Recent Reading On Contemplative Prayer
Here is a list of books I’ve recently read on contemplative prayer. This is a journey into which I am deeply immersed. Michael Casey, Toward God: The Ancient Wisdom of Western Prayer. Liguori, Missouri: Liguori Publications, 1996. Casey offers a fabulous introduction to contemplative prayer,...
Recent Reading On The Reformation
Here is a list of books I have recently read on the Reformation. Some of this was rereading, some of it very new, but all of it helped me prepare to teach a class at our church on the Reformation. There is some remarkable writing here. Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther....
Peter Brown, Augustine Of Hippo: A Biography
Last night I finished Peter Brown’s monumental Augustine Of Hippo: A Biography. This is my second reading of this extraordinary work. St. Augustine, of course, is that towering figure from the fourth and fifth century who straddled the age of the Apostles and the unfolding of Christian Europe....
J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
This book is getting a lot of attention these days. Though it was not written with the presidential election in mind, J. D. Vance reminds us of that forgotten population out there that rose up to elect a crass-talking, offensive, scary candidate who...
Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare To Live Fully Right Where You Are
This is one of the most remarkable books I’ve read in a long time. Truly remarkable. Perhaps life-changing. We learn from biblical writers, poets throughout the ages, mystics, and so many others that the “world is charged with the grandeur of God,”...
C. S. Lewis, Readings for Meditation and Reflection
Somehow I am in the mode of rereading. I pulled this lovely book from my shelf and read it again, meditatively and reflectively as the title suggests. Walter Hooper has made delightful selections from Lewis’s broad range of writings. This is a great...
Henri Nouwen, The Prodigal Son
This book touched me deeply. I read it many years ago, close to its date of publication in 1992. Because we were traveling to Amsterdam this summer, to study and reflect on the works of Rembrandt, I pulled this book off my shelf to get closer at Rembrandt....
Pierre Manent, Beyond Radical Secularism: How France and the Christian West Should Respond to the Islamic Challenge
I am looking for solutions these days, fresh angles on the daunting challenges of our day. So often fresh angles are the most controversial. This book offers such a new take, controversy and all. Manent is a contemporary French philosopher. The focus of...
Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, In Quiet Light: Poems on Vermeer’s Women
Sharon and I just returned from a marvelous trip to several Northern European cities, Amsterdam chief among them. There of course we spent time in the incomparable Rijksmuseum, home to a glorious collection of its chief residents, Rembrandt and Vermeer. We...
C. S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy
I read this marvelous book many years ago. For some reason I picked it up again for my early-morning reading. What an incredible book. This is the story of Lewis’s childhood and early adult years. It is the story of adult formation, spiritual...
Nikolai Berdyaev, The End Of Our Time
I am shocked that I had not discovered Nikolai Berdyaev until recently. This book is fabulous. This writer speaks my language. Berdyaev is Russian, of course, writing about his beloved homeland and the fate of Europe in the smoldering aftermath of...
Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer
This is a fabulous book. It is about believing in our age of unbelief. It is about saying what we believe in an age when the language of faith has grown thin, stale, inadequate. It is decidedly not, though, about nailing down our faith in some pat...
David Brooks, The Road to Character
This is an important book. We’ve caught glimpses of this book shaping up over the last few years through Brooks’ New York Times columns and his various speeches, twice on my campus, many of them at other Christian universities. He has become...
Robert D. Putnam, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis
This book is one of three essential reads, says David Brooks, if we hope to understand the daunting challenges facing our contemporary society. Putnam is ever the exceptional social scientist, marshaling all the statistics needed to support his main...
Yuval Levin, The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism
I find myself looking for solutions these days. I’ve grown weary of the endless analysis of our problems. Enough already. Usually such analysis splits on the ideological axis—it’s either from the left or the right. The solutions then seem tired,...
Marcus Tullius Cicero, How To Grow Old: Ancient Wisdom for the Second Half of Life
No one I know is old. We are all just growing a bit older, as we like to say. Here is a wise book that can inspire us through this sometimes arduous process. Cicero is one of the great writers of classical antiquity, highly regarded for both rhetoric and...
Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
This is an important book. We’ve caught glimpses of this book shaping up over the last few years through Brooks’ New York Times columns and his various speeches, twice on my campus, many of them at other Christian universities. He has become...
Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State Of White America, 1960-2010
Murray traces the tragic formation of a new and permanent poverty, in part caused by the growing absence of religion in our midst. He believes our nation is coming apart at the seams, perhaps never to the same. This is a picture cogently researched,...
Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How We Became A Nation Of Heretics
I was skeptical about this book because of it’s title. Who needs another indictment about Christians and the way they practice their faith? And how might a New York Times columnist be qualified to tackle such a topic as religion in America? But this...