Book Reviews

Summary: There is few parts of American history that are less understood but have more importance to modern political problems.

Over the past year, I have realized how large my historical blind spots have been from the end of the Civil War until roughly the Civil Rights era. That 100-year era was almost completely absent from my education, and I didn’t realize how much that absence mattered until I kept running up against that missing historical era when reading about modern racial issues.

When I asked around, multiple people suggested that I start with Eric Foner. He has several books that are roughly around this era, including a shorter edition of this book that is on sale right now. There are two editions of this book, and I picked the older edition because it was the one that was available on Audible as an audiobook. (The audiobook is poorly done, with lots of editing problems, mispronounced words, and sound issues.)

Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution was originally published in 1988, nearly 30 years ago, with the conscious purpose of countering the myths of reconstruction that had grown up as part of the Lost Cause movement and the later Jim Crow and segregation eras. Much of the early history of Reconstruction was written in the 1920-50s from the perspective of Southern historians. Foner was the first major historian of the late 20th century to counter that myth (and I am using myth in the academic method as a founding story, not just as a false narrative.) Foner does note that WEB Dubois’s book, Black Reconstruction in America, had many similar themes but was largely ignored by academic historians who had adopted the common narrative for the failure of Reconstruction.

The short version of the book is that the failure of Reconstruction was a mix of economic problems, government corruption (this was present in both parties, but the Republicans as the majority party, and the party of former slave officeholders in the South was blamed more strongly) and fatigue of the problems of Reconstruction, not freed Black office holders, carpet baggers, and scalawags.

There were several major periods of Reconstruction. Foner starts in 1963, when the Union Army occupied large areas of the South and, under the Emancipation Proclamation, operated an Army-run Reconstruction until the war’s end. During this period and the next period, Foner suggests that there was far more self-directed movement among newly freed slaves to lift themselves up and build institutions and community than is generally assumed.

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Summary: Contemplative prayer is about hearing from God and resting in his care.

Part of my exploration of Spiritual Direction is looking into specific academic programs. Jan Johnson is one of the faculty at the program I am leaning toward. I picked up When the Soul Listens because it was newly released on audiobook by Christianaudio.com and on sale for $4.99.

When The Soul Listens: Finding Rest and Direction in Contemplative Prayer was originally released in 1999 and was recently reissued. I initially felt some push back against Johnson at the beginning of the book because of emphasis against extemporaneous prayer and against written and fixed prayer. (Part of the renewal of my personal prayer life over the past decade has been finding fixed prayer and historic prayers especially using the Book of Common Prayer.) Part of her emphasis on extemporaneous prayer is based in the focus of the book on Contemplative Prayer, which tends to not be focused on fixed prayer. But also her background in Evangelicalism.

But as the book progressed, I was less bothered by the bias because of the clear wisdom about prayer in general. This is a book that I want to get in print eventually because there are so many good one line thoughts about prayer. Because I listened to the book on audio I didn’t write many of them down.

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Summary: Good overview of the how and why of Spiritual direction.

I am a bit unsure how to proceed with my blogging about books about spiritual direction. I have been going to a Spiritual Director for the past four years and I have mentioned it a couple times in other book reviews.

Over the past couple months I have been considering the possibility of formal training to become a spiritual director. I have not made a decision one way or another. But I have committed to reading more about spiritual direction (because that is how I process), praying about it, and seeking out advice from people around me that I trust.

As part of the reading more about Spiritual Direction I am going to be reading a number of books about spiritual direction over the next 6-8 months until it is time for me to actually apply to a program. I am not sure if I am going to blog through these books or not.

The Practice of Spiritual Direction is a classic book on spiritual direction originally written in 1982. The authors are both Catholic, but it is very ecumenical in tone (at least the 2009 edition that I read.) The first couple chapters are rough descriptions of what spiritual direct is and is not. There are some definitions that are stricter and some that are looser, but roughly the spiritual direction here is understood as, “˜helping a person directly with his or her relationship with God.’

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Summary: Consumer Christianity is boring.

John Hambrick is one of the pastors at my church. I have heard some of this book in stories from sermons that either John preached or were taught or referenced by other pastors.

I picked up Move Toward the Mess when it first came out but never got around to reading it. A couple weeks ago I was scheduled to meet with John and figured I should find out about him a bit before I met with him.

The broad story here is that our Christianity has become boring and staid because we have misunderstood what Christianity is. Christianity is not for us as individuals, especially not to give us something safe.

Christianity is much more corporate than what we tend to understand. We are Christians as a body and not purely as individuals. As such, we cannot really be a Christian apart from a community.

Move Toward the Mess is exactly the message of the book. Christians, if we want to be about the work of the church, are supposed to be moving toward the messy and difficult parts of life. If we are focused on our safety as a priority then we will be missing out on the real work of the church and the real areas of growth for us as individuals.

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Summary: Slavery was intimately tied to the early economy of the United States regardless of where you were located.

Slavery, history, and racial issues are again in the news, and there has been lots of evidence of a poor understanding of history. The way to cure bad history is good history because, frankly, many of us either had no real education about slavery, reconstruction, or the Jim Crow era, or what we had was bad history.

There are two primary focuses of The Half Has Never Been Told. The first is that Baptist is trying to give a good account of what slavery was really like and how it changed over time. Baptist has prioritized slave narratives or interviews with actual slaves as the basis for his descriptions of what slavery was really like.

The second focus of The Half Has Never Been Told is to examine how slavery was tied to the development of the early US economy. What is significant about the book is that the early economy was not separated between the North and the South or by some other regional method but was interdependent. Repeatedly, Northern politicians, some of whom opposed slavery on moral or ethical grounds, and Southern politicians, many of whom owned slaves directly, voted to expand slavery or at least voted against restrictions because of economic interests. When economics and moral concerns collide, usually, the economic concerns win.

In summary, Baptist shows that slaves were the most liquid form of capital in the early economy, and the liquidity of slaves as capital grew over time as the internal slave markets matured. Older slave economies of the Southeast sold slaves as commodities to the Southwest for the development of the cotton economy. The development of early banks and commodity markets was highly dependent on slavery either as a direct market, reason for lending, collateral for loans, or dependent on the crops produced by slaves.

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Summary: First of a trilogy of biographies on Theodore Roosevelt; this one takes us up until the point where he is told of the death of President McKinley.

I picked up The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt a while ago when it was on sale. I knew it had one a Pulitzer Prize and that it was listed as one of the top 100 non-fiction books ever written by Modern Library.

Starting with his early life and continuing until McKinley’s death, which is what moved Roosevelt from Vice President to President, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt is indeed a very good biography. It wasn’t until I was nearly finished that I went back and realized that this was originally published in 1979.

The treatment of the first couple years of Teddy’s life felt a bit too light and almost hagiography. But that fell away as he became an adult. I saw in one of the reviews on Goodreads that someone said, “˜It would be hard to make Theodore Roosevelt into an uninteresting character.’ And that is very true. His life was fascinating.

He was a real reformer, albeit one that was still highly influenced by his culture. He supported women’s right to vote very early. He worked to see African Americans included in the Republican Party convention and supported other instances of what we could anachronistically call civil rights in the late 19th century. He worked strongly for government reform and against machine politics and patronage.

But he also was extremely jingoistic and casually racist against Native Americans and many others as was common of the day. But even at the time, many did not want him to be the Assistant Secretary of War because he was too fascinated by war and Manifest Destiny even at the time.

Part of what is fascinating to me is the role his insistence of proper behavior played in his life. He was very moral and proper and expected other to be as well. Not just about not cheating on his wife (or sleeping around before he was married) or drinking too much or selling votes or similar, but also about the proper ways to address your class or cultural betters. He hated to be referred to as Teddy and even just Roosevelt was not allowed by someone that worked for him or under him.

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Summary: More wisdom, riffing off of the liturgical year or the Irrational Season.

The Crosswick Journals are hard to describe. Each of the three that I have read has been very different. But the central reason for reading them is the same, wisdom.

The first was mostly about writing and family and calling and art. But there was lots more to it than those ideas. The second was mostly about family history, especially Madeleine L’Engle’s Mother, who was dying during the period being written about. The third, Irrational Season is even more hodgepodge than the first two. But there is a theme of the liturgical year, while not strictly focused on, does bring some organization.

One feature that is new in The Irrational Season is a lot of L’Engle’s original poetry. I am not a particular fan of poetry. I understand the appeal. But I also do not want to put in the time. Poetry doesn’t work if you skim it. Poetry requires slow and repeated work. I don’t like giving books slow and repeated work. I like reading quickly and absorbing what I can and then maybe reading again a while later and absorbing some more.

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