Book Reviews

Summary: A scifi police procedural that is a set up for a longer series.

In addition to being a stay at home Dad to two, I have a part time gig that involves lots of data analysis. I am in one of the seasons where that data has to be transferred from one format to another, so I am doing a lot of data entry. This is fairly mindless work and one of the things I have alway liked about my job because I can listen to audiobooks in the background while I do it.

A Facebook friend recommended a book series that starts with The Disappeared last week that seemed like a perfect data entry book and I picked it up and listened to it immediately since it was on sale.

The setting is the moon. The oldest and largest of the moon colonies is Armstrong Base. Armstrong Base has the biggest spaceport and so the largest traffic. This future has a number of different alien groups that trade with humans. One of the side problems with alien economic trade is the different cultural and legal systems. Intergalactic trade policy has to include systems for prosecution of local offenses.

Several of the alien groups have bounty hunters that come to search out humans that are in violation of various ‘crimes’. This gives rise to disappearance services that help hide humans that have been convicted or are in danger of being convicted for crimes that will have harsh sentences, often for just being ignorant of cultural offenses.

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Summary: Flourishing requires both authority and vulnerability (or risk).

I have read and appreciated both of Andy Crouch’s recent books. Culture Making made the case for why we as Christians need to be creative and speak into culture. Playing God made the case for the real existence of relational power and how it should be properly used.

Strong and Weak seems like a natural follow up to Playing God. Once you have the idea that power actually exists and that as Christians we have a responsibility to use it well, then you have to understand how to actually lead, regardless of whether that leadership is of a large organization or your own life.

The basic concept of the book is simple. Crouch has a two by two grid (the image on the right is from the book). High authority and high vulnerability (or risk) leads to flourishing. High authority with low vulnerability leads to exploiting others. Low authority with low vulnerability leads to withdrawing from relationships (and the world). And the final of the four options is low authority and high vulnerability, which leads to suffering.

A simple grid like this works well for illustration. And there is a chapter on each of these four areas. Simple illustrations are memorable and bring insight into a complex world. Some simple illustrations reduce complexity by distorting reality. But I think this, while there can be real quibbles, does point to a real truth. And in the context of a fully fleshed out book, Crouch brings enough nuance to the illustration that is really is helpful.

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Summary: a human/alien construct explores both his alien and human background and finds both lacking. 

Adulthood Rites is the second book in a trilogy. After a devastating world war, an alien race has come to earth. The aliens completely dominated the world. The aliens are genetic masters that use genetic manipulation as their main technology. The aliens have come to absorb all the resources of the earth, including the genetic information before moving on to their next conquest. As part of their conquest all humans have been sterilized and only those humans that are willing to breed with the aliens are allowed to have children.

The main character in this story is Akin, the first human/alien male construct. As an infant he is stolen by rogue humans who want children. After he is recovered, he continues to explore the rogue human’s world. Over time he develops an understanding of his human and alien sides and finds his calling.

I think this is a much better book than the first in the trilogy. Butler is always concerned with concepts of oppression and community and independence. Part of what she is exploring here is the human propensity toward violence. There is oddly a very paternalistic (not quite utopian, but in that direction) bent to this series. The aliens have real limits, but their intent is to change humans for their own good in a way that the humans do not necessarily want.

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Takeaway: Understanding your own Christian background can help you better understand other Christians.

I have barely posted this year. I have been both too busy and a bit burned out. I really enjoy reading theology and Christian living books, but there is a sense in which there really does seem to be ‘nothing new under the sun.’ And so I have been reading several Catholic books. They tell the Christian story at a slight slant (to use Eugene Peterson’s phrase) that allows me to see my faith in a different perspective. That slant cuts through the cliché (although for Catholics I am sure there is plenty of cliché here.)

James Martin is a popular Catholic writer. He writes for America, a Jesuit magazine, and was one of the most frequent guests on the Colbert Report. This is the third book of Martin’s that I have read, but the one that I first noticed.

The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life is an attempt to both explain Ignatian (or Jesuit) understanding of Christianity.  I have read similar books about Benedictine spirituality from Dennis Ockholm and Joan Chittister and about Franciscan spirituality from Richard Rohr. I find that reading about other Christian spiritual practices and theological systems helps me understand my own Christian background and theology more because every system has blind spots that are only revealed when looked at from a different perspective.

St. Ignatius of Loyola founded the Jesuits (or Society of Jesus) and his life and writing is the basis for Ignatian spiritual understanding. Ignatius lived from 1491 to 1556. So the Jesuits were founded almost exactly 1000 years later than the Benedictines. To my outsider’s eyes that seems to come out most clearly in the Ignatian use of pragmatism and the different role of reason. Benedictines are not against reason, but Jesuits embrace it to a different degree (which is why so many Catholic schools and universities are Jesuit). So throughout the book Martin talks about embracing what works pragmatically. What works in one place and time will not work in another place and time.

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Takeaway: A perfect book for reading blahs.

I am a fan (as many are) of the Harry Potter series. I have all of the books in hardcover, two copies of the last four in hardcover because both my wife and I wanted to start on them as soon as they came out. I have since purchase all of the books on ebook editions and I am working on audiobook editions now that they are available on Audible.

I am not sure what you can say that is new about a series of books that has sold millions and been made into one of the most successful movie franchises in history.

But I have been a bit stressed and not quickly reading through anything. So I picked up Prisoner of Azkaban as the best of the three shorter Harry Potter books and listened to it in less than 3 days. It is a good book to just enjoy. Jim Dale is a good narrator and he does not make Prisoner of Azkaban nearly as childish as he makes the first two books.

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Summary: The relationship between Christianity and the founding of the United States is a complicated matter.

As I was finishing up In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life 1492-1783, I picked up God of Liberty. Thomas Kidd’s history is well known and spoken of well by Mark Noll and many others. God of Liberty was the historical overview that I needed after the very particular history of the use of scripture.

The role of Christian faith in the founding of the United States is fraught matter. All sides have reasons for why it matters (often more about current events than historical accuracy.) And because there are a large number of founding fathers, pretty much anyone can find support for their position by proof texting a few pamphlets or speeches or sermons.

God of Liberty does a good job at showing the complication of any particular position. Christian faith was important to many in the colonies, both as a reason for coming to the colonies and as a reason for breaking away from Britain. But separation of Church and state, at least in it early incarnations, was also important in how the country was organized during and immediately after the revolution.

England had a state church, so many of the more radical revolutionaries were against state churches as a concept. But many of the colonies already had a state church with their own constituencies and theological reasonings.

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Summary: As with everything, it’s complicated.

Noll is one of my favorite historians. He is well respected but probably not well known outside of those that pay attention to 17th to 19th century American religious history. I had him both as an undergrad at Wheaton and when he was a visiting professor in grad school at the University of Chicago. He has been at Notre Dame for the last 10 years.

Noll has written widely, everything from multiple books on Christianity in the Global South to a history of Race and religion in US politics to modern analysis of Evangelical thought to his more traditional early American religious history. A theme that has continued through several of his recent books is that how Christians, particularly Protestants, use scripture.

In the Beginning Was the Word is Noll’s attempt to make sense of the high level of biblical rhetoric from the colonies. The colonies were a different world from the modern US in a number of ways that many current users of those early religious quotes do not adequately take into account.

First, and probably most important, the bible was universally understood and referenced in a way that is very difficult to understand today. Those that were literate and had any books almost always had a bible. But many did not have any other book or if they did have other books it was only a handful of books or pamphlets. So the bible was culturally well known and it was expected that people would understand references to scripture in the way that many people today reference current events or culture, but with a higher expectation of understanding.

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