Book Reviews – Page 157

ReChurch: Healing Your Way Back To The People of God by Stephen Mansfield

June 7, 2011 by Adam Shields

ReChurch: Healing Your Way Back to the People of God Takeaway: As with many other areas of life, holding grudges against the church hurts you more than the church.

Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition

Stephen Mansfield has become well known for writing about the faith of politicians. His books on Bush, Obama, Delay, Palin and Churchhill have sold well and helped Mansfield become a regular on the talk show and speaker circuit. I have not read any of those books, so I cannot speak to them. I did read God and Guinness and thought it was decent. ReChurch is a very different book from all of those.

Stephen Mansfield before he became a writer, speaker and consultant, was a pastor. For ten years he was the pastor of a growing church until a disagreement with church elders left him without a church, job and bitter. He does not give details about the incident, but does talk frankly about the hurt.

For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs by Robert Heinlein

June 6, 2011 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: There is a reason that ‘lost novels’ were lost in the first place. Only attempt if you are a very big fan of Heinlein.

Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

I found this on the Overdrive library system. So I checked it out for free and I would advise that if you are going to attempt it, you find it for free as well.

It is not a good novel. It was Heinlein’s first novel and it was never published while he was alive. It has an amazing amount of material that he was able to later use in other books.

As one of the best 20th century Science Fiction writers, he made a huge impact on generations of writers and readers. But in the 350 or so pages of text, there is only about 50 pages of story. The rest is fairly pedantic explication of the world that we end up seeing in later works.

Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert

June 1, 2011 by Adam Shields

Committed: A Love Story Takeaway: Marriage can be scary, and that is not necessarily bad if it makes you think before getting married.

Purchase Links: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audiobook CD

I have not read or watched Eat, Pray, Love.* Honestly, I just have not had much interest in it. But I was interested in this book. While I DO NOT think that everyone should get married, I do like to read about marriage and how to strengthen those marriages that do happen.

Gilbert starts with a very unsentimental take on marriage. She is broken and devastated over her divorce. She meets a guy equally negative on marriage after his divorce. And they live together with the stated commitment to never marry.

Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire by William Cavanaugh

May 30, 2011 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: I like the interesting take on the Eucharist and consumerism. But the book as a whole was disappointing.

Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition

This is my second book on a Christian view of economics in a week. I am not sure why I read in themes. The two books have very different methods. In God’s Economy, Jonathan Hargrove-Wilson writes about his own experiences of conversion to ‘God’s Economy’ and how he has tried to live out that conversion. In Being Consumed, William Cavanaugh writes as an academic theologian (although one that is most known as the author of Torture and Eucharist).

Both authors reject, simple free market/socialist dichotomies. The first chapter of Being Consumed discusses what makes and does not make a free market. This is my favorite chapter because he directly takes on the understanding of the free market economy right off the bat. His second chapter is about our relationship to goods. The biggest weakness of this chapter is that Cavanaugh wants to talk about goods as only tangible things. So when he discusses the movement away from making things, he means physical things. Like many others, he mistakenly believes that ideas, intellectual property, creative acts are somehow different than cars, plows or clothes. While it is a common understanding, it completely misses the economic reality of the digital world. In general, I strongly agree with the theological reflections on work that are in this chapter. But the dependence on the material-ness of work, makes it difficult to discuss in the real world. It is not only new economic jobs that are not material, but jobs of teacher, pastor, musician, counselor that work outside the traditional creation of objects.

God’s Economy: Redefining the Health and Wealth Gospel by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

May 27, 2011 by Adam Shields

God's Economy: Redefining the Health and Wealth Gospel Takeaway: Taking Jesus seriously on economic issues is hard.

Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook (Paperback is on sale for $6 right now)

Christians often make very bad economists, or at least bad economics writers. They may have good theology, but good theology does not necessarily make good economic sense. And Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is OK with that. He wants to focus on ways that we can re-define our understanding of economics. This is a common theme of both Christian and non-Christian books I have been reading lately. Economics is increasingly moving toward mathematical/rational determinism and away from ethical theory.

Wilson-Hartgrove is writing directly to move Christians back toward an ethical understanding of economics. As a student he wanted to change the world through politics and the religious right. Then he was deeply affected by a homeless man and began a long journey toward redefining what it means to be a Christian.

Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear

May 25, 2011 by Adam Shields

Quick Review: Good biological near-term science fiction book. The next phase of evolution is coming, quickly.

Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

Trying to save money, sometimes actually costs us more than we intended. I found the audiobook of Darwin’s Radio on Overdrive library system and checked it out for free. I obviously was not paying enough attention because it was an abridged version. I hate abridged versions. I want to read the whole story, not the highlights. That being said, several of the comments on the unabridged books said it was too long, and many of the unabridged comments complained about the narrator. The abridged version was narrated by Stefan Rudnicki, one of my absolute favorite narrators, so I am not completely disappointed.

The set up for the book is that there is a ‘virus’ that is identified that seems to only affect pregnant women, but only be carried by males. What is odder is that only monogamous couples seem to ‘catch’ the virus. The sickness causes miscarriage, followed by an immediate second pregnancy (without male involvement). Over the first half of the book you discover that this is likely a evolutionary mutation to a new species of humans. The ‘virus’ is identified in ancient neanderthals and may be responsible for evolution to modern humans.

The Next Story by Tim Challies (Is it a Reformed view?)

May 23, 2011 by Adam Shields

My general review of The Next Story: Life and Faith After The Digital Explosion is basically very positive. I had a lot of disagreements about Challies’ conception of Authority, but still think it is a good book.

But after I read this interview where Challies thought he was not writing a Reformed perspective on technology I thought I would write one more brief post about where I think his reformed perspective is showing through. I am not opposed to Reformed theology, and I do not want him to not write from a Reformed perspective, but I do think it is helpful to be aware of our theology so we can better understand how our backstories play into how we conceive of the world.

Why We Read Fiction by Lisa Zunshine

May 23, 2011 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: Fiction is one example of ways that our minds fill in details and help us understand how we may act in different situations. This is a fairly advanced literary theory book and I gave up and did not finish. Purchase Links: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle Edition I picked this up because it was on sale … Read more

The Next Story by Tim Challies (Authority and Truth)

May 19, 2011 by Adam Shields

Takeaway: Conceptions of Authority and Truth are changing, the question is are they changing because of culture or technology. And if they are changing, is it a bad thing?

My general review of The Next Story: Life and Faith After The Digital Explosion is basically very positive. I do not want to distract from the fact that in general I think this was a very helpful book and one that many people would benefit from reading. But the parts that I most disagreed with revolved around Challies understanding of truth and authority.

Initially, Challies has a discussion of Russell Ackoff‘s DIKW model. Ackoff suggests that we move from Data (simple description) to Information (answers basic questions like who, what, where, when) to Knowledge (information that has been owned and processed so a person can interact with other types of information) and finally to Wisdom (the application of knowledge, life experience to make good decisions). Data and information about about the accumulation. Knowledge is about the comparisons. And wisdom is about the application.

Challies makes the very useful progression a focus of how our use of education has changed. Rote memory is much less important because the basic facts are always available. The problems according to Challies, Nicholas Carr and others is that we are in a race to accumulate data and information and do not seem to spend much time with knowledge and wisdom. Part of this is availability of information. If a person only has access to dozens of books you will think much more about the individual books and ideas within the books. If you have access to virtually unlimited data then the inclination is to spend less time on any particular idea. In many ways, I think this is true partially. Many people know lots about a little. But increased specialization also means that people have more time, and are rewarded because they know a lot about a few things. So while I think that for the average person, there might be a temptation toward data/information and not knowledge/wisdom, I do not think this true of society as a whole.

Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science by Charles Wheelan

May 12, 2011 by All Old Users

Rating: 4 Stars Purchase Links: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook Economics has always been fascinating to me. I regret never taking an economics class in college. This book broke down a lot of economics principles into an accessible format that left me wanting to learn more. I wouldn’t call it Economics for Dummies. It’s … Read more