from the eighteenth century through the election of Donald Trump. According to Kidd, the moniker “evangelical” has come to mean something like “Republican insider evangelicals,” whom Kidd argues “abetted the politicization of the movement” (1). And while evangelicals have often been involved in what might be perceived as political issues, evangelicalism has been primarily concerned with the new birth (conversion), an infallible Bible, and God’s discernible presence through the Holy Spirit (156). Kidd argues that this is still true of evangelicalism if we define evangelicals as those who hold evangelical beliefs, rather than limiting it to those who might self-identify as evangelical.
Self-identification is yet another piece of this complex issue. Many non-whites who hold evangelical beliefs would not identify with evangelicals or evangelicalism due to a perceived lack of concern for social issues among white evangelicals for over a century—what Kidd calls “equivocation” (64). But evangelical beliefs regarding conversion, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit are not held only by whites who tend to vote Republican. That’s never been the case. There is a crisis among modern evangelicals on a variety of fronts, yet Kidd reminds us not only of the flaws of the movement but also of the core convictions that evangelicals have always shared, which ought to serve as the source of greater unity among those who hold them.
—Recommended by Jesse Owens
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Russell Kirk, Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered (Wilmington, DE: ISI, 1997), 285 pages.
For many years I’ve heard of Russell Kirk’s biography of Edmund Burke, an important figure of the conservative intellectual tradition. And for many years, I’ve heard of Burke himself as an important figure to read. But life is busy, and, as a student, I’ve always had other things to read. Well, I have recently found the opportunity and time to invest myself in these figures. Little did I know what I had been missing! Engaging the thought of these important luminaries—Burke and Kirk and others like them—is like eating a chocolate cake: utterly delightful.
Kirk’s biography of Burke, first published in 1967, is excellent. Roger Scruton authors the preface to this edition, saying, “Burke was one of the outstanding figures of the eighteenth century” (vii). Throughout the book, Kirk details Burke’s life and his philosophy, as well as some of the major political and social battles he fought, with particular reference to the madness of George III, the imperialism of India, the rebellion of the American colonists, and the revolution of the French. Near the end of the book, Kirk offers this high praise of Burke:
Directly or by a kind of intellectual osmosis, he permeated American political thought and action. He enlivened political philosophy by the moral imagination; he shored up Christian doctrine; he stimulated the higher understanding of history; he enriched English literature by a mastery of prose that makes him the Cicero of his language and nation. And to the modern civil social order, he contributed those principles of ordered freedom, preservation through reform, and justice restraining arbitrary power, which transcend the particular political struggles of his age (210–11).
—Recommended by Matthew Steven Bracey
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C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1996), 175 pages.
“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them” (ix). The reader may think the idea (and cover image) of this book is odd, but C. S. Lewis rightly notes in the preface how believers can fall prey to the schemes of the devil. Lewis’s fictional letters from a senior demon named Screwtape to a young demon named Wormwood are sobering. Each letter will help readers view themselves more honestly, ideally leading them to turn away from sin. Readers should carefully read each letter at a slow pace and perhaps read each more than once. In doing so, the letters might move the reader towards repentance.
—Recommended by Zachery Maloney
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Benjamin L. Merkle and Robert L. Plummer, Greek For Life: Strategies for Learning, Retaining, and Reviving New Testament Greek (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017), 152 pages.
If you’re like many former Bible college or seminary students, you’ve likely not spent much time translating and parsing words from your Greek New Testament since you submitted your final exam. It is easy to find many reasons to put off your language study after taking a Biblical language course. For some, the rigor of the course may have been exhausting, and they were simply relieved not to have another quiz to stress over. Some students may enjoy Biblical Greek, but once they left the guidance of their professors, they did not know how to continue in their language study.
In Greek for Life, Benjamin Merkle and Robert Plummer do a great job of providing direction for how students can retain and even revive their New Testament Greek. They are constantly pointing out the practicality of knowing the Biblical languages and their importance for proper exegesis. The authors’ approach helps motivate the student by highlighting the eternal significance of learning New Testament Greek and by noting that it is not just another foreign language. No matter where you are in your pursuit of learning New Testament Greek, you will find this book helpful and encouraging.
—Recommended by Zach Vickery
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Robert E. Picirilli, How We Get Our English Bible: Understanding about Different Versions (Nashville: Randall House, 2019), 135 pages.
In his most recent book, Robert Picirilli provides a helpful survey of the production of the English Bible. He begins by establishing what we as Bible-believing Christians teach about the Scriptures, arguing for the plenary, verbal inspiration of the Bible. This, he claims, is foundational to everything else he discusses in the book.
Most of Picirilli’s book then deals with the question of translation and why there are so many different versions of the Scriptures. He explains the process of translation and the fact that there is more than one way to render Hebrew and Greek words into English. He gives special attention in this work to the King James Version (KJV) and even includes the original preface of the KJV with commentary highlighting the translators’ view of the Scriptures and their objective for creating a new translation.
This book will interest those who are curious about what underlies the abundance of English translations, and they will benefit from Picirilli’s survey of the translation techniques and manuscript traditions of the English Bible.
—Recommended by Zach Vickery
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William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero, Oxford’s World Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 1,008 pages.
Vanity Fair is a delightful, rollicking novel. Following the fortunes and misfortunes of the conniving Rebecca Sharp, the book satirizes (as is hinted by the title’s allusion to the famous scene in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress) much of Victorian culture and the social striving characteristic of the time. This particular edition features William Thackeray’s original illustrations and pictorial capitals (as this edition’s notes refer to them) that open each chapter; these illustrations provide further insight into Thackeray’s characters and story.
—Recommended by Christa Thornsbury
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J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (New York: Harper, 2016), 288 pages.
J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy is a bestseller from 2016 that I recently had the chance to read, and it wasn’t a disappointment. The disturbing behavior and salty language littered throughout the book aptly describes the author’s upbringing. Vance, an author, veteran, and attorney-turned-entrepreneur brings to light the chaotic family life of many in rural America. His memoir is part autobiography, but it is certainly more. He paints a grim picture of life in the Rust Belt, now hollowed-out by globalization, automation, and other social and cultural forces. Hillbilly Elegy is a commentary on an often ignored part of our country. I am from the rural South, not the Midwest, but much of what Vance describes fits what I observed up-close as I was growing up—though thankfully not in my own household. Many reviewers have thought Vance’s book helps explains the election of Donald Trump, and no doubt this is partly correct. Politics, aside, Vance’s story is compelling on its own terms because it shows the importance of family dynamics for the life outcomes of individuals and communities as well as a closer look at life for many in Appalachia.
—Recommended by W. Jackson Watts
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Maciej Zięba, Papal Economics: The Catholic Church on Democratic Capitalism (Wilmington, DE: ISI, 2013), 206 pages.
Discussing economics is often a complex endeavor, in part because it is such a contested field, with each economic philosophy built on embedded metaphysical assumptions. Maciej Zięba’s Papal Economics provides a wonderful introduction to papal thinking on this subject from Rerum Novarum (1891) to the present. Zięba writes clearly and accessibly about the complex and subtle shifts in papal economic thought for the past century. He also gives extended treatment to John Paul II’s economic position. This recent publication from ISI is refreshing in its unabashed theological approach to the subject of economics. While it includes some Roman Catholic distinctives that low-church Protestants would reject or modify, it has more for us to extol than to criticize.
—Recommended by Phillip T. Morgan
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