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Savor Every Day: A Review
I picked up Shauna Niequist’s devotional Savor: Living Abundantly Where You Are, As You Are because I had read and heard her interviewed on various blogs and podcasts, and my wife is a fan of her...
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Grandpa’s Notes in a Book about World War II
Today is the 70th anniversary of VE Day, the day Germany surrendered and ended World War II in Europe. It has put me in a reflective mood, since my grandfather, who passed away last September, was in...
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How to Be Mission-Oriented Elders: A Review
When I read my friend James Matichuk’s review of Eldership and the Mission of God: Equipping Teams for Faithful Church Leadership, I wanted to get my hands on it as well. While, unlike James, I am not...
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Words about Friends: A Review
Wesley Hill is an assistant professor of New Testament at Trinity School in Ambridge, PA. He published a book with Eerdmans earlier this year called Paul and the Trinity. But in addition to his...
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Making Habits Easier to Break (and Make): A Review
In recent years, Gretchen Rubin has turned herself into something of a happiness guru. She has written two books called The Happiness Project and Happier at Home, and even hosts a podcast called...
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Adam and Eve—Just My Archetype (A Review)
The work of Old Testament scholar John Walton has been on my radar at least since 2012, when I read his book The Lost World of Genesis One (I reviewed it on the blog here). The central insight of that...
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The Church as Salad Bowl: A Review
What is the church supposed to look like? Is it the club of similar people that many of us know, or is it an outpost of God’s kingdom that consists of a group of people who would never get along if it...
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Asking Creative Questions and Finding the Right Data: A Review
Steven Levitt is an economist at the University of Chicago who developed a reputation for coming up with unusual questions to answer using economic analysis: Why do crack dealers live with their...
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Why You’ve Heard of the Vanderbilts: A Review
When I was a kid my parents once took me to the Biltmore, the enormous estate built by George W. Vanderbilt outside Asheville, NC. I didn’t know it then, but Vanderbilt’s fortune came primarily from...
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Good to Great: One of the Great Business Books
I don’t read a lot of business books, but at least I don’t sneer at them like I used to (progress!). Many of them are not great as literature, but I’ve come to believe that I can learn from almost any...
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Religion and Politics Are Inseparable: A Review
I first encountered the writing of Richard John Neuhaus when I took a class on Christianity and culture in seminary and I had to choose a book to review from a list. The title of Neuhaus’s The Naked...
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A Great New Study Bible Focused on Biblical Theology
Any Bible reader looking for a quick orientation to the text without getting bogged down in extraneous scholarly discussions needs a study Bible. Creating a good study Bible is hard: the notes have to...
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How Five Well-Known Podcasts Approach Storytelling
It has been over a month since I last posted, and I’ve been busy. I preached three sermons during that time, in addition to my regular work responsibilities, so I didn’t have a whole lot of time for...
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A Pilgrimage to Krakow: A Review
I fell in love with Krakow when I was teaching English in central Europe from 2002–2004. Part of it was the timing of my first visit. In Prague, where I was living, the Soviet-era project of...
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The Wisdom of Speaking Foolishness: A Review
Apologetics—the systematic defense of Christianity—sometimes gets a bad rap, but for different reasons. For one thing, in our current cultural climate it is often frowned upon to “proselytize” anyone....
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The Habits of Leading: A Review
For about six months a couple of years ago, I was a regular listener of the Catalyst podcast. Catalyst is an organization that seeks to grow young leaders in business and the church through...
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Reminiscences of the Book Business: A Review
Since I work in the publishing industry, I’m always on the lookout for books about it. Surprisingly, considering that the publishing industry’s main purpose is to put out books, there don’t seem to be...
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Authority + Vulnerability: A Review
I finished reading Andy Crouch’s newest book, Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk & True Flourishing, this weekend. I was telling my wife about it, and she asked why I had been...
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The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in Shades of Gray: A Review
David K. Shipler,a New York Times reporter based in Jerusalem during the early 1980s, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land. His book, rather than...
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“My Bad,” and Other Sports Metaphors: A Review
I taught English as a second language for a couple of years just after college, and my students could never get enough of idioms and metaphors. By the time they had me as a teacher, most of them had...
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