As the summer winds to an end, the oppressive heat and humidity are likely to drive us inside as much as possible. Use that nice air-conditioned time wisely, though. We can fill this time with many good books. Below, you will find some of our most recent reads that we think are important. We offer a wide range of subjects that readers from all walks of life will find interesting. If you have a good recommendation, please leave us a comment.
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Kevin Bales, Blood and Earth: Modern Slavery, Ecocide, and the Secret to Saving the World (New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2016), 304 pages.
While many think of slavery as a practice of days gone by, the reality is that millions of people are presently enslaved all around the globe. Kevin Bales draws attention to this fact in his engrossing book, Blood and Earth: Modern Slavery, Ecocide, and the Secret to Saving the World. The fact that so many millions find themselves enslaved is troubling enough in itself. Yet, as the title suggests, the problem goes beyond human rights violations. Bales thoroughly demonstrates how enslaved persons are forced to destroy entire ecosystems in order to harvest raw materials used to make the appliances and accessories we use every day—from the phones in our pockets to the rings on our fingers. Though Bales does not write from an explicitly theological standpoint, we who believe simultaneously that each human is made in the image of God and that the earth is the Lord’s (Gen. 1:27; Psalm 24:1), would do well to understand the problems that Bales presents and adopt some of the solutions that he proposes.
—Recommended by Joshua R. Colson
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Virginia Lee Burton, The Little House (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1942), 40 pages.
I do not recall reading Virginia Lee Burton’s beautifully illustrated picture books as a child, but I have been greatly enjoying reading her children’s book, The Little House, to my little one. With skillful artwork and simple prose, Burton tells the story of a well-built country House and the city that begins to grow around her. As the Little House becomes buried in the busyness of the city, she loses her connection with the natural rhythms of life and the family that once cared for her. Thankfully, the great-great granddaughter of the man who built the Little House decides to have her moved out of the city and relocated in the idyllic countryside once again. I recommend this children’s book for the virtues it holds in high esteem: love for Creation, simple living, and honor toward father and mother.
—Recommended by Rebekah Zuñiga
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Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley, Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 224 pages.
I recently went back and read through Maggie Callanan and Patricial Kelley’s Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying with some of my colleagues. When a person’s body goes through the process of shutting down, important spiritual and emotional work is also taking place. What is the patient feeling? How is each member of the family responding to his or her grief? How should you, as a caregiver, respond to the needs and questions that arise? These questions can be overwhelming for caregivers. For this reason, I am grateful for the work of hospice nurses Callanan and Kelley. They both share their experiences with patients and families at the end of life and give valuable advice in navigating such needs and questions. I recommend this book to any pastor as they work to provide comfort during times of death or dying, and also for caregivers providing support to families suffering from a terminal illness.
—Recommended by Zachery Maloney
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Sally Fallon with Mary G. Enig, Ph. D., Nourishing Traditions (Washington, D. C.: New Trends, 1999), 634 pages.
Stewarding creation well involves, among other things, caring about what we eat. We need to tend to the animals and plants that we cultivate and harvest for consumption, and we must give attention to the effect that food has on our health. Nourishing Traditions is part health primer, part cookbook. Sally Fallon, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, provides an extensively researched case for the diets of traditional cultures and attainable recipes for including these foods in our own diets. The myth of progress may try to convince us that meatless meat will be better for us, but Fallon looks to the wisdom of the past together with modern research to recommend a diet of low-processed foods geared toward human flourishing—especially healthy and successful reproduction.
—Recommended by Rebekah Zuñiga
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David M. King, Your Old Testament Sermon Needs to Get Saved: A Handbook for Preaching Christ from the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody, 2021), 137 pages.
David King’s Your Old Testament Sermon Needs to Get Saved: A Handbook for Preaching Christ from the Old Testament is extremely helpful to ministers who are thinking through how to preach the whole counsel of God in a robust manner. In the first section of his book, King provides exegetical and theological reasons for why one should preach Christ from the Old Testament. The second and third sections are more practical as he discusses the process and benefits of preaching in this manner, while also highlighting many pitfalls to avoid. There are many obscure passages in the Old Testament that ministers may avoid even though they would rather not, because they find it difficult to find a clear application for the New Testament believer. I found this book to be especially helpful in this matter, and I encourage all preachers to read it.
—Recommended by Zach Vickery
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Peter Kreeft, The Platonic Tradition (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2018), 152 pages.
The term Christian Platonism has found a new audience in recent online and academic discussions. Many wonder how much or how little Platonic thought and historic Christian theology should be synthesized or separated. Peter Kreeft offers a wonderful perspective on this topic in The Platonic Tradition by walking through the rich Platonic tradition, showing how it lends itself, in the right ways, to a Christian perspective. Further, he takes to task other areas of philosophy that have shown to be reductive, especially William of Ockham’s nominalism. For those looking for an accessible work that offers a helpful springboard into the world of Christian Platonism, this book is a great place to start.
—Recommended by Christopher Talbot
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Russell Moore, The Courage to Stand (Nashville: B&H, 2020), 284 pages.
In his most recent book, The Courage to Stand, Russell Moore draws parallels between the story of Elijah and many fears Christians face today. Although Moore focuses on the narrative of Elijah’s life and ministry, the book reads like a memoir at times, specifically when Moore shares about a spiritual crisis he experienced as a teenager.
I especially appreciate the way he draws the connection between Elijah and the promise of Christ’s presence during times of fear. He writes, “Elijah was courageous because he learned how to be afraid in the right way. And so must you. You, like he, will walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and the only way you can learn to fear no evil is to conclude that someone is walking with you, someone is, in fact, shepherding you” (68).
This book feels timely as many pastors and lay leaders are navigating their own personal crises and often feel alone. For this reason I recommend this book to any Christian who needs encouragement.
—Recommended by Zachery Maloney
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Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-century New York (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1986), 244 pages.
Historian Russell Weigley perceptively wrote in 1973 that “the relatively remote past is apt to constrain our thought and actions more [than the events of yesterday], because we understand it less well than we do our recent past, or at least recall it less clearly and it has cut deeper grooves of custom in our minds.”[1] While Weigley’s focus was American military history, his analysis was much broader. He rightly saw that the pieces of our past that we understand least tend to have the deepest impact on us, because the results of those forgotten events become normative in our culture, leading us to assume that things have never been different in this aspect of life.
For this reason Kathy Peiss’ Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-century New York is an illuminating window into how much society has changed as a result of the industrial revolution, urbanism, feminism, progressivism, and consumerism. She focuses her attention on a small slice of time in early-twentieth-century New York City when young women began working outside the home in significant numbers. As a consequence, these young women began using their earnings to suit their own desires, which led to the dissolution of traditional family leisure activities in favor of a sexualized consumerist lifestyle.
Peiss’ narrative is fascinating and enlightening in many ways, but I especially enjoyed its historical confirmation of Roger Scruton’s thinking on the sexualization of modern dance in contradistinction to traditional and intergenerational dance forms such as contra dance. Reading Peiss helps us to see how foreign the atomized society we live in compares to the premodern world that was filled with a robust communal and familial life informed by reverence to the transcendent order of things.
—Recommended by Phillip T. Morgan
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Jonathan T. Pennington, Jesus the Great Philosopher: Rediscovering the Wisdom Needed for the Good Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2020), 240 pages.
You do not have to like philosophy to benefit from Jonathan Pennington’s Jesus the Great Philosopher: Rediscovering the Wisdom Needed for the Good Life. It is written at a popular level, and filled with anecdotes, historical and pop culture references, and visual illustrations. I like it because it demonstrates how philosophy is very much about life—very much about the Christian worldview. Consequently, it is very practical. For example, it demonstrates how the Old and New Testaments present a distinct philosophy of life. It also addresses everyday struggles like how we manage our emotions and our relationships. (And you learn about some philosophical concepts and figures along the way!) If you are interested in broader discussions of how our worldview informs our lives, I commend this book to you.
—Recommended by Matthew Steven Bracey
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Andrew Peterson, The Wingfeather Saga (New York: WaterBrook, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2014), 1520 pages.
The Wingfeather Saga is a four-book series by singer-songwriter (and author!) Andrew Peterson. So rather than getting just one recommendation from this submission, you are getting four. I do not know that I have been as excited about a fiction series as I am about this one in a long time. And yet I hesitate to express my enthusiasm about it because I do not want to inflate people’s expectations. Often times we can be (understandably) skeptical about fiction that is written by Christians. Thankfully, I would place Peterson more in the tradition of George MacDonald, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis.
The Wingfeather Saga follows the Igiby family as they learn about themselves, their town, and their world. We see themes of love, failure, sacrifice, redemption, and more. The series begins as a simple (enough) story but, over the course of four books, develops into something really quite magnificent. If you like what you have read from MacDonald, Tolkien, and Lewis, then I heartily recommend Peterson. But do not go looking up anything about it and unwittingly spoil the plot for yourself. I look forward to posting a fuller reflection about this series on the HSF this coming fall.
—Recommended by Matthew Steven Bracey
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Emily S. Rosenberg, A Date Which Will Live: Pearl Harbor in American Memory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 237 pages.
The nature of interpreting history has become a hot topic in the news recently. This cultural discussion has brought the discipline of historiography out of its academic cloisters and into the homes and school board meetings of many Americans. For Christians, Ronald Nash’s The Meaning of History, which I recommended on this site in early 2019, is an excellent primer for understanding the major issues involved in interpreting and remembering the past.
Emily Rosenberg’s A Date Which Will Live: Pearl Harbor in American Memory offers an accessible avenue for thinking through how our interpretations of the past shift over time by examining our memory of one event—the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Rosenberg shows how the looming war played a key role in setting our early vision of the attack. Years later, international politics, philosophical shifts in America, international business interests, and Hollywood all attempted to refashion it for their own purposes how we understand this important event in our recent past. While I differ from Rosenberg’s conclusions about the nature of history (that is why Nash’s book is so important), this historiographical narrative helps explain why politicians, academics, teachers unions, and common folks have radically differing approaches to interpreting our past.
—Recommended by Phillip T. Morgan
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William A. Ross and W. Edward Glenny, T&T Clark Handbook of Septuagint Research (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2021), 512 pages.
The T&T Clark Handbook of Septuagint Research is a great resource for anyone interested in the Septuagint. It covers a comprehensive scope of research topics dealing with the Septuagint, such as its origin, textual history, theology, and many other subjects of debate. Each chapter is written by a leading scholar in the specific area of research for that chapter. The chapters contain concise summaries of debates with up-to-date discussions on where things stand now in light of current research. It is an excellent resource, especially for students and pastors interested in learning more about this ancient translation of the Scriptures and its importance to the history of the Greek language, the textual history of the Bible, and to religious life for both Jews and Christians.
—Recommended by Zach Vickery
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Francis Schaeffer, Two Contents, Two Realities (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1977), 32 pages.
Though more of a pamphlet than a book, one of Francis Schaeffer’s more powerful and relevant works is his short piece Two Contents, Two Realities. The thesis of the book is in the title. Schaeffer argues that Christianity in America needs two contents: (1) sound doctrine and (2) honest answers to honest questions, as well as two realities: (1) true spirituality and (2) the beauty of human relationships. In some ways, this book represents an incredibly concise summary of much of Schaeffer’s overall work. Further, the book is also practical. Whereas some of his other works are, arguably, more abstract, here Schaeffer speaks to both the mind and the heart. I encourage readers not only to read this book but also to practice its vision of the Christian life.
—Recommended by Christopher Talbot
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Asma T. Uddin, The Politics of Vulnerability: How to Heal Muslim-Christian Relations in a Post-Christian America: Today’s threat to Religion and Religious Freedom (New York: Pegasus, 2021), 336 pages.
On the surface, Muslims and evangelical Christians appear to be polar opposites, and, doubtless, they are, religiously-speaking, worlds apart. Yet Asma T. Uddin, a Muslim woman who served as a defense attorney for Hobby Lobby in the famous Supreme Court case, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014), ably demonstrates that Muslims and evangelicals have more in common than one might suppose. Indeed, when it comes to social issues such as abortion, marriage, and the like, American Muslims and evangelicals hold similar positions.
This reality makes it even more unfortunate that prominent voices from both camps speak hatefully of one another. A possible way forward, however, is for Muslims and Christians to form alliances when, where, and how they can for the protection of religious liberty in a rapidly secularizing state. Uddin’s firsthand stories and proposed solutions are at once simple and thought-provoking. For those who care about making peace in the world (Mt. 5:9), this book is a must-read.
—Recommended by Joshua R. Colson
[1]Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (Bloomington, ID: University of Indiana Press, 1973), xx.
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