The President’s executive orders and far-reaching initiatives this past week or so have created lots of political debate and protest; I could go on with my own observations, but you read BookNotes mostly for this bookseller’s reading recommendations. And, boy, do we have some for you this time. I want to focus on books about one topic — international migration, which includes both refugees and immigrants.

Some may know that years ago I had been somewhat involved in efforts to understand the reasons many Central American people fled to the US, sometimes illegally, sometimes hoping for political asylum, in the 1980s and 90s. President Reagan’s deeply immoral (and, with Ollie North et al, illegal) efforts to fund far, far-right military juntas and brutally repressive regimes fueled the revolutionary fires already burning in Guatemala, El Salvador, Niagara and the like. US support of grotesque regimes farther South, in Argentina, say, made things horrible for many there, in those years. Friends at Sojourner’s networked those providing help to migrants with religious activists who created a sanctuary movement, sort of an illegal underground railroad offering safe harbor to those fleeing egregious human rights violations in Latin America.

My very Republican parents happened to be out West in the mid-1980s and during a trip where they met James Dobson in Colorado Springs they also worshiped at a Presbyterian church pastored by James Fife, who famously sheltered refugees and asylum seekers and whose Bible studies had been infiltrated by FBI spies pretending to be spiritual seekers. Meeting Fife was important for my mom and dad as they heard first hand stories of (to use the language of Jesus’s first sermon in Luke 4) those working to proclaim “liberty to the captives” and setting the oppressed free. That their life-long political party was sneaking into Bible studies to expose poor families who had been run off their lands, and seen their own children tortured, was too much.

Years later, here in York County, we helped start a five-year-long campaign to help Chinese immigrants gain asylum in the US. In those years when Clinton was the anti-immigrant President, those fleeing the draconian one-child-only policy (enforced with forced abortions, even late-term caesareans — I’ve seen crumpled photos) were not granted asylum. Hundreds of Chinese immigrants whose ship, the Golden Venture, ran aground near the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, were detained in York County Prison awaiting return to a terrible end in China. Our weekly protests and large entourage of pro bono lawyers fought in what became the largest pro-bono case in American history, to change the laws and save the lives of our detained friends. Left, right, and center, Christian and other, we all had a variety of motivations but our gang allowed me to preach — year after year — in our weekly vigils at the prison. Guns were aimed at us but we kept at it; soon enough we were nearly heros in the eyes of some human rights groups and a lot of ordinary folks. It’s a long story (and there is more than one documentary made on the situation) it showed me that the Bible is (as my friend Pastor Joan would say) the world’s best immigration handbook.

(For those who are interested, in the next “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast, dropping soon, I talk briefly about this situation with the Chinese immigrants detained in York County Prison and our advocacy for them and suggest the award-winning book by Patrick Radden Keefe called The Snakehead, which I describe below.)

Decades later, it seems many in the US now know that there are Bible verses instructing God’s people to show hospitality to those from other countries. Call them aliens, sojourners, immigrants, foreigners, all are essentially fellow humans, often vulnerable and needy, carrying dignity as those made in the image of God. We also learned from our Chinese friends that these were, in some cases, some of the bravest and most noble humans we ever met.  President Trump has used foul language (and dishonest stats) against many people but he seems to have a special animus for those who are poor and certainly for those who are from other countries. He doesn’t know or care what the Bible says about such things.

Do we?

From my earliest memories of my mom helping with a resettled Vietnamese refugee family to my own understanding of how our Central American foreign policy helped stimulate the immigration to el Norte, to our deep experience with asylum law and the Chinese detainees here, we have come to realize that even with the Bible’s general ethic of generous hospitality to immigrants, policy formation in a fallen world is complicated. Good people can disagree about nuances of what should be done. John Paul II, just for instance, spoke out passionately against xenophobia and racism but advised (European countries, in that context, I gather) caution in not causing unintended damage to local economies and the common good with too simplistic border policies. So it is tricky. Many of the books I’ll mention are very aware of that.

Do you want to figure some stuff out, dive a bit deeper, forming a Christian mind on one of the most talked-about topics of the year? Here are an array of books pulled from our shelves here at the shop. One, about Syrian refugees, which looks so good, is listed as a pre-order. You know the drill. 

ALL ARE 20% OFF.

Read through to the end where you’ll see the tab to order. Using that works best — you can safely enter cc digits at our secure order form page (or, there, it invites you to tell us to just send a bill if you’d rather, so you can pay by check later.) Be sure to tell us your shipping preferences, if any.

A FEW BOOKS THAT ARE MOSTLY STORIES

The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream Patrick Radden Keefe $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

Keefe is one of the great investigative journalists and authors of our time and it was an honor to discover he was doing the premier work on the whole big picture of the passengers on the ship called the Golden Venture. It powerfully chronicles their dangerous journey out of China, across the seas (including a wreck in Africa) and then their arrests and imprisonment in the land-locked, central Pennsylvania town of York. We later found out from getting documents through the Freedom of Information Act that Clinton and Gore wanted the Chinese out of the county (to hell with due process or  proper translators, let alone legal asylum hearings) and that York was chosen in part because there were no immigration lawyers here.

Keefe’s book studies the underground Chinese mafia in New York, the rich “snakeheads” (something like what they call in central America, coyotes) who arranged the voyage. This is the most revisiting part of the book and will keep you up at night — believe me.

That our diverse advocacy group, led mostly by Christians who were given room to preach and pray, is in the book at all is stunning. That the story of the Golden Venture immigrants’s imprisonment in York and the effort to get them justice is nearly the last third of this great read is a blast. Who knew that my friends would show up in such a major, New York Times best-seller?

That the book remains in print is, I think, indicative of two things, maybe three: first, it is very well-researched and excellently written, so it is a great read by a respected writer. Great creative nonfiction stays in print.

Secondly, the immigration issue remains hot — hotter now than it was then — and The Snakehead gives a front-row seat to the larger complexity of it all (the good, the bad, and the ugly, as they say.) This makes it an important read now as our current President is rolling back policies and (I might suggest) making matters worse overnight.

Thirdly, I’d like to think that the drama of a handful of small town followers of Jesus who gathered friends of various motivations to form a strong coalition to support human rights and advocate for freedom for our detained Chinese friends is also part of the appeal. Regardless of your views on politics of immigration you’ll be cheering us on by the final chapters. There are not that many public affairs books that have as a central part a politically, culturally, and religiously diverse group who defied polarization and ideological differences, to make common cause, save some lives, and reform the immigration system, going toe-to-toe with ICE, Janet Reno, and right to the Oval Office itself. This extraordinary book is still in print for good reasons. We commend it to you.

Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with His Mother Sonia Nazario (random House) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I have led book discussion on this unforgettable story and I’ve reviewed it years ago here at BookNotes. The prestigious journalist (who has won the Pulitzer Prize) tells in magnificent, vivid prose, her accompanying one of many young boys who climb on top of the infamously dangerous trains running from Central America to Texas, postmodern hoboes, catching a ride that — if they are not captured by traffickers or pirates and if they do not fall and get hurt or killed or abused by corrupt cops — might lead them to a new life in the US. Nazario is brave and at times desperate as she makes this incredible journey with young Enrique who wants to find his mother in the United States. (He finds later she is working in a place called Miami, in a province called Florida.)

This is a boy’s journey and pain and hopes and dreams, told with great care. As one reviewer wrote:

“Enrique’s Journey is a book about love. It’s about family. It’s about home.”

Solito: A Memoir Javier Zamora (Hogarth Press) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

This was a much-acclaimed and widely-read book a few years ago. (It was a “Read with Jenna” pick.)  I list it after Enrique’s Journey as it has very similar resonances.

Here is how the publisher describes it:

When Javier Zamora was nine, he traveled unaccompanied by bus, boat, and foot from El Salvador to the United States to reunite with his parents. This is his memoir of that dangerous journey, a nine-week odyssey that nearly ended in calamity on multiple occasions. It’s a miracle that Javier survived the crossing and a miracle that he has the talent to now tell his story so masterfully. While Solito is Javier’s story, it’s also the story of millions of others who have risked so much to come to this country. A memoir that reads like a novel, rooted in precise and authentic detail, Solito is destined to be a classic of the immigration experience.

This has been called everything from a “beautifully-wrought work” to “monumental” to a “new landmark” to “a stone-cold masterpiece.”

I have written before about What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance, the extraordinary and unforgettable book by poet Carolyn Forche about her year in El Salvador. She knows a thing or two and says here Solito: A Memoir is written in “luminous prose.” She says, firmly,

“I cannot recommend this book enough, nor overstate its accomplishment.” — Carolyn Forche

The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You Dina Nayeri (Catapult) $17.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.36

Although I am not listing fictional books here, if I were, I’d include the beloved, fantastic, YA novel by Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad is Untrue (A True Story), about the experiences of a refugee son and his mother and sister, Christians from Iran, resettling in Oklahoma. In a genre-busting display of vivid storytelling, Daniel speaks a bit of his sister Dina.

This, The Ungrateful Refugee, is Dina’s fully nonfiction memoir of her years, escaping from Iran (their mother was a leader of the underground Christian church in Iran and needed to escape) and into Europe — Greece first, then the Netherlands, and I think France — and eventually finding refugee status and landing in small town, rural Oklahoma.

Ms. Nayeri, like her upbeat, gregarious brother, is a Persian storyteller (she has two well-received novels) but her memoir is more sober, more complex, more raw, even as it is at times quite tender. It focuses on the experience — including the interior lives of — those who are in exile. She tells the stories of other immigrants and refugees and asylum seekers and what it feels like to leave everything and have to preform in certain ways to be able to find safety.  In 2022 Beth declared it one of the best books she read that year.

As Jessica Gouda wrote in Guernica:

“The Ungrateful Refugee is the work of an author at the top of her game.”

What We Remember Will Be Saved: A Story of Refugees and the Things They Carry Stephanie Saldana (Broadleaf) $28.99  // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

I have not started this one yet although it looks very compelling. I respect the editors at Broadleaf and treasure many of their thoughtful books. This one brings a granular, poignant look at the lives of men, women, and children seeking refuge around the globe; in this case, from Iraq and Syria. Father James Martin calls it “gorgeous” and Ruben Degollado, author of The Family Izquierdo, notes that Saldana bears witness to beauty amid the ashes of war and unimaginable loss, saying “this indelible work should be read widely and deeply.”

On the back cover it nicely says that “there are always historians among the survivors of war — people who carry stories not in books but in small things. A woman sews her city into a dress.

This compassionate, fiercely humane collection of stories is exquisitely composed, an act of deepest grace. It is a compendium of precious preservation. –Naomi Shihab Nye, poet and the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate of the United States, 2019-2021

Beautiful, heartbreaking, and full of lush detail of creation and recreation. A profound journey of listening, of honest witness.  — Sandy Tolan, author of the international bestseller The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

A Journey Called Hope: Today’s Immigrant Stories and the American Dream Rick Rouse (Chalice Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This is a great, inspiring paperback (with a cool forward by global travel expert and anti-hunger advocate Rick Steves.) After several thoughtful chapters exploring the history of the immigration debate (and some good conversation on the American Dream) the heart of the book tells, in each chapter, the story of an immigrant or refugee — from Afghanistan, Africa, Ukraine, Central America, the Middle East, and more. As a Lutheran pastor, Rouse has helped with resettlement of refuge families so he knows a bit. But more, here, he allows each person or couple to tell their own stories. This is a great resource.

Rick Rouse has done an extraordinary job succinctly tracing the history of how American has extended welcome to newcomers and doesn’t shy away from the challenges. — Linda Harte, Past President, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services

It’s tragic, isn’t it, that our current President would interfere with Christian ministries trying to offer legitimate care to people like you’ll find in this lovely, provocative book.

All Saints: The Surprising True Story of How Refugees from Burma Brought Life to a Dying Church Michael Spurlock & Jeanette Windle (Bethany House) $13.99  // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.19

This good book is so inspiring (and, in many ways, surprising) that it became a major motion picture.  The subtitle tells it all as it shows how a newly ordained pastor of a very small, struggling Episcopal church in Tennessee — broke and demoralized — took on a huge project of welcoming a community of Karen refugees from Burma. These were former farmers and, well, this is the true story the inspired the film that also dives a bit deeper into the background of the Karen people, Spurlock’s work in the All Saints church, and “how a community of believers rally to reach out to those in need, yet receive far more than they dared imagine.”

They Come Back Singing: Finding God with the Refugees Gary Smith, SJ (Loyola Press) $14.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.96

Smith worked for six years with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Sudanese refugee camps in Uganda. (An earlier book called Radical Compassion: Finding Christ in the Heart of the Poor, explored his ministry to the poor and disabled in Portland.)

This is, essentially, his African journal, the story of finding amazing faith and forgiveness in a very discouraging and dangerous place. It was, by most accounts, a hard and pitiless place.

Smith’s journal, it is said, is “a vivid, inspiring account of the deep connections he forged during his life-changing experience with the Sudanese people,” who were made refugees by the brutal civil war. Could this be a window to the best sort of spiritual life and the notion of Christian growth, experienced by this humble, thoughtful, priest?

When Stars Are Scattered Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed (Penguin) $12.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $10.39

We could do a whole big list of children’s picture books, YA novels, and other kids resources for understanding the need to offer hospitality and welcome, to celebrate God’s plan of diversity and racial justice and the like. This, though — a graphic novel which was a finalist a few years back for the National Books Awards — tells the story of Omar, and his younger brother, Hassan, are from Somalia and have spent most of their lives in Dadaab, a refugee camp in Kenya. The lack of food and adequate medical care is obvious. The day-to-day dullness and struggle is vividly told. This is one you’ve got to read.

By the way, we have highlighted this before noting that Omar ended up in Lancaster, PA, and worked with friends in Church World Service’s refugee resettlement program here in Central PA. This has won a dozen important awards in the book world and we are happy to recommend it.

Separated by the Border: A Birth Mother, A Foster Mother, and a Migrant Child’s 3,000 Mile Journey Gene Thomas (IVP) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I wondered if I should list this here, now, since the politics of family separation is worse — or is it better, with everyone being deported carte blanche? — and foster parents (like this author) may be unable to intervene at all. The President has suggested removing birthright citizenship (as guaranteed by the 14th Constitutional amendment) so even Native American children — from Navajos in the Southwest to Yupics and Inuits in Alaska — could lose their citizenship. How horrible.

Maybe this tender, gripping story really is relevant and it might touch some hearts before it is too late.

Written in 2018, this nicely written but riveting read tells first of five-year-old Julia who traveled to the US with her mother, Guadalupe, from Honduras, in the cargo section of a tractor trailer. Her mother was captured by smugglers who exploited her and, at the US border, when her stepdad was deported, she ended up in a processing center as an unaccompanied minor.

Enter Gena Thomas. Thomas (as it says on the back cover) “tells the story of how Julia came to the United States, what she experienced in the system, and what it took to reunite her with her family.” Gena is a Spanish-speaking former missionary who became Julia’s foster mother. I won’t tell you about all that  happens — it’s an amazing drama! — but Thomas understands the trauma of children and the tenacious power of motherly love. What a read.

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis Jonathan Blitzer (Penguin) $21.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.80

We have a friend who works in a missionary ministry, focused mostly in a certain country Central America. A PK, his wife is from Central PA; they are thoughtful, decent, down-to-Earth folk. In any case, he’s one of the most astute readers we know and he says, if I may quote him, that this one really is a must-read. It is, clearly, one of the most painstakingly detailed accounts of the stories of Central American immigration. It explores this by telling the long and complex stories of four people and why they chose to come to America.

It is (as more than one reviewer observed) searing and gut-wrenching. It is also deeply humanizing, a glimpse into the lives of other human beings and their complex lives, risks, hopes, and dreams.

He offers, vividly, as one reviewer put it, a “a sweeping history of humanitarian crises on the US-Mexico border and of the politics of immigration in Washington” which becomes “a stunning epic.”

I’ll let the reviewers explain:

The masterstroke accomplishment of Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is the way that Blitzer weaves the gripping stories of refugees with the 45-year history of policymaking in Washington, where elected officials and key bureaucrats — some craven and nakedly political, others well-meaning — repeatedly fought the wrong wars and worried about the wrong things to spin the tangled web of policies that caused a humanitarian nightmare. — Philadelphia Inquirer

If anyone is well placed to take on the agonizing story of America’s southern frontier it is Jonathan Blitzer, a writer who has spent the best part of a decade reporting from there.. . . What could be a complex story is a stunning epic woven around the lives of four individuals seeking sanctuary from the death squads and murderous gangs that at different times dominated their homelands . . . this is a novelistic account rather than a tract, and his tale is beautifully told. All four characters, whose lives he has followed over many years, linger in the reader’s mind. — Financial Times

In this urgent, extraordinary book, Jonathan Blitzer takes a crisis we generally encounter in the black-and-white simplicity of sound bites and statistics and reconceives it in complicated, unforgettable color. Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here tells the origin story of our border emergency as both a sweeping panorama, traversing decades and continents, and an intimate chronicle of the lives of a handful of indelible characters. Based on years of unparalleled reporting with migrants, activists, and policymakers, the book offers a profound reflection on one of the great paradoxes of American life —and a tribute to the astonishing indomitability of the human spirit. — Patrick Radden Keefe, author of The Snakehead and Empire of Pain

PRE-ORDER NOW The Asylum Seekers: A Chronicle of Life, Death, and Community at the Border Cristina Rathbone (Broadleaf Books) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19 // NOT YET RELEASED – DUE MARCH 18, 2025

This looks really good and we hope to have it before the release date. Here is how the publisher tells about it:

From award-winning journalist and priest Cristina Rathbone comes this remarkable work of reporting about a community of people at the US-Mexico border. In The Asylum Seekers, Rathbone renders in blistering detail the story of people camped at the foot of a bridge: the trauma they carry, the community they create, and the faith they maintain.

This book is a pastor’s account of her sojourn among people camped at our country’s southern border, people seeking asylum and rarely receiving it. Rathbone writes with admirable candor about her small triumphs and failures, her doubts and uncertainties. But to me, the great strength of this story is the author’s passionate sympathy for the desperate people she works with. It suffuses the book, like antivenin to the slanders forever thrown at immigrants. — Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Rough Sleepers and Mountains Beyond Mountains

The Asylum Seekers shines with a kind of moral clarity that illuminates not only the horrific effects of the United States immigration system on individuals, families, and children, but the personal toll of working alongside those affected. A must-read. — Alejandra Oliva, author of Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration

These pages are filled with both anguish and uplift, and they depict a religious faith that is anything but ethereal. Nothing I have read about the so-called border crisis has torn up my heart and haunted my conscience like The Asylum Seekers. — Samuel G. Freedman, award-winning author of Upon This Rock, Small Victories, and other books

Nothing I have read about the so-called border crisis has torn up my heart and haunted my conscience like The Asylum Seekers. — Samuel G. Freedman

 

BOOKS THAT EXPLORE THE BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF HOSPITALITY TO IMMIGRANTS AND REFUGEES

Start With Welcome: The Journey toward a Confident and Compassionate Immigration Conversation Bri Stensrud (Zondervan) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I wasn’t sure if I should list this as a story of immigration and a memoir of ministry or in this second category of books about a Christian view of the subject and how to get involved. It is sort of both…. There are lots of stories here, great examples and highlights, intimate details and well-written portraits. It is also the story of the author — hooray for Bri Stensrud — who, as a conservative, evangelical woman who is involved in pro-life work, rallies other pro-life women (with help from Focus on the Family, believe it or not) to expand the definition of being pro-life to include compassion for the poor, the excluded and needy. She thinks being a Godly pro-life evangelical means she simply must be consistent with her standing with and for the oppressed and marginalized. We must, she comes to realize, “love beyond your borders.”

This would be one of the best books to give to a MAGA-inclined person to help them understand the orthodox Biblical view of caring for those displaced from their homes, caring for migrants and exiles, standing with the oppressed.

How does one do this? Stensrud explores the doctrine of human dignity as the director of Women of Welcome, and helps us “understand God’s calling” concerning immigrants. As it says on the back, “She reveals that something is stirring. Something much bigger than platforms, politics, and pundits.” It starts, as she says, with one word: Welcome.

If you are curious what Scripture teaches about how to care for the immigrant and refugee in an incredibly complex world, there is no better place to start than this book. — Sharon Hodde Miller, The Cost of Control

Bri Stensrud courageously decided some years ago that — because immigration is not just a political issue but also a biblical issue impacting people fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s image — she needed to engage. I’m so grateful that she did. — Matthew Soerens, Welcoming the Stranger

Beyond Welcome: Centering Immigrants in Our Christian Response to Immigration Karen Gonzalez (Brazos Press) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

We have highlighted this before and it remains as urgent now as it was when it was first released a few years ago. This is, perhaps, for those who already are convinced that people of faith and followers of Jesus must work hard to welcome immigrants with hospitality and solidarity. However, she is concerned that many well-intended helpers — God bless them! — are a bit ill-prepared to be faithful advocates for those facing abuse and marginalization. This book really is, as Adam Taylor puts it, “a road map to help all of us fully live out what it means to love our neighbors as ourselves.”

You see, such a goal is more complicated than we may realize and authentic solidarity will “put immigrants at the center of the conversation” even as we come to see ourselves in our immigrant neighbors.

This book really does need to be in the hands of those seeking to love immigrants and of those who are immigrant advocates.

This is a bit of a stretch but perhaps some will understand more deeply what this important book is about by thinking of the shift (in the conversations about race and racism) from being “color-blind” to being delightfully color-conscious, and the the shift from, say, talk of “racial reconciliation” to being anti-racist.

As Matthew Soerens notes, “Whether you agree with Console’s conclusions or not…you will find Beyond Welcome to be challenging, constructive, and helpful.”

The God Who Sees: Immigrants, the Bible, and the Journey to Belong Karen Gonzalez (Herald Press) $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

Karen herself is a much admired immigration advocate who here, in her first book, recounts her own family’s migration from Guatemala to Los Angeles to the suburbs of South Florida. This is a well-told and important story — she signed the contract with the publisher sitting over coffee in our bookstore, by the way — but, perhaps more urgently, she introduces us to others who have fled their homelands. You know, people with names like Hagar. Joseph. Ruth. Jesus.

The back cover notes that this is “a riveting story of seeking safety in another land… a gripping journey of loss, alienation and belonging. But yet, it is clear that the foundation of all of this is her interpreting her own family journey and story in light of the Scriptures.  This is a fabulous, personal, interesting, study of Scripture and is a great introduction to the issue for people or congregations trying to determine what they think.

As Rachel Held Evans put it, in one of the last books she endorsed before her sudden illness and death in 2019:

“Every single page of this beautiful, timely book pulses with prophetic truth.” — Rachel Held Evans

You Welcomed Me: Loving Refugees and Immigrants Because God First Loved Us Kent Annan (IVP) $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

We met Kent years ago and highlighted his very good book Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle: Living Fully, Loving Dangerously about his third world experiences (and then the extraordinary book written after the infamously horrible earthquake in Haiti, After Shock: Searching for Honest Faith When Your World Is Shaken, which I have described as a book for those whose faith is shaken by the sheer horror of the world’s suffering. And then, in 2016 he did a personal favorite, Slow Kingdom Coming: Practices for Doing Justice, Loving Mercy and Walking Humbly in the World.) We stock his books and appreciate his caring heart and really good writing.

As the immigration debates heated up a while back his son asked, innocently enough — are we “for them or against them.” Oh my. This book is the result, basic, yet profound, well written yet clear as a bell. We love because He first loved us, the Bible says, and we are to treat others as we have been treated by the merciful God who died for us.

Look: I was stunned by the animosity that arose against the preacher at the National Cathedral when she did what preachers do: she quoted Jesus and asked for mercy.  Methinks this book, readable, even delightful, might be what some folks need. It isn’t simplistic — it has to look at “othering” and bias and power as it develops a theology of arms-wide-open prophetic hospitality — but even with nuance and first-hand experience of the complexity of these issues, it is a book full of practical guidance and steps for involvement.

Neighbor: Christian Encounters with “Illegal” Immigration Ben Daniel (WJK) $19.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.96

I ripped through this, twice as I recall, when it first came out in 2010. The debates about the Southern border were heating up more and more and I was not only intrigued to know what this Presbyterian pastor was doing — he was on the board of Presbyterian Border Ministries and was a tireless advocate — and I was intrigued that Franky Schaffer, son of Francis, had the foreword. Our old Dallastown friend, Rick Ufford-Chase, who founded Borderlinks and was a leader in our PC(USA) denomination, called it “the primer on immigration I’ve been waiting for” since it was rooted in church history, Biblical studies, and included political analysis and, of course, compelling stories.

Ufford-Chase continued,

Those who care deeply about the immigration traditions that have strengthened our country will find themselves caught up in Ben Daniel’s easy, non-preachy storytelling style.

As Frank Schaeffer notes, “At the very least this book will forever strip away the ability of those who have raised their hands against immigrants to say they are acting as Christians and patriots.”

Serving God in a Migrant Crisis Patrick Johnston with Dean Merrill (IVP) $15.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

If some of the books on this list have been informed, at least a bit, with a progressive sort of inclusive vision that emerges from a careful study of the Bible’s own liberation themes, this book comes to the topic from the front lines of global, evangelical missions. Patrick Johnstone has, of course (I hope you know) inspired a generation of Christian workers and pray-ers with his informative Operation World prayer guides. After sixteen years as an urban missionary in a city in Africa, Johnstone served the WEC International leadership team for thirty some years. He continues to care deeply about reaching the lost, equipping missionaries to reach unreached people groups, doing global mapping, and authoring important volumes such as the jam-packed The Future of the Global Church: History, Trends and Possibilities.

Curiously, in a teaching I have pondered for decades, he insists that “God has used migration for millennia to achieve His purposes for his people…” and God might be doing so again in our time.

As millions are on the move, driven by war, drought, terrorism, poverty, failed states, environmental catastrophes, disease, revolutions, religious conflict, and more, we wonder: what is an evangelical response? We dare not turn our backs on people, or the times. The world is coming to our doorsteps. This short book, from what Stephan Bauman says are “noble and trustworthy guides” we get good data, spiritual vision, and tangible ideas.

Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion & Truth in the Immigration Debate Revised and Expanded Matthew Soerens & Jenny Yang (IVP) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

I sometimes say that this is the one volume in this category that we most highly recommend. It’s hard to say when there are so many good ones, but this is a classic, now in a second edition, written by two vibrant leaders who work valiantly for World Relief, which is the relief arm of the NAE. Rave blurbs on the back are from the late, great, impeccable Ron Sider and Jo Anne Lyon, the global ambassador for the Wesleyan Church.

Reid Ribble, a former member of Congress from Wisconsin, notes that it is “refreshing to read Christian authors addressing a global crisis in a decidedly Christ-like manner.”

This is compassionate, Biblical, logical, addressing the complexities of the moral issues and the theological evaluations of various policy options. This puts a human face on the topic and delves deeply, without being overly arcane or academic. It’s a great, great resource.

The Bible and Borders: Hearing God’s Word on Immigration M. Daniel Carroll R. (Brazos Press) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

You should know the name of M. Daniel Carroll R. who is an esteemed Old Testament scholar. (I’ve highlighted a number of his books, most recently, perhaps, The Lord Roars: Recovering the Prophetic Voice for Today.) Raised bi-lingually and cross- culturally in Houston by a Guatemalan mother and American father, he is uniquely situated to understand this topic. With personal experience and the passions of one who studies Amos and Micah and the like, he is a favorite go-to spokesperson.

As Dr. Carroll tells it, following the release of his previous book on immigration, Christians at the Border, he spent the next decade continuing to speak and write about the topic and sharpening his understanding about what the Bible does and doesn’t say. The Bible and Borders continues his top-notch (yet very readable) biblical scholarship, providing a succinct Biblical foundation for our talk and work on immigration. One review noted that this combines top-notch scholarly analysis with a pastoral heart.

The publisher has said that this book “sharpens Carroll’s focus and refines his argument” to make sure we hear clearly what the Bible says.

Granted, despite the religiosity of many in the MAGA movement, it seems evident to me that most far-right ideologues do not want to be Biblical people. Like their leader, they may not even know what the Bible does or doesn’t say. But for those who do care about Biblical teaching, this book is, quite simply, indispensable.

Seeking Refuge – On the Shores of the Global Refugee Crisis Stephan Bauman, Matthew Soerens, and Dr. Issam Smear (Moody Press) $13.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.19

Nearly a manifesto of World Relief — Bauman was at the time he wrote this the President of World Relief (and a heck of a great guy), and Soerens was the US Director of Church Mobilization for World Relief (he had been the head of the Evangelical Immigration Table, a coalition of evangelical organizations.) The are solid, creative, energetic guys. Dr. Smear is a licensed clinical professional counselor who has specialized in trauma treatment for refugees, victims of torture, and severely abused and neglected children. (His Master’s is from the clinical psychology program at Wheaton College.) One couldn’t ask for three more capable, professional, informed, and theologically impeccable authors. This book is short and inspiring, belief me.

You may recall a few years back when the flood of refugees was pouring out of Africa and the Middle East into Europe, especially. This book was drafted in that context, insisting that churches cannot ignore the refugee crisis, offering insight about how to respond to displaced people and the very real risks involved in receiving increased numbers of migrants. It’s a fair question to ask, about how to balance compassion and security.

Drawing from history, public policy, psychology, many personal stories, and their own unique Christian worldview, the authors offer a nuanced and compelling portrayal of the plight of refugees and the extraordinary opportunity we have to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Finding Jesus at the Border: Opening Our Hearts to the Stories of Our Immigrant Neighbors Julia Lambert Fogg (Brazos Press) $22.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

Kudos to Brazos for bringing to the reading public books that are so germane and powerful. We stock everything they do, and this is a gem. Agree or not, this writer deserves your attention. She is ordained as a PC(USA) pastor and preaches in Lutheran congregations in her home in California. Yet, the heart of this book is about her own journey — interweaving Bible stories along the way —of accompanying immigrants near the US-Mexican border It is no joke or cliche that she was wondering “What Would Jesus Do?” and her creative Biblical exegesis on the ground —the vantage point makes a difference, of course — is fascinating and I think quite compelling.

A beautifully written, well-researched, painfully moving book that invites all believers to read Scripture in a new way. Any church community that reads it prayerfully will never be the same again!  — Justo L. González, church historian, theologian, and author of Mañana: Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective and Teach Us to Pray: The Lord’s Prayer in the Early Church and Today

Fogg shows that the scriptural trajectory of refugees’ border crossings — out of peril into safety, out of oppression into promise –does not end with Jesus and the Bible but continues today in the living stories of migrants. — Barbara Rossing, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, author of The  Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation

EXCELLENT (somewhat) MORE ACADEMIC RESOURCES

Our God Is Undocumented: Biblical Faith and Immigrant Justice Ched Myers & Matthew Cowell (Orbis Press) $26.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

Meyers, as I recall, got his start thinking about all this while living as part of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker community. He became well known as an educator, activist, and writer with Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministry which does serious work enhancing serious Biblical literacy. (Recall, for instance, his groundbreaking  Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus and his brand new, Fortress Press masterpiece,  Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy: Luke’s Jesus and Sabbath Economics.)

Myers is an esteemed leader in radical Bible study which can fund resistance to the idols of the age found in ideologies of empire and injustice. From Walter Brueggemann to Elsa Tamez, from Brian Walsh to Dorothy Soelle, from Walter Wink to Sylvia Keesmaat, he is a leader in that league, a heavy hitter, in terms of Biblical study and socio-political analysis. You should know his book Watershed Discipleship,  but I digress.

Our God Is Undocumented has a set of well-written narratives about a person who has forged important ground in radical service to others that illustrate the Biblical point being made in each chapter. In this sense, it is a fabulous combination of lived experience and Biblical exegesis. God has no passport, respects no human divisions, and invites us all to deeper views of how to allow a Biblical imagination to shape our perspectives. Wow, what a book. Fair warning — it’s not the simplest study and it presumes some awareness of justice themes in the Bible.

The trials and tribulations faced by the undocumented on the Mexican border represent the greatest human rights crisis occurring in the United States today. What then should be for Christian the proper response to this crisis? Myers and Cowell help us formulate a response faithful to our God, who happens to be undocumented. — Miguel de la Torre, Trials of Hope and Terror: Testimonies on Immigration

Strangers and Scapegoats: Extending God’s Welcome to Those on the Margins Matthew S. Cos (Baker Academic) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Vos, a Reformed evangelical with a PhD in sociology (and the chair of the department at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, GA) is respected in his field and, here, offers a very timely response (most generally described) to the widening cultural divides between “them” and “us.” He explores how the very notion of a stranger “lies at the root of many problems humanity faces, such as racism, sexism, and nationalism.” But if our identity is in Christ, we have the capacity to love strangers as neighbors, even friends. This is very mature and amazingly good stuff.

This big book is learned and informed, fascinating and captivating. As Aimee Byrd (herself no slouch in ongoing education and teaching) said, “I learned so much from reading Strangers and Scapegoats.” You will, too.

Vos knows it isn’t easy to live into the vision of God’s diverse Kingdom or to honor the image of God in others who we have reason to fear.  Yet, he offers a wonderfully written exploration and rumination on how we can — by thinking Christianly and being formed in the ways of God — reject the world’s impulses and develop “a fresh lens by which to consider some of the most polarizing issues in the Christian community today.” Whether it is concern over gender issues or race or certainly immigration, we can resist the harm done by falling into fear and scapegoating.  A few other authors join in with case studies making this thoughtful and full of uniquely Christian sociology.

This bracing book is powerful, eye opening, and hope filled. It empowers us to be good news and a healing force in this hurting world. — Carolyn Custis James, author of Half the Church: Recapturing God’s Global Vision for Women and Malestrom: How Jesus Dismantles Patriarchy and Redefines Manhood

A masterful fusion of classic sociology, analysis of contemporary social problems, and personal experience that will support and stimulate Christians toward loving their neighbors. — Jenell Paris, Messiah University, co-author of Introducing Cultural Anthropology: A Christian Perspective 

Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear Matthew Kaemingk (Eerdmans) $32.50 // OUR SALE PRICE = $26.00

We gladly named this one of the Best Books of the Year when it hit in 2018 admits heightened tensions in Europe about Muslim immigration. It is a complex and delightfully sprawling work, looking at Abraham Kuyper’s old Holland, how commitment to pluralism shape a generous immigration policy for nearly a century until there was a radical reversal. As a contemporary neo-Kuyperian, Kaemingk does a splendid job looking for sustainable principles that could frame the West’s immigration policies and forges new evangelical ground for robust Christian-muslim dialogue.

Jamie Smith wrote an excellent foreword. Endorsements have been from leaders from various faith traditions who all rave; it was very widely reviewed. What a great book!

Kaemingk is a winsome guide through difficult terrain. He avoids the easy dead-ends–assimilate or stay out–that too often shape responses to the real challenges of Muslim immigration in western democracies. But he also doesn’t assume that we’ll find our way somewhere in the middle of those opposing poles. Instead, he charts an alternative course, using a theological map that takes pluralism seriously. Along the way, he stays grounded in real-world experience while never losing sight of basic convictions. The result: A book that is both timely and compelling. — Kristen Deede Johnson, Western Theological Seminary, co-author of The Justice Calling: Where Passion Meets Perseverance

Migrants and Citizens: Justice and Responsibility in the Ethics of Immigration by Tisha Rajendra (Eerdmans) $26.50 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.20

The author is a teacher and ethics scholar from Loyola University in Chicago; the important contribution she carefully makes here is she in how she backs up a bit, giving an overview of various schools of thought about the nature of justice and who owes what to whom. This is classic, solid, ethical reflection. One might say this offers reasonable theories and prudent applications.

A creative contribution to the urgent ethical challenges raised by migration today. Drawing on social analysis and Christian thought, Rajendra shows that treating migrants justly will require rethinking and reshaping the social, political, and economic relationships that set the context for the movement of people today. Essential reading for all concerned with ethics and migration. — David Hollenbach, SJ, The Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

Refuge Reimagined: Biblical Kinship in Global Politics Mark R. Glanville & Luke Glanville (IVP Academic) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

When Biblical scholars like Christopher Wright and M. Daniel Carroll R. rave about a book, you know it is worth having. Mark Glanville is a professor of pastoral theology at Regent College (while Luke is associate professor in the department of international relations at Australian National University.) Both have done exceptional, high-end scholarly monographs ad which this remains a meaty title (and over 250 pages) it is engaging and empowering for anyone interested in refugee issues. As Wright put it, it is, “constructive, creative, hope-filled.”

Discerning Welcome: A Reformed Faith Approach to Refugees Ellen Clark Clemot (Cascade) $21.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.80

Wow — this uniquely Reformed, slim, dense volume invites us all to wonder how the Reformed tradition responds to questions of “who is my neighbor” and what the nature of political justice might be even as we promote healthy public theology to enhance the common good. It looks at Calvin on occasion, and has a chapter on the sovereignty of the state and another on civil disobedience. Even United Methodist leader Will Willimon suggest that Clemot “has given the church a wonderful book that encourages churches to welcome on there in the name of Christ.”

Donald McKim (a well known name in the history of Reformed theology) raves, even as Luke Bretherton (of Duke, author of the magisterial Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy) says it “unfolds a Reformed view” that is not only rooted in a fine, broad, understanding of that particular heritage but “distills wisdom born of pastoral practice legal experience, and a clear-eyed analysis of the contemporary situation.”  The author is both an attorney (so she cites the important Robert Heimburger Cambridge text, God and the Illegal Alien: United States Immigration Law and a Theology of Politics) and a PC(USA) pastor. I am astonished she didn’t cite Matt Kaemingk, but it is still a very fine and useful book.

Immigrant Neighbors Among Us: Immigration Across Theological Traditions edited by M. Daniel Carroll R. & Leopoldo A.Sanchez M. (Pickwick) $25.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

This is a great ecumenical handbook offering expert theological essays by Latino/a scholars/leaders in various (Christian) faith traditions. You’ll learn about representative theologians from Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Methodist/Wesleyan, Pentecostal and independent evangelical churches making a case for a particularly Latinas/os-shaped theology within these traditions today. Carroll R is at Denver Theological Seminary and Sanches M is at Concordia Seminary in St Louis.

White Borders: The History of Race and Immigration in the United States from Chinese Exclusion to the Border Wall Reece Jones (Beacon Press) $25.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.76

I mentioned above our involvement, years ago, with a project trying to get detained Chinese asylum seekers out of jail and to reform the grounds of asylum law. In that multi-year campaign we studied the history immigration law (what did we know here in land-locked central PA?) We discovered the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and, as this book shows, legal efforts against the Chinese went back (especially in California) long before that. This is, as Pulitzer Prize-winner Greg Grandid says, is “a damning inquiry into the history of the border as a place where race is created and racism honed into razor-sharp ideology” It is searing, if eloquent, filled with masterful storytelling.

I have not read this new one yet but hope to soon. It looks important…

Jesus the Refugee: Ancient Injustice and Modern Solidarity D. Glenn Butner, Jr. (Fortress Press) $25.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

Is the holy family a refugee family? If the holy family fled persecution today, how would American refugee systems receive Jesus and his parents? This fiesty book combines historical, theological, and legal analyses and attempts to “break down today’s devilishly complex legal regime.” Dr. Butner (a professor of Christian ministry at Sterling College in Kansas who has published texts on trinitarian theology) introduces us to the basics of modern refugee law and raises ethical challenges to our current systems.  Danielle Vella of the Jesuit Refugee Service says it is “a must-read for those who want to turn their compassion into concrete acts of solidarity.”

Intercultural Church: A Biblical Vision for an Age of Migration Safwat Marzouk (Fortress Press) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

We stock the other serious works in the “Word & World” series of books (designed as “theology for Christian ministry” — the first was by Wes Granberg-Michaelson) and this, too, is serious, thoughtful, but written for application for those in religious ministry and Christian leadership.

What does in mean to welcome strangers while living as aliens ourselves? This starts with the sojourners (and settlers) who inhabit the Bible. These folks inspire Marzouk  who is a professor of Old Testament at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminar an ordinary ed in the Synod of the Nile (Egypt) where he has served as pastor. Can the church be a community of resistance embodying God’s vision for a multiethnic “intercultural” politics?

Church on the Way: Hospitality and Migration Nell Becker Sweeden (Pickwick) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

When excellent authors on the Biblical mandate of offering hospitality such as the late Christine Pohl and Amy One affirm a book like this, we notice. Sweden is a professor of Wesleyan Theology at George Fox Seminary in Portland and in this serious book —not much more than 150 pages — she uses “critical analysis and constructive re-imagining” to offer an ecumenical Christian ecclesiology strong enough to speak to this issue. Amos Yong says it is “neither sentimental nor oblivious to the theoretical-theological and practical challenges.” This really does make a substantive contribution. There’s a forward by Miguel A. De La Torre.

Jesus, King of Strangers: What the Bible Really Say About Immigration Mark Hamilton (Eerdmans) $23.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19

This is not a scholarly textbook, granted, but it seems a bit more sophisticated than many. It is very nicely written, serious, and invites us to consider the “church’s true language for migrants.” It examines the Bibles’ key ideas about human movement and the relationship between migrants and their hosts. Hamilton argued that reclaiming the biblical language will “free the church from hyper nationalism and fear-driven demagoguery.” 

Hamilton got his PhD from Harvard and teaches Biblical studies in Abilene, Texas. Shaun Casey of Georgetown wrote a powerful forward in which he claims this is a once-in-a-lifetime work.

Eight Million Exiles: Missional Action Research and the Crisis of Forced Migration Christopher M. Hays (Eerdmans) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Hays is president of Scholar Leaders, a ministry dedicated to cultivating theological leaders from around the globe. As it asks on the back, “how pastors, scholars, and others can use missional action research to make a real difference for displaced persons abroad.” Rooted in his first-hand research and reform efforts in Colombia, Eight Million Exiles offers a model for “how to put academic research to use to serve those in need.”

As the daily news fills with accounts of migrants who put themselves at unfathomable risk to find safety and support for themselves and their families, we wonder what churches and theological schools can do to help. Christopher Hays and his team in Colombia sought theologically wise and active responses to the agonizing stories of over eight million people displaced by the violence that swept the land. In lively prose, Hays offers a living model for any community that seeks to bring the gospel and justice to those who suffer the consequences of living in a shattered world. This is genuine theology ‘on the road.’ — Gene L. Green, Wheaton College co-author of Majority World Theology: Christian Doctrine in Global Context

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BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

I have wavered back and forth, wondering if I should even attempt my often massive Best Books of the Year column. Some years it goes on for several posts, multiple parts, as there are so many good books to celebrate. It is stressful narrowing them down, asserting this one over that, when there are so, so many good books released each year. Book buying is down (and our sales have generally fallen each year for years, now) but writing and publishing is fantastic.  I’ve got a huge stack and I’m trying to whittle it down.

And that is just the nonfiction stack. Oh my.

You may have heard me say that it is hard to announce a “best” book as the question always looms large for me: best for whom? Some books are too academic to be much good to ordinary folks while others are simply not that well written. Some are a bit too eccentric (which may be fabulous fun for some of us) and some are a bit too strict. What excites one theologian turns off another; ditto with most topics. Different strokes, you know…

I can tell you the titles that I most remember enjoying these past months. I can remind you of those that I hope folks order and read and discuss because, well, Ioved them.

I will list those that I think should appeal to many of our followers, books that have a vision of life — whether Christian or not — that will be for them wise and good. And fun.

Here, then, are most of my favorite (nonfiction) reads of the last year. I’m sure I’m leaving some out, so forgive me if your fav isn’t on the list. Each year I think I should keep a notebook, and each year in early January I kick myself for not having kept better records. Still, these are most of my very best books of 2024.

Almost all of these have been reviewed previously at earlier BookNotes; we invite you to visit the website and click on “BookNotes” to see the archives of all our previous reviews. Not only are there lots more good items recommended but you can find my original thoughts about most of these described below. That might be fun, or help if your unsure if you really want them. We’re at your service, so don’t hesitate to use the “inquiry” page or email us or call.

PLEASE ORDER BY CLICKING THE ORDER TAB AT THE VERY END. ALL BOOKS MENTIONED ARE DISCOUNTED — 20% OFF.  Happy reading in the New Year.

FAVORITE NONFICTION BOOKS OF 2024

Defiant Hope: Essays on Life, Faith, and Freedom Michael Gerson (Simon & Schuster) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

As noted, we don’t really have a “Book of the Year” but if we did, this would perhaps be it. It would be our way of honoring a person who was an acquaintance to us and a friend to many. He worked in conservative politics (and wrote a book insisting that true conservatives should make central a concern for the poor and disadvantage, a title that soon enough caused frustration among many on the right.) Gerson was a speech-writer, a good one, for George W. Bush (and one the back cover there is a picture of the two of them, the President in shorts and a tee shirt and Mike in dress shirt and necktie.) He played an very large role helping the President craft some of the most generous and just foreign aid at a time when AIDS in Africa was still being ignored too many places. As a right-hand consultant to the President, he made a difference.

Later, when he became a full time journalist, with a column in the Washington Post he became a “never Trumper” and spoke clearly about first things, about important principles, about goodness and decency and faith and America.

This book collects some of his greatest work, essays grouped in all sorts of topics. His public discussion of his cancern and his mortality is here, as are some lovely pieces about faith and family, pets and hobbies. But most is public theology, if you will, civic-minded insights, good, thoughtful, inspiring examples of the best of evangelical proclamation.  Agree or not (and I did not, always) it is a grand example of how to write for the general public out of a deeply rooted faith and moral worldview.

As I said when I first announced this, the lengthy David Brooks foreword is wonderful, moving, thoughtful, and frames the book exactly right. It is very, very good. You should get this book.

Stolen Price: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right Arlie Russell Hochschild (The New Press) $30.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.79

What makes a book one of the very best books of the year? I find it hard to say, but in this case it is page-turning writing, captivating conversations reported with vigor and grace, a provocative thesis, lots of local color and notable empathy on the part of the writer. Hochschild’s study of right-ward leaning Appalachian folk struggling with so much loss (and resisting the neo-Nazi and KKK march in their town) was riveting, compelling, heart-breaking and in was admirable. Her counter-intuitive thesis about shame became for me a major piece of the puzzle of why so many view the MAGA ideology as righteous and why they like Trump so much.

As I said, I’m not quite into ranking best books but if I did, this would be near the very top of my favorite books of 2024. Very highly recommended.

Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus, Become Like Him, Do as He Did John Mark Comer (Waterbrook) $26.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

Comer is one of those engaging, cool writers that I adore and I’ve read all of his insightful books. From the great Garden City to the helpful The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry to the powerful book about sin,  the flesh, and the Devil (Live No Lies) Comer has the ability to write punchy sentences that are culturally-savvy and yet channeling solid, evangelical wisdom about spiritual formation. His main man is Dallas Willard and this recent book invites us to that grand hope of being an apprentice to Jesus, learning His ways, being transformed from the inside out by practicing spiritual disciplines. Sure, others have written about this, and Comer has himself done a years-long deep dive into the mystics and contemplatives.  That this content is shared streaming on-line for free in exceedingly professional, beautifully expert video curriculum makes the book that much more significant. We’ve got the large sized and very classy curriculum guidebook, too. Practicing the Way is accesible, inter-denominational, solid, and a real joy to read.

Rags of Light: Leonard Cohen and the Landscape of Biblical Imagination Brian J. Walsh (Cascade) $23.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19

When Brian Walsh puts his mind to work and his pen to paper, believe me, I am all in. Perhaps you recall the book done in his honor when we retired from campus ministry at the University of Toronto (A Sort of Homecoming which I reviewed here) or the grand re-issued of his co-authored magisterial volume Beyond Homelessness, which I highlighted here.  The first of the major multi-volume “Christian Origins and the Question of God” series by N.T. Wright is dedicated to him, and his lively, creative commentaries (written with partner Sylvia Keesmaat), Colossians Remixed and Romans Disarmed, are among my all-time favorite books on the Bible.

Rags of Light came in just at the end of the year and immediately look its place as one of the best books of 2014. I had read an early manuscript but holding the book in my hand drew me in and I read it again nearly in one sitting.  And I’m not even that much of a Leonard Cohen fan, but I loved how Brian not only described a bit of the troubled Jewish poet’s life and worldview but, more, how he engaged with the song lyrics, placing them in conversation with the Bible. Not unlike his book on the lyrics of Bruce Cockburn (Kicking at the Darkness: Bruce Cockburn and the Christian Imagination), this new book is perfect for fans, of course, but also useful for those who may not be Cohen aficionados. Through the lends of popular culture — in this case, the work of Leonard Cohen — the Bible comes alive in fresh ways, allowing us to be honest about our fears and foibles, our sorrows about the ways of the world, and to see Jesus as both prophet and priest.

As Walsh puts it, Cohen greets us as a cantor “from the other side of sorrow and despair.” And he turns it all into a liturgy of life. Rags of Light is a great, great book.

White Poverty: How Exposing Myths about Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (Liveright) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

There have been several really good books about US poverty in recent years. I think of Poverty, By America, Matthew Desmond’s important follow up to Evicted (and the recent little book Walter Brueggemann wrote about it called Poverty in the Promised Land: Neighborliness, Resistance, and Restoration.)  I think of the spectacular writer Tracy Kidder and his recent Rough Sleepers, which is subtitled: Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People.  Last year’s The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America is a serious study of first hand research about regions of poverty (written by three of the best scholars of this topic, Kathryn Edin, Luke Shaefer and Timothy Nelson.) All of these, and more, are fairly recent and to be commended. Given the amount of emphasis Jesus puts upon loving our neighbors by serving the poor, one would think your church library would have some of these serious studies to share with your people.

This year, though, White Poverty stands out for it’s brave vision of racial reconciliation and multi-ethnic values that undergird the Kingdom of God. William Barber is an eloquent, passionate, black preacher and the instigator of the “Moral Mondays” protests and the President of the social change organization Repairers of the Breach. (Assistant writer Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, old pal of Shane Claiborne, mentored by Tony Campolo, has been a small town pastor of a multi-racial church in North Carolina (and now is at the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School.) Together, these vibrant, activist, deeply Christian authors have written a book which brings to the fore the fact that most poverty in America is experience by white folks. Proportionally, poverty weights heavier on black and brown people, but in terms of sheer numbers, most of the poor people in America are white.

To even see some of the photographs in this book of the black gentle giant that is Dr. Barber standing with rural white people as he travelled the country to listen well, is itself quite moving.  That the book is (as Eddie Glaude puts it) “brimming with insight and prophetic fire” it is still laden with facts and information that should be considered by anyone involved in serving the common good. (Why not give one to your congressional representative?) Can we “climb to higher ground together?” Is King’s dream alive? Can we find what Rev. Barber calls “moral fusion”?

White Poverty: How Exposing Myths about Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy by William Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is surely one of the vital books of our time. Highly recommended.

Makers by Nature: Letters from a Master painter on Faith, Hope, and Art Bruce Herman (IVP Academic) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

I so enjoyed telling you about this before and will not add much other than to remind you that Bruce Herman is an esteemed Christian leader and a respected painter. His work is really moving to me and his many years as a leader in CIVA and as an art teacher at Gordon College has shown him to be one who is loved by many.

Which makes the structure of this book just perfect: it is written as a serious of mostly fictitious letters. Actually, they are to real people (and often you know exactly who — painter and writer, Mako Fujimura, for instance.) The epistolary formate is so warm and inviting but he instructs us with all sorts of wisdom— about knowing God, about discerning vocations, about coping with disappointment, about making time for one’s passions, about art, color, beauty, goodness. Some chapters are about craft and style and making art; others are more general about making a good life, the “hallowing of the everyday” and coping with loss.

Designed in a exceedingly lovely way with lots of his full-color art throughout, Makers by Nature is truly one of the great books of 2024. Big kudos.

Why Everything That Doesn’t Matter Matters So Much: The Way of Love in a World of Hurt Charlie Peacock & Andi Ashworth (W Publishing Group) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Speaking of books written as letters, this exceptional little volume is one of the best books of the year (without a doubt) for any number of reasons. It is written by pop star and Grammy-award winning producer Charlie and his very active partner and the wife of his youth, Andi. She are written by him, some by her, and some they penned together. Imagine having this wise, culturally savvy, wide-reading couple across the living room with you, over some good tea or coffee, and they tell stories and answer questions and offer hard-won but artfully shared advice. This is Christian wisdom for today, offered beautifully. Each letter is precious.

I hope you saw the great review we did of Charlie’s recently released memoir Roots & Rhythm and having read that thrilling work, some of the essays — I mean letters — here are even more powerful. I’ve highlighted these through-provoking pieces before and not that they cover a lot of ground. Some are for those of us baffled by contemporary politics. Some are for those wanting to deepen their discipleship by way of stewarding their creative gifts. Some are about marriage, about friendship, about daily life.  There’s a good piece about writing. There’s some advice for public speakers. Several talk about the gift of hospitality and how to be more open to guests and others God brings to your life. There is one very good one about chronic illness and pain, and it is very honest and real.

These letters are said to be “a gentle dude” in the directly of God’s powerful-ordinary purpose of reach of us. We can all join Christ in His redemptive purposes (even though we sometimes feel like exiles from our culture, and, perhaps, from the church.) Even if Why Everything… is told in clear and down-to-earth voices, they are (after all) artists and writers so there is considerable pizzaz here, elegance at time as they move from being graciously charming to heartbreakingly poignant to what I might call nearly prophetic. This book is fun and serious and it deserves to be well known. It makes a great little gift and would be a fine choice for a book club. If I were giving fancy awards this year, believe me, this would get one. Hooray.

Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive Russ Ramsey (Zondervan) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

After what I said on the inside cover — next to blurbs by writers more famous than I and scholars more knowledgeable — how could I not list this as one of my favorites of the year? When I reviewed it earlier I noted that this is the follow up to his very well received Rembrandt Is in the Wind which, like this one, has a chapter on each of a handful of painters, telling of their backstory, their faith (or resistance to faith) and how their work might stimulate or inform our own faith. The first was very good but I found this one even more touching. The first stood alongside a handful of other books — think of Terry Glaspey’s several great volumes — that offer a Christian reading of paintings and painters. But this one focuses on something that few of deeply explored and that is the ache and longing and sadness and pain of the artists and how that came out in their beloved artworks. The point, of course, is not just that we can understand  Rembrandt’s “Simeon at the Temple” or Leonardo’s most famous masterpiece or Gustave More (and “the beautiful sad stories in a complicated world”) or the “delightful horror” of the Hudson River School, but, more, that we ourselves can learn to find solace and insight in knowing these stories and contexts. The subtitle gets it just right — great art teaches us “about the wonder and struggle of being alive.”

Any book that does that from a winsome but candid Christian perspective and is honest about the hurts many of us carry, and offers full color guidance, man, it’s a winner. And Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart is one of the very best books of this kind. It is not off-putting or complex, the chapters are wonderfully told and the stories are more than touching, they are illuminating.

For what it is worth, you may be surprised to read the incredible chapter on Norman Rockwell — don’t miss it. I like the one called ‘Through a Glass Darkly” that tells of contemporary painter and rocker Jimmy Abegg and the impressionists Edgar Degas Chapter Ten is called “Our PersonalCollections: Jeremiah’s Lament, the Works We Carry, and the words on Which we Rest.” The three informative appendices and the discussion guide are themselves nearly worth the price of the book.

Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed: Restoring Ken-O-Sha Gail Gunst Heffner & David P. Warners (Michigan State University Press) $29.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.96

I raved about this when it first came out (admiring that one of the authors is one of the very best, life-long friends of Beth and me) and extolled it for being so very, very interesting, so very, very important. Reconciliation ecology is a branch of ecological work these days and it has to do with…. well, you have to read this thrilling book to understand one of the nuances.  It is, as I said again in another review, a great book about local activism, the ups and downs of these two staff of Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, organizing both college staff and other local folk, to learn ump one of the most polluted waterways in all of Michigan.

To understand the “Plaster Creek Stewards” as the group at Calvin was called, and the multi-dimensional work of restoration the envisions, the book explores the history of the stream (and the name for it — Ken-O-Sha — given by the indigenous people there) and how it got so polluted in the first place. Naturally, settler ideologies and the history of colonialism (not to mention Dutch and Reformed theologies) come into play. Their neo-Calvinist worldviews give them tools to understand creation-care in deep ways, and this book comes full circle as they tell the story of their earliest days of service learning and social concern to becoming national known and hopeful in helping repair the harm done though this visionary movement of reconciliation ecology.

Here, here, and glasses raised to Gail and Dave, for their long years of hard work documented so tenderly (and rigorously) in Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed and for how it might give us all a vision of caring for what Ched Myers has called “Watershed Discipleship.” It is not every day a publication of an academic / scholarly press gets on my Favorite Reads and Best Books list. This one is truly exceptional. Hooray.

The Eighth Moon: A Memoir of Belonging and Rebellion Jennifer Kabat (Milkweed Editions) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

In a recent BookNotes I listed a few of my favorite memoirs read in 2024 and I did not list this one. I was still pondering what to say about it and knew it would be on this “Favorite Books of 2024” list; as soon as I posted that (full of some titles which were truly some of the most fascinating and finest writing I’ve seen in decade) I knew I should have included this stellar title.

The Eighth Moon certainly goes alongside major, stunningly-written books like 1974 (Francine Prose), Splinters (Leslie Jamison), Biting the Hand (Julia Lee), and Between Two Trailers (J. Dana Trent) and will remain a classic in my mind as a book that is so creatively written and which has left a lasting impression.

I cannot say much, here, now, but The Eighth Moon is a memoir and a history book with a dual story — the woman writer living in a small Catskill Mountain town trying to learn to love her place and what she has learned about the history of this place. Sometimes she writes about the moment and other times, sometimes in the same paragraph, she is referring to what happened on “her land” or “her road” among “her neighbors” in 1840s.

And what happened in the mid-1840s, we learn, was an uprising of Bible-quoting, Year-of-Jubilee enacting, warriors who fought back — dressed with leather masks and calico dresses — against rich people demanding rent from their oppressed tenants. Though careful (tedious) archival work (studying the florid handwriting of old deeds and court documents) she unfolds how grandchildren of the American Revolutionaries became oppressors and those who revolted in what history calls the Anti-Rent Wars.

Jennifer Kabat is a captivating and attentive nature writer and the classy, literary Milkweed Editions is a perfect, classy publisher for her. (They made famous the indigenous writer Robin Wall Kimmerer for her glorious and important Braiding Sweetgrass.) Alongside the extended pieces about waterfalls and flora and fauna and her appreciation of the sunlight on rural sheds or stone walls are commonplace stories about drinking with friends and joining up with the local volunteer fire fights. She’s a left-leaning populist (her father worked as an organizer for co-ops) and cannot understand how to relate to her Trump-supporting neighbors. The journey of her husband and herself making their way as citizens of this upstate New York region is itself splendid reading and brought tears to my eyes as I recognized so much about small towns and rural places I know.

And yet, the real power of The Eighteen Moon is the uncovering of American idealism that popped up before the Civil War, often socialistic, often idealistic, often faith-based, but weird. The Anti-Rent wars that played out in her town — her neighbors are literally descendants of those killed or arrested — are part of a larger anti-capitalist history and her zeal for this is fascinating. This is a colorful, creative, artful book that at once brings pleasure and provokes. One of the most striking and haunting books I’ve read all year.

Even After Everything: The Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anyway Stephanie Duncan Smith (Convergent) $26.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

When I first described this I trust that I explained it with enough vigor and enthusiasm to show that I was a very big booster of this remarkable writer. The advance praise was great (J.S. Park called it “a soaring memoir” and Shauna Niequist exclaims, “Oh, I love this book.”) Only a few pages in and I knew.

It is a memoir, yes, and it is about the grief of losing a baby in miscarriage, yes, but it is more the narrating of one’s life in light of the liturgical calendar. I have not read a book that so nicely weaves the story of one’s own life and sorrows with the discover of the church year. From the cycles of creation to the forms of the church seasons, Even After Everything brings a beautiful story, beautifully told.

As Kayla Craig (author of Every Season Sacred) puts it, this “expansive offering” is both personal narrative and sacred story.”  It’s a great read, unforgettable, even. One of the best-told stories and finest books of 2024. (See a list of other favorite memoirs, HERE.)

Sacredness of Secular Work: 4 Ways Your Job Matters for Eternity (Even When Your Not Sharing the Gospel) Jordan Raynor (Waterbrook) $25.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

As you may know, we have long been passionate about helping ordinary Christian folks think well about faithful service in their respective careers, jobs, and occupations. We all must be attentive to the things God gives us to do, and words like vocation and calling have been central to our arrangement of our shelves here at our Christian bookstore. We’ve tried to show books about the integreation of faith and learning, the Bible and daily life, helping folks connect liturgy and life, worship and work, Sunday and Monday, so to speak.

There are many books like this and as passionate as we are and as important as they are, I almost wonder if we’ve had enough, now. After decades of very few resources now there is a glut. Last year saw some thrilling ones (three from the Denver Institute on Faith and Work, Working from the Inside Out (by Jeff Haanen), Women, Work, and Calling: Step into Your Place in God’s World (by Joanna Meyer), and Faithful Work: In the Daily Grind with God and for Others (by Ryan Tafilowski & Ross Chapman.) All deserve medals of honor.

The small hardback by Jordan Raynor first struck me as too basic — saying work matters even if you aren’t doing verbal evangelism on the job seemed nearly unnecessary, since hardly anybody really thinks that, do they?

And then the reviews starting coming in, people I know said they’ve heard folks say stuff indicating a really dualistic worldview, as if all that matters is overtly spiritual stuff, or church life, or evangelism. Just when I thought the conversation had moved on, I realized that for many, this book is simply a game-changer. A life-saving, God-honoring, Christ-centered faith-saver.  I really, really enjoyed it and was impressed with his citations and research and stories. Yay.

As Randy Alcorn — whose big books on heaven and on happiness are both stellar, if a bit long —  puts it:

“The Sacredness of Secular Work is personally relevant and, more important, biblically faithful. Raynor has done his homework and really gets it. I think the smile of God is on this book.”

The Servant Layer: Facing the Challenges of Christian Faith in Everyday Law Practice Robert F. Cochran, Jr. (IVP Academic) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

Speaking of thinking Christianly about one’s career and about connecting the doctrines of vocation to work, every career should be so fortunate as to have a book as spectacularly good as this. I have written about this before and, in fact, have an endorsing blurb on the inside (which sort of strikes me as funny, since I surely could never pass the Bar Exams or be organized enough to do the work of an attorney.) There are other books that focus on jurisprudence and a theoretic framework for thinking about the practice of law. Cochran and I agree that the fabulous Redeeming Law: Christian Calling and the Legal Profession by the very astute and super fun Mike Schutt (not to mention the slim but helpful The Lawyer’s Calling by Joseph Alligretti) are both must-reads and exceptionally important. But, for ordinary lawyers, thoughtful women and men who serve in fairly ordinary jobs in small-town tax law or ordinary real-estate law or who work in a fairly typical general practice there needed to be a better guidebook for them to think well and develop attitudes and postures and practices of being an attorney of integrity. Plumbing the Biblical themes of servanthood and applying them to professional legal practice makes this book one-of-a-kind.

Cochran has written scholarly books on constitutional law and the history of the field. He has done excellent work in symposia nurturing a Biblical sensibility among his fellow attorneys. He hangs with everybody from scholars like John Witte (at Emory) or James Davison Hunter at University of Virginia to his upbeat pal, Bob Goff, at Pepperdine. Cochran has traveled the world working for religious freedom and serving the poor. But has John INazu says in his lovely foreword:

It turns out that most of the work of maintaining trust and fidelity in law comes from the habits, routines, and dispositions of everyday lawyering.

For ordinary lawyers with fairly ordinary jobs, nobody has written a book like this and it is certainly, therefore, one of the most important books of the decade. Now, if only we had ones like this — rooted in good scholarship and theologically informed, but written for everyday practitioners — for doctors, engineers, farmers, or tech workers. Thanks to IVP and Bob Cochran for this one.

Thriving on a Riff: Jazz and the Spiritual Life William C. Carter (Broadleaf Books) $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I have a handful of books about popular culture and music that I adore. Music matters a lot to me — see, just for instance, the memoir I raved about last time by the fascinating artist and producer Charlie Peacock (Roots & Rhythms.) We have several books on jazz, including good books written from a solid faith perspective — I often mention Bill Edgar and his fabulous 2022 IVP book, A Supreme Love: The Music of Jazz and the Hope of the Gospel. But 2024 was a great year for this topic because the long-awaited book by Presbyterian preacher and jazz pianist and leader of the hot (or is it cool) Presbybop Quartet, Bill Carter, finally came out. He has been playing piano since he was kid, immersing himself in the jazz scene for decades, and playing clubs and churches, jazz shows and jazz vespers, for a very long time. He’s lectured and written and preached about it fabulously for almost as long.

As a preacher and jazzman, he didn’t have a lot of time to fit in the writing process. And he had some woodshedding to do — he has written other books, but this; this needed to be crafted with the right balanced of story and theology, faith and history, justice and lament, jazz anecdotes and musical magic. He nailed it, I’d say, offering a great survey of the history of jazz from a broadly Christian imagination and, as the book promises, how listening or playing (or reading about) jazz can shape ones human spirituality.

From the very openness improvisation demands to the heart-felt longings of the minor keys, from blues to praise,  jazz really does point us to God and to robust, creative discipleship. As church organist, theologian (and father of one of the Indigo Girls) Don Saliers puts it, “This book is no less than a love song to the art and genius of improvisation.” Saliers continues,

“Thriving on a Riff is also a musical primer about transcendence and the risks of biblical faith… If you love jazz and seek a deep sense of what is spiritual, this is a feast.”

Plundered: The Tangled Roots of Racial and Environmental Injustice David W. Swanson (IVP) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I invite you to go back to our BookNote archives and read what I wrote about this splendid, urgent, book. I said there and still maintain that there is nothing like this on the market and, as such, is simply a must-read. Nobody has, from a readable Christian perspective, drawn such a vivid and compelling portrait of the injustices of environmental racism and what ordinary Christians might do to resist this double-whammy of harm.

The author is a white pastor of a multi-ethnic, urban church on the South Side of Chicago who has written well about how mostly white churches might need to grow and learn about racial injustice. (See his excellent Redisicipling the White Church that came out in early 2020.) In the beginning of this recent book he tells us that he was an outdoor minded guy all along, majored in wilderness education, and figured he’s take up a career as a park ranger or wilderness guide or adventure educator. Little did he know that God would call him, of all outdoorsy people, to become a pastor and serve a very urban church.

Which situates him quite well to understand the relationship between city dwellers and pollution, toxic waste dumbs and the marginalized communities that often are polluted unfairly by them, and how issues of race come up, over and again, in matters of environmental destruction. That two of our most intractable, urgent problems — systemic racism and pollution — intermingle is (or ought to be) well know. What to do about it is of great concern.

How can the church, especially the thoughtfully evangelical sing, do something about these mutual problems? Racial and ecological injustices are, Swanson shows, symptoms of a deeper more pervasive problem and he shows us how to rethink and live anew in ways that can move us towards the reconciliation of all things promised in Scriptures. 

Great writers and leaders like Randy Woodley and Brenda Salter McNeil and Ben Lowe have raved about this (alongside organizational support from folks in the CCDA and Missio Alliance, say) and we add our names (again) to the list of those insisting that this is a very, very needed and happily beautifully written book. Hooray.

The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Bible Commentary edited by Esau McCaulley, Janette H. Ok, Osvaldo Padilla, & Amy Peeler (IVP Academic) $60.00// OUR SALE PRICE = $48.00

One of the things I highlighted in my essay about this in a previous BookNotes is that there is hardly anything like it in print. It is often said that books make a major contribution but this truly, truly does. There are other Biblical studies texts done by African American scholars, and some important ones that are what we might call critical and progressive. We’ve got a lot. However there is no such New Testament resource, big and thorough, done by evangelicals, bringing the insights of a range of multi-ethnic scholarship to the interpretive  process. These editors have pulled together a very impressive team to create a very, very impressive volume.

Let’s just face it: scholars of color who are trained to think in terms of culturally-informed hermeneutics, and who want to write for the broader body of Christ to help us all get the Bible right, to understand it properly are — thanks be to God — a Godsend, a great gift. This book deserves kudos and should be in every church library in America. Whether you favor strictly traditional processes of Bible learning or are on the broader edge of ecumenical scholarship, this will be of value to you. We can’t say enough about it and are delighted to name it as one of the great books of 2024.

Listen to what Ninjay Gupta writes:

In my own theological education, I was pressured to suppress my ethnic perspective and experiences, to conform to some sort of disembodied neutrality. Since then I have come to learn that my background, culture, and reading lens can actually enhance my ability to understand Scripture. I am thrilled to recommend The New Testament in Color because this ‘library-in-a-book’ reflects the beautiful mosaic of a many-colored hermeneutic. I wish someone had handed this book to me twenty-five years ago, and I hope many will read it now.

Here is an excellent overview of what makes this both reliable and necessary; Max Less says it well:

The editors have done a superb job of gathering scholars from diverse ethnic backgrounds who interpret the biblical text adeptly using the familiar critical tools of exegesis, and who also demonstrate how reading from their particular social location provides theological insight germane to all of God’s people. They show how the New Testament addresses a range of issues important to today’s readers, including topics of restorative justice, immigration and hospitality, racial bias and violence, the priority of families and ecclesial communities, and so much more. Not to be missed are the excellent introductory essays, which trace the ethnic histories of peoples of color and their practice of reading the Bible with a hermeneutic of trust. Exegetically precise, theologically orthodox, and prophetically challenging, this book — in a word –preaches!” — Max J. Lee, Paul W. Brandel Professor of biblical studies at North Park Seminary

Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies N. T. Wright & Michael Bird (Zondervan) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

If the above listed title — Plundered — illustrates anything it is that many of our most pressing problems are institutional and structural and systemic. That is, being a better individual Christian or doing kindly gestures of charity will not be adequate to reform the very architecture of our social structures. That the Old Testament law addressed things like debt forgiveness and the Hebrew prophets denounced things like unfair interest rates and land speculation further illustrated the complex social nature of injustice in our world and the call to be aware of how the world really works, in it’s beauty and complicated brokenness.

That somehow some of our social systems are deeply distorted and may even have been taken over by fallen (demonic?) powers is something that Bible suggests at times, and says outright on occasion. In Colossians 2:15 Jesus is said to have defeated or disarmed “the powers” and put them to shame. In Colossians 1 it says Christ is reconciling the powers. We are reminded in Ephesians 6:12 that we don’t fight against ordinary flesh and blood but against spiritual powers in high places. That is, Christ seems not to have fully reconciled those destructive institutional structures quite yet.

Few contemporary writers have explored this, although one who did was Walter Wink in his important three or four volume set. About the turn of the century our old friend Marva Dawn did a tremendous set of lectures at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary which explored and reformed Wink a bit that was developed into a book called Powers, Weakness and the Tabernacling of God. Both drew on the Dutch Hendrikus Berkof, a little volume translated by John Howard Yoder in the 1970s. Nobody since Marva has done much on this topic.

Enter Wright and Bird — a Brit and an Aussie — who have finally given us the thoughtful (but fully readable) volume on the subject we have long needed. Yes, they explore a bit some of the authoritarian political movements developing around the world, from Hungary to Venezuela to the USA.  And, yes, of course, they are greatly concerned about the obvious dangers in the extremisms of the nationalist movements. But their socio-political insights are always shaped by how people following Christ must be “building for the Kingdom.” It is a Biblical study of the question about the Kingdom of God as it relates to the social and political upheavals of our day.

Wright has several collections of essays (which we import from the UK) about the principalities and powers, about social witness, about cultural relevance and the reformation of society. But this is his first major work done like this — “part political theology, part Biblical overview, part church history.” If Christ’s Kingdom confronts the empires of this world how do we engage with that? What does it look like as we orient ourselves to Christ’s ways? Is there an approach to current events that is shaped by Christ’s Kingdom? One of the best books of 2024!

At a time when discussions about Christian nationalism and debates over religion and politics too often involve more heat than light, Jesus and the Powers offers something different. Drawing on their expertise in biblical theology and on two millennia of global Christian history, Tom Wright and Mike Bird present a defense of liberal democracy that pushes back against the extremes of the Left and the Right. There are no easy answers here, but readers across religious and political spectrums will find much to grapple with in this sharply written text, and perhaps also a framework for the pursuit of mutual human flourishing in a polarized age. — Kristin Kobes DuMez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

In our unsettled and polarized world, it is as easy to be tempted by the solutions offered by those on the extremes as it is to put our heads in the sand. Bird and Wright remind Christians that Jesus truly is king and the hope of the world, and they encourage us toward steady faithfulness when it is easy to be swept away by the shifting winds of historical and political circumstance. Read this book, remember ‘the old story’ and pursue public faithfulness while resting in truth. — Vincent Bacote, author of The Political Disciple: A Theology of Public Life

Jesus inaugurated his ministry by proclaiming the coming of the kingdom of God. What does that long-ago event have to do with us today? Everything, say the authors of Jesus and the Powers. The fundamental character of authentic Christian political activity, they argue, is ‘building for the kingdom.’ Using their skills as esteemed New Testament scholars, the authors first illuminate what Jesus would have meant by ‘the kingdom of God’ and then explore how present-day Christians can build for the kingdom. I know of no other book that comes even close to locating, so insightfully and in such rich detail, Christian political activity within the context of the coming of the kingdom. Given what is happening in politics today, their call for Christians to engage as workers for the kingdom could not be timelier. — Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace

Faithful Politics: Ten Approaches to Christian Citizenship and Why It Matters Miranda Zapor Cruz (IVP Academic) $24.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

I have written a lot about faith and politics this past year (and did a multi-week course this fall at my PC(USA) church that one can find on Facebook and YouTube, actually. I could wax eloquent about a dozen good books, old and new. (Brand new, by the way, is the long-awaited Citizenship Without Illusions: A Christian Guide to Political Engagement by the impeccably thoughtful and almost too moderate David Koyzis.)  Please see HERE and HERE or, a bit older, HERE for a few good lists. We need them now more than ever, I’d say.

This one if my vote for best new book about Christian political witness overall. It highlights ten historic and current approaches, postures and styles that have various emphasis or insight, and she offers the Biblical basis for and the social impact of each tradition.  In some chapters she breaks it down even more — in the chapter “Keeping the Kingdom out of the Country’ she dissects three “Separatist” Approaches and in “Keeping the Country Out of the Kingdom” she explores two other “Separationist” Approaches (noting the slight differences in spelling, there.) In, for instance “Keeping the Country Under the Kingdom” she describes two different Calvinist approaches. As she calls us all to “salty citizenship” we recognizes that there are many different voices out there, from what historians call “social gospel” approaches and to these varying nuances of ways to related Kingdom and country. It’s all very, very interesting and very, very wise.

The last two chapters, she insists, are models that are not (like the above ones) viable. They are unfaithful and troublesome, but important so she critiques what some call dominionist approaches and what is known as Christian nationalism.

Jo Anne Lynn (general superintendent emerita of The Wesleyan Church) says it is “the most comprehensive understanding of the role of the Christian believer in national politics from a biblical, theological, and historical perspective to date.”

Chan Woong Shin of Gordon College asks if we really need yet another book on Christianity and politics.. He answers his question saying, “after reading Dr. Cruz’s Faithful Politics, my answer is a resounding yes!”

Dr. Cruz teaches historical theology at Indiana Wesleyan University. She holds a PhD in religion politics, and society from Baylor University and an MDiv from Princeton Seminary.

The Age of Grievance Frank Bruni (Avid Readers Press) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

I adored this book, full of care and anguish and wisdom and moderation, even as he skewers Trumpian outbursts and exposes the pseudo-grievances that plague so many. These grievances are growing and (as one rave review puts it) the book offers “an astonishing, alarming catalog” but he gets to the solutions which are “smart and hopeful.” Each political tribe these days seems to be “out victiming” the other. This explores this feature of contemporary culture and why it is so harmful for our body politic.

In the last year or two I have read maybe 15 books on the rise of the extremist far right, from edge-of-your-seat memoirs of guys who infiltrated the KKK or neo-Nazi groups to studies of the wild shenanigans of those who in recent decades took over the Republican Party. I’ve recommended many of these thinking that it is really, really important stuff (and there are a lot to wade through.) Honorable mentions include The Deconstructionists: The Twenty-five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party by Dana Milbank and When he Clock Broke: ConMen, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked up in the Early 1990s by John Ganz. These are must-reads, in my view.

I didn’t mention the creepy and vulgar Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics by the brave Elle Reeve.  It has been called “a surreal feat of investigative journalism” showing how seemingly weird- online groups sometimes spill out into political violence.  Brian Stelter said it is “powerful and propulsive” and that it is. He explains that she “fearlessly investigates some of the most insidious corners of the internet and showcases, to horrifying effect, how these radical pockets are threatening the rest of us.”

Bit with all this analysis of the dangers of the far right (which, as I have written before, I think are much more vivid and concerning that dangers of the left, these days) it was Frank Bruni who helped me maintain balance and explore this not quite below the surface impulse about grievance-bearing.  It was one of my favorite reads this year.

Jonathan Haidt (himself no liberal of course) notes that,

It can be a pleasure to read about how terrible things are when the writer is Frank Bruni. He gives us a catalogue of absurdities, sparing neither left nor right, along with some explanations of why our current wave of grievance is more dangerous than earlier waves. He also gives us great ideas for making our country less absurd. This is a wise and humane book for our foolish and cruel era. — Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation and The Righteous Mind

They Flew: A History of the Impossible Carols Eire (Yale University Press) $35.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

This came out at the end of 2023, I’ll admit, but I didn’t pick it up until 2024 and I worked on it, on and off, throughout the year. I want to say it was my pick for the best academic book, from a scholarly press, that I read all year. (The aforementioned Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed, while on a peer-reviewed, scholarly press, is so very readable that I hardly want to pitch that as an academic title.) This, though, is tedious (in all the right ways.) It is careful scholarship, exploring the ways in which the miraculous was observed at the cusp of the modern world in late medieval Europe. That would be intersting enough, this class of worldviews, this study of miracle and proof and logic and science but there is more, a lot of a very specific more. It is about levitation. And bi-location.  Oh my…

You may have skimmed over those parts in Interior Castle or not allowed these stores to grab you in other well-known works of the mystical life. I recall that bit in one of the volumes of the Philokalia, but figured it was rare and eccentric. I know I never took seriously —I hardly noticed, or it never registered — the many paintings of the levitations of St Francis, Thomas Aquinas,  Teresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross and more. What was God doing with this rash of miraculous levitations? What is the definition of impossible? What cultural contexts, if any, give rise to such inexplicable things? How did the church respond?

That answer, with some nuances, can be simplified by saying these things were considered either as miraculous (a gift from God) or somehow fraudulent (which was difficult to prove since there were so many eye witnesses) or very real, but demonic. (The Protestant Reformers of the mid 1500s generally thought of these reports as demonic activity.)

Eire won the National Book Award years ago for his much-loved Waiting for Snow in Havana and has been a professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University for year. His colleague (and Calvin biographer) Bruce Gordon says, “Only Carols Eire could take us on this job rent to the impossible.” He calls it a “brilliant feat of scholarship and imagination.” This really could change our attitudes about the early modern world, and I think it was one of the most amazing books I’ve read this past year.

Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See Bianca Booker (Viking) $29.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

Holy smokes, what a blast this big book was. I can’t say enough about it (and can’t wait to dive into her older one, the quirky, if similar in approach, Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live.) Get the Picture is both an introduction to the contemporary modern art scene (mostly in New York City) and a bit of a guide to how to understand and interpret modern art. And it is rip-roaring good, caring, funny, honest, well written without being so lavishly done that one gets lost. It is a great read, upbeat and aggravating and inspiring.

Here’s the deal. Bosker, a journalist for The Atlantic, et al, admits she’s the kind of person who wants to like modern art, or contemporary art installations, but has this sneaky feeling “any five- year-old could have done that.” The near pornographic scenes and the arcana deconstructionist lingo leave her cold or clueless. Of course she knows your not supposed to think that, let alone say it out loud, so she studies paintings and sculptures in galleries and museums, and goes to shows and looks and looks and waits for the inspiration to hit. The slanted brilliance and upsetting insight of it all — she learned that “beauty” is not what the contemporary art scenesters are going for — just never hits her. She decides she has to work in the scene, volunteering at a gallery, working with artists, learning about art school and interpretation and performance art and gallerists and, well, nobody trusts her. This is a very elite network (the word “rarefied” comes to mind) and, often, dangerously rude. She is seen, irony of irony for the postmoderns who want to give voice to the marginalized and be inclusive, as “the enemy.”

Get the Picture is, indeed, “the mind-bending journey” of her coming to know these obsessives and even though it almost kills her, she comes to “see” at last. In a manner of speaking. It is really a great, fun read and you will learn a lot. One critic called it “sheer pleasure” and “the best book I’ve ever read about contemporary art.” It also investigates with an open heart, in the words of Patricia Marx, “the questions you are too chicken to ask: ‘Um, how come this is called art and now come I’m supposed to like it?’” It’s a great, great read.

Break, Blow, Burn, & Make: A Writer’s Thoughts on Creation E. Lily Yu (Worthy) $27.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

You may know of Lily Yu’s fine writing — she has done novels and short stories — and rejoice that she is esteemed in the high-brow world of contemporary fiction. This series, thoughtful, profound work is on a publisher that is know for many evangelical authors and I was surprised at first. And then I was very glad, realizing she is a serious thinker about faith and the arts, and is informed by everyone from Jaques Maritan to Madeline L’Engle to the aesthetics of George MacDonald. She cites folks as diverse as James Baldwin to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to G.K. Chesterton. She is a fine reader and a very fine writer.

I noticed she does not quote my favorite Calvin Seerveld, but I suppose that would be asking a bit much. She does cite N.T. Wright and Mako Fujimura, which is almost as good. She does explore her topic of writing in God’s world, the notion of making, of creating, and (as Karen Russell puts it) has given us “a love letter to God and to language, to writers and readers…” It really is a love letter to us all. As Mako writes, “Yu deftly weaves together beekeeping, catching trout, Rilke, Milosz, and Christ, sometimes in a single breath, and her words illumine like a candle in a neglected church.”

We have a good number of such books and we would quickly recommend any number. This, though, is rich and moving and extraordinarily thoughtful.

To read Break, Blow, Burn, & Make is to behold — to gaze upon the beauty of the fragments and broken remains of our art and our lives, to be gifted the courage to be faithful makers. It is an invitation to hope, to persevere, to recalibrate through despair, to pray and ultimately to love. At times in reading this gem filled book, I wanted to pause and weep, and at other times I wanted to stand up and applaud…. I follow her into that sacred, darkened space, and sojourn into our daily discipline of making there.– Makoto Fujimura, author of Art+Faith: A Theology of Making

Aslan’s Breath: Seeing the Holy Spirit in Narnia Matthew Dickerson (Square Halo Books) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I highlighted this a time or two in these BookNotes columns this past year and I now want to insist it is one of the Best Books of 2024. I say this for a few reasons; most simply, because it is.

But, also, it is a winner because it is relatively short, but with lots of fresh material; well-written without being dense or audacious; thoughtful without being arcane; lively without being silly or flamboyant. It’s a great read and — get this, with a drum roll please: there is nothing like it in print. I don’t get to say that often but every year or so I find a book that truly nobody else has tackled. Aslan’s Breath is a study, just as the subtitle promises, of how the images of the Holy Spirit show up in the Chronicles of Narnia.

As I have said before, each chapter explores how a certain book in Narnia describes the Spirit For the metaphors and symbols of the Spirit that Lewis uses in that book. For instance,  in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe the Spirit is seen as “transforming power” (says Dickerson, and he shows it.) In Prince Caspian the Spirit is found in the language of “growing bigger.” Naturally, in The Magician’s Nephew the Holy Spirit is “breath and wind at creation.”

You will find some blended symbols and plenty of courage.  You will find gentleness and comfort (especially in a very moving passage from The Horse and His Boy.) This will intrigue anyone who loves Narnia and would be a great book to read together.

There are great lithographs by the book’s editor, printmaker and author Ned Bustard (perhaps most known for his design work and illustrations in the three Every Moment Holy volumes and several other Square Halo titles.)  Together, Ned and Matthew have given us a lovely little book, one we are honored to declare one of the truly fresh books of 2024.

Through Middle Eastern Eyes: A Life of Kenneth E. Bailey Michael Parker (Wipf & Stock) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I think it could be said that many of us who knew Ken Bailey — not to mention the tens and tens of thousands all over the world who esteemed his great books of Biblical scholarship (especially New Testament studies) — have longed for a book about him. Surely the story of this Western Pennsylvania Presbyterian who ended up teaching in Beirut during the civil war there (1975-1990) and in Cairo and other Middle Eastern cities needed his story to be told. Ken was not only a fiercely ecumenical evangelical and a best selling author in the world of Biblical teaching but was known throughout the world as a scholar of early Middle Eastern Christian literature; he owned one of the very few extant copies of a rare early centuries set of book (I rarely understood what he was referring to when he talked to me about Coptic Christian commentaries and Syrian linguistics and Arabic manuscripts and such. Although he lectured at Oxford and Cambridge, he was at home in Middle East. That one of his major collections of eases is called Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes tells you much about his primary contribution.

Scholars the world over admired him. Ken told me once on the phone, as he was writing Jacob and the Prodigal (an ingenious study of the literary parallels between Jesus’s “Prodigal Son” story and the epochal story of Jacob in Genesis) that after a while he thought maybe he was “seeing things” that weren’t really there. He already had a list of over 50 seemingly deliberate parallels. He said he send the work-in-progress to N.T. Wright to see if Tom might talk him out of this fanciful stuff. Of course Wright was astounded, assuring him this was good stuff, and to carry on. His insights about the ancient far East and the contemporary Middle East — including “the simple villages of upper Egypt” — shaped all that he did.

Chapters in this biography have clever titles that speak to this cultural setting: “The Antiochian Missionary” and “On the Island of Aphrodite” and  “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem.”

There is plenty here about the travels and ministry of Ken and Mickey and their family. It describes the research done for most of his books (and the Hollywood-inspired movie he made, retelling the story of the Prodigal Son, in Arabic, with mostly professional Muslim actors.)  There is the moving section part way through, about his son, David, a popular singer-songwriter and performer who bravely faced cancer and died in October of 2010. And, of course (for those who known Presbyterian mission stuff) there is a bit about his beloved New Wilmington Missionary Conference.

Author Michael Parker served as a missionary and professor of church history for many years in Sudan, Rwanda, and Egypt. From 2012 to 2020 he was the director of graduate studies at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo, Egypt. His dedicated work on this project is to be celebrated. Many are very, very grateful.

This is the remarkable story of a life we can only imagine. Michael Parker’s expert telling of Bailey’s life is enthralling and pulls us back to another era of courageous scholar-missionaries that today are few. Bailey was a missionary to the Arab world, but more, he was a missionary to the West, helping us see our Scriptures through the eyes of a world that originally produced them. — Gary Burge, professor emeritus of New Testament, Wheaton College, co-author of The New Testament in Antiquity: A Survey of the New Testament Within Its Cultural Contexts and Whose Land? Whose Promise? What Christians Are Not Being Told about Israel and the Palestinians

Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age Rod Dreher (Zondervan Reflective) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I highlighted this in a previous BookNotes and always new I’d say it was one of the most important Christian books of 2024. I am so glad to have read it and so glad a few customers picked it up. I have some resistance to it for a number of reasons but there is no doubt that it was one of the most striking books I’ve read this year. Maybe you too, eh?

Here is the gist: Rod Dreher is a culturally edgy and very widely read, socially conservative, Orthodox Christian. He wrote a thrilling memoir about the death of his sister, and another about how reading Dante helped, literally, save his life. He has been outspoken against the progressive drift of secularized culture and has been a bit controversial in all of that. I enjoy him; he is a good writer, and I either loved or hated his recent books. This one is yet another leg on his journey and it is both delightfully personal with well told stories and deeply aware of and articulate about the roots of Western modernity, the secularizing forces of our contemporary age, and the thrilling sense of wonder that can still be encountered if one has the eyes for it.

Yes, this book includes some fascinating stuff about UFOs and other mysteries about the weirdness of modern life. It wonders how realizing that the world is more wondrous that most know or appreciate right transform our lives. He tells some powerful stories of extraordinary spiritual encounters that he has never told and he invites us to be more deeply aware of the supernatural world.

He gets at all the spiritual stuff not by way of American evangelicalism, let alone Pentecostal or charismatic renewal, although it sounds a bit like that at times. I say bring it on. If a cultural critique and writer about “the secular age” can invite us to his Orthodox practices (icons, the Jesus Prayer, the complexity of ancient liturgy, not to mention the beauty of good literature and such) and get us thinking more broadly about the dehumanization of a stripped down and reductionist world, and offers a bigger account of the really real, then I’m all in.

Living in Wonder is a brave book that will captivate you, even if your are a skeptic. It will touch you even if you are a cynic. It might, as novelist Paul Kingsnorth puts it, “point the way out of the delusions of our modern dream and back toward reality.’  One critic said it is both “disturbing and visionary.” Yep. It is one of the great reads of 2014 and a very important book.

Backroads and Better Angels: A Journey into the Heart of American Democracy Francis S. Barry (Steer Forth Press) $35.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

This big, fat, fabulous book came out in 2023 but I didn’t discover it until 2024; a person in my church was this author’s camp counselor years ago and stayed in touch. I somehow missed that he visited our church learning about the history of racism and racial reconciliation in York, PA, several years before and his encounter is in this, his big, fat, fabulous book. That I read in 2024.

I could lecture on this (and have read from it in classes and workshops I’ve done) but the short version is simply this: Barry and his wife get an RV and almost comically, with very good hearts and very good eyes (although not always so good navigation) set out to drive the entire length of the legendary Route 30. Hence the visits to Philly, Lancaster, York, Gettysburg, Chambersburg and off into Pittsburgh early in the book. You know we live right near that Lincoln Highway, even if Amor Towles does not mention us.

Not only is this a fun travelogue across America, it does three extraordinary things and does them delightfully. First Barry reports about the local stuff he sees and learns. He’s a local history buff and so in each town you learn, as he does, interesting (dare I say important) stories, things that matter. He is a politico — a Democrat speechwriter for Mayor turned candidate Bloomberg — and he cares about civic life, the common good, the human scale of politics and the history of folks working together. Not only do we learn a whole bunch of historical things along the way of this huge journey,  Secondly, Barry is constantly asking people what holds America together. Can we get along? The polarization wasn’t even as bad a few years ago as it is now, but, even then, the trip was a brave journey to ask about our better angels. It is an important document about our cultural moment, I think.

Thirdly, that “better angels” line, of course, is from Lincoln, and from the Lincoln Tunnel on out across this land, our driver / author keeps Lincoln stories front and center. Who knew? Who knew, I want to shout! Even if you are well informed about the great, tall President, you will learn things I am sure. And you will be better for it. And it will be a blast since all this learning happens through conversation, day by day, as Francis and his wife drive their way across America in this goofy big rig. I loved this book.  God bless them.

TWO BOOKS THAT I JUST HAD A BLAST WITH, FUN READING WITH A SLIGHT MORAL TO THE STORY…

Rocky Mountain High: A Tale of Boom and Bust in the New Wild West Finn Murphy (Norton) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I told you about this in greater detail in a previous BookNotes but it is one of those books that I read because I liked the author (his book about being a long haul trucker, The Long Haul, was a heckuva thrill ride) and was intrigued by the story of a guy starting up a business. Despite the goofy title, this is not about pot, exactly, but is about growing hemp (what they called for a year or so in Boulder County Colorado, “the hemp space.”) This trucker has a great heart and a sharp mind but, frankly, knew nothing about said space, or really any agricultural space. That he could Gert a boat-load of money and hire a relative and try to grow hemp (and dry it and sell it to pharmaceutical hotshots) makes for a wild ride, wilder than his long haul trucking book. It is witty and fun and moves with a moral center, even if everything goes wrong almost from day one. It is, they say, “a masterful tael of one entrepreneur’s misadventures.” A fun read that I couldn’t put down.

I like what writer Jessica Bruder (of the powerful Nomadland) said: she said it “brims with wit and pluck and hard-won wisdom.” Yep.

All The Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians Phil Elwood (Holt) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

I ripped through this (despite the stupid cover) in almost one long sitting on quiet Sunday and I am thinking about it still, months later. It is the personal story of a guy who worked in Washington DC and eventually became known as one of the great PR guys. He got some very high-paying jobs with some very big firms who do this sort of thing and next thing you know he is baby-sitting Middle Eastern dictators in Las Vegas, flying around the country with world-famous bigwigs, crafting media strategies for some of the worst humans who grace this sad, grisly planet. How could he do such stuff, grease the wells and sell false stories about dictators and other sorts of low level (if well paying) bad guys? How could he live with himself, maven that he was?

Here’s how the New York Times described it:

This memoir by a former public relations operative for the wealthy and the corrupt is greasy fun — stocked with scoundrels, cocktails and guns, and showing off the charm and quick wit that catapulted Elwood to the top of the sleazy, amoral world of high-end spin.”

Listen to this:

If Hunter S. Thompson billed clients by the hour, it would look like All The Worst Humans by Phil Elwood. The pacing and storytelling propel the book’s epic sweep across the dark side of DC and global hotspots. Even the most experienced in PR will learn things they did not know, and Elwood’s gripping personal story is an unexpected and wild ride. — Bill McCarren, former Executive Director, National Press Club

The wild writer and bad boy Christopher Buckley says it is “hilarious and harrowing and hard to put down.” Exactly.

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I’m sorry this was delayed getting out. For those who have visited our store in recent decades you might want to know that our little Bichon Frise, Aurora (“Rory”) who we’ve had for almost 18 years, died a few days ago. It’s been a hard week in many ways…

This was going to be my last BookNotes of 2024 but I thought otherwise, then, and did that post about the incarnation, the humanness of Jesus, and the like. We don’t have that many customers who order theology books from us that often, so it was fun to feature a few important ones alongside the easier-to-read practical ones and have a number place orders. Thanks. It was important.

In this first BookNotes of the new year I want to feature some of the best memoirs I read this past year. Most were released in 2024 but a few are older but were new to me. Scroll down to the very end to see them all. You can easily order by clicking the link at the end.

As I’ve often said, there is much entertainment value and much wisdom to be gained by reading memoir. To learn how people narrate their own lives, how they search for meaning, how they do or don’t live well, it all is so colorfully interesting. To show how very committed we are to this genre, here is a list we published previously of about 50 great memoirs that we recommend. Enjoy.

Here, then is my list of just some of my favs in this genre from 2024. ALL ARE 20% OFF.

Roots and Rhythm: A Life in Music Charlie Peacock (Eerdmans) $32.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $26.39

Okay, may I list this as a 2024 read? It just came out, but oh yeah, rock on and flash the hook ‘em horns concert symbol — I read an advanced manuscript in 2024 so I’m laying this down, here, now. It just released a month early and we have a big stack. Did I say rock on? We sent out our pre-orders a day ago. Hooray.

Charlie Peacock is a performing artist (across a multitude of genres as you’ll see), a good writer, thinker, advocate for the arts, lover of books, and friend of Hearts & Minds so I’ll tell ya that I’m biased. I like books about the music industry and I like books about the arts and culture-making. This is tremendous insider pop music book (with fabulous blurbs from the likes of Dylan’s old pal T-Bone Burnett to abstract visual artist Mako Fujimura to the hip young artist known as H.E.R.) so if you enjoy name-checking oodles of household names — from Jackson Browne to Bono to Amy Grant) you’ll have a blast turning these pages. There are a few sections that may prove a tad tedious to those not in the know about pop session musicians or studies (or gear! Oh, there’s a lot about gear) but even casual fans should have a go at this. It is one of the most captivating books I’ve read in a while.

And some parts are simply exquisitely written. So good.

I heard Charlie speak at a small conference more than a decade ago, an event sponsored by Square Halo Books in Lancaster, PA. He contributed to their It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God and as he spoke at that event, years ago, about being an artful rock performer and creative record producer he told this marvelously crafted story about growing up in Yuba City in Northern California. About how his sense of place colored how he saw life and shaped his story. No simplistic Christian cliches, no inspirational verses, but just a great bit of performance art, lecturing about God’s creative call by way of telling his story. And man, I was surprised (he’d been reading Wendell Berry, I realized) and delighted. I find out now that some of that early rumination on his own place, his family tree, his family systems and DNA, really is vital. This is a storytellers story and it is brilliant.

I loved his early, innovative work in the hey-day of an alternative music scene in what has come to be known as CCM. (Think Exit Records or the new wave band Vector and the legendary 77s.) Hardly a thing anymore, CCM was once a huge industry and, like other music movements, had both the bland and the beautiful, those who were artful and those who were copycats. Decades ago sales reps would try to sell us on a given album release saying this hip, modern gospel singer “sounds just like  the Indigo Girls or Tears for Fears or Michael Jackson.” Well, they were often wrong about the similarities, and, anyway, how in the world is that the way to promote a talent stewarding their God given talent? Charlie resisted that cheap “Christian” world the best he could from the get-go.

Peacock — a stage name, by the way — came up in the West Coast almost punk scene but before that was taken with jazz. His great, great grandfather from Louisiana was a fiddler. His dad was a high school band leader, and good at it. We learn that young Charlie, who married his high school sweetheart, Andi, when they were still teens, was reading On the Road and The Dharma Bums and was serious about drugs and drinking; he was a truly ambitious and multi-talented kid and grew and his telling of listening to TV shows like Shindig, American Bandstand and Soul Train. One of the first songs he wrote that got sold went to the producers of The Monkees. He was into Dylan and James Taylor and Jackson and eventually would  perform with and eventually produce some of the edgiest artists of musical integrity the CCM scene ever saw. (They had good equipment, too — Richie Fury, a born-again Christian who left Buffalo Springfield, noted that one of the soundboards Charlie was working on was the one on which they cut For What It’s Worth.  Stop children, what’s that sound, indeed.

And, eventually, others; many others.  He rubbed shoulders with many of the greats from many genres — as white as he seems, he’s got some deep and lasting soul connections. One brief story tells of him pressing the great Al Green for a better vocal for which Charlie was doing takes. Yikes!

The book recalls his coming to faith in one of the very best conversion narratives I have ever read. With intellectual acuity and personal, raw honesty and keen insight into the cultural baggage he explains how he came to embrace the gospel and profess Christ. Testify! His respect for and commitment to principles of sobriety discovered in AA is wonderfully drawn. His honesty is at times raw — more than once he airs some unpleasant feuding with other artists — which is refreshing without being maudlin or gossipy. He has seen some ups and downs and he has matured in ways that have allowed him to mentor many young artists in various settings.

He and Andi started a significant ministry of safe spaces for artists of all sorts — Art House, which they’ve poured their life into — and wrote a couple of books calling for a smashing of the lines between the so-called sacred and secular. He was so ensconced in the CCM world (especially when then moved to Nashville) that it was hard to break fully out of that scene himself, even as he started record labels and championed artists across the divides of perspective and genre.

Roots and Rhythm — is he alluding to a line from Paul Simon’s “Under African Skies”? — is a magisterial memoir, a life story of a public figure (the only guy I know who has to attend the Grammy’s sometimes.) It is a study of his roots, his family, a history of the stuff that made him, his faith, and his navigating his sense of calling in the music industry.

The book starts not in his early days (he’ll get to that) but with the sadly published break up of a band duo that Charlie helped mentor and helped turn them into Grammy Award winning major rock stars with the critically acclaimed Barton Hollow. The chapter is called “The Uncivil Wars” and is about the break-up of the band The Civil Wars at the very height of their fame. It is anguishing, really, and a captivating start.

As I stayed up late reading an early copy of this 300+ page book (including pictures and discographies and lists) I knew we had a winner. As I’ve said, I love music memoirs — Robbie Robertson’s Testimony and Bono’s Surrender being two fabulous examples — and I felt like this was almost in that league. In a way, it was even better because Charlie (if not quite in the league of Robbie and Bono) worked in their world; the picture of Bono at their Art House using a borrowed guitar leading folks in “They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Love” is priceless. The picture of him with Peter Frampton was surprising; his story about a friend who first produced Prince;  man this man wore a big man’s hat. If you care about popular music, you will love this, I’m sure.

But, also, he was a major player in the CCM world that was the backdrop to so many of our best friends and customers and events here at the shop. I loved reading the stories of the world-class famous — he’s friends with Vince Gill,  produced the daughter of Hank Williams, Jr and on and on , but Charlie is also an advocate for greater artistry in the very industry we played a small role in. He’s worked with the best in this subculture, from Mike Roe to Sarah Groves to Sarah Mason to Switchfoot. In this sense, it is simply a must-read for anybody who cares about this scene.

I do wonder if those who aren’t familiar with Nashville record producers or session musicians, who don’t know T-Bone Burnett from Rick Rubin from Margaret Becker from Switchfoot, who don’t even care about Keaggy or Amy Grant, will care much about this. It is a beautifully crafted memoir but even as it says in the promo, it is filled with “geeky trivia.” So it goes.

Yet I want to assure you, dear and gentle reader, that the stuff about his past, his growing up, the influence of his place and his people’s story, are gorgeous and significant. The threads connecting his fabric of faithfulness are well written and even without the geeky trivia this is a memoir well worth having. You will be surprised as he reflects on the influence of the Redbone phrase (and at least two recording artists who used that moniker) and his own racial heritage and just cool stuff — he talks about a retreat on food and farming led, in part, by Ellen Davis, a Bible teacher at Duke and an Alice Water’s trained chef. How intersting!

Here’s my reply to those who might say that they aren’t into the music scene (or books about the sports scene or the political scene or whatever.) I think there is much to be learned by any story of anybody who takes their faith seriously and lives it out in their particular calling, who has an open mind and an open heart, as they try to be faithful to their sense of vocation in the world. That is a gift and you can be inspired for your own particular vocations and occupations.

In Roots & Rhythms Charlie represents, in full color, an example for us all, pushing the limits of the boxes his industry put him in, being an agent of reformation and reform, wondering about the social and “common good” influence of his own career, standing firm despite setbacks, being faithful as best he could alongside his wife and kids, as a family. This “in the world but not of it” transforming vision is illustrated with story after story of somebody being true to their sense of call, their opportunities and limits, doors that opened, doors that slammed shut. From his earliest days — his dad was a music teacher in California — to his introduction to the feisty California music scene, his conversion to radical faith, to his work as record executive and producer, he tells us how it all played out. Even chapters with a few too many tedious names and titles, are delightfully shared under the rubric of chapter titles like “Imagination, Interdependence, and the Bonds of Affection.”

And who knew political figures like Mike Gerson would show up, or that there would be stories about Eugene Peterson or Shara Worden (aka My Brightest Diamond) and her involvement in urban gardening in Detroit.

It isn’t a big part of this decades-spanning memoir, but he and his wife, Andi, did just release a strong collection of pieces — written as letters — that we’ve raved about earlier this year. Called Why Everthing That Doesn’t Matter Matters So Much. It’s fabulous.

Surely his story, in his setting and context, isn’t your own. Maybe you’ve never heard his famous Lie Down in the Grass or his latest jazz compositions. Maybe you’ll skip a paragraph or two about the tech and recording gear (but you will be amazed by the lovely story of finding a long-lost, vintage electric piano in the home of a band he was visiting, decades after the piano had been sold!) I think you’ll enjoy learning about it all, and maybe take inspiration. He’s a hard-working writer and Roots & Rhythm: A Life in Music is a book for us all.

Roots and Rhythm is the play of youth with the wisdom of age merging into a beautiful fireworks show. We all desperately need the sorts of honest, sage stories Charlie tells about the artful life–to see, in ourselves, the merging of the girl in the woman, the boy in the man, simultaneously growing more playful, imaginative, and wise. — Sara Groves, recording artist and cofounder of Art House North, St. Paul, Minnesota

I wish I could communicate all the admiration and respect I have for Charlie with a fraction of the artistry he possesses. He is an amazing, soulful storyteller at all times — as an author with Roots & Rhythm, as a musician, improviser, producer, songwriter –and a man of faith, family, integrity and more. I am so very grateful to know him!  —John Patitucci, Grammy Award-winning bassist, solo artist, educator, and multi-decade collaborator with jazz legends Chick Corea and Wayne Shorter

Lyrically written and richly textured, Roots and Rhythm is the best sort of memoir: captivating, entertaining, and subtly coaxing readers to live their own lives more wholeheartedly. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez,  Jesus and John Wayne

The truest masters always teach over the shoulder and through the heart, inviting others to come alongside and listen carefully to the storied insight of their years. In his new memoir, Charlie Peacock — musician extraordinaire –invites the wide world into his life, sharing about the music and musicians of the modern world as he reflects on the vocation that makes sense of who he is and, why he is, and what he has done. With rare understanding of the nexus of imagination and the marketplace, Roots and Rhythm offers philosophical and theological insight into Charlie’s unique pilgrimage as an artist of unparalleled creativity and surprising generosity, nurturing the hearts and minds of a generation of singers and songwriters who long to learn from the master.   — Steven Garber, Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good and The Seamless Life: A Tapestry of Love and Learning, Worship and Work

Between Two Trailers: A Memoir J. Dana Trent (Convergent) $27.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

Beth and I both were nearly breathless reading this complicated story of a girl raised among drug dealing, on-again-off-again, church folks, written in great prose in what Erin Lane calls a “ludicrously good plot.” This coming-of-age story is about trauma and resilience, witty and amazing. The forward is, curiously, by her friend the exquisitely charming and theologically astute Barbara Brown Taylor. My NYC friend Jonathan Merritt says it is a “tough tale to tell but Trent communicates it with a winsome charm.”

Micha Boyett (who recently wrote Blessed Are the Rest of Us) says it is:

“…in the vein of great literary coming of age narratives like The Liars Club and This Boys Life.”

There is so much I could say about this remarkable memoir. Don’t miss it.

Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story Leslie Jamison (Little Brown) $29.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

I want to say that while this may not be for everyone, it was perhaps the most compelling and engaging book I read all year. I cannot believe how moved I was by it, how captivated and interested. It has received extraordinary praise and Ms. Jamison is an extraordinary writer at the top of her craft. She has written literary fiction, memoir, sociological studies, immersive journalism. She is known for writing about recovery in the stunning The Recovering and was world-class famous for a bit after the release of The Empathy Exams. She is a bit postmodern, vivid, at times vulgar, deeply self-reflective, and this memoir looks at some of her life of what Maggie Smith (of You Could Make This Place Beautiful fame) says is “a brilliant reckoning with what it means to make art, a self, a family, a life.” Indeed. Wow.

The writing is, as Smith notes, “as sharp and piercing as its title” but it remains a riveting look into a woman and her writing, her sexuality, her marriage and divorce, her grief, and — this is huge — her parenting. I do not think I have read as moving a narrative about mothering an infant and then a toddler, ever. As an artist with a place in the literary world, she, still, has to deal with her deep, deep love for her daughter and it is nothing short of remarkable.

One reviewer said she is “unstinting in her assessment of marriage gained and lost, of motherhood held close, and of loving oneself in the process…” (Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood.)

In this work of stunning emotional depth, she offers “a portrait of rupture that is at once a page-turner about divorce, a romance about parenthood, a mystery of self after splintering, and a promise that however many times we break or are broken, art and love will never fail to mend us.”

As Heather Havrilsky writes, “No one else I’ve read has evoked so powerfully what it feels like to be pulled by too many competing tethers until you’re half a mother, half a writer, barely a wife, hardly a real person…”

“No one else I’ve read has evoked so powerfully what it feels like to be pulled by too many competing tethers until you’re half a mother, half a writer, barely a wife, hardly a real person…”

If you care about any new mothers who have dangerous marriages and hard living conditions, this book will grab your heart.

I wish that some mature and non-judgmental Christian with insight into the cultural mores of our elite, urban artists and who has psychological wisdom might offer a review of this showing how it captures much of a certain zeitgeist and how a normative, Godly perspective might make a difference for those so caught in this sort of mess. Disapprove of some of her lifestyle choices and values, as you may, this book still has a profound and loudly beating moral heart. I will never stop thinking about it, I’m afraid.

My Life in Seventeen Books: A Literary Memoir Jon M. Sweeney (Monkfish) $23.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $18.40

I announced this before but didn’t say too much; one could go on and one about each chapter, but the gist of this clever project is, as you might surmise, a reflection on his life by way of books that influenced him. Karen Swallow Prior’s first brilliant book, Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me, was just this sort of thing — an idea I had considered doing myself at various points, unless I did rock albums, which could piece together a life story almost as well — and Sweeney’s considerable intellect and generous spirituality shines through. He is a former bookseller, a longtime publisher, and prolific author and he’s not messing around here..

From Tagor’s Gitanjali to Buber’s Hasidic Tales he has been influenced — carried, as he puts it — by many sorts of books. He has written about Merton, himself, and his chapter on Furlong’s Merton bio (which he took on his honeymoon!) is a great chapter. His piece on Wendell Berry is lovely.  His piece about acquiring a nearly controversial, small book about Saint Francis — he was deep in an obsession at the time, writing a lot about him professionally — is fabulous.

Sweeney makes it clear in the beginning that these are not his favorite books, really, not even the most influential in his life. They are, as he puts it, books he carried. Some of this is sheer magic (or as the back cover says,” ‘enchantment.” What does he mean by having “carried” these? Take up and read and you’ll find out.

Somehow: Thoughts on Love Anne Lamott (Riverhead Books) $22.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

I adore the writing chops of this upbeat and thoughtful writer, an old bohemian who came to Christian faith in a colorful manner years ago and has held a space for many of us who appreciate her open-minded soulfulness and her utter candor. Her book about birth and parenting as a single mom, her book about writing (Bird By Bird) and her many collections of essays all strike me as more interesting and vivid than her acclaimed novels. This new collection of storytelling is generally on love. More specifically, it tells of her own falling in love later in life and her recent marriage.

This wonder of a book is about love. She has plenty to say. You will enjoy it and maybe learn a bit, shaking you up and giving you new hope. You will smile along the way, belief me.  She’s right, you know: “One day at a time, and somehow one hour at a time, love will be enough to see us through.” Don’t you need a reminder?

“Full of the compassion ad humanity that have bade her beloved by millions of readers, Somehow is classic Anne Lamott: funny, warm, and wise.”

Even After Everything: The Spiritual Practicing of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anyway Stephanie Duncan Smith (Convergent) $26.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

I earlier highlighted this, perhaps more than once, announcing that it surely is one of my votes for a best book of 2024. I love creative memoir and this captures so much, so well. Duncan Smith is a very fine writer and here vulnerably shares essentially a year in her life, a year of miscarriage and loss, of living into the church calendar, of new joy and hope. My, my, what a lovely, poignant, and well-told story. She is a writer to know and to watch.

Called (by therapist and writer J.S. Park) “a soaring memoir” he goes on to suggest it is “a meditation on birth and death, a reassuring theology that does not rush or reduce… Even After Everything is a special work written from both impossibly hard experience and intimate brushes with heaven.” Yes!

Kayla Craig, who has the handsome book for family to do devotions around the church year (Every Season Sacred) called it “expansive” noting that it “beckons us to reflect on our own experiences of time, self, and the One present in every beautiful, broken season.” I am sure that is one of the reasons I was so taken with it, her sense of wonder even admits hard stuff.

Hillary McBride, author of The Wisdom of Your Body and Practices for Embodied Living: Experiencing the Wisdom of Your Body, says, in regard to her own miscarriage and other embodied hurts, writes,

“I have been longing for words that contain the wordlessness of these experiences I found the words I needed in this book, each page undoing my aloneness, creating a choreography of connection to the rhythm of the cycles of nature, and inviting me even more deeply into the sacredness of the path of living as a body. I never wanted the book to end.”

Ghosted: An American Story Nancy French (Zondervan) $28.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

I have “hand sold” this to more people than perhaps any book this year, pressing it on anyone even vaguely interested in the art of memoir or anyone even vaguely interested in the conflict among us in these United States, these days. Nancy French tells of her Appalachian upbringing, her legalistic and emotional religion, an abusive situation in college, her meeting the charming but reasonable lawyer and thoughtful Christian apologist, David French, who believed in her. They fall in love and eventually become, together, legendary Christian operatives within the rising Republican Party; she finds herself as a ghost writer (having worked with very well known names of the right-wing of previous decades.)

Ghosted is at times fun and humorous but it is also a complicated and agonizing story — as I’ve written before it is just so gripping — but when they wouldn’t back Trump in his first Presidential bid they became disillusioned with some on the far-right, especially religious friends. More than a few of their Trumpian friends and colleagues were brutally outspoken against them and the story quickly turns harrowing.

Nancy and David were Christians, first, and couldn’t abide Trump’s degrading abuse of women or his dishonesty or his narcism or his cluelessness about the gospel, and, further, they were principled conservatives who couldn’t abide Trump’s odd-ball lack of virtue-based, conservative policy. After a stint in the Army serving in Iraq (a moving section of the book) David stopped writing for the National Review, they experienced ugliness of the sort one can hardly imagine (some of it blatantly racist; they had adopted an African child and the alt-right got grossly involved in trolling them) and, as this story continues, were in the middle of firestorm as Nancy advocated for abuse victims from the country’s largest evangelical camping program. It is a heck of a read.

I recommend this to anybody who loves a good tale, who appreciates the glories of the art of memoir. I recommend this to anyone who is disillusioned with the Christian right as it explores how they did or didn’t manage to keep friends once they shifted away from that stained ideology. And I recommend it to anyone who still holds sway for conservative evangelicalism and/or the MAGA right. It illustrates how some in your circles have treated well-intended, decent, folks, and you owe it to yourselves to realize how bad some of this has gotten; you need to read this so you can work to distance your movement from the sorts of evil harassment and vile mistreatment they faced. Like them or not, this is a book to read and ponder. I encourage you to read it now.

I didn’t know writing could be this haunting and hilarious, heartbreaking and exhilarating all at the same time. I did not want it to end. This tour de force of storytelling and sense-making is one of the most gripping and beautiful memoirs in a generation. In these pages, Nancy French takes us beyond this confusing American moment right into the soul of our shared human condition, full as it is of gore and glory. You will not close this book the same as you were when you opened it. — Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

I picked up Ghosted only once, not putting it down until I had read every page. This is a captivating account of a child, a girl, and then a woman buffeted by unthinkable betrayals who withstood despair and surrender and remained true to her values. Her uncommon character and integrity educate and inspire. — Mitt Romney

Land of My Sojourn: The Landscape of a Faith Lost and Found Mike Cosper (IVP) $24.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

This stunning book came out last February and I have highlighted it often. It tells the painful story of Cosper’s drift from his church-planting circles, a growing sense of disappointment and even betrayal as he realizes that some in his community had become — how to say this? — taken with ideologies of the far right and beholden to funders who did not want to speak about racism or nationalism for fear of being considered woke.

Cosper has published with Crossway, written about orthodox faith and serious worship, and was a leader in an evangelical church planting network, so the shattering of his dreams (and his artsy evangelical ministry among bohemians and other hipsters in his Midwest city) was a shock, a hard, hard shock. He did not see this coming or the emotional toll it would take.

Two things that make this honest reflection a stand out read: it tells what it is like to go through the doubts and confusions when one feels in some sense exiled from one’s own faith tradition and home. That his pain led to symptoms of burnout is not surprising, nor is his sense of being adrift, a sojourner. This well written story is a glimpse that many of us may benefit from and I very highly recommend it.

Secondly, though, as I have noted before, this is superimposed on, or given shape by, a series of every-other-chapter pieces of Bible study set on the ground of the holy land. He literally goes to the land of Jesus and reflects on that place, to give a counter-balance to the narcism and crisis of leadership he was observing in some high-profile evangelical communities.

You may know that Cosper was behind one of the most talked about podcasts of recent yearsThe Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. You may have heard of his brand new book, The Church in Dark Times: Understanding and Resisting the Evil That Seduced the Evangelical Movement which we have also commended. Through all this study of the dark side of evangelicalism, he is not a cynic and he is a caring critic. Land of My Sojourn tells his backstory and it is important and captivating.

Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden Camille Dungy (Simon & Schuster) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I wrote about this last year, naming it as one of the Best Books of that year, but it has been released in paperback in 2024 so I am delighted to highlight it again, if only briefly. Beloved by many, this memoir is mostly about a black woman — a college literature professor and esteemed poet — re-doing her yard in Fort Collins, Colorado. The only person of color on her street and the only one turning her downtown lawn into a wilder garden, a natural habitat for native species and critters, it has an edge of drama to it. (Not everyone is at first pleased with her seemingly unusual plantings and yard design.)

So, yes, there are themes about racism and ecology, digressions on environmental racism, rants about uniform lawns, info on invasive weeds and natural history, upbeat encouragement about gardening and important reporting on black history and resilience. And more — written in a usually heartwarming style. Mostly, it is an inspiring book about a black woman (and her husband and child) who learn to love, again and again, their soil.

I love how one advanced review said,

“In Soil, Dungy plants poems next to memoir next to critical analysis next to environmental history next to African American history.”

Upbeat fellow gardener and poet Ross Gay says it is “brilliant and beautiful memoir.” Enjoy!

Biting the Hand: Growing Up Asian in Black and White American Julia Lee (Holt) $26.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

Wow, this is a memoir that (in the words of Phuc Tran, author of the great Sigh, Gone, set right here in central Pennsylvania) “that brims with wit, intelligence, vulnerability, and delicious rage.” He continues, saying it is a “firm manifesto of ‘an angry little Asian girl’ that delivers on so many levels.”

Lee’s mentor, the world-famous Jamaica Kincaid (the book title is a line from a Kincaid story) says it is “vivid, powerful, and empathic.”  It is by turns tender, academic, full of insight and rage and a bit of hope.

Yes, Julia Lee is a good writer. And yes, she has a stunning story. But throughout she features not only her own experience as an Asian-American girl becoming a young woman and professional scholar, but shifts to social analysis, cultural studies, American history, and the nuances of experience that many Asian Americans feel growing up “between black and white.”

I love these kinds of books that offer both personal memoir and searing social commentary. We learn a lot about (an) Asian American [Korean] view on all sorts of things making up recent American history — she came of age in LA during the awful uprising caused by the Rodney King verdict — and reflects about her own experiences of racism (even if somehow different than racism against blacks.) The relationship of blacks and Asians (not to mention Latinx and First Nations peoples, which she explores at length, ashamed of how little she knew about indigenous people and how little — even as an outspoken progressive activist in her older years — she cared.) Kimberly Jones (an anti-racist writer) notes that it is both fearless and vulnerable.

As Jones puts it, “this is the book my heart that wasn’t my story to tell, so I’m elated that Lee cracked open her heart for us to travel with her.”

Memoirist Kiese Laymon (of Heavy) calls it “phenomenal” and “a lush treatise on the politics of expectation.”

She is vulgar and passionate, at times frustratingly immature and other times heroically insightful. It’s a great read. Her mother is a character (a first generation immigrant from Korea, born in the North) and, like with any captivating memoir, you are drawn into her family’s drama. Her discussion of her uncomfortable years at Princeton are shocking. (I had no idea that the “Southern most Ivy League school”, as it is often called, was so racially-fraud, so full of caste and class.) Her expose of the dining clubs and frats and ethos there was hard to read, even if at times bitingly snide, and an important part of her story. For anyone that works in higher education, this book is illuminating.

David Chang (of Momofuku) says it is “awe-inspiring.”

Chang continues,

“…this book is a must-read for anyone looking to gain a deeper understanding of Korean han, the Asian American experience, and the power of resilience.”

1974: A Personal History Francine Prose(Harper) $27.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

I thought this was going to be a fun, broadly conceived study of this mid-70s year that was important for me, and for the country. I graduated from high school in 1972; fell in love a couple of times in college, got more serious about my Christian calling, worked with the handicapped, met Beth and married after college in 1976. Why wouldn’t I want to read this cool memoir? I was told it was “spellbinding.” I was up for that.

I had no idea. No idea at all. And I will tell you now that while it may not be for everyone, it is one of the most amazing books I have ever read. For surprise and intrigue and candor and weirdness and power, it is almost as good as the stunning What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance (set in El Salvador) by poet Carolyn Forche. 1974 has the same urgency, the same political vibrancy, the same revolutionary energy. It feels to me, not unlike Forche’s, that it would be set a bit earlier. Its plot line starts, most directly, in 1971 when the Pentagon Papers were released.

Yes, this is, as one reviewer put it, “a stunningly alive portrait of the artist as a young woman, set during that dizzying time when the hopeful loveliest of the ‘60s morphed into the murky violence of the ‘70s.” It is, as Caroline Leavitt continues, “Heartbreaking, hating, and indelible.” Prose is a writer, artist, professor, and her story is important for anyone interested in the creative arts and integrity as a writer.

Yet, the heart of the book is — to put in simply — her friendship (and romance, sort of) with one of the two men that published the infamous Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg is a hero to many of us, and his name is well known. Tony Russo, however, did not become as well known, even though he was the one of them that did horrific jail time for his part in being a whistleblower against the lies of the U.S. Government. Tony Russo, once released (and with Ellsberg and his wife distancing themselves from him) was obsessed. He was emotionally distraught, paranoid, perhaps (okay, more than perhaps.) As Prose tells it, she herself didn’t quite know what to make of it all. Russo certainly exemplified at least one aspect of the early 1970s and the aftermath of the anti-war efforts. How could she ever move on after having known him?

Russo saw first hand the horrors of what we did ( and what we covered up) in Viet Nam. The torture, haunting, gross stuff,  all of it. He came back outraged and committed and, soon enough, crazy, maybe. His telling of the tale is vital for us all, now more than ever. Her coping with this wounded warrior of the anti-imperialist left, her loving this unstable man, her effort to be a writer amidst the hard politics (and his own grievances) makes this a book I will never forget. I swear I will never forget.

The MAGA Diaries: My Surreal Adventures Inside the Right Wing (And How I Got Out) Tina Nguyen (Atria) $28.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

Back after 9-11 when we all learned about jihadists and suicide bombers many of us read several memoirs or stories about those who were, as we put it, “radicalized.” How did it happen, often ordinary Muslim folks turning viciously anti-American. Some of it was so extreme it wasn’t just an awareness about American militarism or injustices. Something deeply serious was happening as people changed their entire worldviews.

I do not at all mean to suggest (I do not!) that those hoodwinked by the MAGA ideology and the dishonesty at the heart of the Trump movement are like evil suicide bombers. Not at all. I only start with that recollection to say that I have long found it helpful to read books about people explaining why they’ve come to believe as they do. Tina Nguyễn does this in plain but vivid prose, telling her story of growing up in political and socially conservative circles, landing a job in right wing media, coming to know, well, just about everybody in those heady tea-party years. As an Asian American woman she had a certain uniqueness and she only occasionally comments on the racial aspects of her growing disillusionment with the far right ideology she so fully embraced for decades.

This is at once a coming of age memoir — an immigrant’s daughter, striving as many Asian American families do, her ending up in debate and college journalism. What a story — I also love stories about college life and this is a good window into her experiences as a minor (and politically-active conservative) in higher education. She went to the legendary Claremont McKenna College and was involved in the Salvatori Center. (If you don’t know their orientation and vision, get this book immediately!)

Her job search and coming into the adult years is fabulously told. Her first job was with a little known gent named Tucker Carlson. She goes on to Grover Norquist, ReasonTV, dinners with Peter Thiel, “conventions that rival Coachella” and working at The Daily Caller and eventually with the likes of Breitbart and Bannon.

She dated a guy who grew darker and darker, with connections in the growing neo-Nazi movement — this is an important part of the story… As with other thoughtful evaluations of the election-denying, Trumpian extremists, she notes that much of her own conservative formation happened before the Trump thing happened and her own libertarian and principled conservative (she can argue about political philosopher Leo Strauss!) social concerns seemed increasingly foreign to the wild new MAGA movement and their Groypers and QAnon allies. That she is now a critical reporter of Trump’s policies — it took a while for her to get a legit job at mainstream media sources — is quite the conversion story.

One big take-away — and she explores this with passion once she leaves the fold of the MAGA faithful — is how she was enfolded into the movement, mentored, given many (many!) opportunities for networking. She goes to a summer “right wing camp” and assumes this is normal. The think-tanks and financial grants and scholarships and communal housing and paid internships are just everywhere in the right wing ecosphere. Later, she was aghast that Democrats, for instance, have little vision for creating an upcoming generation of well-informed young adults, mentored and guided to a career track in changing the world. There is, clearly, a thought-out, systematized on-ramp for young Republicans to enter the world of new right politics.

This is hugely informative for anyone wanting a glimpse at how the extreme right operates these days (and she spills the beans, in passing, about what billionaires fund what think-tanks, from AEI to Cato to The Rockford Institute to Heritage to the American Action Forum to IHS at George Mason to the National Journalism Center to the Charlemagne Institute (and money from Koch, Bradley, et al.) The footnotes with further documentation — I had never heard of the Bradley Foundation’s influence — is worth the price of the book if you want to know what’s up and who helps play a hidden role in the radicalization of decent conservatives. Besides the scary details, it’s a great read, a fun memoir about a witty woman’s journey finding her way (with her mom looking over her shoulder much of the time. Yep, there’s lots of that, giving it a good feel.) I think The MAGA Diaries is a book we should know.

Motorhome Prophecies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness Carrie Sheffield (Center Street) $29.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

Wow, this is one of those books that if you pick it up you won’t want to put it back down. There are a number of reasons why this is an important read and I might revisit it eventually. There is much to say, much to ponder, much to care about as a book like this can create not only greater empathy within the hearts of readers, but offer insight on how some parts of our broken world works.

And what grace looks like.

She says it is a story about sabotage. Wow.

This is one hell of a story, the memoir of a woman raised in a family of what some have called “Mormon fundamentalists” or extremist polygamists who have broken away from the fairly staid Latter Day Saints. The LDS church long ago renounced polygamy and other raunchy aspects of their odd cultish legacy. But there are those who with the radical zeal of extremists everywhere take it upon themselves to found a new cult, more authoritarian and wild-eyed than even Brigham Young. (One of the latest fundamentalist Mormons says he is the Holy Spirit and Father of Jesus; they recently left Utah to Montana.) Carrie Sheffield’s family were part of this dangerous tribe of fundamentalist Mormons, akin to the infamous Ron and Dan Lafferty and other “School of Prophets” folks written about so compellingly in Jon Krakauer riveting Under the Banner of Heaven.

Sheffield’s toxic family was not only caught up in a web of cultic religiosity but were, in some cases, mentally ill. Her brother tried to rape her. Her father was dangerous. Etc. They lived in tents, sheds, a motorhome, always on the run. As the fifth of eight children she saw it all.

Her story is hers to tell and she tells it well. Motorhome Prophecies isn’t as violent as Under the Banner but makes Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy or even Tara Westover’s great Educated: A Memoir look like kid’s stuff. Her journey out of abuse and weirdness is nearly miraculous. She ends up at Harvard, involved in conservative politics, struggling with post-traumatic stress and yet becoming a well-loved, positive individual. But there’s more.

Here’s the very short version. She comes to understand traditional Christian faith, attending — get this! —-both Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian (a culturally-savvy but theologically conservative PCA congregation of some fame in Manhattan) and was in part mentored by the gracious and charming, then-presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the USA, Rev. Michael Curry. (His book Crazy Christian and the sermon he preached for the Royal wedding a few years back touched her deeply.) Rev. Curry baptized her and, she told me, they love talking about their differences in theology, social policy, politics and more. She loves that sort of civil diversity in the church. I figure that if she knows Curry (and he has a rave review on the back of the book) and Tim Keller, she has my attention.

It isn’t every book that has a great blurb on the back from Amy Chia (Yale Law School professor and author if Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother) and Dr. David Brat of Liberty University. And Deepak Chopra.  (He writes that her “spiritual transformation from exploited, angry skeptic to a full embrace of God’s transformative, healing power is a powerful witness to the world.”

Bratt writes:

The story of Motorhome Prophecies is a universal one: Jesus heals. Carrie Sheffield’s horrific abuse at the hands of people who should have protected her shows the brokenness of humanity. But Carrie’s story also illustrates our capacity for redemption and renewal by walking with God and trusting in His justice and sovereign grace. Carrie illustrates the heart of God: leading by loving our neighbors who believe differently than us.

What the Taliban Told Me Ian Fritz (Simon & Schuster) $29.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I know that not everybody looking for an inspiring and entertaining bit of literary memoir wants to dive into a somber and heady read about the war in Afghanistan. But, frankly, this is an anguishingly beautiful book, compelling and wise. It is hard to read at times but it seems somehow very, very important. Matt Gallagher (who wrote the highly-regarded Kaboom about “a savage little war”) says that What the Taliban Told Me is not only beautifully told (“with rare honesty and seeking”) but that it “introduces Ian Fritz as a powerful moral and literary voice.”

Fritz was an airborne linguist tasked with listening in on suspected Taliban communications and he grew to know them intimately. He perhaps understood them better than most — their wants, their fears, their hopes and dreams. Gallagher suggests that this “transcended the normal boundaries of war.” What that means is the thrust of this book, how a service member deployed to a war zone might come to transcend those boundaries.  Not only does it put a human face on the energy, it tries to actually understand them.

Look — I have little sympathy for Taliban extremists. I do not think Fritz does, either; this is not a book suggesting they really are decent guys. HIs two tours of duty, monitoring on the ground conversations in real time, allowed his fellow soldiers to do deathly battle. In a memorable line he says that much of this book came from “listening to the dead.” He saved lives in some cases, and he caused much death and destruction, people and villages he was listening to, often just moments before they were blown to bits.

As the flyleaf cover tells us, he started his first deployment with the Air Force with great pride. After realizing his role in so much death he ends “with near-suicidal despair that he’s been instrumental in destroying the voices he’s heard in service of a war he and so many service members know is lost.” This is an intimate reckoning, to say the least.

We were involved in this war for twenty years or more. The memoir offers a stark moral perspective, starting with understanding these Afghan rebels and their faith and their desires, and, eventually, coming to learn much about himself. It is, as the publisher notes, “a coming of age memoir in a war that is lost.”

PRE-ORDER Pilgrim: A Theological Memoir Tony Campolo (Eerdmans) $23.99  / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19 // not yet released – due February 2025 

Oh my goodness, how can I tell you how much I appreciated this, how much I enjoyed it, how many memories it brought back. I could tell you how it made me feel — recalling Campolo’s powerful sermons, his great oratorship, recalling his fun conversations behind the prominent (and not so prominent) stages where I had the privilege to hang out with him on occasion. We did some projects together and while we were not good, good friends (even though he always treated me with enthusiasm) I cared for him deeply. I’ve got a few little stories. So, yes, this book means a whole lot to me.

After his passing this past November (and having lost Ron Sider last year) it feels like the end of an era for me and Beth.

But, frankly, I think I’d have enjoyed this fascinating story and would have been moved by it (even if frustrated by a bit of it) no matter if I had never heard of him or sold his many good books.

Anybody who was part of the evangelical world of the last generation, trying to help it become more social conscious (or maybe then resisting the push and pull towards social engagement) will love his telling of his role in some of what I might call the first battle — when traditional evangelicals thought cultural engagement with the arts and sciences, let alone working to liberate the poor and oppressed, was second-level stuff, not so important as evangelism and praising the Lord; you will love hearing Tony recounting his efforts to meld evangelism and social concern. Hooray for this. He pulled it off and many of us were very glad for his feisty proclamation of the Lordship of Christ over all of life, including his advocacy to alleviate poverty and world hunger.

Secondly, then, once evangelicals did get out of the pews and intro the streets, there was what I might call the second battle; namely, the question of how we do social action, what cultural renewal looks like, what role philosophy and theology and political science and sociology might play in the reformation of ideas and society. How do we “think Christianly” about the implications of the coming reign of God? How do we serve the Kingdom of God within the kingdoms of this world? We were glad when evangelicals conceded that public theology might be important, that we should vote, even.

Yet were distressed when they worshipped money-making and so-called American progress. They backed violent dictators in El Salvador and Chile and Iran and the Philippines. That evangelicals applauded when Reagan cut the budgets for the poor and funded excessive militarism and mocked concern about ecology. The development of the religious right became one of the largest socio-political stories of the last fifty years and Campolo wasn’t having it. He was in it deep and Pilgrim tells some of the backstory of what he did and the price he paid.

How did a young man from a fiery Baptist home end up working with Albert Einstein, run for office as an evangelical, anti-war candidate, and come to do pastoral counseling with a sexually-sinful President of the United States? How did he start and mission group and raise so much money for the disadvantaged? How did he go from being one of the top speakers on the evangelical conference circuit to becoming a persona non grata? How did he feel during all this? How did it effect his wife, his children (who bore the same names as the kids in The Simpsons, a joke almost too good to be true?)

This book elaborates the faith journey of Tony Campolo who was, for better or worse, one of the most lively, entertaining, and influential figures in modern evangelical Christianity. His recent death (November 19th 2024) makes this his last book and will allow millions of those who admired him as a popular speaker to hear him tell his own testimony.

I could hardly put my advanced reader’s copy of this down and swept through all 250 plus pages with ease. I’m sure you will, too. It is not highly crafted, poetic literature and it is not academically dense scholarly prose. It is Tony, after his stroke, talking to his friend Steve Ramey, in the long overdue account of his whole long life. Plain and moving, this is surely a book many will want to get as soon as it comes out. We hope we’ll have it early, before the mid-February release date. Pre-order it now, please.

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We here at Hearts & Minds send Pennsylvania holiday greetings to our subscribers and other on-line friends and customers. With great gratefulness we wish you a merry Christmastime and an upcoming happy New Year.

f you need something to listen to, don’t forget our “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast — in the most recent I describe with enthusiasm an adult book on Epiphany (by Fleming Rutledge) and two beautiful children’s books. Enjoy that by either watching on YouTube or listening at Spotify or Apple Podcasts. The one before that was sort of about the holiday season — a book on hospitality, one on wine, and one on a Kingdom vision for family called Households of Faith. Both of those pods are timely, so check ‘em out.

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/A-6oCpJMTIY?si=3keizbAo_6fT0sDK
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• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Vkig1OukDcJYaFl248AuM?si=f6ee20461cca4122

After that creative review of a bunch of contemporary novels in the last BookNotes, today I wanted to highlight for you a couple of books about the incarnation — God with Us, Emmanuel. We all know the lingo but, frankly, I am afraid some of us haven’t plumbed too deeply into that Earth-shaking mystery. Jesus said the faith of a child is enough, granted, but we know that God has given us resources with which to enlarge our hearts and stretch our minds. Here are a couple that might help do just that.

Christmas: The Season of Life and Light Emily Hunter McGowin (IVP) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

Let’s start with this utterly lovely, truly fascinating, must-read, small book in the terrific “Fullness of Time” series. We’ve highlighted the Advent one (by Tish Harrison Warren) and the Epiphany one (by Fleming Rutledge) but sandwiched between the is the marvelous study of Christmastide. It’s not to late to read this and to learn more about this beloved holiday. Highly recommended.

And, of course, she necessarily studies the incarnation. It is astute, if brief, lovely and inspiring, as she explores the great O Antiphon that calls this mystery “the wondrous exchange.”

The Christmas liturgy of the Catholic Church, she shares, puts it like this:

For through Christ the holy exchange that restores our life has shone forth today in splendor: when our frailty is assumed by your Word not only does human mortality receive unending honor but by this wondrous union we, too, are made eternal.

The early church fathers, she tells us, compared this to the burning bush in Exodus 3 or the behavior of iron placed into fire. Its a good section in a lovely little boo and it is a marvelous place to start thinking a bit more deeply about the meaning of the incarnation.

Later in the book she draws forth the implication that God took on flesh in a chapter called “The God of Creation and Recreation.” Later she has a chapter called “The God of the Creche and the Cross.”  It’s so good — don’t miss it.

On the Incarnation Saint Athanasius of Alexandria (Whitaker House) $9.99  // OUR SALE PRICE = $7.99

The small and very handsome paperback published by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press in their handsome Popular Patristics series is out of stock here, right now, (and they have been closed between Christmas and New Years so we haven’t replenished our stock, yet but will have more of that edition in a week or so. It goes for $20.00.)

For now, I’ll suggest this edition, which is, frankly, several dollars cheaper and has somewhat larger print. Whitaker House is a conservative (and at time Pentecostal) Protestant publisher who realized the importance of this classic from the 4th century. Kudos to them for doing this affordable edition of what is surely one of the most important books in church history.

C.S. Lewis says:

“Only a master mind could, in the fourth century, have written so deeply on such a subject with such classic simplicity.” – C. S. Lewis

One of Us: Reflections on the Radical Mystery of the Incarnation A.D. Bauer (Square Halo Books) $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

I have done two different reviews of this new little gem and have each time celebrated it for being accessible, pastoral, practical. A.D. is a Reformed minister and thinker and it’s as if he is chatting with you over coffee or tea.  While it isn’t exactly breezy or hilariously chatty like some edgy/cool books these days, it is substantive, solid, truly interesting, and immensely important.

Does Jesus taking on human flesh really matter? Is he really “fully human” as the Bible says and as the ancient creeds declare? And if so, how does that assist us in our life journey of hardship and sin? So much of the church’s current woes are (in my view) linked to a failure to be formed into the ways of Jesus, and knowing who Jesus is as “one of us” is a really good start.  Short and solid.

The Incarnation in the Gospels Daniel Doriani, Philip Graham Ryken & Richard Phillips (P&R) $14.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

Again, this is a wonderful read, both deeply theological and immensely inspiring, exploring a spectacular insight — fundamental to our faith, they properly insist — that has deep implications. This is a thoughtful, devotional work, with three authors each presenting twelve readings from Matthew, Luke, and John.

Doriani, whose work I have always liked, explores Matthew under the rubric of “The Hope of Israel” while Ryken explores Luke under the title “Songs for the Savior.” Richard Phillips invites us to consider “The Coming of the Light” with four great chapters on John 1. I suppose this is read by some as an Advent devotional, but I commend it here as it really does exegete and teach directly from Scripture about how the incarnation is taught.

Incarnation: The Surprising Overlap of Heaven and Earth William Willimon (Abingdon) $15.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

We really, really like these several “Belief Matters” volumes, short and really reader-friendly. (Our neighbor and good friend Ken Loyer did the one on communion, why the way, and we really like the one on creation. Each shows how these core doctrines have huge implications for the formation of our life together as God’s people.)

This is certainly an urgent one, perhaps the most famous since it is by Will Willimon, after all. They did not pitch this as a Christmas book but as a standard topic about which we must all have some familiarity. Jesus — fully human, fully divine — is “God’s Word of promise to be with us.”

From the introduction, Willimon provokes us just a bit, writing:

Jesus defines simplistic, effortless, undemanding explications. To be sure, Jesus often communicated his truth in simple, homely, direct ways, but his truth was anything but apparent and undemanding in the living. The gospels are full of folk who confidently knew what was what — until they met Jesus. Jesus provoked an intellectual crisis in just about everybody. Their response was not, “Wow I’ve just seen the Son of God,” but rather, “Who is this?”

There is a fabulous blurb on the back from classy Presbyterian Bible scholar and preacher, Thomas Long, as well as one by the emergent thinker and hip justice activist Doug Pagitt. This book is fine for anyone, in any stage or style of faith, believer or seeker. Hooray.

Veiled in Flesh: The Incarnation – What It Means and Why It Matters Melvin Tinker (IVP-UK) $17.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

This is a truly solid study, a good and reliable exposition of the first two chapter of Hebrews to get at the question of who Christ is as the incarnate One and then, in a bunch of lively chapters, going deeper, “drawing on systematic and historical theology to tease out what the doctrine means and why it is vital to the life and health of the church and for Christian devotion.” It even shows how the doctrine of incarnation is related to two other key Christian beliefs, the Trinity and the atonement.

Tinker is a minister in the UK and a well known author and international speaker. This is not quite academic but does delve a bit deeper than some titles…

The Word Became Flesh: Evangelicals and the Incarnation edited by David Peterson (Paternoster Press) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I think we only have one of these left, again, important from the UK. (Ahhh, those British evangelicals are often ahead of US evangelicals on questions of lively theology and justice-seeking social ethics.) Anyway, this brings together a number of scholars to provide a Biblical and theological reflection on the thee. I think these were once lectures given at a conference (at Oak Hill, a prominent gathering at their School of Theology.”

Here you have Michael Ovey on Christ’s Consummator and Lex Mundi theology;  another chapter by Ovey on the Son Incarnate as co-sufferer (and the hostility of a rebellious world); David Peterson writes about how Christ shares our humanity and is “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (from Hebrews.)  Chris Green’s chapters are worth the price of the book as he explores “The Incarnation and Mission” (a meaty exploration, by the way.) Timothy War has a good chapter on “The Word and Words” exploring Scripture and then Carl Trueman (more famous now than he was in more than a decade ago when this came out) writes on the Incarnation and the Lord’s Supper, realizing that it was an “incarnational problem” in the debate between Luther and Zwingli. He shows how the Lord’s Supper can have a positive, formative function and is necessary for us all. I know somebody is going to love this.

Jesus Human: Primer for a Common Humanity Leonard Sweet (The Salish Sea Press) $27.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.36

From out at Orcas Island in Washington state, Len Sweet has been busy mentoring DMin candidates, teaching and preaching semiotics, helping young theologians be bright and culturally savvy, reading the signs of the times. He is a witty wordsmith, a Kingdom renaissance man who cites more interesting books in any of his titles than a half a dozen other theological scholars combined. He’s a blast to read, challenging, delightful, if occasionally amusingly eccentric. He’s beyond postmodern, he’s got a holy imagination on fire with the gospel.

This may be, he says, one of his most important books ever. It is on the humanity of Jesus. I mentioned before it’s creative structure: the first two units are about our identity, and become a Jesus-infused “divine” human. Part Three looks in nine chapters at nice “inhumane” dreams, and this is itself potent. Part Four (which is itself nearly 350 pages) is an ABC arrangement of statements about Jesus, holding up a global Jesusy humanity. Yep, it is a playful and often fascinating abecedarian.

From Maximus the Confessor to Randy Scruggs, from Abraham Heschel to Iain McGilchrist, from Jacques Maritan to Hildegard of Bingen, he draws on Scripture, literary critics, philosophers and pop culture icons.  Sweet is fascinating, invigorating, and important. See the companion / sequel, by the way, Designer Jesus, which deserves its own review, another time…

Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered Oliver Crisp (Cambridge University Press) $42.99  // OUR SALE PRICE = $34.39

Here is how Cambridge describes this heavy, scholarly study:

The doctrine of the Incarnation lies at the heart of Christianity. But the idea that ‘God was in Christ’ has become a much-debated topic in modern theology. Oliver Crisp addresses six key issues in the Incarnation defending a robust version of the doctrine, in keeping with classical Christology. He explores perichoresis, or interpenetration, with reference to both the Incarnation and Trinity. Over two chapters Crisp deals with the human nature of Christ and then provides an argument against the view, common amongst some contemporary theologians, that Christ had a fallen human nature. He considers the notion of divine kenosis or self-emptying, and discusses non-Incarnational Christology, focusing on the work of John Hick. This view denies Christ is God Incarnate, regarding him as primarily a moral exemplar to be imitated. Crisp rejects this alternative account of the nature of Christology.

The prolific Professor Crisp has degrees in Systematic Theology and Church History, an MTh from Aberdeen, and a PhD from King’s College, University of London. He has taught theology at the University of St. Andrews, at Notre Dame, and at Regent College in British Columbia.

Jesus Through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ with the Artists, My stick, and Theologians of the Middle Ages Grace Harman (Zondervan Reflective) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

When I wrote about this before I raved, inviting you to come to know Christ in fresh ways by learning how those in another era saw him. Even those not fully fascinated with the Middle Ages will appreciate so much about this creative book. It has theological information, historical stuff, art pieces, and some fascinating insights from that era — Jesus slaying dragons, Jesus gestating children in his wounds, yes, Jesus, the lover of your soul.

I have been trained to be mistrustful of pre-Reformation era theology and popular expressions of faith in part because (and this is doubtlessly true, if only part of the story) of the ways Neo-Platonism infused it’s sacred vs secular dualism into the imaginations and worldviews of nearly everyone in the medieval world. The church running society as it sort of did (think of the Divine Right of Kings, and the worst of Constantine’s Christendom) was only one bad example. Think of the “higher” and “lower” callings and the way notions of vocation and calling were used only for the priests and the monks or nuns. In any case, that truncated vision of things rooted in a Greek (page) dualism is only part of the story; actually, there were brilliant thinkers and of course great (religious, at least) art and poetry and more. This feast of a book offers easy-to-appreciate insights about how Jesus — lifted up as King — was sometimes seen as fully human, sometimes seen as incarnate, sometimes understood in ways that can help us now with all of this.

Jesus Through Medieval Eyes is a great read and I wanted to list it here, now, at least for the portions dealing with the Nativity. Hooray — what a book!

Finding Messiah: A Journey into the Jewishness of Jesus Jennifer M. Rosner (IVP) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

If we are going to make a case that Jesus was fully human, that the incarnation really did happen as the early church creeds explain, then, well, we must ask: what was his religion? The Jewishness of Jesus has always been known (how could it not) but both an ethereal piety and some blatant anti-semitism has worked against a full-throated affirmation of His first century Judaism.

So many scholars have unpacked that for us these days, from N.T Wright to Amy-Jill Levine to Brant Pitre to Gaza Vermes and popular writers have helped immensely (think of Lois Tverberg or Ann Spangler, recently.) An enjoyable and inspirational book that pops to the top of such a list is one I’ve mentioned before; I was first drawn (I’ll admit) to it by the enthusiasm of Richard Mouw who wrote a fabulous foreword.

Partially a conversion story, part a study of Older Testament prophecies pointing the way to Christ the Messiah, this roots the coming of Christ in Biblical context, showing how incarnation is, in a way, both expected and yet surprising. What a story.

Marty Solomon and Brian Zahnd and Gerald McDermott are all authors I respect and they rave about this study of how Jesus’s Jewish identity informed his work, words, and witness.

Jen Rosner interweaves her fascinating journey as a Messianic Jew navigating the tensions between Judaism and Christianity with a informative discussion of the Judaism of the earlier believers in Jesus.” — Lois Everberg, Reading the Bible with Rabbi Jesus

The Emotional Life of our Lord B. B. Warfield (Crossway) $8.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $7.19

Last year maybe at Easter-time I highlighted this great pocket-sized book by the famous Preofessor Warfield, published as a “Crossway Short Classic.” It is a singular essay which, oddly, was omitted from his “complete works” of the legendary late 19th century and early 20th century Princeton prof and not widely known. I think it was my friend Steve Garber who I first heard mention it years ago…

Certainly if we are pondering the incarnation we are asserting that Jesus was fully human. It is interesting how little systematic attention has been given to his emotional life. In recent years a number of pop titles have come out (Angry Like Jesus comes to mind) but this careful, short, study, is foundational. What a great little book, written in that older style.

Passions of the Christ: The Emotional Life of Jesus in the Gospels F. Scott Spencer (Baker Academic) $32.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $26.39

In the B. B. Warfield text isn’t enough, let us celebrate this remarkable scholar who, more than a decade ago, founded a working group and track within the Society of Biblical Literature on emotions in the Bible. Other work may have come out of their years of exploration but at least we now have this welcome addition to the study of emotions in the Bible. This hefty volume explores Jesus’s very real anger, grief, disgust, surprise, compassion, and joy.

Blurbs on this 300 page scholarly treatise are significant, from Te-Li Las of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School to Brittany E. Wilson from Duke. Matthew Skinner of Luther Seminary says it “made me realize my own misguided tendency to pass quickly over places where the Gospels highlight Jesus’s emotions” He says it is both wise and approachable.

PRE-ORDER The Affections of Christ Jesus: Love at the Heart of Paul’s Theology Nijay K. Gupta (Eerdmans) $34.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $27.99  NOT YET PUBLISHED / to be released mid-February 2025

If some of the above titles explore the human Jesus, the incarnate One, the Word made flesh, even by exploring his emotional life found in the gospels, this forthcoming volume (by one of our generation’s sharpest stars of Biblical study, Nijay Gupta, a beloved New Testament prof at Northern Seminary) unpacks the love of Jesus as written about by Paul. It is, the publisher assures us, “a new perspective on an often overlooked aspect of Paul’s theology — love.” It is, as many colleagues attest, absolutely excellent. Amy Peeler says it is “”revitalizing.”

I’ve got an advanced manuscript of this and I assure you it is well worth reading. It is very much a study of Pauline theology — the great Paul scholar Michael Gorman has a great forward. But yet, the love that Gupta helps us see at the heart and core of Paul’s teaching about the gospel emanates from Jesus Himself. There is a reason that speaking about love is the “love language” of the great Apostle to the Gentiles.

Do a careful, even provocative, study of Paul’s preaching of the gospel, linking it to the centrality of love, proof to us that Jesus was the Second Person of the Trinity come to Earth. Does it unpack “Veiled in Flesh the Godhead See”? Perhaps not exactly. But, man, it comes close. If the love of Jesus is unique and vital for Paul, and if that is core to the gospel, it surely will help us understand the incarnation. Yes, I’m glad to list this here, now, not only as a stand-alone good contribution to Pauline theology, but to help us piece together the puzzle of Christmas. It will call us, too, to love our neighbors, and, well, when gospel-centered theology takes root, it surely sends us into all corners of culture and society, embodying His love, as it were. I’m convinced a study of love will necessarily lead us to deepen the incarnational nature of our discipleship.

“The Affections of Christ Jesus manages to both brim with information and be an enjoyable read. I will be recommending this to students and parishioners for years to come.” — Amy Peeler, author Hebrews: Commentaries for Christian Formation

Christ Unabridged: Knowing and Loving the Son of Man edited by George Westhaver & Rebekah Vince (SCM) $48.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $38.40

We imported this from the UK because it just seemed so very rich, so thoughtful, so needed. The title “Son of Man” has evoked a number of different takes in theological studies, but it certainly gets at the whole Christ — that is, both His humanity and divinity. Loving Jesus calls us to commune with the Triune God. (And, as this volume reminds us, not just into Oneness with God but with each other within the Body of Christ, and for the life of the world.)

This edited volume includes hefty pieces by N.T. Wright, Rowen Williams, Lydia Schumacher, Kalistos Ware, Malcolm Guite, and Oliver O’Donovan. Wow. This “explores some of the many registers of the story of Christ.” Wow.

Seeing as Jesus Sees: How a New Perspective Can Defeat the Darkness and Awaken Joy Alan Wright (Baker) $24.99  // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

This upbeat and lovely book invites us to lie our lies as followers of Jesus by, literally, nurturing a practice of seeing as He would see. To do that we have to not only immerse ourselves in His teachings but we must understand His heart. How do we see the world knowing John 3:16 — that it is fully beloved by God or entered it? This offers a clear spiritual vision, yes, and is not an argument for the incarnation. But I think if we want to be incarnational we need this nearly sacramental vision of life “for the life of the world.”

Jack Deere (Surprised by the Power of the Spirit) says that Alan Wright “is a superb teacher and a great lover of Jesus.” This nice read will help us see His beauty and thereby see as He sees. This could change a lot, and if the incarnation is not key to our imagination, I suspect we will not fully glean all that this vivid book has to offer. How does Jesus see this? Hmmm.

His Face Like Mine: Finding God’s Love in Our Wounds Russell W. Joyce (IVP) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I highlighted this moving book previously and it is so, so good I have to mention it here, now. The author had a rare, cranial-facial disorder which took several serious surgeries to create a face that was somewhat more presentable, but it created huge undercurrents of emotional pain and insecurities. In a season of planting a new church, Joyce came to cope with these serious wounds and came to realize the depth of the love of Jesus who understood his pain.

Talk about Christ’s own appreciation of, solidarity with, our very human, material, embodied selves. This invites us into the open arms of a good God who, because of the incarnation, heals us in ways that allow us to be more human, not less so.

An excellent author we respect, A.J. Swoboda, says, rightly:

Joyce’s brilliant, vulnerable, and fierce exploration of the power of wounds and scars will leave you breathless.

Engaging Jesus with Our Senses: An Embodied Approach to the Gospels Jeannine Marie Hanger (Baker Academic) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Hanger has a PhD from the University of Aberdeen and is an Associate professor of New Testament at Talbot. She’s a stunning, ecumenical thinker and has written a heavy, expensive book (on Brill) called Sensing Salvation in the Gospel of John; this, it seems, while not at all simplistic, is inspired by that heftier work and is considerably more accessible. We adore this in so many ways, for so many reasons…

John Barclay (a very innovative Paul scholar) says it is ideal for “encountering the Word made flesh.” Yup. He insists it is “an excellent resource for a fully embodied life of faith.”

That seems to be a developing theme here in this BookNotes, that a full, orthodox view of Christ as the incarnate One, fully human and fully Divine, can help us embrace our oneness with God but — and this is vital — become more fully human in the process.  As Barclay put it, “a fully embodied life of faith.” Because Jesus was embodied, we realize that the Hebrew worldview is fully right: we are creatures in a wondrous world that (broken as it may be) still praises Him. In this book we use our senses to understand the God of the Bible, made human in the gospels.

Insightful. Intriguing. Invitational. Engaging Jesus with Our Senses is all this and more. Hanger explores the intersection of the Gospels and sensory experience, building on scholarship from both arenas. The results are both thought-provoking and experientially rich.  — Jeannine K. Brown, Bethel Seminary, The Gospels as Stories and Scripture as Communication: Introducing Biblical Hermeneutics

Echoing Hope: How the Humanity of Jesus Redeems Our Pain Kurt Willems (Waterbrook) $16.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80

Okay, this strikes me nearly as a Lenten book, a book pointing to the echoing hope of the resurrection experience in time of pain. Our brokenness does not get the final word and we get to bring a little of “that future thing” — the eschaton fully realized — into the here and now. We can live with real hope, with hope of human-scale transformation, being more fully alive, even in time of hardship.

Willems is a very thoughtful pastor and an eloquent writer. This book is honest and raw, yet glorious somehow. I felt like I should mention it now as it really is a very solid, contemporary study of the full human-ness of Jesus and how we, too, no matter who we are or what condition we are in, can embrace our own humanity, our foibles and limits, as we walk with Him.

None of this would be true without the incarnation; at least we would not know that Christ is redeeming this very planet, the stuff of life, our bodies, even, if he did not so fully embrace the world He made by entering it. This mysterious relationship between creation and new creation is both a Christmas story and a Easter story, and I wanted to commend it to you now as we ponder the human-ness of Christ, seen most clearly in his vulnerability as a baby born at Christmas. Yes, yes, indeed.

Every page of this book asks us to ponder, What if Jesus actually gets it? What if Jesus really empathizes with us because he experienced life just like us? You can see Kurt’s pastoral heart as he invites us into the humanity of Jesus to learn from him and love him anew. — Osheta Moore, pastor and author of Dear White Peacemakers and Shalom Sistas

Shockingly few books truly illuminate the humanity of Jesus. But Kurt Willems has given us a rare gift–a beautifully written account of Christ’s humanity and also a tender, vulnerable account of Kurt’s own. To read Echoing Hope is not only to go deeper into Christ’s story but also to go deeper into yours. — Jonathan Martin, author of How to Survive a Shipwreck and Prototype

Jesus and the Pleasures J. Christian Wilson (Augsburg-Fortress) $14.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

We’ve had a handful of these for a long time and while I seem to think it is out of print, it’s a fascinating little study by a scholar of first century languages. With a PhD from Duke (and ordained in the United Methodist Church) he has been a professor of religion at Elon University in SC.

Here he invites us to consider how Jesus related to life’s ordinariness, its pleasures. From work to wine, from feasting to song, Wilson explore’s Jesus’s very human side, his Jewishness appreciating the goodness of creation, and the implicit call that Jesus, who would have valued the simple joys of a life well lived, expects us, too, in a distinctively Christian way, to also appreciate the goodness of daily pleasures.

These days there are still those around who do not fully believe Jesus was human and they still do not believe that devout and pious people of faith can be fully alive and fun-loving. If they don’t quite get 1 Timothy 4: 1-5, maybe this book will shake them up a bit. In any case, it, too, is a pleasure, reading a lovely, thoughtful, provocative book about the human life of Jesus. Cheers!

Flesh-and-Blood Jesus: Learning to be Fully Human from the Son of Man Dan Russ (Baker) $14.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

Speaking of somewhat older books that we have a small stack of (despite having gone out-of-print) this is a gem of a great read, a very fine book that carefully explores the humanity of Jesus. It studies themes such as fragility, the need for companionship, feasting, dying, living with wounds, and responding to authority — human stuff, indeed. Os Guiness has called this “a little gem — rich with quiet wisdom and deep insights, and beautifully written.”

I think you can enjoy, indeed savor, this book which has uncommon power and is what one leader called “stunningly helpful examination of the humanity of Christ, with rich implications for your life.”

At the time of writing this (2008) Russ was the head of the Christian Study Center near Gordon College in New England. The first chapter (“Manger Wetter”) is about the little Lord Jesus, the one who did indeed cry on that first Middle Eastern Christmas. Hooray!

A God Named Josh: Uncovering the Human Life of Jesus Christ Jared Brock (Bethany House) $19.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

Here is another great read which we’ve highlighted before and what a fun book it is. It asserts that the question Jesus asked — “Who do you say that I am” looms large and is ever-vital. Yep, we need a good and deft biographer, one who can weave archeology, philosophy, history, apologetics and theology to “create a portrait of Jesus we’ve never seen before.” That Brock is this writer is fabulous because, frankly, he’s a lot more lively than many other such volumes. This really is a solid book, but clever and captivating.

Aussie Mark Sayers says it is good for those who are unfamiliar or overfamiliar with the story of Jesus.

The same wonderful story, the same incredible Savior, the same good news… but written with such clarity that everything you thought you knew about Jesus will seem new and exciting. — Steve Brown, author of Laughter and Lament: The Radical Freedom of Joy and Sorrow

 

The Word Fulfilled: Reading the Bible with Jesus Michael Pahl (Herald Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Oh, my, my, I just started this and am thoroughly enjoying it. It’s a great read, a fun book, and challenging to me (even though I am on board fully with the thesis, which, oddly, may be controversial to some.) The author is an Anabaptist (that is, a Mennonites so a Christ-centered hermeneutic of the Bible is sensible, perhaps nearly revolutionary. It makes it very clear that we are to follow Jesus, even in the way we read Scripture. How challenging and how liberating. It is an art and a science, it seems, and these days folks from various theological traditions — the more sacramentally inclined liturgical folks, the Reformed Bible teachers calling us to a historical redemptive approach, those contemplatives invoking the lectio divina tools — are all noting that Christ’s incarnation is the very heart of the story, that “every chapter whispers His name” and Christ’s coming is the centerpiece of the whole unfolding drama of redemption. Yes, yes, yes.

But this books gets clear and honest about all that, not only arguing for a Christ-centered vision of the larger Bible narrative, from creation to new creation, but actually for Christ-like practices of reading well. If we hold to the doctrine of the incarnation, and Jesus is who who says he is, then this sort of style of reading is essential to learn. What an important book!

In this fine study of crucial scriptures at work in Jesus’ heart, mind, and mission, Michael W. Pahl not only provides a sketch of how Jesus read the Bible — thereby helping followers of Jesus read the Bible — but also provides a template of the formative teachings of Jesus. A splendid book in many ways. — Scot McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel

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BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

Of course not everybody gets a lot of time off over the holidays but I do hope you’ll have a few days of leisurely contemplation these next weeks. Lots of people tell us they read a novel over the Twelve Days or so, and even more (who may not spend enough time with fiction) promise to do so in the New Year. I go in spurts (while Beth tends to read more novels than I do.) I’ve been captivated by some incredibly well written memoirs, too, and, as I often say, they function much like fiction. What stories! What good writing! What imaginative construal of tales rooted in non-fiction.

But for now, here are some bone-fide novels. I’ve curated these sort of following my own flights of fancy. Most are new, a few were new to us and I wanted you to know. A few you’ve no doubt heard of and a few I bet you haven’t. In any case, pick one (or anything else you want) and send us an order. We need to keep our business thriving in this final week of the year and we’d sure appreciate your business.

ALL ARE 20% OFF.

ORDER AND SAFELY PAY BY CLICKING ON THE LINK AT THE VERY END.

All are discounted at the 20% off and we can send them promptly (while supplies last. Just tell us how to ship (as we explain at the secure order form page at the website.) If we run out, we’d be happy to order more of anything we’re short on, and get them to you at the discounted price soon. We’ll write back promptly and confirm everything.

In no particular order, a few fiction fancies for the end of ’24 or beginning of 2025.

James: A Novel Percival Everett (Doubleday) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

I hope you have considered this; it has been on the year’s end “Best Books” lists from critics around the country. It won the prestigious National Book Award for Fiction this year and was a winner of the coveted Kirkus Award. It is audacious and wild and the mark of a near genius writer, what some call a true American classic.

I suppose you’ve heard that it is a fine retelling of Twain’s Huck Finn, from the point of view of Jim. What fun, what a creative effort, and, frankly, what an important contribution to re-imagining the dignity and roles of the famous runaway enslaved character. The publisher explains, writing that it is “a brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and darkly humorous, told from Jim’s point of view. While many narrative set pieces remain in place, Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new voice.”

“A careful and thought-provoking auditing of Huckleberry Finn. . . [James is] a kind of commentary or midrash, broadening our understanding of an endangered classic by bringing out the tragedy behind the comic facade. And that is no small thing. I expect that James will be spoken of as a repudiation of Huckleberry Finn, but a book like this can only be written in a spirit of engaged devotion. More than a correction, it’s a rescue mission. And maybe this time it will work.” — The Wall Street Journal

Night Watch Jayne Anne Phillips (Hatchett) $22.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

Speaking of Pulitzer Prize winners, this took the 2024 award (and a paperback will be released this coming February.) A beautifully written work, mesmerizing, even, if heavy…  It was long-listed for the National Book Award and received all sorts of acclaim.

It is a Civil War era story, about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in the chaotic aftermath of the war. One could say it is “a brilliant portrait of family endurance against all odds.”

The publisher described by the publisher like this:

A beautifully rendered novel set in West Virginia’s Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in the aftermath of the Civil War where a severely wounded Union veteran, a 12-year-old girl and her mother, long abused by a Confederate soldier, struggle to heal.

In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. Twelve-year-old ConaLee, the adult in her family for as long as she can remember, finds herself on a buckboard journey with her mother, Eliza, who hasn’t spoken in more than a year. They arrive at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital’s entrance by a war veteran who has forced himself into their world. There, far from family, a beloved neighbor, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives.

Wellness: A Novel Nathan Hill (Vintage) $19.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

Who over the holidays has time for a 600-page novel? Well, I stole bits and pieces, late nights and Sundays to finish this extraordinary book by a very, very respected contemporary writer. (He became popular with his literary work The Nix.)

This story is so sprawling and expansive it is hard to explain what it is about, but the plot is fairly simple — two young adults, who we meet in the beginning in a rough, bohemian neighborhood of Chicago, have left their oppressive families (one a rural boy from the mid-West, defined to be an artists, the other a very smart and accomplished daughter of a wealthy and perhaps corrupt New England family) and fall in love. Their art, their studies, their involvement in the underground rock scene, all are beautifully rendered until, well, the troubles start. This book looks at the complexities of modern love, the difficulties of raising a complicated child, and the story swerves in various directions tracing backstories of everything from Elizabeth’s family’s ill-gotten wealth to Will’s tragic farming family. There is sex and longing and what one reviewed called “sharp scale” dissection of the paradox of modern American life. Omar Akkad explains what he means, what he sees in Wellness:

“…this hopelessly broken need to fix what may not need fixing, to reach with utter desperation for a version of better that may not be better at all.”  He warns: “Read Wellness with caution: it lays much of our little self-deceptions bare.”

I don’t want to give too much away but some of the multi-faceted plot delves into Elizabeth’s work as a researcher on the placebo effect, and at a clinic she eventually starts offering (curiously fake) wellness advice, that seems to work quite well. What is really true? What is really right?

And, late in the book, we learn about Will’s relationship with his father (who is new to the internet and falling for conspiracy stuff…) Will’s return to his home church for a funeral is particularly touching, even though there is no little ugliness.

This wry and at times very witty study of American self-improvement is, as Anthony Marra puts it, “one of the funnest, saddest, smartest novels I’ve ever read.”

“…one of the funnest, saddest, smartest novels I’ve ever read.” — Anthony Marra

It is ambitious (to say the least) and readers will stick with it through it all, even as it is (in the words of the great Joshua Ferris) “epic in scope, domestic in scale.”

We have a sturdy hardback or two here which are hefty and nice, They usually sell for $30.00 and we have them at $22.00; while supplies last.

Whole: A Novel Derek Updegraff (Slant Books) $19.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

In previous decades our friend Gregory Wolfe was legendary for founding Image Journal and setting up a network of artists, writers, poets, and cultural critics who attempted to express their creative endeavors in light of enduring, historic Christian convictions. A big tent hosting conservative Catholics and radical Protestants and artful evangelicals, Image remains one of the great cultural artifacts (and networks) of our time. (Our dear friend Jamie Smith edited the journal for a few years and did an extraordinary job, filling Greg’s big shoes in wholesome and generous ways.) In any case, Wolfe’s efforts were respected by folks like serious writers Anne Dillard, say, or Catholic novelist Ron Hansen, contemporary poets like Luci Shaw or Scott Cairns, and singer-songwriters like Over the Rhine.

After his departure from Image circles, Wolfe started a print-on-demand publishing venture and it has gathered a stable of exceptional writers, a respected coterie of novelists, short story writers, essayists, memoirists, poets. We carry most of what Slant Books publishes even if some are a bit eccentric, creative, perplexing, even. For those who like the best of cutting edge fiction with some sort of moral center — curated for publication by the widely read Wolfe — you should order nearly anything they do. (If you want a glimpse, by the way, of Wolfe’s own sensibilities, we adore his big collection, published by Square Halo Books, of pieces that early on appeared in Image. It is called Intruding Upon the Timeless: Meditations on Art, Faith and Mystery which includes engravings by Barry Moser) or his Wipf & Stock collection entitled The Operation of Grace: Further Essays on Art, Faith, and Mystery.)

Okay, so I have to tell you about this perplexing, enjoyable, incredibly creative, well-written novel about a weird guy — he talks to himself a lot —and his journey both caring for a homeless guy (who, in the first pages, he hits with his car) and falling in love with a religious woman who teaches lit at a Christian university. Joe’s friendship with the houseless Ronnie (and his dog) and Ashley, is just fascinating and I really was pulling for this guy.

Somebody — maybe Wolfe, who would know — linked it to Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away and, perhaps more closely, to Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams. It really is a novel about solitude, about longing, about what it means to be happy.

The voice of the main character, Joe, is funny, witty, even, and reminds me (I know it sounds like a cliche but I’m trying to give you a glimpse of the style) of Holden Caulfield of Catcher fame. He speaks casually, in circles, sometimes, and it’s a hoot. Or brilliant. Or maybe he’s losing it…

There are between most of the chapters these interludes of creative fiction some of which are very moving (one was so beautiful it literally made me wipe my eyes) and/or perplexing. I’m still thinking how they do (or don’t) fit into the plot, the dreams of Joe, the meandering glory of the power of words. Some might say they could do without these dream-like sequences and others will say they pondered them well. I have mixed feelings about those several page interludes…

But the main story, the crazy, lonely, idealistic, odd-ball character? I miss him.

Bret Lott calls Whole “darkly endearing, calmly frightening, sadly funny and starkly complex.” That’s good. It is a book I can’t stop thinking about.

 

The Goodbye-Love Generation: A Novel in Stories Kori Frazier Morgan (Bezalel Media) $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

If Bezalel Media (the given name of the author’s indie publisher) doesn’t capture your attention, you need to read a book or two on a Christian view of the arts. Or dive into Exodus a bit since Ezekiel is one of the first people in the Bible to be empowered by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, that falls on him to give him artful gifts of working with metal and crafting glorious artifacts as his Spirited team of makers were working on the temple. This struck me and as I’ve corresponded just a bit with the novelist, I realize she is a thoughtful Christian that many in our Hearts & Minds circle of friends would appreciate. She knows Image and Hutchmoot and Square Halo and the like calls herself “a literary strategist” which I guess includes professional writing services and such. Her Substack reflects on “where faith, art, and orthodoxy meet.” I’m looking forward to her next big release, a collection of personal essays, coming from Calla Press in late January (Why I Dyed My Hair Purple and Other Unorthodox Stories.)

Okay, I won’t say much about this collection of what almost feels like short stories, all interconnected, moving back and forth in time, but each related to the tragic shooting of college anti-war protestors (and bystanders) by the National Guard during the Kent State University uprising in May of 1970. Even if you were not born yet — and those of us that were have the pictures seared into our brain forever, I’m sure — you’ve heard Four Dead in Ohio” by Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young. Nixon had illegally invaded Laos and Cambodia, expanding the unjust, awful war and campuses all over the country exploded. The Kent State shootings were the worst and most deadly.

The novel is mostly about the music scene in and around Kent State and those of us familiar with the area will be delighted to see towns (and streets and highways) mentioned as the band in the novel — the Purple Orange — travel the scene. From Akron to Ravenna to Stow to Cuyahoga to Canton (and over to Youngstown.) Of course they are booked to do a show in Cleveland. Anybody that follows the rock music scene will dig this, and if you followed any of this in the late 60s you’ll smile as they band rehearses covers of Guess Who or wonders if they should play “No Sugar Tonight” or Thunderclap Newman or The Rascals.

It is a tragic book, full of hard stuff, realistic scenes of sex and drugs and family fighting but the big question that looms is how the the war, and the protests of the war, and the violence that ensued impacted so many lives, even, as one reviewer put it, “becoming part of the DNA we pass down through place and ravaged hearts.”

I so appreciated this colorful novel, the interconnected stories, the power of the tales. Although, as I’ve noted, the author is working out of a comprehensive sort of faith-based worldview, this is not a “religious” novel nor does it offer any overt moral. It is art, it is moving, it is entertaining, it is a novel I won’t forget.

I, Julian Claire Gilbert (Hodder) $11.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $9.59

This book released last year and we had imported it from the UK through a distributor. It got a few great reviews but wasn’t widely known since it was published overseas.

Now, the less costly paperback edition is out and, again, it is being touted. With blurbs on the back even from celebrities like the controversial writer A. N. Wilson (who called it “intensely moving”) to the great actor Jermey irons (who was “completely hooked and considerably moved”) this retelling of the story of Julian (yes, of a monastery in Norwich, England) set in 1347 is sure to captivate those interested in medieval life or contemplative spirituality.

This novel has been called “tender” and “luminous” as it unveils in artful, entertaining ways, an earnest fictional autobiography of young Julian — the sadness of her father’s death, the spreading pestilences, the Church’s heresy trials, her visions. She becomes an anchoress (bricked up in a small room on the side of the church), develops a friendship with a monk named Thomas, and creates what really was the first book to be written by a woman in English!

The author is quite the scholar and activist around ecology and health and faith in public life, having founded the Westminster Abbey Institute. It is a story that is well-informed. Hooray.

Ahoti: The Story of Tamar Miriam Feinberg Vamoose & Eva Marie Iverson (Raven / Paraclete) $22.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

Paraclete, as I suspect you know if you follow BookNotes, produces lovely, often exquisite, books of faith formation, spirituality, Catholic theology, and sacramental discipleship. They also have a very impressive collection of faith-based poetry, an imprint about faith and the arts, and, in recent years, an imprint called Raven for edgy, thoughtful, provocative, faith-influenced novels. These Raven releases have thus far been very impressive for their aesthetic and their storytelling. Hooray.

This one is the formidable tradition of fictionalizing and retelling a Bible story or developing the characters from Scripture in interesting, engaging ways. This one is considered an excellent and illuminating project in this tradition and we highly recommend it.

Tosca Lee, quite the evangelical wordsmith who has had bestselling novels along these lines, has a rave endorsement blurb on the back:

Evocative, illuminating, beautiful, tragic, and triumphant at once. Ahoti is the story of Tamar we only thought we knew — a tale of faith and hardship written in breaking detail.

How does a novel get written by two co-authors? Good question. Vamoose lives in Israel and is an expert in the field of archeology across the holy land. Everyone is, on the other hand, a US Biblical studies professor and award winning Biblical writer. (She is a graduate of the Tzemach Institute and CEO of Word Weavers International.) What a collaboration, offering a “melding of Jewish history, folklore, and biblical truth.”

Flight of the Wild Swan Melissa Pritchard (Bellevue Literary press) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I am not sure how we found out about this artful, excellent story released on a smart, indie, literary press, but we’ve come to realize that Mellis Pritchard is herself connected with the aforementioned Image journal. She is an award-winning author of a dozen books, including novels, short story collections, essay collections, and more. She is the Emeritus Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Arizona State University.

Flight of the Wild is another imagined bit of historical fiction — in this case a powerful fictionalized story of Florence Nightingale. Considered a brilliant and groundbreaking pioneer woman, the back cover suggests that her real “humanity has been obscured beneath the iconic weight” of the legend about her. I am not sure if the legends are all false — she really was heroic! — but, as those who have studied her a bit may know, she overcame “Victorian hierarchies, familiar expectations, patriarchal resistance, and her own illnesses.” She used her own “hard-won acclaim as a battlefield nurse to bring the profession out of its shadowy, disreputable status and elevate nursing to a skilled practice and compassionate art.”

A lush, lyrical story about the rise of modern nursing, through the eyes of this trailblazing Christian woman. What an amazing read.

The fabulous poet Joy Harjo says that “this is the best of Melissa Pritchard.”

Harjo continues,

“It combines her exquisite ear for tone and detail in story, her gift of mystic perception, and her sense of the historic layering of human lies and the evens that make our lives absolutely distinct”

Playground Richard Powers (Norton) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

This has been sitting on my bedstead for a bit and it may be the next novel I dive into. Unless Beth gets it first. We both loved The Overstory (I think Beth read it twice!) That was surely one of the great novels of our time; the great reader Barack Obama said “it changed how I thought about the Earth and our place in it” and the tremendous Barbara Kingsolver called it “monumental.” She continued, about The Overstay, writing,

… it accomplished what few living writers from either camp, art or science, could attempt… a gigantic gamble of genuine truths.

Playground is equally extraordinary (or so says Tracy K. Smith, who uses that description of his prose, at once so insightful and poetic.)

This new one, which has been described as “awe-filled” is about the drawing together of four lives, personal, relational, but sweeping and panoramic in scope. It is futuristic, sort of, about meeting on the “history-scarred island” of Maketea in French Polynesia, with a plan to set whole cities afloat — seasteaders, they call themselves. Set in the world’s largest ocean it “explores the last wild place we have yet to colonize in a still-unfolding oceanic game.” One of the four different characters has become, in the story, one of the leading scholars of AI. Can you guess this is a story set ablaze with questions about technology, humanness, and our relationship to the broader creation?

Tell Me Everything: A Novel Elizabeth Strout (Random House) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

Strout has been hugely popular over the years and she won a Pulitzer Prize for Olive Kitteridge and folks loved her Lucy by the Sea. I suppose not everyone was thrilled by her honest but graceful writing, but I know she is a favorite of many. This is her brand new one (which was immediately adopted as an Oprah Book Club selection this past fall), set in a small town, with lots of drama. It is being pitched as a hopeful, healing novel about “new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.” I think I’m going to try it.

Apparently the main character of Olive meets the character of Lucy. And whether you’ve read those two or not her writing builds empathy and care.

With tenderness, honesty, intimacy, and compassion, Strout uses her cunning powers of observation to draw readers beyond the mundane to the miraculous complexities where true friendship lies. . . . An absolute must-have. — Booklist, starred review

 

Forty Acres Deep Michael Perry (Sneezing Cow) $12.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $10.36

A week or two ago I was writing to a customer who wanted a book that was humorous. Thoughtful but funny. Naturally I suggest any number of the memoirs or collections of essays by the great Michael Perry, a writer who we adore. Laugh-out-loud funny and tender and charming as can be, he is an earnest, decent, Wisconsin farmer/writer/philosopher, having written fabulously rewarding books on building a farm life (Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting) fixing up an old truck (Truck: A Love Story) being an EMT (Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time) and a very clever but informative introduction to the resistance scholar Michel de Montaigne called, Montaigne in Barn Boots: An Amateur Ambles through Philosophy.) I hope you can appreciate why we like this rural rock star (yes, he’s in a band, too), part time poet and writer and decent human being. We loved his funny novel, Jesus Cow.

I say all this to warn you that Forty Acres Deep, a short, compact-sized novella, is only a little humorous — he can’t help himself, goofball Cheesehead that he is — but is, frankly, deadly serious. It is (if one can summarize a complex, beautiful, novel in a nutshell) about rural depression.

It isn’t discussed as much as the devastating opioid addictions in often white, blue-collar towns, but failing, rural farmers are, in fact, taking their own lives at notable paces, and it seems to be getting worse. As those who have lived close to the land (and have built up a social fabric of neighbors and those you know and those who know you) are seeing their way of life eroded (if not out and out torn asunder) by what I sort of understand to be a rural sort of gentrification, more and more old farmers are killing themselves. This book is about that.

It is a heck of a read, not utterly devastating and not demoralizing. It is provocative in the best sense and I recommend it to at least two major kinds of readers. First, if you live, or have lived, in the country, in small towns near rural areas (and, further, if you resonate with the stories of Wendell Berry) Forty Acres Deep is a must-read. Secondly, if you are urbane and not at all aware of how rural folks live, this is a short and powerful introduction to a large population of what too many see as flyover country.

When the farm crisis came to a head decades ago — Farm Aid live concerts became a good thing, then — a few popular films took the nation by storm. (Think of 1984’s brilliant Country or The River or even the splendid, older Places of the Heart.) Now this little book might appeal to those who care about such things. And if you really don’t, it’s a short novel that might touch your heart.

There’s a scene in which a guy goes to a rather hipster sort of coffee shop in town and doesn’t quite know how to order. I almost bawled between my chuckles. There’s a page or two that eloquently (in this farmer’s voice, without knowing he’s doing it) summarizes the famous thesis of sociologist Robert Putnam about “bowling alone.” This sad man stuck in a harsh winter just can’t quite make himself live in the changing world that has come. It’s not what I’d call an uplifting read, except that it is. Kudos to Michael Perry. Read Forty Acres Deep.

The Beautiful Madness of Martin Bonham: A Tale About Loving God Robert Hudson (The Apocryphal Press) $24.99  // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I usually like to tell you a bit about an author or the author’s previous books so you understand the context of the new book I’m promoting. I could write pages about the great Robert Hudson, a very important Christian literary figure you might not have heard of. He worked in acquisitions and then editing at several important publishers over the last 40 years and has brought to you authors as impeccable and important as the great Phil Yancey. I think he edited Eugene Peterson. Etcetera, etcetera. He has edited and re-issued a prayer book from London from the time of Shakespeare (Four Birds of Noah’s Ark) and I raved here at BookNotes about the very fun and interesting, The Monk’s Record Player: Thomas Merton, Bob Dylan and the Perilous Summer of 1966 which is one of my own favorite books about Merton. He has a couple of volumes of poetry and likes to collect fables and kid’s stories. To put it mildly he is a literary wise man, prolific, and somebody you should know.

And, he wrote this surprising, eccentric novel, one of my favorite reads this past year. I might have announced it last year, here, but we finally met face-to-face at the Calvin Festival of Faith & Writing this year and I am so eager to have people read it, I’ll give another shout out here.

Two things: it is set among the debates within higher education. To oversimplify it is about the tensions between a free-wheeling spirituality course taught at a college and the more formal theological education happening at the seminary next door to the college. From angry deans to territorial department heads to inter-faith collegiate groups to imposing seminary programs, the whole thing is a hoot, setting the stage for the theme of the book: the difference between learning about God and actually coming to know God.

A group at the college sort of tentatively offers a course — the main prof (Martin Bonham) is a lit guy who is passionate about the mystic poets, the medievals and those great English ones — about how the faith of various fellow profs is experienced in life; that is, how they have actually encountered the Divine. The seminary teachers across the street are frustrated (offended, even?) by this and insist that (only) they have the adequate qualifications to guide students in such things. The Dean there tries to dissuade the college from offering such dangerous stuff, unhinged from their scholarly confines.

The mystical course becomes a hit, it becomes a department where students can actually study and learn in greater depth. And the seminarians have a fit. It’s a serious study in academic disputes, a fabulous discourse on the difference between knowing God and just knowing about God, all dressed up in the guise of a madcap and nearly riotous comedy. And a romance, did I mention romance? Hudson knows his philosophy (and his mystic poets) but this funny book brings his deep knowledge to us with lots of shenanigans.

Hudson has said that this theological comedy of errors is like a Venn diagram with which C.S. Lewis and P. G. Wodehouse intersect.

…like a Venn diagram with which C.S. Lewis and P. G. Wodehouse intersect.

Buy The Beautiful Madness of Martin Bonham today. It will be fun!

Let Us Descend Jesmyn Ward (Scribner) $17.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and received a MacArthur genius grant. She has had residencies with some of the best writing teachers of the day and currently is considered one of our very best. She teaches at Tulane. She has been awarded two National Book Awards and is known for passionate, provocative fiction centering the experience of black women — in this case exploring the darkest chapters of American history.

Let Us Descend has been called “searching” and “brilliant” and “nothing short of epic and magical.” She is a writer you should know and this book — out just recently this year in paperback — is extraordinary. It is, some say, better than her widely read Sing, Unburied, Sing which we have promoted. The great Anthony Doerr, noting about its hard, harsh, harrowing topic  and yet guiding us through it “to ascend to the light” says it is “a spectacular achievement.”

Ward is one of America’s finest living writers… Her mesmerizing sentences, her dazzling description of the natural and natural, the way she coerces time and guides readers between a heartbreakingly familiar story of torment and moments of sublime tenderness, suggests a protean artist in her element.  —San Francisco Chronicle

The Surface of Water: A Novel Cynthia Beach (IVP) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

InterVarsity Press (IVP) remains one of my all time favorite publishers and their nonfiction work has sustained many of us for decades. Thoughtful, open-minded, but rigorously orthodox, they’ve done books about worldview formation, cultural engagement, spirituality, faith, life, and Biblical living, creating just a lifetime of great reading.

It was only a few years ago that they got into publishing fiction and they have developed a small line of quality Christian storytelling (not to mention children’s books.) Their novels are good and we are glad to see them doing thoughtful, even allusive, artful faith-infused novels. They do not release a lot and what they do have been careful chosen and well edited.

Cynthia Beach is a name some of us know from her own books about spirituality and healthy living at IVP. She is a professor of creative writing (at Cornerstone College in Grand Rapids) and earned her MFA from the Northwest Institute of the Literary Arts.

Now Ms Beach has written a very fine novel —it is exciting to me to see evangelical scholars within the IVP circle doing important fiction. The Surface of Water is very well done.

Julie Cantrell (an author we admire) has said

Readers won’t be disappointed as Beach delivers an emotional story though beautifully lyrical language, presenting characters who stick with us long after the last page is turned.

It is, in many ways, this story about a megachurch pastor, about “a young woman trying to understand her complicated life” and, ultimately, about hypocrisy in the church. Newbery Honor winner Gary Schmidt calls it “a complex, richly interwoven story…” It is about spiritual corruption, as he puts it, the “allures of power and wealth.” A lesser writer or less nuanced thinker could make this into a one-dimensional cheap shot. It brims with honesty (as Prasanta Verma put it) but will leave you pondering much about faith, secrets, idols, redemption.

I Cheerfully Refuse Leif Enger (Grove Press) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

Oh my, Leif Enger is the author of one of our classic, enduring novels here at the shop, Peace Like a River, released to great acclaim in 2001. (It has sold over a million copies, a few of them from here.) He doesn’t write much (his last was the quiet Virgil Wander. Now we have this, released early this year, and Beth gobbled it up as soon as it came. It has a plot exquisitely written by a masterful storyteller, a true, magical wordsmith.

The very fine singer-songwriter and novelist Josh Ritter has said  about I Cheerfully Refuse:

A heart-racing ballad of except, shot-through with villainy and dignity, humor and music. Like Mark Twain, Enger gives us a full accounting of the human soul, scene by scene, wave by wave.

It is, by the way, about a guy in the near future on a boat (on Lake Superior) searching for his lost bookseller wife. Music and books and boats, oh my.

Two-Step Devil: A Novel Jamie Quatro (Grove Press) $27.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

Quatro’s name keeps coming up, from being a favorite of several Image contributors to hearing that she cited in a talk a book I love. She wrote a highly charged and highly regarded debut about sensuality and marriage called Fire Sermon and this year’s release is getting tons of accolades. It is set in the South (she, herself, lives in Chattanooga) and tells of a an older mountain man, a preacher / artist, who paints his visions; he is called The Prophet and when he saves a girl from a kidnapping and hides her off the grid in his cabin, a friendship develops.

I have not read this but it is described as “a propulsive, philosophical examination of fate and faith that dares to ask what salvation, if any, can be found in our modern world.” Not bad for a spooky, Southern yarn, eh?

Many have raved — Tom Missell, Charles Marsh, Garth Greenwell, (author of Small Rain.) So much acclaim for her work.

Bestseller Lauren Groff says it is:

“A starkly gorgeous story of God and loss and art and love.”

The fabulous writer Margaret Renkl says it is:

“Beautiful and brave and brilliant, shot through with mystery and love.”

Banyan Moon Thao Thai (Mariner) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

I am not sure what first attracted me to this, that it is considered a “heart-shatteringly beautiful” novel about a mother and daughter or if it was one of the recently acclaimed work by a Vietnamese author. I’ve read more than enough on the terrible Viet Nam story and several good memoirs about Vietnamese-Americans growing up here (including the tremendous Sigh, Gone: A Misfit’s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In by Phuc Tran, set a few decades ago near us here in Carlisle Pennsylvania.) I do not know if we’ve had many Vietnamese novelists here and this was a “Read with Jenna” pick, which are often quite tender, poignant stories.

This debut is said to be:

“…an intricately woven story of three generations of women, surviving and living each in their own way. This novel has everything yoiu want: desire, betrayal, grit, tenderness, pride, love, and — most deliciously — most brazenly, dirty secrets and sacred secrets we make and keep to protect what we hold dear. — Meng Jin, author, Self-Portrait with Ghost

 

“Thao Thai pierces the veil between the living and the dead in this haunted and beautifully rendered debut. This is a story about mothers and daughters, the chasm where misunderstandings accrue, and enduring tenderness despite the little hurts we may inflict on our loved ones. Most affectingly, Thai gives us characters who mourn lost origins, but who still get to decide what home looks like. A spellbinding and intricately layered story, Banyan Moon celebrates Vietnamese women.” — E.M. Tran, author of Daughters of the New Year

My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante (Europa Editions) $19.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

One of our favorite customers alerted us to this four part series and Beth is on number two (The Story of a New Name.) This epic series starts with an exploration of two very different young girls growing up together in a mid-twentieth century, rather insulated neighborhood in a small town in Italy; there are strict rules for and roles regarding class and gender, of course. (These are translated editions, done with great acclaim.)

Gwyneth Paltrow summarizes it nicely saying that “Ferrante tackles girlhood and friendship with amazing force.” I know some of my favorite stories have been about the friendship of youth — I think of A Separate Peace or the great novels of Chaim Potok.

Emily Gould says they are “the truest evocation of a complex and lifelong friendship between women I’ve ever read.”

Beth loves this so much I’m eager to take them up, too.

The aforementioned wordsmith of great empathy, Elizabeth Strout has a blurb on this, too, saying “it took my breath away… so honest and right and opens up the heart to so much.”

By the way, the New York Times Book Review did a fabulously interesting round-up a month or so ago with critics compiling a list of the best novels (so far) of the 21st century. My Brilliant Friend landed as number one. Wow. I’m told there is a Netflix show. How about that? Start with this one…

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TO PLACE AN ORDER 

PLEASE READ, THEN SCROLL DOWN TO CLICK ON THE “ORDER” LINK BELOW.

It is helpful if you tell us how you want us to ship your orders. And if you are doing a pre-order, tell us if you want us to hold other books until the pre-order comes, or send some now, and others later… we’re eager to serve you in a way that you prefer. Let us know your hopes.

The weight and destination of your package varies but you can use this as a quick, general guide:

There are generally two kinds of US Mail options and, of course, UPS.  If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has an option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.83; 2 lbs would be $5.58. This is the cheapest method available and sometimes is quicker than UPS, but not always.
• United States Postal Service has another, quicker option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.70, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.50. “Priority Mail” gets more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper than Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Keep in mind the possibility of holiday supply chain issues and slower delivery… still, we’re excited to serve you.

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

Don’t forget to scroll down to the very bottom to enjoy this long, enticing list. The order links are at the end.

Of course we booksellers think it is never too late to buy books. They pair nicely with anything. With the twelve days Christmastide soon upon us, I suspect there will be lots of occasions to give more gifts. I know that some of you, like our family, give gifts on Epiphany; it’s the day that started this whole gift exchange thing during Christmas. Saint Nicholas sharing with the poor is a good model, too, but the wise men bearing gifts from afar really is a great basis for our own giving presents. So you’ve got some time to stand in the tradition of the famous, Biblical wise guys. Get some more gifts to give (from Hearts & Minds, please.)

Here, then, with little time for lengthy reviews (your welcome) here are a bunch of random books that might capture your attention or that could be fun for somebody you know.

ALL ARE 20% OFF.

We don’t have lots of some of these so send us an order soon. For now we have to say “while supplies last.” Please use the order form link at the very end of this BookNotes. Here we go.

Anne of Green Gables: The Complete Novel, Featuring the Character’s Letters and Mementos, Written and Folded by Hand L. M. Montgomery (Chronicle Books) $40.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $32.00

Oh my, this package, curated by Barbara Heller, is the newest in the stunning “Handwritten Classic” series. It includes tipped in letters and announcements (like the official program of the Debating Club) paper mementos, notes, and recipes (for raspberry cordial and currant wine, of course) and replicas of 13 items from the story “recreated with charming handwriting and loving attention to historical detail.” This deluxe edition of the novel is a new way of experiencing it which will transport readers to Prince Edward Island.

Why We Love Football: A History in 100 Moments Joe Posnanski (Dutton) $30.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

Posnanski is considered by some to be the greatest living sportswriter. Everybody raves about his writing skills as an outstanding journalist (and “the best pure long-form sportswriter in the land” according to the Chicago Sun-Times.) We sold a bunch of his Why We Love Baseball, not to mention The Baseball 100. This new one should have been flying off the shelves this fall.

Even if your not a big fan you will remember at least hearing about some of these 50 sporting events. Number 3 (which I would have said should be higher on the list) is “Johnny U and the Greatest Game” and the Number 2 spot is a much discussed play in a college game on November 20, 1982, the chapter called, “The Play.” Number one? Madden’s last game. I read the first paragraph on why Madden announcing his last game was so beloved, I was touched, and I hardly care about Madden. What a book! I bet you know a football fan, don’t you? It’s not to late to give them a happy gift.

How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History from NPR Music edited by Alison Fensterstock (HarperOne) $40.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $32.00

Okay, now we’re really talking my language and I bet I’m not alone. There are probably hundreds of truly great books on rock and roll, and a few are among my all time favorite reads (Robbie Robertson’s autobiography, Testimony, Bono’s Surrender, Jenn Wenner’s Like a Rolling Stone and several by Steve Turner from the UK.) But this — wow. Sheila Weller, of Girls Like Us: Carol King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and the Journey of a Generation, says it is, “Essential, definitive reading for anyone who listens to music or cares about women.”  Much could be said about it’s many short entries, its format and all that it so wonderfully covers. What a blast. Enjoy!

Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography Holly Ordway (Word on Fire) $34.95 / OUR SALE PRICE = $27.96

What can we say about this brilliant illumination of the life of faith of the great novelist and essayist. Carol Hostetter (editor of T’s The Nature of Middle-Earth) says it is “the first systematic, book-length exploration of the influence and importance of the Christian faith in Tolkien’s life..” Most know about his Catholicism, but here you will learn so much about his faith and convictions Bradley Bizer of Hillsdale (author of the famous Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth) insists it is “extraordinary” and says he “savored every word.

 

Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien John Hendrix (Abrams) $24.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

We have sold a number of these, purchased by all sorts of folks, indicating there is still a great love for the generative relationship of Tolkien and Lewis. This could be given to teens or those just learning about the amazing friendship of these two storytellers and thinkers. Obviously, it will be cherished by anybody who loves the writings of either of these two gents.

Here’s the thing, though: this is like no other book on the market on this topic (and that is saying a lot.) It is a graphic novel style, illustrated expertly with sophisticated and well-designed cartoon illustration. Hendrix is a serious thinker and excellent artist (you may know his graphic biography of Bonhoeffer called The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler and this is as thoughtful and insightful. A fun read, it does explore how JRR and CS created an aesthetic of myth-making that contrasted with the secularity of 20th century modernity. Highly recommended.

The Message of Jesus: Words That Changed the World Adam Hamilton (Abingdon Press) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

One of the most esteemed popular preachers these days who has thoughtful, accessible books on all manner of Biblical stuff. He’s a big church United Methodist pastor and carries endorsements from unique thinkers like Thomas Jay Oord and evangelicals like Scot McKnight. Will Willimon writes,, “Looking for an engaging means of introducing others to the message that revolutionized the world? Here’s the book.”

 

The Shape of Joy: The Transformative Power of Moving Beyond Yourself Richard Beck (Broadleaf) $25.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $20.79

I want to say that everyone should buy this book, study this book, ponder its deep insights and multi-dimensional approaches, but, to be honest, I’m not sure it is for everyone. Beck is a provocative therapist, a theologian, a Christian thinker who knows ancient theology and the latest neurological science. He’s a great writer, too, as those who have read his other books know well.

“Our joy has a geometry, a shape,” he says. Interestingly, we have to look outside ourselves to find it.

This book is a scathing critique of “the failing mental health ecosystem” and, as one writer puts it,  he“reveals the toxic cultural soil in which we all are planted.” If you worry about our social decline or wonder about this “complicated intersection” of psychology and spirituality, The Shape of Joy will be a very rewarding read. It is a good guide to better living, but not quite like you’d expect. In a society laden with cultural pain and trauma, we need something bigger than we know. This would make a great gift to deep thinkers longing for a better way…

Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman Callum Robinson (Ecco Press) $30.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

Man-o-man, this would be a perfect gift for somebody that is both literate and good with their hands, people who work in the trades and like good writing. It’s not quite as philosophical as the classic Shop Class as Soul Craft but if you or someone you knows appreciates that, this is a book that is both a memoir, a father-and-son story, and Ian Bill Buford puts it, “an apprentice’s learning of an exotic craft, a hub to the eternal mystery of trees, and a tribute to the flat-out joy of gifting.”

Yep, with tones of (as one reviewer put it) James Herriot and Anthony Bourdain (!), this enchanting, smart book is about trees and woodworkers and vocation and so much more.

Break Blow Burn & Make: A Writer’s Thought on Creation E. Lilly You (Worthy) $27.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

Inside the front flap it says, “When a writer and the Creator work together, the universe is set in order.” Can good writing and good fiction go together? I had this book displayed at an event —Christian lawyers, of all people — and esteemed artist and writer Makoto Fujimura happened to be in the hotel, and he realized we were there so he came by, and immediately exclaimed how glad he was that we had this new book. Ends up he has a blurb on the back, raving about it. As Mako notes, E. Lilly Yu deftly weaves together beekeeping, catching trout, Rilke, Milosz, and Christ, sometimes in a single breath.” Wow.

I was writing this in an email to a recent customer and he assured me that a prestigious writer he heard had highlighted it a The Glen workship (sponsored by the great Image Journal folks.) This is serious stuff, beautiful and vital by a serious writer. Another contemporary novelist called it “a masterpiece.”

Prayers from the Cloud: 100 Prayers Through the Ages Pete James (Eerdmans) $22.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

This brand new paperback is a lovely book, just simple enough to be given to anyone, but profound enough that serious people of faith will be amazed. James is an evangelical who has served in the PC(USA) most of his career — he started ministry in the 1970s doing campus ministry with Pittsburgh’s CCO — and now, in retirement serves a a chaplain at a major seminary. He has released this lovely set of just 100 prayers, with a bit about the person who wrote and prayed this prayer on the facing page. This project started out during Covid when a person who was quarantined and very ill needed a pastoral visit and asked Pete for a written prayer. He did a few and sent them as email. He did a few more. He eventually published them in a blog and became a virtual hero to many. A number of good folks realized that this needed to be a book and we are pleased to have it, just now. What a great, great, resource.

There are prayers here from Julian of Norwich and Issac Watts,  Augustine and Aquinas, Dorothy Sayers and Reinhold Niebuhr. A few are from third world faith leaders whose names you may not know, while others are world famous, from John Calvin to Karl Barth to Sojourner Truth. What a fabulous, ecumenical resource, to learn much and pray well. Lovely.

Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed: Restoring Ken-O-Sha Gail Gunst Heffner & David P. Warners (Michigan State University Press) $29.95 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.96

Since this is on a scholarly, academic press, my fear is that many ordinary bookstores (let alone so-called Christian bookstores) might not carry it. And since it is about a decade-long project of learning about and forming coalitions to care for a very polluted Western Michigan waterway, it might seem too local to gather wide interest. But I am here to say — as I have before — that this book is so thoughtful and interesting and universally applicable that anyone who cares about earthkeeping or creation-care, or watersheds or community-based activism will love it. It was one of my favorite books that I read this year and I think you could give it not only to ecologists or community organizers or those doing service in their locale, but to anybody that likes the drama of a good story.

In this case, two Calvin University staff set out to recruit students and local church groups to clean up a polluted river that flows through Grand Rapids, Michigan. Once they learned the history of the place, why it was called by settlers Plaster Creek, the stories of the indigenous folks who have lived there for centuries (and named first named creek the delightfully evocative Ken-O-Sha), and discerned much about the nature of the pollution causing the problems (and the worldviews that generate those problems) they found the strength of nurturing community assets which took their clean-up efforts to a whole new, multi-dimensional level. They are, in fact, nationally recognized leaders in what some call reconciliation ecology.

This is a great read, an admirable book about a wonderful project, and would make an excellent, inspiring gift.

Life in Flux: Navigational Skills to Guide and Ground You in an Ever-Changing World Michaela O’Donnell & Lisa Pratt Slayton (Baker) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I raved about this when it first came out — I admire so much the one author (Michaela O’Donnell, a known leader in the faith and work movement and author of the great Make Work Matter and I love the other author, Lisa Pratt Slayton, a long-time friend and customer from Pittsburgh who has proven herself a pastoral presence, a leader and helpful guide to many in the business, work, or nonprofit settings. Between the two of them they have created one of my favorite self help books, a practical guide that is so detailed and useful that nearly everyone could benefit from it, but yet rooted in a  big picture of God’s redemptive work in the world and healthy notions of vocation and calling.  They draw on authors from the deeply wise and eloquent Steve Garber to other important writers, inviting us to do the hard inner work while we live in a time of change.

I love this book and you can give it to anyone facing changes, struggling with chaos or anxiety, or who wants wise consultants to offer good guidance on daily growth and personal flourishing. Maybe it should be the first book you read in the New Year. You won’t regret it.

Catching Whimsy: 365 Days of Possibility Bob Goff (Thomas Nelson) $22.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

If you don’t know our friend Bob Goff, you should. Read all his books. It’s that easy, starting with Love Does and then Everybody Always and on to the others. You’ll laugh, maybe cry, and be delighted even as you are compelled to “leak Jesus” on others, as he playfully puts it. He’s adventurous, funny (really!) and knows the Bible well, even if his focus is on these whimsical capers that allow us to find new ways to love others.

This brand new devotional about catching the spirit (Spirit!) of whimsy and realizing the possibilities of a life lived with adventure is worth every penny.

Buy a couple to give away — your friends will love it! I promise.

Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human Cole Arthur Riley (Convergent) $22.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

Beth and I talk often about this book and it’s lovely, generous author, and we wanted to list it here, now, to remind you of the times I’ve written about it and how we think it is so very, very well done. In a way, the first half is comprised mostly of meditations and reflections, memoir and story, testifying and inviting. What good prose from a sharp thinker and important young, black voice. (You should read her memoir This Here Flesh if you have not.) The second part of this handsoe hardback is a devotional, including short readings for the church calandar, inspired by black writers. All of the citations and quotes and hymns and resoures are from black literature, making this a treasure chest of insight, compiled so nicely, integrated into her own wise and capacious faith. Exceedingly important scholars like Imani Perry have endorsed this (calling her writing beautiful and full of “moral clarity, tenderness and wisdom.”

Thriving on a Riff: Jazz and the Spiritual Life Bill Carter (Broadleaf) $26.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I hope you recall the big review I did of this at BookNotes or my reflection on the lecture / concert he did for us as we hosted him here in the York area this past spring. Bill is an old friend, an admired Presbyterian pastor, and a great jazz musician. (Tune in to his stuff at Presbybop, his very cool jazz band.)

This book, as I explained, is a bit about the history of jazz, his own growing into an appreciation of the arts and of music, particularly, written as a mainline denominational pastor. He is convinced that the arts, generally, and jazz, quite specifically, is a gateway to knowing the God of the universe, and that an artful God authorizes us to have a blast playing great jazz songs. If you know anybody who loves jazz (older and newer) and might be open to a theological reflection on it all, this is the book for them. It is wise and good, fun and inspiring. It’s one of our favs of the year and you could give it to any number of people and they would, I’m sure, dig it.

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World Robin Wall Kimmerer (Scribner) $20.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

This hand-sized book would make a perfect little present as a housewarming gift or a “just because” to anybody who cares about the natural world, who likes nature writing and the spiritual / social /cultural philosophical pondering that emerges from a close attention to, in this case, one particular thing in nature.

Robin Wall Kimmerer should be a household name — her famous Braiding Sweetgrass — continues to sell and is the sort of book that is at once unforgettable and nearly transformational. She is a Native American, and here, like in Braiding, she combines natural history and a grounded spirituality of creation and an ecologist’s glory in the details of land and place with excellent writing that is both informative and heartwarming.

Flourishing, she tells us, must be mutual. This small book ends up being about gratitude and common grace, inspired by the simple serviceberry.  One serious writer says her book is “a hymn of love to the world.”

 

Backroads and Better Angels: A Journey into the Heart of American Democracy Francis S. Barry (Steer Forth Press) $35.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

Do you recall me writing about this before? I should devote a whole column just to this wondrous, funny, inspiring, earnest, and brilliant book, but for now I’ll just say this. Barry is a Democrat who went to work for a Republican candidate. He started writing columns in the Bloomberg journal (yes, Michael, the NY mayor and millionaire, offers a lovely endorsement of this audacious book.) As you might guess, Francis is a good guy, caring about both sides of the political aisle and what seems to me to be a conscientious objector in the culture wars. He wants to know what keeps us together, what common ground our polarized culture might have. He wants to know if local folks are neighborly and, frankly, if focusing on the local history of their towns and places, can help bridge the divides and lead us to be open to our better angels.

Better angels? It’s a line from Lincoln, of course, and he is captivated not only by Abraham and his civic vision, but of the great American highway named after the President. Yep, this book is a road trip where Francis and his wife take off from Manhattan and through the Lincoln Tunnel and head out in their RV to follow the Lincoln Highway all across the country. They tell fabulous stories of local history and funny stories of people they meet along the way, day by day. They visited my own church and learned about efforts of racial reconciliation in York, Pennsylvania when they passed through here, right before Gettysburg. It’s fun seeing people and places we know in a major published work. This big book is a great, great read — give it to anybody that likes good storytelling, local history, travel, civic conversations, and the adventure of following our better angels on some pretty amazing backroads of the U. S. of A.

Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction Richard J. Mouw (Eerdmans) $17.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I wanted to list this lovely little book about a person many of us have been influenced by, almost by osmosis, in part due to his famous quote about Christ — the resurrected and ascended Lord — pointing down fro heaven at “every square inch” of creation and claiming “Mine!” Yes, indeed, it was a great line from a great speech in the late 1880s. Jesus is more than a personal savior but the One who inaugurates (and gives his life for) the Kingdom of God. Kuyper was ahead of his time in seeing the relationships between the good creation, scared and distorted by sin, but being fully redeemed and restored by the God who “so loves the world.”

He was deeply pious as a public leader, and as Prime Minister of the Netherlands in the early 1900s, having already started a uniquely Christian poltical party, a daily newspaper, a college free of constraints church or state, formulated innovative industrial policies including worker’s rights, and lead a renewal of the Calvinist churches who were often confused about public life in Holland. That “every square inch” line gets a lot of play; our beloved Jubilee Conference in Pittsburgh is using it as a theme this February, as it undergirds efforts to think well and live for the common good, even celebrating common sorts of grace as we try to shape culture in faithful, healthy ways. Mr. Kuyper — converted by reading a novel — was larger than life, a provocative public intellectual and, yes, a Prime Minister. It has been said that he challenged Queen Victoria to undo some of the unjust trading patterns that the East India Trading Company unfairly foisted on the poor Indonesia. (If only he was as astute in dealing with South Africa!)

Anyway, this is the easiest, most intereting, shortest guide about the sort of neo-Calvinism that Kuyper unleashed and whether one is Kuyperian or not, it’s a grand little book about a faithful statesman. Frustrating the left and the right, Kuyper’s worldview stretches us to new vistas, and this little book by the always charming Rich Mouw, would be just the thing to give to somebody who is frustrated with current political options or who wonders how Christians might be more thoughtful in their public engagement. Short, sweet, nicely done. Hooray.

Myth America: Historians Take on The Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past edited by Kevin Kruse & Julian Zelizer (Basic Books) $32.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60

This is another book — a hefty collection of readable but well informed essays — that I could write about in greater detail. Every chapter is a different (often prominent) historian writing about a certain myth, “punching through the information overload with clear-eyed analysis, research rigor, and stylistic verve” (as Margaret O’Mara, author of The Code puts it.) This really is a fabulous collection.

Naturally, no historian has a God’s eye view on things and each has their own biases, presumptions and worldviewish assumptions; nobody is neutral in scholarship. So it is not like that standard texts and viewpoints are the true ones, objective and unbiased, and this new generation of critical theorists are biased and opinionated, no. That’s not how it works. All the stories we’ve learned in schools are biased (as is every news report and column) and may or may not prop up certain ideologies and may or may not be, actually, true to what happened. We see through a glass darkly as God told the great apostle to write. Some of the deconstruction in this book about some classic myths about America is really, really informational, and very inspiring, actually. Are they all fully correct? I don’t know. But they do (in the words of David Blight Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Frederick Douglas) “take direct aim at the lies that are the lifeblood of the myths that grip American culture and politics today.” It’s worth considering.

Blight continues,

This book is a collective work of courage in a time when ‘truth’ and ‘fact’ have never been so widely abused; if we believe in our craft as public historians and journalists, Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer show us the way.

Defiant Hope: Essays on Life, Faith and Freedom Michael Gerson (Simon & Schuster) $28.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

Maybe you recall that I highlighted this not long ago, a great collection of pieces by the late political speech writer and public essayist, Michael Gerson. Gerson was a Wheaton-educated Christian public thinker who ended up working in the Bush White House. When he couldn’t abide supporting candidate Trump, he wrote in his regular column in The Washington Post about his concerns and both inspired many conservatives who resisted Trump but also took the ire of many. He held to his faith and in this collection of essays he writes about everything from his friendship with Presidents, African politics and his hope for public virtue, his cancer diagnosis, to the love of his pet, his family, and his hope in Christ.

The fabulous and lengthy introduction by David Brooks (in which he writes about the “life of astonishing moral coherence and grace” that Gerson lived) is so wonderful that I knew that this book would be a winner. I hope that many will find it balanced, eloquent, challenging, prophetic even, wise, and gracious.

Go Forward in Love: A Year of Daily Readings from Timothy Keller Timothy Keller (Zondervan) $26.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I can just say it as clearly as possible: there are two sorts of people who will appreciate this book: those who know Keller and so would love a greatest hits collection to dip into day by day and those who do not know him, who will find this a perfect introduction to his extraordinary written work.

The late Keller was a hero of ours (even if we did not agree with everything he believed or that his denomination stood for.) I met him more than once and he was always alert and stimulating and thoughtful (if a bit shy.) I saw him talk with or interview N.T Wright, Bryan Stevenson, Miroslav Volf, John Inazu.  In any case, he was not only an urban pastor and well-loved evangelical leader, he was a writer who brought wisdom and erudition to the genre of Christian popular writing and many grew to deeper faith because of him. Not unlike his beloved C.S. Lewis, his work is perfect to share with seekers and those unaware of intellectually rich evangelical faith. This new one is a great place to start (or ideal for fans.) I’d get a few to have around…

Ordinary Saints: Living Everyday Life to the Glory of God edited by Ned Bustard (Square Halo Books) $24.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Speaking of Keller (above) I believe that it was Square Halo Books that published his first written piece in a real book. (It was in their classic It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God.) Years later, Square Halo manager invited a bunch of people to do what Keller always did: thoughtfully bridge the seeming divide between the so-called sacred and secular and tell how they find God in the ordinary. Reformed people, especially, make a big deal about glorifying God in all things (from the arts to work, sexuality to scholarship, eating meals and suffering loss.) How does all this play out, Ned asked, and these fabulous chapters are the answers.

You will enjoy chapters on taking care of chickens and taking care of grand babies; on work and on play, or playing music and reading books, on cooking and knitting and making love and reading poetry. From Malcolm Guite to Calvin Seerveld to Margie Haack, Bruce Herman to Diana DiPasquale to J. Mark Bertrand, to, yes, me, Byron Borger, on working in retail – the chapter isn’t as good as Tom Becker’s on roller skating or Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt on going to museums — it has gotten some good feedback. Enjoy, for God’s sake. This book is not as known as it should be and if you give it as a gift I am sure the receipt will dip in and have a blast. And, who knows, maybe just come to see their whole ordinary life in a new way.

Faith Embodied: Glorifying God with our Physical and Spiritual Health Stephen Ko (Zondervan) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

If you enjoyed thinking about Ordinary Saints — and the joyous testifying chapters about common stuff that ordinary saints do — this book will flesh out the theological and Biblical foundations of an embodied and down-to-earth faith. Ko is the senior pastor at New York Chinese Alliance Church but, previously, was a CDC medical officer and has taught at Boston University. It is delightful to have someone so fluent in theology and faith formation and medicine. This tells his powerful story from pediatrician to public health officer to a pastor of a large Chinese church. He understands the implications of what it means that we are made — even our bodies! — “in the image of God” and how our senses (that’s right –  sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste) can be understood Christianly. This is a book about incarnational theology and the relationship of daily living and Kingdom worship.

My, my, this is great, deep and yet so practical. I’m sure you will know theological types who need to bring their ideas down to Earth, and you may know health-conscious homemakers who would appreciate a solid foundation for their stewardship of their bodies. This is about experiencing God in all things. It is  about breathing and moving, resting and how love can impact our very selves. Want greater integration with faith and life? Want to understand our bodies and link physical and spiritual wellness? This is one of the best books we’ve yet seen on this practical topic that we all should care about. Science, faith, nutrition, neurology, play, and health, all for “a full-orbed embodied life.”  Hooray.

Cup Overflowing: Wine’s Place in Faith, Feasting, and Fellowship Gisela H. Kreglinger (Zondervan) $22.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

I mentioned this in the latest “Three Books from Hearts & Mind” podcast as it seemed like a perfect time to celebrate — after the longing, even anxious, time of somber Advent — the feasting and celebration of Christmastime that most likely will include some glorious tasting of the fruit of the vine. For some of us it is a hobby — learning the tastes and aromas and pleasures and even history of foods and beverages, from quality coffee to craft beer to tasty cheeses or delightful peppers. How about wine?

Kreglinger told her story in a somewhat more broad, theological memoir (The Spirituality of Wine) published by Eerdmans which we have happily sold. This new one is a bit more Biblical, showing the many places wine is discussed and celebrated (and occasionally warned about) in Holy Scripture. It’s so good.

We have all three of her books and this new one is perfect to give to someone who cares about the theological and Bible basis for enjoying a fine bottle of wine. As my friend Winn Collier puts it in a back cover blurb, this book can even lead us to “wholeness and abundance.”

Becoming By Beholding: The Power of the Imagination in Spiritual Formation  Lanta Davis (Baker Academic) $27.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

I suppose you’ve noticed the number of books we’ve recommended as quick, last-minute gifts are about creativity and the arts, writing and music and such. I know you’ve got friends who would love to know that God cares about the creative life and that there is a Christian engagement with stuff like jazz music (see, above, Thriving on a Riff or writing, like Break, Blow, Burn, and Make.) This is one that invites us to this embodied, creative, imaginative life as a way to behold the Bible. Yep, this is about a transformative view of reading the Bible and — as the subtitle nicely puts it, “the power of imagination in spiritual formation.” This is one of the great books of the year, spelling out what seems to be a growing consensus among many of our smartest Christian minds and best writers, that merely learning the Bible’s truths in conventional ways is not as formative or transformational as it would be if we only added the imagination and not mere cognitive facts.

This title itself says so much, it is worth having the book just to gaze at its cover and title, wondering what it all means.

As we explained in a good review earlier this fall, this recent work is nothing short of spectacular, inviting us to behold (as C.S. Lewis put it) and allow that deeper way of knowing to shape how we are formed by the Biblical story itself. I bet you know somebody that would’ve this kind of approach. This is one of the great books of 2024, so you’ll be hearing a bit about it again when I do that list. For now, why not buy it as a gift for somebody who would appreciate it.

Prayers for the Pilgrimage: A Book of Collects for All of Life David O. Taylor with paintings by Phaedra Taylor (IVP) $25.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

This is one of the most lovely books on this whole list, a great house warming present or stocking stuffer or end of the year blessing to someone who needs a little gift. It is a whole bunch of very solid, if creatively written, prayers to the Triune God of the Bible, done with down-to-Earth insight about God’s care for, well, everything. From the hurts of the heart to the joys of the family, from the fears or pleasures or hopes or dreams, Prayers for the Pilgrimage offers poetic collects, enhanced by allusive, gentle, earth-toned water colors.

Douglas McKelvy (author of the three Every Moment Holy prayer books which, of course, we carry) calls these “perceive petitions and sensitive paintings.” Poet Luci Shaw and spiritual writer Richard Foster both rave, Malcolm Guite says it is “memorable, beautifully crafted little prose poems that will stay with the reader long after they have been prayed.”

Present in Prayer: A Guided Invitation to Peace Through Biblical Mediation Jennifer Tucker (Thomas Nelson) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I think sometimes the look of a book and its attractive design is part of the joy of sharing it and, certainly, a handsomely designed little volume will lure some to take a second look. This is a very good book on prayer — to quiet the noise within and around you, to be “fully present in prayer as you allow the Holy Spirit to speak through God’s Word.” That is, this is an easy to read, upbeat, gracious book about Christian mediation.

There are thirty beautifully illustrated mediations that call us to silence, prayer, mindful reflection on a Biblical passage using the framework of lectio divina.

Perhaps it is designed mostly for women but anyone who likes flowers and lovely design will appreciate this very attractive, slightly smaller than typical hardback. Nice.

Ordinary Mysticism: Your Life as Sacred Ground Mirabai Starr (HarperOne) $26.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

Okay, I’m just going to say it. This book isn’t for everyone and while she is an amazing and generative spiritual writer, it is not exactly a Christian approach. Her view of mysticism is generously interfaith and while she may be what some call a reliable guide, I’d say, for the record, that her other works are more rooted in the ancient Christian saints while this one is a bit more broad, spiritual but not religious. The person now known as V (formerly Eve Ensler) says it is “a shimmering call to reclaim our direct connection to the sacred and the beautiful.”

This deep and affirming writing could be just what somebody will really appreciate, or, for others, it might be a lifeline to the spiritual life that isn’t tied to creeds or doctrines or church life. It isn’t my own cup of tea, but we are glad to suggest it here, for that person who might approach her invitation to be full who they are, and to attend to their soul in honest, mystical ways. It is a welcoming book, hospitable, and generous.

Flannery O’Connor’s Why Do the Heathen Rage: A Behind the Scene Look at a Work in Progress Jessica Hooten Wilson (Brazos Press) $24.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I think when I first announced this at BookNotes I said something breathy like “a literary event” and suggested it would surely be one of the most talked about books of the year. I don’t get out much in literary circles but I sure do know that if you know anybody that likes O’Connor (or who has watched the much-discussed film that came out this year) Ms Wilson’s extraordinary effort to retrieve this unfinished novel — now in print for the first time ever — this book would be a perfect gift. Wilson here both publishes the never-finished book from the great Catholic novelist (she died in 1964 at the age of 39) and explores a bit about why it was not finished, what was going on in it, and what impact it might have had.

Esau McCaulley nicely says that it is “part detective story, part examination of “O’Connor in the context of a changing American (especially racially), and part exploration of one of America’s great writers in the process of creation.”

There are some great (and perfectly illuminating) woodcuts by the great Steve Prince. New York Times bestselling author George Saunders has a back cover endorsement. Man, I was right: this right here is one of the great publishing events of recent years. Kudos to Wilson and to Brazos. Spread the word.

Reading Genesis Marilyn Robinson (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) $29.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

Speaking of literary events, this, too, was nearly one. The Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist (and essays and magazine journalist), has given us a rumination on the first book of the Bible. Robinson is so esteemed in the literary world that folks who might not ordinarily care about the Bible have taken this up and found it enchanting. The review in The New Republic said her work is “capacious and wondrous like the night sky; it deserves our attention.” Roger Kimball wrote in The New York Times Book Review that it is “a goad to renewed curiosity.” We could pray that it would be, drawing many into Holy Scripture as if for the first time.

In our circles my sense is that many who might have a fairly conventional Christian reading of Genesis — either a fairly evangelical view or a more liberal critical view — all agree that we could use a fresh take, and that her talent for beautiful prose makes this a no-brainer. That is, give it to anyone, believer or otherwise. She’s working on one on Exodus, I’ve heard. Hooray.

Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair Christina Wiman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) $30.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

I hope you know of Wiman, the Texas Baptist boy who became an elite scholar and poet, got a terminal diagnosis which generated a renewal of faith, told beautifully in the much-lauded My Bright Abyss. He has written about faith and the arts (in He Held Radical Light which one reviewer called “soul-searing… a magnificent, radiant memoir.”) Of course he is known for many books of poetry and he is, truly, one of the important writers of our time. Not unlike Marilyn Robinson, above.

This 2024 book will be on our “Best Books of the Year” list (if we do one in the next weeks) but for now we wanted to suggest it would be a good gift for anyone who has had a rough go of it this past year. For anyone who has experienced a “blue Christmas” or who wants to think hard about suffering and even despair, this unique book — sort of memoir, lots of essay-like ruminations, some fine quotations and poems included — will be a provocative balm for many. Thoughtful, (dare I say intellectual) and allusive, these brief pieces fit together to push back against despair. Wow.

Evangelical Zen: A Christian’s Spiritual Travels with a Buddhist Friend Paul Metzger with Kyogen Carlson (Cascade) $29.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

Oh my, you know who to give this to, I’m sure. Anybody who is interested in interfaith conversations, anyone who believes that Christians can appreciate Zen, anyone who wants to see a generous evangelical become a friend and search for common ground with a friend who is a priest of another way. You have to know somebody who would like this, right? In this increasingly diverse world, we all know people who are into either a pop, new-age sort of Buddhism or those who are, in fact, serious Buddhists or serious practitioners of the customers and dispositions of Zen. This book, written from a mature and solid evangelical position, is nothing short of ingenious. We are doing a webinar with Paul Metzger (who I admire greatly and would read anything he writes) later this winter. Stay tuned for that.

Evangelical Zen is partially related, I’d say, to Metzger’s previous, serious book on interfaith conversation called Connecting Christ: How to Discuss Jesus in a World of Diverse Paths which I think is very strong (and comprehensive) for those eager to share Christ well in a globalized, multi-faith world. Paul is Christ-like and focused on His Kingdom, is generous and kind, open and thoughtful, seeking common ground with his long-time friend, Kyogen Carlson. I love the subtitle to this new, updated edition of an earlier version of the book, “A Christian’s Spiritual Travels with a Buddhist Friend.” Exactly.

Paul Louis Metzger, an evangelical Christian theologian well-versed in Japanese culture and customs, has written a thought-provoking book that provides helpful insights for both Americans and Japanese. His years of interaction with a Zen Buddhist priest have enriched his learning and this book.  — Kiwa Fukushima, chief priest, Genshoin Zenkoji Temple

When it comes to inter-religious interchanges, theology often gets more attention than relationships. That’s not true of Paul Louis Metzger’s Evangelical Zen. Although filled with stunning theological insights, it models how evangelical Christians and Zen practitioners can and should be in relationship. An inspiring read. — Terry C. Muck, co-author of Christianity Encountering World Religions: The Practice of Mission in the Twenty-First Century

Keys to Bonhoeffer’s Haus: Exploring the World and Wisdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Laura M. Fabrycky (Fortress) $25.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $20.79

I am sure you’ve heard reports — good, bad, mixed — about the new Bonhoeffer film (that was not made with any nationalist motivations and with which controversial MAGA ideologue Eric Metaxas had no connection.) Still, there have been more heated debates about the reception of and use of Bonhoeffer than there have been for a long time. Maybe I’ll do a whole BookNotes about that, but, for now, if you want to give a book to somebody who has some interested in the German pastor who died under Hitler, this truly lovely (and truly wise) memoir by an American working in the famous haus — the home, now museum, in Berlin, would make a fantastic gift. You can take a tour of Bonhoeffer’s world and, as the back cover puts it, “discover how his life matters for how you live your own.”

That is, she isn’t quite so interested in the battle for Bonhoeffer, but she wants to know how encountering the man, his literal stuff, and his books and his life, might make a difference in our own lives. It is, as Richard Mouw puts it, “marvelously engaging” and it helps us all not only see behind the scenes of his ordinary life, but invites us to ask “what difference does knowing this make.” Which is to say, she is asking one of the biggest questions any morally serious person can ask: what does it mean to really know something and how does what you say you know actually inform your life? As Anne Snyder puts it, this book can offer keys to “private sanity and civic hope.”

I’d give this to anyone who has watched the movie or read any of the many books, or dipped into Cost of Discipleship or Life Together.

We Become What We Normalize: What We Owe Each Other in Worlds That Demand Our Silence David Dark (Broadleaf) $26.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I have written about this before and have invited readers to consider if this book would entertain them (I think it would — David is such an energetic writer and interesting storyteller) or challenge them (it surely will — he is nearly undaunted in his (humble) invitation for all of us to explore what is really going in in our lives, in our circles of friends, in our systems and in our government, operating in our name and on our dime) or inspire them (it just might; he tells stories of those who have stood up and spoken out, paid the price of not being complicit in social evil.) Entertaining and challenging and inspiring? Will it provoke? Yep. WIll it cause you to scratch your head? Yep, and that’s not a bad thing, like reading poetry. This is a one-of-a-kind book, one of the most curious and affecting and I think important volumes of 2024. Get one and see who you might share it with. Or buy two, in good faith, knowing that somebody you know will dig this. For some, it will be, appropriately, an epiphany.

The Sacred Chain: How Understanding Evolution Leads to Deeper Faith Jim Stump (HarperOne) $29.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Really sharp folks I admire — Curtis Chang, for instance, or Francis Collins — have raved about this, not only because it is well written and very accessible, but also for its astute Christian philosophy and generous, upbeat faith. Stump offers a fairly personal narrative, here, interweaving his own insights and discoveries with solid science and the latest findings. Can a book about the contested spaces of science be joyful? Yes!

 

The Age of AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity Jason Thacker (Zondervan) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I bet you’ve had family conversations — maybe arguments? — about this recently. Right? Who isn’t aware of and somewhat concerned about the ups and downs, the possibilities and troubles, of this new age of artificial intelligence? Thacker is a solid theologian and thinker (who works for a Baptist think tank and is a swell guy) who wrote this book before AI became a household conversation. Rich Mouw liked his work so much he did a great foreword, noting the wisdom of Thacker’s approach (neither demonizing it nor making it into an idol) and deeply committed to the truth of humans being made with dignity in the image of God. It has recently been reissued in paperback and we think it is the best book to frame the ongoing conversations.

We have plenty more on this, with more to come, but I’d recommend this for Christian wanting a solid starting place.

A Literary Field Guide to Northern Appalachia edited by Todd Davis, Noah Davis and Carolyn Mahan (The University of Georgia Press) $24.95 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.96

Those who aren’t interested in Appalachia— and in this case the northern tier of that big chain mountain that extends right up into Pennsylvania, even New York and New England — might still enjoy this, the second in a set edited by a poet and environmental studies prof (at the Altoona campus of Penn State) and his son, raised along the Allegheny Front. Dr. Mahan is also a prof of biology and environmental studies at Penn State Altoona and here the three editors have brought together in a stunning, beautiful volume, both art and science, natural history and ecological poetry. The first, similar volume, was A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia, and both offer poems and writings, and fascinating descriptions of habitat, range, and ecological contexts. Is this a science-shaped poetry volume or a poetic science volume? There are illustrations, too, with wonderful guides to trees, shrubs, wildflowers, birds, mammals, amphibians, and fungi. I didn’t know most of the contributors, the naturalists or poets, except I smiled to see a piece by former Messiah University prof, (and very highly acclaimed poet) Julia Kasdorf. This is a great book to study or to browse through at your leisure.

Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church Hahrie Han (Knopf) $29.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

It isn’t every day that a major, respected publisher does a gloriously researched and beautifully written study of Christian folk who are involved in the hard work of building a better world, in this case, trying to be a multi-cultural congregation with integrity. Undivided is a truly remarkable book (what one reviewed noted contained both “elegant storytelling and rigorous research.” It is a book that is compelling, and, frankly, a wonderful reminder not only of the importance of racial reconciliation, but how central the church can be in this hard project.

This book offers hard tales and good stories, laden with informed insight about the complexities of grappling with racial justice, especially in a largely white, non-denominational, evangelical church. (The church is in Cincinnati and the black pastor is Chuck Mingo.) One could hardly find a better study of the dynamics of organizing for real change. I know some people at this church, in fact, but even if I did not, I’d be raving about this “richly informed reflection on the problems and possibilities of faith-based, community-rooted solidarity.”

Maybe you have read the amazing, powerful, complicated, riveting, and deeply troubling book by Pulitzer Prize winner Eliza Griswold, about the radical house church that eventually fell apart — in part of racial justice questions — called Circle of Hope. That was an important read (and, again, I knew some folks in that congregation, and, in fact, preached there early on.) If that book left you depressed or discouraged, this, too, unpacks some of the complicated relationships that develop as Christian congregations get serious about being transformed into a community of justice, but it might make you take a bit more courage and a bit more inspiration. Circle (which we reviewed at BookNotes and still have on sale) was a must-read and tragic morality tale, while Undivided is more, perhaps, bearing light and a signpost of hope.

Bone of the Bone: Essays on American by a Daughter of the Working Class Sarah Smarsh (Scribner) $29.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I highlighted this when it came out this fall and noted, of course, that we loved Heartland (which was a National Book Award finalist) and that I truly adored She Come By It Natural  which was a short and remarkable book on Dolly Parton. The New York Times Book Review called Heartland “ a deeply humane memoir with crackles of clarifying insight… and in this new anthology she only underscores her keen insights about rural life, mid-America, and her damn good prose. This book will resonate with all sorts of readers, but especially for those wondering about flyover country, about why the Trumpian right is appealing there, and how class issues are perennial in this land of possibility and injustice.

These are pieces from more than a dozen very different publications — McSweeney’s Texas Observer, The New York Times, The Guardian, Columbia Journalism Review, The Atlantic, Aeon, Harpers, Oxford American, and more. These are pieces I bet you’ve never seen. Somebody said she brings her graceful storytelling and incisive critique. More than thirty essays.

Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep Tish Harrison Warren (IVP) $22.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

Most of what I’m suggesting for these 12 days of Christmastime gift-giving are new books, some quite new. I feel compelled to share this older one, though, as it is a prefect gift for nearly anyone, but certainly to those who wonder if, well, to put it starkly, “they an “trust God in the dark?”  Although this excellent book is framed around the nighttime prayer of Compline (that is, literally praying at night) it is, more metaphorically, about praying during times of doubt and sadness. In this stunning work she “navigates themes of human vulnerability, suffering, and God’s seeming absence. “

This is one of my favorite books, ever, for a number of reasons, and I often sense a certain holiness when I recommend it.

My friend Karen Swallow Prior says,

“I know of few writers today who write as pastorally, prophetically, and poetically as Tish Harrison Warren. I know of few writers of any time who write of the deep dark stuff of life with as much hope, grace, and beauty as you will find in these pages.”

This book — written, as Andy Crouch puts it “by the light of an ancient nighttime prayer” — walks a line between an overly stark relishing of doubt and pain and (on the other hand) a cheesy, upbeat call to happy faith. No, it offers a wise and sensible and raw call to real attend to our real hurts with what faith we can muster by following the old prayer, honest and orthodox. It is just about perfect, as a vision, as a help, and as a captivating read.

To Be Made Well: An Invitation to Wholeness, Healing, and Hope Amy Julia Becker (Herald Press) $17.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I could say much (and have, actually) about this mature, honest, raw, hopeful book about healing and wholeness, about chronic pain and finding personal, spiritual, even social healing “as we reconnect with our bodies and souls, with God, and with our communities.” In our self-help section we have some very, very good books about personal growth and about coping with anxiety and hurt, about trauma, about physical pain and emotional baggage, about stress or lonliness, abuse or illness. This is one of the best of them all in the way it weaves Biblical stories with the authors story and with our own emotional pain, shame, guilt, and the like. The Bible stuff isn’t simplistic or glib, but interesting and insightful.

This is a transformational book by a very good writer who has seen some stuff. Give it to anyone who wants to be equipped for the journey to wholeness or to be a agent of care for others. I highly recommend this for our readers and those wanting help in their struggles.

The God of Wild Places: Rediscovering the Divine in the Untamed Outdoors Tony Jones (Rowman & Littlefield) $24.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

This book would make a great gift to anyone who enjoys the great outdoors — and I mean hiking, fishing, hunting, taking long excursions into the wild. Jones is a former churchman, an energetic leader (and author) trying to help the too-often dry or strict evangelical movement to emerge into better, deeper, more gracious ways. As he forthrightly tells it here, he mostly got tired of all that and both burned out and frankly, reconsidered his faith, taking up questions to live into them in fresh ways.

He still sees himself as a follower of Christ, of sorts, at least, but mostly worships the Divine in the outdoors. I say that less as a criticism (although I don’t buy it) but to note that there is some theological stuff here that suggests that faith is personal and does not need to be expressed in a conventional congregation. Agree or not with that viewpoint, Tony’s description of the glories of creation, the very real possibilities of finding God in the outdoors, the Biblical teaching about the wilderness and the value of wild places makes this a fabulous and, for some, a life-giving read. Yes, you can find God in the untamed wild spaces — if Tony is right, maybe more so than in the safe confines of a typical worship space.

Barbara Brown Taylor says, “I have read a lot of books in my life, but never one like this.”

Brian McLaren says:

“I love this book. I love its tenderness, its craft, its settings, its quests and questions, and the profound misters toward which it bows. It takes you places you need to go.”

Word Made Fresh: An Invitation to Poetry for the Church Abram Van Engen (Eerdmans) $26.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

Holy smokes this is a great read, important and lovely, intellectually stimulating and spiritually refreshing. I say that, actually, as one who does not read much poetry and who may understand its importance but still avoids it more often than not.

Which is to say this great book is ideal for poetry lovers and literature types. And, maybe even more, it is a life-line to the art form for those who don’t care much about poems. The book is so good that it really could make a difference for those who need a nudge.

Van Engen is a professor in the Humanities and chair of the English department at Washington University in St. Louis. He is passionate, he tells us, about teaching poetry to a wider audience. Importantly, he is the director of the Carver Project, a Christian project that aims to connect the university, church, and society. I love that.

The blurbs on the back indicate, by the way, that this isn’t exactly for the church leader, not about integrating poetry into worship or church study (although that isn’t a bad idea.) It is good for any person of faith regardless of their role in a congregation.

Those blurbs, by the way, are from the great Christian Wiman and the wise James K.A. Smith.

Like the Ancient Mariner, I will be grabbing people by the lapels and pressing this book into their hands: Here’s why poetry is the song you didn’t realize your heart wants to sing.

Water, Water: Poems Billy Collins (Random House) $27.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

Speaking of poetry, one can hardly go wrong with the well-loved Billy Collins. He is respected, mostly, among the serious critics, but is even more-so loved by ordinary folks who like a good word.

He is understandable and pleasant, fun and funny, serious, and wise. These brand new poems are mostly about the goodness of nature and ordinary experiences and I”m sure many will take great pleasure in it.

 

Another Day: Sabbath Poems, 2013 – 2023 Wendell Berry (Counterpoint) $27.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

I am sure I don’t have to explain the appeal of Berry’s esteemed poetry, let alone his sabbath-day poems, but for those who have not tried them, this new handsome hardback collects a decade’s worth. His novels and short stories and essays are all stellar, urgently important, some would say, but these relaxing, allusive, spiritual poems are nearly musical, laden with themes of goodness, rest, and love for creation. As one critic notes, Mr. Berry is indeed “the poet laureate of America’s farmland.”

 

Same Old, Same New: The Consolation of the Ordinary Mike Mason (Friesen Press) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Do you know Mike Mason, the wordsmith who wrote one of the very best books about marriage, The Meaning of Marriage, one glorious one about children, another about joy, and the big Gospel According to Job, as well as some very cool YA novels? I sure hope so. We’ve carried these all for decades and they remain some of the finest writing in the broader Christian community we have seen. Eloquent and sensible, Mike Mason is a writer to read and admire.

This is a collection of random essays, pieces which, it is said, “straddles two worlds, the quotidian and the eternal.” As Ron Reed (founding artistic director of Pacific Theatre) notes, “Of course those two worlds aren’t separate worlds at all — and the reality of that intermingling, that co-existence of the mundane and the mystical, is perhaps the recurrent theme of Mason’s writings.”

We have a whole section of “the spirituality of the ordinary” and it is lovely to have this beautiful, evangelical writer (who for a while was mentored by J.I. Packer) chime in with these luminous essays about the commonplace. Give this to anyone who likes good writing or who needs to be reminded of God’s common grace for everydayness.

The Mother Artists: Portraits of Ambition, Limitation, and Creativity Catherine Ricketts (Broadleaf) $28.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

Cole Arthur Riley, herself quite a wordsmith and memoirist, says this is “skillfully traveling through the wisdom and stories of female artists” and that Ricketts “has offered us a labor of both love and loss, grit and frailty.” Another astute friend, James K.A. Smith, notes that, obviously, it is for mothers who are artists, but, more, he says, “read this if your human and hope for a different world.”

When Cole and Jamie says to read a book we should listen. If this unique work of art history and memoir and cultural criticism and invitation to creativity is as good as it seems, it will be great for anyone wondering about the intersections of caregiving and creative labor. Sarah Sentilles says it is a tour de force. Maybe you know somebody who needs it now.

Wild Things and Castles in the Sky: A Guide to Choosing the Best Books for Children edited by Leslie Bustard, Carey Bustard and Thea Rosenburg (Square Halo Books) $29.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I have highlighted this often and want to suggest it again as a book for parents or grandparents (or teachers or anybody who cares about the imaginative lives of children.) You know, we’ve got tons of books on marriage and family and parenting. We’ve got all sorts of speciality topics and we could tell you about many. But I am sure of two things, at least: better than nearly any self-help, “how to” book is this wonderfully visionary and deeply caring resource about all kinds of kids books and how to choose good books for children of all ages. A large group of sharp moms and dads, educators and scholars, teachers, and grandparents all chime in here sharing their insights on different kinds of books and different sorts of kids. This is a majesterial book, excellent done by people I trust. I look stuff up in it often and it would seem every church library (and every bookstore) should have it. Maybe you should share it with somebody you care about…

Make a List: How a Simple Practice Can Change Our Lives and Open Our Hearts Marilyn McEntyre (Eerdmans) $16.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

This compact sized, easy to read, utterly profound prayerful, guidebook is a surprisingly fascinating read and would make a lovely little gift for anyone thinking about new habits and fresh plans for the new year. We have some hardbacks we’re selling at the paperback price, and this is a great resource to have around when you need just that special gift — nothing too heavy, but, not trivial.

You probably know how we love Marilyn McEntyre — her Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies is one of my all time top ten books — and her other work is beautifully crafted and vital. This one, also, is smart and helpful. It is a simple practice and, as Lauren Winner puts it, it is “life-giving and edifying” as it refames a simple habit into a spiritual practice. It will remind you of the power of language and the joy of playing with lists, corem Deo. 

Rocky Mountain High: A Tale of Boom and Bust in the New Wild West Finn Murphy (W.W. Norton) $27.95 / OUR SALE PRICE = $22.36

Sometimes you might just want a rip-roaring read, a clever telling of an amazing story, full of fun and moral lessons, adventure and touching concern about the world. A blue-collar philosopher, former truck driver and very interesting writer, Finn is a guy whose books I love. I can’t wait for another, no matter what it is about…

The first was a heck of a story about being a truck driver (The Long Haul) but this one — oh man — it is about leveraging it all and buying up a Colorado hemp farm. Several years ago the feds and all sorts of folks were pushing this new gold rush, encouraging people to buy up land and put in non-hallucinogenic pot plants to sell to the growing hemp business. For medicinal and textile use, this was going to save the agricultural problems of our frontier and, well, uh, well, it just didn’t work out so well. For a whole bunch of reasons.

As Jessica Bruder (author of the wonderful Nomadland) says,

Finn Murphy’s misadventures on the wild hemp frontier brim with wit, pluck, and hard-won wisdom. Rocky Mountain High is a roller-coaster ride through the green gold rush, a rollicking cannabis caper full of dissolving profits and indelible characters.

I certainly couldn’t have put it so well, but Bruder’s comment makes you want to read it, doesn’t it? I know as a businessperson, I sure related, even though the book biz is a bit more quaint than his pull your self up and figure it out world. This isn’t your typical entrepreneur book full of hip success and tech-savvy genius extolling the glories of  self-made profiteering. This is about immigrant workers and the working class guys taking big risks and wondering what the hell happened. What a book!

God Has a Name John Mark Comer (Thomas Nelson) $25.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $20.79

The most popular book on spiritual formation this year has been Practicing the Way by John Mark Comer and we have been thrilled to recommned it (and the excellent, fully free streaming courses they have on line.) With the enthusiasm for his work they re-issued an older one of his with a slightly different format with a new section on the practice of Christian meditation. It’s a great introduction to God, to knowing God, to living in ways that make sense of this fundamental truth of the universe.

It has as a new subtitle “What you believe about God will shape who you become.”  I believe this is absolutely so, and while it is not the only thing, it is the most foundational. And one of the key things the Bible teaches is that God has a name. This has huge implications. This cool book would make a great gift to anybody who is seeking, new to faith, or hungry for deeper practices of spiritual formation. It is fun, interesting, and utterly compelling.

What If Jesus Was Serious About the Church? Skye Jethani (Moody Press) $14.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

Maybe in your travels and conversations this week someone has brought something up about church. It happens, right? Ha — you know. Maybe you’d like to share just a small book, not too heavy, just a fun invitation to remember the important of a local faith community. It doesn’t make much difference if your non-denominational or Anglican, Mennonite or Lutheran, Pentecostal or Presbyterian (or even Catholic, these days) people are lax about their involvement in their local congregation. We all need a little reminder, not too threatening, not too heady, but a interesting call to take Jesus seriously about being a community.

This What If Jesus Was Serious About the Church book is small and full of cartoon-like illustrations, charts, pictures, jokes, even. It is part of a rather whimsical series of four others (with a fifth on the way I’m told.) This one is really important, and a great reminder of the need for a serious understanding of what the local Body is to be about. The subtitle reads “A Visual Guide to Becoming the Community Jesus Intended.”  Hooray for this. Give ’em away to folks you know – cartoons are for grown-ups, too, ya know.

Learning for the Love of God: A Student’s Guide to Academic Faithfulness Donald Opitz & Derek Melleby (Brazos Press) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I mention this from time to time and it often generates some good discussion among customers who know college students and hope for them that they’d deepen their faith in their college years in such a way that they relate their convictions to what they are learning, to think well, to imagine their careers as holy callings, to pursue what these clever and upbeat authors call “academic faithfulness.”

You may know students who are all fired up about their Christian fellowship group on campus. We are glad for that but they need a book like this to relate their religious zeal to their studies and future careers. Or, you may know collegiates who are frankly turned off by zippy evangelical groups and want something more integral to their vocation as students. In either case, this book invites college students to a life of learning, for God’s sake. The book is dedicated to me which is one of the great honors of my life by two friends who have spent much of their adult lives investing in the wholistic discipleship of young adults. This is a great book to give to a student heading back to campus in January.

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TO PLACE AN ORDER 

PLEASE READ, THEN SCROLL DOWN TO CLICK ON THE “ORDER” LINK BELOW.

It is helpful if you tell us how you want us to ship your orders. And if you are doing a pre-order, tell us if you want us to hold other books until the pre-order comes, or send some now, and others later… we’re eager to serve you in a way that you prefer. Let us know your hopes.

The weight and destination of your package varies but you can use this as a quick, general guide:

There are generally two kinds of US Mail options and, of course, UPS.  If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has an option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.83; 2 lbs would be $5.58. This is the cheapest method available and sometimes is quicker than UPS, but not always.
• United States Postal Service has another, quicker option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.70, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.50. “Priority Mail” gets more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper than Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Keep in mind the possibility of holiday supply chain issues and slower delivery… still, we’re excited to serve you.

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

THIS IS PART ONE of a TWO-PART BOOKNOTES. LOOK FOR PART TWO COMING NEXT.

We are sending out ordered items each day and with a full week before Christmas, we’re sure we can get things to you soon. You can send us orders and we’ll attend to them promptly and gladly, at least while supplies last. (It is best to use the website order form; click on the “order” link at the end of the post.) If any are out of stock or not shipping promptly we will certain let you know.

Books that we are special ordering for folks, however –that usually come quickly — are now seriously delayed. Sadly, this mostly due to some breakdowns at the largest book distributor in the country who is dropping balls daily. It’s frustrating that our supply chain is so backlogged; USPS, FedEx, and UPS, though, seem right on time and shipping this season has been good. We’re at your service — don’t hesitate to give us a call any day (except Sunday) from 10:00 am and 6:00 pm, EST.

Here is PART ONE of a two-part list, starting with some children’s books about Christmas, and then some Biblical resources for kids that are fabulous. PART TWO, which will follow, will describe some other good children’s books just for fun. We’ve got these ready to ship but you better act fast before they are gone. Even if you give books throughout the twelve days of Christmas (or on Epiphany, when the wise men gave gifts to baby Jesus) I wouldn’t delay since our inventory on these titles may be disappearing.

All are on sale at 20% off.

NEW BOOKS ON THE NATIVITY and CHRISTMAS

Don’t hesitate to visit older BookNotes (they are all archived at our website) such as this one or this one. Some of those titles described are still fantastic choices. Don’t miss The King of Christmas: All God’s Children Search for Jesus by Todd Hains and the excellent Natasha Kennedy, All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings by Gayle Boss with beautiful illustrations by Sharon Spitz, or the best-seller and splendid Christmas Promise Storybook: A True Story from the Bible About God’s Forever King written by Alison Mitchell and illustrated so whimsically by the respected Catalina Echeverri.  Search for Seek and Find: The First Christmas written by Sarah Parker, which has over 450 things to find and count in the energetic illustrations by Andre Parker and don’t forget Sally Lloyd-Jones’s Song of the Stars (in great hardcover or baby-sized board book.) From lessons plans like Messy Christmas by Lucy Moore & Jane Leadbetter to inexpensive funny ones like The Christmas Surprise by Steph Williams, there are so many to browse through. You can enjoy looking at past BookNotes any tie at our website archive.

Here are a few new ones this year.

Birth of the Chosen One Terry Wildman, illustrated by Hannah and Holly Buchanan (IVP Kids) $18.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I hope you know the name Terry Wildman, a Native American who was the lead translator of the recent First Nations Version of the New Testament. We stock that, of course, in hardback and paperback and find it enlightening and wise. Scholars from several tribes, people groups and those with distinct languages were involved in the translation and it offers a delightful, culturally-adept rhetoric to render the New Testament Greek. This lovely children’s picture book has lots of text adapted from the First Nation translation and tells the Christian stories through the faithful eyes of North American indigenous peoples. The art is stunning — really intriguing.

There is a fabulous glossary in tie back showing how Wildman rendered names and places. Jesus was born of Bitter Tears and they laid him on a baby board. The bed of straw was in a feeding trough. The story continues through the attack by Chief Looks Brave (Herod)  and his rule over The People of Iron (Rome.) Christ is rendered Chosen One” and Jesus is called “Creator Sets Free.” I like that the Hebrew of Jerusalem is rendered as Village of Peace. This telling of the story is culturally relevant for First Nations peoples but it is insightful for all of us, helping to see how Biblical languages can be contextualized in astute and clever ways that are faithful to the ancient texts and that speaks afresh. And, frankly, we all know how Jesus Himself grew up to teach us to reach out to those not like ourselves, how His earliest followers were given by His Spirit the task of going into all the world. A children’s cross-cultural telling of this vital story is a great way to prepare them for being sensitive to the marginalized, open to cross-cultural ministry, and to more fully grasp just a little of the expansive power of this Christmas story. It’s a rare book that can accomplish so much urgent work and be so enjoyable.  Wildman is both of Ojibwa and Yaqui heritage and the illustrators are twin sisters who are members of the Miami Nation of Indiana.  Highly recommended.

The Deliverer Has Come: A Christmas Story Sarah Shin, illustrated by Shin Maeng (Waterbrook) $13.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $11.19

This is one of the more exceptional children’s Christmas books this year and we are fans for a few reasons. Sarah Shin is an Korean-American who wrote an exceptional book called Beyond Colorblind which we think is one of the more important books on racial identity issues and questions about multi-ethnic ministry and racial justice concerns. I’m so glad she took up this challenge of telling a Kingdom story about the coming of Jesus into the world.

It asks on the back (importantly) “Are the stories true? Is He here?” That is, the characters in the story are asking, perhaps with many of us, if the Hebrew promises of redemption are true, if the flow and trajectory of the Old Testament Scriptures promising new creation and point to Jesus, and is this baby born truly the Messiah, the Deliverer.

The character in this children’s tale is Anika and she loves stories. “Especially the ones her great-aunt Anna shares about the Deliverer; the One God promised to send.”

It seems this retelling of the Nativity through the eyes of Anika weaves together the longing of Advent and the fulfillment of the joyous Christmas Day. You see, Shin roots the telling of the Christmas story in the great  stories of the past. In this it is almost like the old idea of a Jesse Tree — each story from the Old Testament finds its culmination in the person and work of Jesus. Hooray.

Besides the story’s unfolding and the realization Anika comes to that this star and this birth and this baby are all foretold in her well-loved stories, there is, in the back, a couple of pages of review / celebration, a summary of the many texts in the Hebrew Bible that imagine a coming savior, a Messiah, a Deliverer. That back page spread can be used over and over to look up and tell those stories as you trace the plot line of the coming Deliverer.

Illustrator and artist Shin Maeng — a Korean American who currently lives in bonnie Scotland — offers a distinctive art style and while the story is not particularly about the Asian American experience or context, the visuals will appeal to those who like not only the adventure style illustrations of modern action scenes, but of a uniquely cross-cultural art experience. It seems to me a fun blend of upbeat Disney-esque faces and bright, bright, Asian colors, maybe portraying the ancient Near-East. In any case, it is colorful and fascinating and endearing and very, very helpful in linking the Old Testament plot line to the fulfillment in “the dawn of redeeming grace.” Hooray for The Deliverer Has. Come.

Discovering Christmas: A 25-Day Advent Devotional with Activities for Kids Amanda Bass, illustrated by Marina Halas (Tommy Nelson) $14.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

We have a few of these left and, to be honest, I think you could use easily use it in the remaining days of Advent and into the 12 Days of Christmas. Granted, it’s a 25-day devotional (written for 4 – 8 year olds) but with the prayers and activities and conversation prompts, you can use this throughout the day, almost any time. Jass is an impressive artist and here she invites us to “journey though the Christmas story as your family celebrates the hope, joy, peace, and love of Jesus’s birth.”

I love the tag line on the back” Watch Expectantly with the Prophets. Share Mary’s wonder. Hear the angels sing. Follow the star. Sit with the animals beside the manger.”

(board book) Carl Laferton, illustrated by Jennifer Davison (The Good Book Company) $9.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $7.99

The nice-sized Christmas board book is taken from the impressive God’s Big Promises Bible Storybook by Carl Laferton and Jennifer Davison. It’s a few pages, telling the basic story. We really like Carl Laferton and this is a good, basic retelling.  Nice.

 

Little Christmas Carol adapted from Charles Dickens, illustrated by Joe Sutphin (Moody Press) $29.99  / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Don’t you love that line by Dickens, “It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.” Although, I suppose you know, the classic story is not just for children. It is one of the profound tales of our culture and not enough of us have read it through. You really, really, should.

This new edition is abridged for younger readers or listeners and has charming black and white, wonderfully detailed drawings of Sutphin’s classic animals (mostly mice.) He has done a number of beloved art books — from Watership Down to Little Pilgrim’s Progress — with his detailed illustrations and we applaud his moving, almost classic, illustrations to enhance this classic tale.

The House without Lights: A Glowing Celebration of Joy, Warmth, and Home Reem Faruqi, illustrated by Nadia Alam (Henry Hold) $18.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

This is not a Christmas book at all but we had to tell about it as it does capture something of the kindness and peace that should be in the air this time of year. It is a lovely story, warm and inviting, well worth reading to little ones, helping them realize at least two things. First, there are those who do not follow the Christian religion so, obviously, for them Christmas-themed habits (even of holiday lights) are not practiced. And, yes, secondly, there are longings for loved ones and being “home for the holidays” that capture the hearts of people everywhere. In The House Without Lights, a house with new occupants worries that they are not putting up the twinkling lights this year, and it at first is sad. The house soon realizes the new family has much warmth and joy to fill its rooms and its walls have much to see. What a lovely, warm, new family. This house glows with warmth from the inside out.

But then, yes, there are lights, soon enough, as the family celebrates EID. The scenes of this Muslim family sharing a festive meal and hearing their call to prayer is really lovely. A wonderful book to help young children learn a bit about others and their families and their celebrations.  As the author says in a fabulous note at the end, “Eid Mubarak [“Have a Blessed Eid”] to all who celebrate!”

The Light From My Menorah: Celebrating Holidays Around the World Robin Heald, illustrated by Andrea Blink (Pajama Press) $18.95 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.16

Wow, this is fascinating, as a young Jewish book, on a still Hanukkah night, begins a journey on the beam of light from his menorah. It takes him — go with it! — all over the world wherever cultures celebrate festivals of light. In one fantastical journey (no more magical than Santa flying all over the world with reindeer.) Reader’s will learn about Diwali, in India, Christmas lights, the kinase’s seven candles of Kwanzaa, Loy Krathong ( a Thai celebration), and St Lucia day in Scandinavia. What fun.

BIBLICALLY-BASED CHILDREN’S BOOKS FOR FAITH FORMATION

A Little More Like Jesus Zach Williams, illustrated by Lisa Molloy (Zonderkidz) $18.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Yep, this is a project by the Grammy Award winning artist Zach Williams who is nicely painted, shown with his beard and hat and guitar as he sings to a bus full of kids about being “a little more like Jesus.” As he puts it, this book helps kids “take a ride to patience, peace and faith in God above. Climb on board for goodness, it’s just up ahead. Buckle up for Jesus and hear the things he said.”

It’s a great introduction to the Fruits of the Spirit for ages 4 – 8.

The Long Road Home Sarah Walton, illustrated by Christina Yang (Crossway) $17.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

This is a rich, handsome book, artful with deep colors and gold embossing. In lovely script on the back it says “wherever you go, my son, I want you to remember that I love you with a never-ending love.” I do not know many books for children that are so evocative about this classic parable of Jesus, called “The Prodigal Son.” They suggest it combines elements of Jesus’s parable and John Bunyan’s classic The Pilgrim’s Progress. Designed for children ages 6 – 9 or 10.

Every Body Wonderfully Made Courtney Siebring, illustrated by Irina Avgustinovich (Paraclete) $18.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

What a rollicking, fun, creative party this is, with great, playful illustrations of folks of all sorts — young and old, multicultural and multi-ethnic, abled and otherwise, boys and girls, urban and rural —showing folks at a county fair having a great time. It is a well-done rhyming book showing all the many things we — by using our bodies — can do.

From painting to playing to serving others to imagining growing up to be mothers or fathers, perhaps, to being still, there is so much going on about a child’s worth, purpose, and dignity. Thoughtful Christians these days are speaking much about being made in God’s image, about our calling to steward the creation, about being (as Psalms 139 puts it) “fearfully and wonderfully made.” We give God glory by living well, even with virtues of goodness and beauty, in God’s good world. These lovable characters are celebrating the miracle of their bodies, in the spirit of, and informed by, Psalm 139. Ages 4 – 8.

The Man in the Tree and the Brand New Start: A True Story About Zacchaeus and the Difference Knowing Jesus Makes Carl Laferton, illustrated by Catalina Echeverri (The Good Book Company) $16.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

I hope you know this ongoing series of picture books called “Tales That Tell the Truth” that are so lively and interesting and compelling, nicely combining text and illustration in such a way that they are truly the best children’s Bible stories around. Some nicely connect Old Testament stories with New, showing a gospel-centered approach and a big picture for the coming renewal God promises. Echeverri’s illustrations are tremendously energetic and, again, in this new one, we are thrilled.

It obviously tells the story of “the man in the tree” but— unlike some that seem to think the point of the story is his stature — it shows Christ pursuing him and then his economic restitution after his meeting with Jesus.

Gathered at the Table: Celebrating Communion Glenys Nellist, illustrated by Anna Kazimi (Zonderkidz) $18.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

We have seen over the years more books coming out for little ones about the sacraments; certainly communion and baptism. We add this and celebrate it because it is one of the most energetic and playful books about communion that we have seen. There are any number that have liturgical symbols or seem a bit formal — appealing, no doubt, to pastors and theological-types in liturgical churches. But for many parents, they prefer books on this tender, complex topic that are as upbeat and delightful books as many others they read to their children day by day. This sense that communion is very special but also somewhat of a real-world, ordinary thing — a thing they should participate in! We couldn’t be happier with the modern expression and the theologically solid content.

For what it is worth, it starts with Jesus’s own last supper and it has nice, colorful, paintings (that will appeal to kids today) of various ways various churches celebrate communion. It shows people in pews, it shows folks lined up to go forward, it shows African congregants outdoors standing in a circle. There is more than one scene of women clergy, some in full priestly robes, others less vested. It nicely explains what different churches call it —you know, such as the Lord’s Supper, Communion, or Eucharist.

Gathered at the Table even has a page about World Communion Sunday (and if your church doesn’t join in the global witness of that glorious day, you should!)  This book  should be in eery church library and every parent’s collection.

Penny Preaches Amy & Rob Dixon, illustrated by Jennifer Davison (IVP Kids) $18.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

A few of our friends from the Wee Kirk Conference will recall how during a book announcement time up front I read from this and got choked up. Yup. This book is so amazing I find it hard to tell about it without tears.

It is a fun book, upbeat and touching. Penny loves the sermons at her church — how about that! She wants to preach and pretends playing preacher, even if her friends don’t always enjoy playing the part of the congregation. But even as she pretends, her pastor comes to realize she really wants to preach and eventually allows her to use her lapel mic after church one day. Increasingly, Penny began to wonder if she could tell stories that help people think about big things. Could she teach God’s words to others? (And, could I wear that tiny microphone?)

There are a couple of great things going on in this excellent children’s book. Besides the obvious — it affirms the notion that God might call women to the ministry — it tells of a girl who thought she heard God speaking to her. In other words, it invites children (and the adults reading this with them) to be attentive, to be discerning, to learn the art of listening to God. It also has a sub-text (as we say) about discerning the call of God on one’s life — that is, the notion of vocation. In the story pastor Sarah invites Penny to explore how to use her gifts in service to others and then church.

For church leadership there is a lesson here, too — to be about equipping others (including boys and girls) to use their gifts! Oh, if all of us had a Pastor Sarah in our lives. This book is amazing and very, very useful, for girls, of course, but for anyone. I’d say this is for ages 5 to 9 or so….

Not Finished Yet : Trusting God with All My Feelings Sharon Garlough Brown, illustrated by Jessica Linn Evans (IVP Kids) $16.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80

Oh my, what a moving (and delightful and wise) story this is. You may know the author, Sharon Garlough Brown, for her set of novels in the Sensible Shoes series (about spiritual direction and other matters revolving around the interior lives of the women in the stories)  Brown is herself a spiritual director and one of her novels — sort of an offshoot to the Sensible Shoes characters has one of the characters with a girl named Wren, who is herself an artists, staying at a retreat center as she heals emotionally from some mental health difficulties. If you know those stories you may wonder if that story inspired her to write a children’s picture book version.

Well, yes. You don’t have to know that novel, Shades of Light (or the subsequent devotional that came out of it) to appreciate this but Not Finished Yet is the story of that character, Wren, as a child. She loves Gran’s art studio and she loves talking about so many things with a trusted adult, who listens well, seeming to turn those conversations into sacred moments.

Not Finished Yet is gorgeously illustrated, vibrant and flowing, with engaging text and fabulous art. The key moment, I suppose, is the narrator saying, “Sometimes, Wren and Gran didn’t paint flowers or clouds or birds or trees. Sometimes, they painted their feelings. She and Gran called it “painting prayers.”  Helping children name their feelings and bring them to the fore, before and with God, is immensely useful. This is one of the great children’s books of the year and we very highly recommend it. (And then, for fun, if you want to know what happens to Wren as an adult, you should order Shades of Light as well.)  They say this is for ages 4 – 8 but the descriptions of freight emotions and this simple but sophisticated view of prayer might be useful for older kids.

This Special Blessing for You Eric & Meredith Schrotenboer, illustrated by Denise Hughes (Zonderkidz) $16.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

I was taken by the phrase, bold on the back cover: “Today is the day the world gets to see the beautiful person God made you to be.” Yep, this is a beautiful book showing that children of all sorts are made in God’s image, loved, accepted, blessed. It is, as a matter of fact, the Aaronic blessing of Numbers 6: 22-27 from which this poetic book takes its cue. As readers follow the illustrated story of two children and their larger community, kids will also discover how each part of God’s blessing can be seen in their own lives, as well as “what happens when they live out God’s words wherever they are.” There is a nice note in the back helping adults or caregivers unpack the scriptural meaning behind this blessing, helping you pray it over your little ones.

The text is large and sparse on the page with big, rich color. Help children carry God’s name with them as they love and serve others. Nice.

No Greater Love Dominique Okonkwo, illustrated by Lhasa Lorena (Paraclete) $16.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

While I’m not always a fan of what seems to be computer generated children’s illustrations, or the fairly typical format of rhyming sing-song phrases. Yet, this book is worth every penny if it communicates to young readers the beauty and goodness of God’s great love for us. As it says on the back, “God’s love is wise and high and deep and long.

How can we plant seeds of faith and guide children on the path to understanding just how much their heavenly Father loves them? What does it look like to share this love with others? To know you are loved with a boundless love because that is God’s nature? Wow, this simple book is utterly profound and truly tender, very simple but nice, explaining the majesty of a God who cares about creation and us. Yay.

Zion Learns to See Terence Lester and Zion Lester, illustrated by Subi Bosa (IVP Kids) $18.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

This book is so amazing I do hop you consider buying a few as gifts this season. I highlighted it earlier at BookNotes and this is more or less what I said then:

I so, so appreciate all the IVP Kids line, and this one is a stand out. It is written with such joy and warmth, but yet, quietly at times, shouts “every person matters to God — and that means every person should matter to us.” But, of course, that means we have to see — really see — each person in their need and glory, their hurts and their dignity.

Zion is a young black girl who wants to understand and do something with this important message and her father reminds her of this lesson when he takes her to a community shelter at which he works and introduces her to house-less and other hurting folks, his friends from the streets. She decides to help raise awareness and funds through a project at school and it becomes, well…. You’ll see. It’s a great story.

Zion Learns to See is a lovely book for little ones inspired by the adult book by Terence Lester called I See You: How Love Opens Our Eyes to Invisible People. There’s a bit of the follow-up in this kid’s book, too, from the one Terence wrote called When We Stand: The Power of Seeking Justice Together, which comes with a great foreword by Father Gregory Boyle. Both are by IVP.) Terence is a great author of adult books and now he has partnered with his daughter to do this lovely, inspiring kid’s book.

Just the other day the parent of a black child wrote to me saying that it seems some folks in their area seem more emboldened to be rude and racist; the uptick in nastiness is noticeable and now we need to help our children “see” others made in God’ image. We’re glad for Christian books by authors of color who help us all see better. Yay.

The Biggest Story Family Devotional Douglas O’Donnell, Kevin DeYoung, illustrated by Don Clark (Crossway) $29.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Several years ago this team did a major children’s Bible called The Biggest Story. The wording was, with a few exceptions, simply brilliant and the vision of an unfolding drama of redemption whispers shades of everything from Sally Lloyd-Jones’s The Jesus Storybook Bible to The Gospel Story Bible: Discovering Jesus in the Old and New Testaments by Marty Machowski, say, informed by the big picture method of reading the Bible found in the likes of The Drama of Scripture or The True Story of the Whole World by Craig Bartholomew & Michael Goheen. These do not center the virtue of the Bible characters as if Daniel’s bravery or Joshua’s courage are the point. No, the story puts God as the main character as the trajectory of the Bible points to the redemption of all things coming in the Kingdom of Jesus, the Christ. These are not random Bible stories for kiddies, but wise tools to help children understand the plot and vision of the Bible for our contemporary worldviews.

Anyway, this brand new (and hefty) new volume turns the content from the Biggest Story not a daily reading devotional. Each devotion has tons of activities, including five Bible readings, brief “Big Picture” introductions, memorable gospel connections summaries, a line to an animated video retelling, and discussion questions for families to ponder together and a short prayer.

There are over 100 devotionals, but over 500 Bible readings… it isn’t a whole year’s worth, but, man, there is a lot, with a lot of theologically solid substance.

Don Clark is an artist and cofounder of Invisible Creature, a widely respected and award winning design studio. It’s super classy.

The Book of Belonging: Bible Stories for Kind and Contemplative Kids Mariko Clark & Rachel Eleanor (Convergent Books) $24.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

This has been one of the most talked about children’s resources of the year and we are proud to recommend it. As a very classy and artfully done children’s Bible that highlights women of the Bible and seems to offer a wise and balanced vision of the Biblical story as one that leans towards peace, justice, reconciliation, human dignity and God’s grace for all, it is exceptional. Just exceptional! The view of God and the nature of redemption it offers is solid and good. Here is some of what I wrote about it when we invited people to pre-order it last fall. Hooray.

There are so many great new children’s books coming that it is hard to know what to highlight but we certainly want to celebrate this forthcoming release that already has considerable buzz. The Book of Belonging is (as they explain) designed for families seeking a Bible storybook that reflects the diversity of God’s people and for readers seeking a more expansive and wondrous view of God. I don’t really want to label it “progressive” and many religious books these days feature a multiethnic caste of colorful characters. But the exceptionally thoughtful text and rich illustrations present “some of Scripture’s most important and overlooked stories — including many female-centered ones — alongside old favorites reimagined to convey greater inclusivity, diversity, and historical representation.”

Taking a cue, perhaps, from the “wondering” approach of resources like “Godly Play” or the lovely children’s Bible Growing in God’s Love: A Story Bible by esteemed educators Elisabeth Caldwell and Carol Wehrheim, this Book of Belonging offers more than narratives, but and guided wonder moments, mindful practices, and other creative ways to engage the text of Scripture. With the theme of “belovedness” that appears, children will learn who God is and the fact of their being loved and delighted in. As the authors like to say,  “When it comes to the love of God, everyone belongs.”

This gentle, gracious Bible story book offers forty-two Bible stories with aesthetically-pleasing colorful illustrations on every page.They would want you to know that the art showcases a variety of body shapes, ages, abilities, and skin colors and, also, uses historically accurate depictions of Jesus and God’s people, including original Hebrew and Greek names with historically accurate depictions. This is great.

Mariko Clark is a Japanese American author, mother, and storyteller on a mission to help kids embrace diversity and wonder.

God’s Big Picture Bible Storybook – 140 Connecting Bible Stories of God’s Faithful Promises N. T. Wright, illustrated by Helena Perez Garcia (Tommy Nelson) $24.99 /  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

If this isn’t the coolest thing for kids and families — heck, for anyone! — this season, I don’t know what is. We had heard Tom was doing a children’s Bible story book and, of course, we were thrilled. It is fantastic, just fabulous. I respect his Biblical insight and his theological worldview that shapes his deep understanding of the interconnectedness of Scriptural episodes, so this book which will amplify the unfolding nature of the drama is sure to be a fabulous resource for any family wanting to not only get the stories right, but the Story.

When he did a program at our store promoting the then new (now classic) How God Became King — okay, he preached in our back yard, and played some guitar — he emphasized this interconnection of Scripture, the echoes of uses of the Old Testament in the New. The coherent narrative hinting (or outright promising) new creation coming. When I see this children’s Bible I can hear him, right here in Dallastown.

I like the feature where, after the telling of the Bible stories, the phrase “What else in God’s big story links up with this?” nicely appears and there are one or two little colorful circles with a word and a page number to show how those themes show up in other stories. I’m not saying it is like the old Thompson Chain Study Bible (ha!) but it sure is a very nice feature that captures something about Wright’s deep familiarity with the whole coherent plot of God’s written Word. And, more importantly, helps you and our child see the wonderful echos and connections between Bible stories.

There are other children’s Bibles these days that show the interconnectedness of the overall biblical plot, and we are grateful. There are some that may have a more edgy sort of artistic appeal to young parents, or a higher quality of illustration, but this one has fairly typical art for kids. More could be said about what might have been done better and while it may not be my choice for the best looking design, the look is still quite engaging and good. The fabulous text is on the left of the spread and the vivid picture is on the right (with a hint of color or symbol or a bit of the picture spilling over just a bit onto the page of text, which is a nice, integrated touch.) Still, this is one of the great releases of 2024 and I’ll be awarding it a “Best of” book later when we do that list. For ages 6 to 10 or 11, I’d say. Every church library should have at least one.

The Really Radical Book for Kids: More Truth, More Fun Champ Thornton , designed and illustrated by Scot McDonald (New Growth Press) $29.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

This big book came out at the end of 2023 and while it isn’t brand new, now, it sure deserves to be highlighted here again. When, a number of years ago, we first saw The Radical Book for Kids, I was so excited my eyes almost popped out. When The Really Radical Book for Kids came, I was even more excited and more pleased. What great, evangelical content in a book full of oddball games, neat stories, secret codes, curious experiments, unusual food to make, and lots and lots of Bible teaching. It is not only for boys or the bored, adventurous older elementary kid, but it will attract those who may not love long stories and wordy messages. I bet you know kids like this. This book is a blast anti could be a life-saver.

Champ Thornton is an acquisitions editor at Crossway, so he has seen some books over the years. He is theologically trained and now a parent of three energetic teenagers. He knows what it looks like to captivate young hearts, minds, and imaginations “with the wonders of God’s Word and world.”  Enjoy.

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TO PLACE AN ORDER 

PLEASE READ, THEN SCROLL DOWN TO CLICK ON THE “ORDER” LINK BELOW.

It is helpful if you tell us how you want us to ship your orders. And if you are doing a pre-order, tell us if you want us to hold other books until the pre-order comes, or send some now, and others later… we’re eager to serve you in a way that you prefer. Let us know your hopes.

The weight and destination of your package varies but you can use this as a quick, general guide:

There are generally two kinds of US Mail options and, of course, UPS.  If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has an option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.83; 2 lbs would be $5.58. This is the cheapest method available and sometimes is quicker than UPS, but not always.
• United States Postal Service has another, quicker option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.70, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.50. “Priority Mail” gets more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper than Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Keep in mind the possibility of holiday supply chain issues and slower delivery… still, we’re excited to serve you.

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

 

THIS IS PART 2. WE HOPE YOU SAW PART ONE, SENT PREVIOUSLY.

PART TWO OF A TWO-PART BOOKNOTES.

Just a bit ago we published the first of this long post about recent children’s picture books. We have so very many and we wanted to feature a few favorites from this year, some about Christmas and more that were overtly Christian, Biblically-based ones. Some were really clever and some were visionary and some were beautiful. All were highly recommended.

Here, then, are some others that can also enhance a family’s spirituality and learn more about the values of Christ’s Kingdom. While these may not be obviously Christian (or utterly secular) we wanted to share them with you. These are some great reads, good for nearly any family with young children. All are 20% off.

We are shipping promptly, while supplies last. Did we mention they are all on sale, 20% off. Order today.

Drawn Onward Daniel Nayeri, illustrated by Matt Rockefeller (Harper Alley) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Part adventure story, part graphic novel, part poetic rumination on loss and hope, this is a vividly illustrated story with only a few words by the great Daniel Nayeri —I hope you’ve read and discussed his spectacular YA novel Everything Sad Is Untrue — which is hard to explain. To say it is a work of art is not a cop-out, but, still, it is hard to put into words what this might evoke. On the surface the story is simple: it seems a boy and his dad are lamenting the loss of the wife and mother. The boy wants to know if his mother was glad to be his mom. He heads into the forest to find her, to ask, to know.

The illustrations are fabulous, the adventure exciting, the fantasy world just a little odd, but mostly, it is a tale of a book coming to terms with his being loved.

Aaron Becker, author of the Caldecott Honor Book Journey, says it is “A gift for those who believe books to be living things”

“A gift for those who believe books to be living things”

If You Can See the Dark Timothy Mudie & Jenny Ward, illustrations by Mattie Rose Templeton (Appalachian Mountain Club Books) $19.95 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.96

The Appalachian Mountain Club was founded in 1876 and their books are legendary among hikers and outdoor folks; this lush, creative, children’s book deserves a big, if quiet, shout out. It’s about nighttime, after all. Each animal through-out this beautiful book — printed on black paper — has what almost looks like a not filled in paint by number design over it, and it is such a striking (modern art, dare I say urban) image that it makes this simply stunning. It is not somber at all, but almost alludes to stained glass. It is very striking.

Even without the extra doodles, this artful reproduction of various animals that hibernate or who need the dark, will teach you and your children so much. If you can see the dark, the book suggests you will see all kinds of good stuff. Dark skies allow animals to sleep soundly, for instance, and can improve the lives of creatures great and small. (Dark skies are important, we learn, for humans, too, and for plants.) Light pollution is a problem and you might want to check out zoning hearings and such in your own area. But first, enjoy this lovely, stimulating, aesthetically pleasing work

Kingdoms of Life Carly Allen-Fletcher (Eerdmans) $18.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Eerdmans Books for Young Readers is a prestigious publisher of excellent, if often eccentric, children’s books’ curiously, they often publish in North America some of the more artful and allusive books first released by the more artful publishers in Europe. This splendid volume is done by a prominent British illustrator and author and the pages are so vibrant, so bright, and so colorful one has to study them to see if they are photographs or not.

This is the book for the science kid on your list. It is ideal for ages 6 or 7 up to about 12. The magical illustrations are so vivid and psychedelic they will be sure to be studied carefully for hours. The publisher says it “explodes with mind-boggling details” and they are right. But, more, it offers fabulous information about the life that is all around us. Tracing the six kingdoms of classification (animals, plants, protists, fungi, bacteria, and archaea) each page will spark curiosity and wonder (and maybe questions about the tiny things wiggling under microscopes, or odd stuff like seaweed or bread molds.)

This is lush and rich and fun and very, very informative.

The Girl with the Big, Big Questions  Britney Winn Lee, illustrated by Jaco Sousa (Beaming Books) $17.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

“Why can’t people live on the moon?” “Are monster’s real?” “What makes a person good?” This isn’t about religious questions exactly, even if, in a way, all questions are religiously-motivated. Like its companion (The Boy With the Big, Big, Feelings) this book nicely authorizes kids to be themselves, and, in this case, to develop a curious mind, to continue to ask questions, to learn how to grow, think, and make stuff happen in the world. The girl’s sharing what she’s learned with her classmates is risky (not everybody likes those who ask questions) and she is admirable.

As it says on the back cover, it will “inspire girls to bravely take up space and ask their thought questions!”

Between My Hands Mitali Perkins, illustrated by Naveen Selvanathan (FSG) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

We have followed Mitali for years, selling her important, excellently-crafted YA novels and delightfully realizing she was a Christian. We finally met at this past year’s Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing and she was as delightful as we had experienced when we corresponded briefly. Born in India and living in the US she is remarkably productive, speaking all over, writing new books for different audiences (including a tremendous adult book about reading children’s literature, published by Broadleaf, called Steeped in Stories. She contributed to an important Square Halo Book release as well (Wild Things and Castles in the Sky: A Guide to Choosing the Best Books for Children) so you know we feel somehow connected. She was and continues to be one of the important figures in the vast field of children’s books.

This new one, Between my Hands, is the third in a series in which she has the word “between” in the title. (See, also, Between Us and Abuela — which she notes is about separated families and the power of art, and Home Is In Between — which is about immigration, new customers, and being a new school.) This one adds to this fun children’s books which engage in social-emotional learning by writing about the “between” of self and community and neighborhood and family, and more.

The question on the cover of Between My Hands is “How will you namaste the world?”  It’s a good question. Although it is a tender and cheerful book, Perkins has a lovely “author’s note” in a page on the back noting that this third in the “Between” picture books is “an invitation to children to offer their gifts and talents in service to the planet through the Indian gesture of namaste, which means, “I bow to you.”

“Given the huge problems in the world,” she continues, “children may not believe they can make a difference for good.” She tells, then, about the character in the story (Maya) who lives in Oakland, California, home of murals and gentrification (and protests.) She says that she chose the names of her characters intentionally; Alvaro is a Spanish name that means “truth” and Jubilee is, she explains, based on the Bible’s Year of Jubilee when slaves were to be set free, and Karina is the Sanskrit word for “mercy.” Maya, Mitali explains, in her own mother tongue, Bangla, means “love.” Highly recommended for ages 4 – 8.

Folktales for a Better World: Stories of Peace and Kindness Elizabeth Laird, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amino (Crocodile Books USA) $12.95 / OUR SALE PRICE = $10.36

Oh my, what an amazing and utterly delightful collection, nicely done in an oversized paperback (with hefty paper) and great, contemporary illustrations that capture the culture and tone of each story. This book is obviously a labor of love, nicely done by an indie publisher we are glad to have discovered.

I will not go on and one about each tale — some are more captivating than others, but each has memorable plots and the fables teach vital lessons. Some are clever, some are funny, some are mysterious. Each are wonderfully illustrated and told with empathy and grace.

As they say on the back cover, “The importance of peace and kindness in our lives shines through these timeless, inspirational stories from seven countries.”

The folktales come from Ethiopia, Sudan, Palestine, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, and a Uighur story from China.

The Prince of Yorsha Doon Andrew Peterson, illustrated by Kristina Lister (Waterbrook) $14.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

What a lovely, fun, mysterious, powerful story this is. As you may know, Peterson is a singer-songwriter, adult author, worship leader and youth fiction writer, and has grown famous not only for his songs and books about the creative life, but for the Wingfeather Saga, a great four-book set of adventure / fantasy stories. After those were written, a collection was released (by a handful of authors) of other Wingfeather stores, called Wingfeather Tales. Not everyone who loved the four-part saga knows this extra volume and this new book, The Prince of Yorsha Doon, is a picture book adaptation of a chapter from Tales. Got it? It doesn’t matter, though, as the book really stands alone, especially now as a picture book. Hooray.

As they entice us on the back, in this book you will, “Decode mysteries, unlock secrets, infiltrate a palace, and discover hidden treasures. The hero is reluctant, he will rescue a prince, and learn the importance of true friendship. Andrew Peterson is great. Did I say hooray?? Hooray!

Jimmy’s Rhythm & Blues: The Extraordinary Life of James Baldwin Michelle Meadows, illustrated by Jamiel Law (Harper) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This is a stunning book (and I’ll admit I was pulling for the excellent illustrator and deigned to get a Caldecott this year.) They say it for ages 4 to 8 but I think I’d say 6 to 12. The artful, energetic prose is so good it sounds like poetry (and the graphic design of the book is fabulous and fitting.) This tells you much of what you need to know about this novelist, writer, essayist, public intellectual. This year I enjoyed and learned from the adult book by Greg Garrett (The Gospel According to James Baldwin) but this, really, tells you in exciting writing and pictures most of the contours of his life and art.

On the back cover, in beautiful jagged type, it says:

“Writing is electric blue, bright, brilliant swirls of letters and words flying, flipping, flowing to the beat.”

Do I hear an Amen?

Why Not? A Story About Discovering Our Bright Possibilities Kobi Yamada, illustrated by Gabriella Barouch (Compendium) $18.95 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.16

This is another large, lavishly illustrated, rich and imaginative book by the team that brought us What Do You Do With An Idea? (Not to mention, What Do You Do With a Chance? and Maybe and other allusive, inviting books that make us think and believe in the best possibilities of doing good stuff in the world.) These are classy, creative books.

I love this story of realizing that good things might happen, and that world is alive with possibility.

The back cover, in embossed gold, handsomely asks, “What if life is even more miraculous than you’ve imagined? Why not find out for yourself?”

Hiawatha and the Peacemaker Robbie Robertson, illustrated by David Shannon (Abraham) $20.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $16.79

I’m not going to lie: this is not a new book in 2024. It came out a decade ago and somehow I missed it. I loved The Band and have all of Robbie Robertson’s solo albums. I adored his big memoir Testimony. Yet, this wonderful, beautiful book — illustrated by a talented oil painter and Caldecott Award winner — is new to me and I can’t help but want to share it. It is the story of warfare among indigenous tribes (Mohawk, Iroquois, etc.) and how a peacemaking leader emerged, calling them to reconciliation and harmony. Hiawatha, of course, according to oral tradition among First Nation peoples, was the person who delivered the Peacemaker’s message, and it deeply transformed his own heart.

Included in this handsome book is a CD of an original song by Robbie Robertson telling the story. What a well-made and gorgeous book, inspiring not only for those who are interested in Native people’s history but for those eager to learn about peacemaking.

The Verts: A Story of Introverts and Extroverts Ann Patchett, illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser (Harper) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Okay, start here: you have to know Ann Patchett, the famous adult novelist and beloved owner of one of the great independent bookstores in the whole country (in Nashville; yes it is on my bucket list to visit someday.) She is a great writer with a gracious moral center and is, beside her fiction work, an extraordinary essayist, speaker, storyteller, and more. (I truly loved her two collections of essays, These Precious Days and This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage: A Collection, but I digress.) It shouldn’t surprise us, I guess, that she would be able to pull off tremendous children’s picture books; this is now her third. She knows everybody in the field, and these energetic and fun-filled illustrations by the artist that gave us the Fancy Nancy books, deserves a lot of credit for making this book so very, very fun. And fun it is.

The adventure is wild and electric and yet the story is tender and touching; the plot simple: two siblings, Ivan and Estie, learn to value their very different temperaments and celebrate their differences.

Bridges Instead of Walls: The Story of Mavis Staples Mavis Staples, illustrated by Steffi Walthrall (Rock Pond Books) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I suppose you know the black gospel and roots singer Mavis, who sang with her parents (Mom and Pops Staples) and increasingly became known as one who did her amazing gospel work with others. She played and sang with everybody from Dylan to Pavarotti to Prince to her friend Aretha Franklin. This children’s book tells her story with gloriously upbeat illustrations, making his a real treasure. The theme of building bridges is inspiring and it tells about Pops famous meeting with the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King and features her standing alongside King and other activists. What a person she is, and what a book, telling her story.

A Star Shines Through Anna Desnitskaya (Eerdmans) $18.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

This is a simple story, sparse and rather sad text and modern illustrations but it seems it could be read out loud and it would lead to many, many good conversations. It is breathtaking, really. Simple but breathtaking.

We learn a bit more in a long author’s note at the end, which you won’t want to miss.

The story unfolds as a young person (not a little child) observes that in her home country she walked home from her music lessons happily to see a star in the window of their home apartment. Now that she has immigrated to another country she is out of sorts, lonely, the food is unusual, the language complicated. It is, in short, simple sentences and moving graphic illustration, evoking a world of disorientation from being exiled from one’s home. Why? What will they do? Well, the spoiler alert is true and simple: this is a real story and the mother helps them make another cardboard star that will light up which they will put in the window of their new apartment. Things will seem a bit more normal, now.

We learn from the author’s note that she and her family were on vacation (in Greece) when, the day they were returned to their beloved Moscow, their country started a war with Ukraine. Anna could not (or would not) go back. They found a temporary home in Israel where they made the glowing star. They took it with them as they went to another country where they now reside. A Star Shines Through is a moving story that our own children might need to read. It is a simple true story that might touch your heart.

The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien. John Hendrix (Abrams Fanfare) $24.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

We will be announcing this yet again soon when we do our Best Books of 2024 list. Surely this graphic novel, powerfully and expertly illustrated and designed by the master John Hendrix, deserves all kinds of accolades. They say it is for youth maybe 10 years old and up but the detailed illustrations (and the juxtaposition of written text and copies of real artifacts — not unlike his must-read, visual striking  —The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler) makes it a piece of work that is, frankly, enchanting even for adults. I shudder to call it mere cartoons.

The book has gotten wide acclaim, from early starred reviews in places like Kirkus, Booklist, The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, Horn Book, and other respected lit journals. It is also a coveted volume for those in the Lewis / Tolkien orbit.

For what it is worth, this brilliant graphic novel type study includes some weighty, intellectual stuff. It talks about how the respective friends had different philosophies of storytelling and both influenced 20th century literature. The book explores their creative differences and how it impacted their friendship. It explores their theology of the arts and creativity and it looks at their respective notions of modernity. And mythology. Naturally, there is lots about mythology. It is a really well informed study and is a beauty to behold. Good for any thoughtful teen, for sure.

Order now and we’ll let you know when we hope to have more back in stock. Sorry that for this one, the delivery schedule is a bit unsure. Any day, I hope…

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TO PLACE AN ORDER 

PLEASE READ, THEN SCROLL DOWN TO CLICK ON THE “ORDER” LINK BELOW.

It is helpful if you tell us how you want us to ship your orders. And if you are doing a pre-order, tell us if you want us to hold other books until the pre-order comes, or send some now, and others later… we’re eager to serve you in a way that you prefer. Let us know your hopes.

The weight and destination of your package varies but you can use this as a quick, general guide:

There are generally two kinds of US Mail options and, of course, UPS.  If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has an option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.83; 2 lbs would be $5.58. This is the cheapest method available and sometimes is quicker than UPS, but not always.
• United States Postal Service has another, quicker option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.70, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.50. “Priority Mail” gets more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper than Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Keep in mind the possibility of holiday supply chain issues and slower delivery… still, we’re excited to serve you.

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

In this BookNotes we not only wish you a blessed and honest Advent — see last week’s post for some titles about coping with hardships and sorrows in this season — but I want to tell you about two great books, each that I found to be nothing short of spectacular. They are two of my favorite reads this year, one recent and one very new, and they feel somehow related although I won’t explore that here. I am grateful for the opportunity to tell you about them and hope you will find my enthusiasm persuasive. That is, I hope you send us orders for these (or other great books you are seeking; believe me, we appreciate any orders sent our way.) Please share this info, too, if you know anyone who needs to hear about these titles.

Both of these — and others I mention along the way — are all at 20% off as is our custom here at our almost weekly BookNotes.

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Rags of Light: Leonard Cohen and the Landscape of Biblical Imagination Brian J. Walsh (Cascade) $23.00 // OUR 20% OFF SALE PRICE = $18.40

The first book I’m going to highlight is written by a dear friend of mine — a writer, Scripture scholar, social / cultural activist, pastor, and farmer, Brian J. Walsh, now of Russet House Farm in Ontario. I’ll have to tell you more about him and his writing but for those who know his work, you won’t be surprised that he has just released a book on the poems and lyrics of Leonard Cohen. Again, it is called Rags of Light: Leonard Cohen and the Landscape of Biblical Imagination and, believe me, it’s an amazing and moving little work — one of my favorite books of the year. And that is saying a lot. The curious title is a line from the great Jewish poet and songwriter, Leonard Cohen. Like Brian, I first encountered this oddly enchanting, mysterious, songwriter while still in high-school. Unlike Brian, I haven’t kept up, and, man, was this book an education! I had no idea.

I hope you’ll enjoy me reminiscing just a tiny bit about Brian’s other important books; I think naming them will help you place this book in the body of his ongoing work and help you realize what is going on in this tremendous new release.

But first, cutting to the chase, I will just say this: I hope you trust me when I say that I believe that Rags of Light will be enjoyed and appreciated at least by five kinds of readers. You’re bound to know more than one of these sorts of folks, so you very well may want to buy more than one.

First, obviously, it is a must for those who are Leonard Cohen fans. Those that have followed his prose and poetry or albums will know he is a serious (if combative) Jew and has more Biblical allusions in his poetry and music than U2 and Bruce Cockburn combined! He is more Biblical (and clear) than the great Bob Dylan, in whose league he stood. Those that are fans will have to have this (and it would make a great Christmas or Hanukkah gift since it is brand new and not well known yet.) To be clear, I don’t mean only the hard-core fans, but anyone who likes any of Leonard Cohen’s many albums and songs and poetry volumes.

Secondly, anyone who has followed Walsh’s books and teaching and ministry (and now, sustainable farming) — from back in the early days when he set the bar for books about a Christian world-and-life-view. (The Transforming Vision co-written with J. Richard Middleton remains a must-read in my view) and, also, the very strong follow-up, also with Richard — what to this day remains the best book on postmodernity, Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be, which I cannot recommend more highly. You may know Brian’s own collection of sermons and talks — one of them delivered at the legendary Jubilee Conference in Pittsburgh — called Subversive Christianity: Imaging God in a Dangerous Time, the first that had a forward by his friend and (then) little known Anglican Bible scholar, N.T. Wright, aka Tom. It is astute and thoughtful and serious and fiery and I read from it often.  I’ll tell you about the even more relevant, recent books he wrote or co-wrote in a minute, but just know that his many fans and friends should get this new Rags of LIght one, pronto.

(Just for fun, you can visit a BookNotes post I did a few years ago when a group of his former students and colleagues did a book in his honor called A Sort of Homecoming.)

Thirdly, it seems to me that anyone who is interested in the interplay of a Christian imagination and the popular arts — in this case folk-rock indie music and, of course, contemporary poetry — will love how Brian interprets Cohen’s lyrics and lines and will enjoy how a radical Christian with a wild Biblical imagination can interact with this profane Jewish saint. Who wouldn’t want to know which version (of the hundreds) covering Cohen’s Hallelujah, is the best? To read excerpts from interviews and documentaries and biographies? Rags of Light is part of the excellent “Short Theological Engagements with Popular Music “ series curated by Christian Scharen of Yale and it stands alongside — perhaps towering above — the other good ones in this line (which includes a nifty one on the Indigo Girls, by the way. Also Radiohead, Black Sabbath, The Roots, and one by the great Daniel White Hodge on Tupac.) Anyway, if you want to give a gift to somebody who is into serious pop music, or who reads stuff like David Darks Everyday Apocalypse or Steve Turner’s Pop-Cultured, this new book would be a great choice.

Fourthly, if you know anything about Cohen, and Walsh, you might know that both are pressing us towards lament and attending to our sadness, honoring the brokenness of this life, and somehow — even in doubt and despair — finding a glimmer of hope among the detritus of a corrupt civilization. For Walsh, the covenantal nature of reality, the God-upheld glory of creation that was created by the love of the Triune God, even as it is despoiled by sin and disrupted by idolatry, points us to Jesus and — surprise! — this odd Jewish folk/rock star himself sings and writes much about the Rabbi from Nazareth.

But Cohen and Walsh will have nothing of cheap or sentimental faith or disengaged piety that shields us from the harsh realities of this warring world. I had no idea how bitterly (viciously?) critical Cohen could be of the idols of secularized modernity, and it fires Brian up to preach like Jeremiah and Isaiah and Amos about impending doom and our contemporary ecological and social injustices. If you are hurting, if you are tired of cheap faith, if you are concerned about the immoral nonsense happening all over the world (but certainly in what some call Trumpworld and the ungodly nationalism that drives it) you will want to have Cohen along for this part of the journey. And Walsh is doubtlessly the best interpreter we’ve got, about the nature of our idolatrous, covenant-breaking, living-in-exile times and of how Cohen points us through it. But, again, this is no cheesy spiritual claptrap. Cohen’s last album, released right before his death in 2016, was called You Want It Darker. Yep. This book will be true light for some who knows well our cultural darkness, or even their own dark days. Without being jaded or cynical, but with great pathos, it speaks the truth about hard things. Some readers really need just such a book.

Fifth, if you or someone you know is on that journey that has come to be called “deconstruction” — that is tearing down old pieties and theological views to deconstruct evangelical truism (and maybe the Christian faith all together) then you simply have to read this book. While not aimed solely at those engaged in doubt or in the deconstruction posture, it necessarily comes up, sometimes subtly and sometimes not, on almost every other page. If you are a leader of this movement — and some of my friends are podcasters and authors and seem like deconstruction gurus, these days — I beg of you to pick up Rags of Light. ( suspect you know who you are; I could name a dozen of you and, again, you need this in your toolkit to help others in their critical journey.)

There is so much in Cohen’s oeuvre and there is such wisdom and candor in how Walsh reads him, that it will be a brilliant companion for those moving away from conventional faith. But here is the thing: Walsh has always invited the abused and the seekers and the skeptics and the marginalized to the table of God’s fellowship, knowing in his own broken bones that Christ himself receives those who perhaps His church would not. He has never advanced a toxic sort of right wing faith or abstract doctrinal truisms, so he has long been a passionate voice useful for those deconstructing. It seems to me that Brian has consistently held out a counter-cultural faith that is built on covenant, relationship, a recognition of our hurts and frailty, and a rage-against-the-machine sort of prophetic denunciation of church and state. His powerful chapter in Rags of Light about Cohen the prophet — Cohen studied Isaiah diligently as a youth with his Talmudic scholar grandfather — will blow you away and bring tears to your eyes and make you want this kind of faith, a full-on, deep Biblical communal discipleship shaped by a prophetic imagination. Anyway, give it to anybody in the throes of this sort of deconstruction of conventional religiosity. They will thank you.

Leonard Cohen fans, Brian Walsh fans, pop music fans, those who are hurting, and those who are in doubt or deconstructing, are the five sorts of readers I believe would most greatly benefit from this book. Oh, yes, maybe Hearts & Minds fans; if you care about our curated book lists and my taste in stuff, you can be sure this is one I’d recommend with gusto. And I’m hardly a Cohen fan, to be honest. I still loved this book so much.

Two more things you should know about Rags of Light.

First, the Biblical insights on every page of this book examining the (often quite Biblical) poetry and lyrics from this Jewish singer-songwriter are stellar. Wow. Not unlike Walsh’s 2011 book putting the lyrics of Bruce Cockburn into conversation with a Biblical imagination (Kicking at the Darkness: Bruce Cockburn and the Christian Imagination), Rags of Light is like a Biblical study of the sort you don’t get in most Sunday school classes or (on the other hand) in abstract, technical commentaries. Walsh’s reading of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament is stunning — on target, wise and informed, relevant and radical and life-giving. If you find Bible reading a chore or ho-hum, I dare you to pick up this little volume and let Brian and Mr. Cohen stimulate your Scriptural imagination just a bit.

You can see Walsh’s great familiarity with the Bible in the recently reissued major work (co-written with Steve Bouma-Predigar) Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement where Brian does exceedingly good Biblical work on themes of home and homemaking, home-breaking and homecoming (and, yes, the concern for the unhoused.) (Here is a BookNotes reflection I did on their book earlier this year.) For those familiar with the increasingly well-known telling of the plot of the Bible using the lingo of creation-fall-redemption-restoration, Walsh explores Old and New Testaments with this similiar angle of original shalom and homemaking, alienation and exile from one’s place, and (glorious, if sobered) return and homecoming. In an age of broken homes and, importantly, increasing hostility to migration and immigrants, this theme of exile and displacement and hospitality and homecoming is so very important and nobody plumbs the depths of Scriptures about this better than Walsh (admittedly, often, with co-authors like ecological scholar Bouma-Predigar and Old Testament prof Richard Middleton, and New Testament scholar extraordinaire, Sylvia Keesmaat.) All of his books are very, very engaged in astute and creative reading, hearing, wrestling, and application of Scripture.

Walsh hints at his particular framing of the Biblical narrative throughout Rags of Light and even if you frankly don’t know much about Cohen the controversial Jewish activist or Cohen the published poet who is esteemed in the world of letters, or Cohen the rock star, believe me, the Bible stuff here (illuminated by Cohen’s lyrics and speeches) is generative. Of course, I have often said that my two favorite Bible commentaries — even ahead of Walter Brueggemann’s fine work and the great N.T. Wright — are the two that Brain did with his own life partner, Biblical scholar Sylvia Keesmaat: Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire and Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire / Demanding Justice. If you love the Bible and want to have its story shape and drive your own story, living it out in our contemporary culture, and you’ve not struggled with these two works, you really, really should. They are paradigm changing and truly transformational — and the most creatively done Bible commentaries you’ve ever seen, I promise. Rags of Light is a nice little start towards this distinctive, even idiosyncratic reading of the Holy Bible, and I wanted you to know that the subtitle about “the Landscape of the Biblical Imagination” really is at the heart of this book.

Along with my appreciation of Brian’s extraordinary enthusiasm for the Biblical texts and their overarching narrative and trajectory, I also am impressed with how he has developed this nearly one-of-a-kind propensity to use pop music in liturgy that is deep and wide and honest and faithful. Anybody can quote a poem or a rock song to spice up their preaching, but Brian very deeply intertwines the ancient words and the contemporary poets. It is not cheesy or simplistic. He does it prayerfully, even. With a team of others that came together in the more than a decade when he worked at the University of Toronto for the CRC as campus minister and pastored a group they called Wine Before Breakfast, he self-published two books of their very creative liturgies. We are thrilled to be one of the few bookstores that carry these and we very highly recommend them. They are Habakkuk Before Breakfast and St. John Before Breakfast. I wrote about them extensively here and here and we have them both on sale for 20% off. There is nothing like them in print!

Secondly, the format and flow of this lovely study into the dark and troubling lyrics (and the healing and finally hopeful beauty of Mr. Cohen’s vision, as well) is to show how Cohen works with a few major themes; Rags of Light offers a good rubric to categorize different impulses and perspectives evident in his work. After a tremendously honoring, very interesting foreword by Biblical scholar and professor J. Richard Middleton (who, like Brian, uses music in his classes, from the aforementioned Cockburn to Bob Marley and the Wailers from his native Jamaica) there is a breathtaking overview in a preface in which Walsh very appropriately compares and contrasts two Jewish spokespersons, prophets, sinners, and rock stars, King David of Biblical fame and Leonard Cohen of Montreal. Brilliant!

And then, the close reading of texts begins (starting with the very early and famous song “Suzanne”) under the chapter title: “You think maybe you will trust him: Cohen and the Promise of Jesus.” Who knew this Jewish poet wrote and sang so much throughout his career about Jesus? Wow.

The next chapter is important for anyone wanting a vibrant and engaging overview of the covenantal Biblical imagination, called “Lover, Lover, Come Back to Me: Cohen and the Biblical Landscape of Covenant.” That is followed by some of the most compelling pages I’ve read all year about the prophetic calling (in the Bible and perhaps in our own lives) called “When they said “Repent,” I wondered what they meant: Cohen and the Prophetic Voice.” I am not exaggerating but this is stunning, as hard-hitting as any Biblical prophet.  And, lastly, there is an amazing chapter— I had tears in my eyes, feeling like I was given a fresh call to conversion, a postmodern altar call, if you will — which explores how Mr. Cohen has noted how his name stems from the ancient tribe of Levi, the priestly class. Indeed, it is explored with beauty and allusive grace in the chapter called, “If if be your will: Cohen and the Priestly Calling,” As you may know or guess, each chapter title is drawn from an important Cohen song or poem. The last postscript is a rumination on that final album, “You Want It Darker.”

And so, let’s go. Order some books.  As a favorite Walsh line from Cohen puts it, let’s dance — “to the end of love.”

Owing to his own familiarity with the biblical landscape as a Christian pastor, Brian Walsh ably shows that Cohen is best understood not as a secular saint, but as a post-secular poet who spoke both prophetic and priestly truths. The many Cohen fans who are also people of faith or spiritual seekers will find much to enjoy in this book. –Christian Raab, OSB, associate professor of theology, Saint Meinrad Seminary, author of Walk the Line: Rock Music and the Christian Imagination

Brian Walsh knows that the highest order of interpretation is responsive making. In Rags of Light, Walsh not only recognizes and argues for Leonard Cohen’s prophetic and priestly role, but makes Cohen’s music a usable liturgy–one profoundly helpful in our cultural moment. I emerge from its pages in song and prayer–ready to make my way through a landscape of both wonder and ruin–and not unaccompanied.  — Tiffany Eberle Kriner, associate professor of English, Wheaton College, author of the memoir, In Thought, Word, and Seed: Reckonings from a Midwest Farm

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The second book that I finished this week that has left be breathless, excited, stunned, even, for the fine writing and good storytelling and near-brilliant, extraordinary insight, is a work of upbeat sociology, I guess, immersive journalism by a woman who wanted to know (again) why mostly poor rural folks would vote for Donald Trump and embrace the MAGA worldview when, on the face of it, is seems that the rich, divorced, New Yorker who owned casinos and caroused with Playboy Bunnies, was anything but a hero for the rural and the poor. Arlie Russell Hochschild is an accomplished, older woman writer — a died in the wool liberal, now from Berkeley — who grew to great fame when she wrote a bestseller and award-winning study of this same theme (how the working class and often marginalized poor would come to support the Presidential bid of Mr. Trump) in her Strangers in Their Own Land, set amidst oil rig workers and shrimpers in coastal Louisiana. She has written widely on topics such as the intimacy of Homelife in a world of second shift work and the “time bind” many feel as they balanced Homelife and work. Years ago we stocked her social study of work itself called The Cultural Study of Work. This new one is the most readable and powerful book, yet.

Stolen Pride: Loss Shame, and the Rise of the Right Arlie Russell Hochschild (The New Press) $30.99 OUR SALE PRICE = $24.79

In Stolen Pride, Ms Hochschild’s newest work (which was years in the making) she seems to be revisiting the methodology and agenda of her previous serious study, Strangers in Their Own Land, again trying to piece together the social imagination and worldview, if you like, of working class conservative Americans. In this case she visits and studies what is one of the whitest counties and the second poorest Congressional District in the country, focusing on a patriotic, Republican-voting town in the heart of Appalachia, Pikeville, Kentucky.  There are stories galore about this impoverished but culturally rich region — the place where the legendary Hatfields and McCoys had their generations-long, murderous feuds and where coal companies did dastardly things for nearly a century. (Cue “Paradise” by John Prine, at least, and recall John Sayle’s great film, Matewan or the classic documentary of near-by Harlan County.)

Hochschild goes to Pikeville about the time the neo-Nazi Matthew Heimbach planned a far-right wing and neo-Nazi (with the less radical KKK helping) march through the town, perhaps as a dry run for what would become the infamous Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, of which he was a prime architect. She wanted to know what this mostly white, very rural, Appalachian town thought of this upcoming event and, perhaps to her surprise, most folk were disinterested (to say the least.) Whatever Heimbach’s Traditionalist Worker Party, the KKK, and the neo-Nazi’s had in mind, many of the good folks of the area simply weren’t buying it. The conversations Hochschild has about this are remarkable (and the friendship she develops with Heimbach is itself extraordinary. I’ve read a bit about this guy, who attended Towson University near us for a bit and made a splash there with his White Civilization stuff.) His unexpected appearances in this book about Appalachia were fascinating and the way Pikeville police and others responded is told well. One of her black respondents talks about the connection between “the hood and the holler.” The local college plays a role in things, but many or underemployed, at best. There’s black lung and other ailments. It’s a decent sized town surrounded by mountains and valleys, and legendary roads leading to rustbelt towns in Ohio — not unlike described in Hillbilly Elegy. Stolen Pride is a superb book and not a few reviewers have called it essential for our times.

Stolen Pride works as a book of embedded journalism, a creative-nonfiction work of artful storytelling, explaining her time out of her own comfort zone, becoming empathetic friends to many of those who started out as interviewees and subjects. I adored how she came to care about Appalachian people, including — I must add — those who have been addicted to opioids, and with those in the booming recovery business, and with more than one incarcerated prisoner. She hung out with fundamentalist country preachers (the role of religion shows up often) and with a rather progressive chaplain at the local community college. She talked with working women and men and those who are chronically unemployed and the aged. She visited diners and doctors offices and fire halls. She connects with the few immigrant Muslims (who are loved and respected —  one is a caring doctor) and with black farmers. She included a wide swath of the population, believe me, and for anyone trying to expand our awareness of our fellow Americans, this book takes you into the ups and downs of this intriguing community through the stories of its mountain people. And their family histories, pains, loves, and achievements. I couldn’t put it down and highly recommend it.

But here is what sets it apart from other such behind-the-scenes journalistic accounts of rural America; she is exploring a theory that she is developing about what is really going on when poorer folks support this unlikely candidate who has little in common with their Appalachian experience. Her theory — which by the end of the book she was discussing with everybody she met — is about shame the very title, Stolen Shame, is important.

Perhaps in many places, but certainly in rugged, individualistic, rural Appalachia, there is a wholesome pride that is manifest and it includes pride in doing hard, even dangerous work in the coal mines, in fueling American growth and industry, about unique Appalachian cultural stuff, about God and country and church and state and self-reliance and more. It comes as no surprise that these are a proud people who, when industry declined and the coal mines were running down (and the outside company’s started blowing the tops of the people’s beloved mountaintops and poisoning their streams and waterways) something akin to (and sometimes directly related to) shame developed. Poor folks who for generations have fended for themselves in a region often cut off from the larger trends in American culture, lost their ability to care for their own and the shame became debilitating. The stories she listens to are poignant and often powerful. It starts to make sense.

But here is the thing: I cannot explain it simply, here, but throughout the book, as the author asks more and more folks about all this, she comes to realize that a strong man, bully figure (a false savior some would say) is just what these ashamed people desire. They see in Trump a person who can, in a sense, give the finger to those who shame them (the so-called comedy of mocking hillbillies is a common theme in these shame-enhancing stories. Whether Trump and his Towers and his ultra-rich, Miami Beach parties mock the mountain folks is almost beside the point, it seems. ) And then, in a four-step pattern that Hochschild developed, Trump, by being accused of shameful things and not caring, can vicariously atone for their shame, can carry it for them. Without a single citation of the scapegoating theories of Rene Girard there is a bold and compelling bit of insight she is developing and bouncing off some of her conversation partners in this congressional district. She sees Trump as they see him, one who can carry and vindicate their (undeserved) sense of shame.

There is no cheap psychologizing here, even as she talks about unrecognized grief and the like. I found it to be a fascinating read and encouraging, gracious, even, and very helpful as I try to make sense of things in our polarized culture. Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right offers a caring and I’d say profound insight about the moral emotions of pride and shame (that, in the world of Michael Sandel, who endorses the book) “animate the resentment that roils our politics.”

Sandel continues:

This is the best book yet on the moral and political psychology of the new right, a masterclass in the art of listening across our cultural and political divides.

That is something we need, and it comes to us in an entertaining and captivating story of this scholars visits and friendships in Pike County, Kentucky. There’s a sharp and wise Appendix called “Upper and Lower Decks of the Empathy Bridge” that will come in very handy for anyone doing peace-making or common ground exercises. I recommend this well researched book highly.

Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Stolen Pride is a masterpiece of epic proportions. Her account of a small, struggling Appalachian community’s response to a parade of out-of-state white nationalists provides a glimmer of hope for our fragile democracy, even in the face of political polarization, economic inequality, racism, and the nonrational, emotional dimensions of political identity and mobilization. My advice to everyone is: read this book. –Shaunna L. Scott, professor emerita of sociology, University of Kentucky, and former president of the Appalachian Studies Association

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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We were delighted that so many customers and friends responded to the various titles we suggested in our latest BookNotes that landed in your inboxes (if you subscribe) right in the middle of the Thanksgiving holiday. Black Friday isn’t so hectic around here but we smile, knowing it was the exciting day we opened our doors back in 1982. No shindig here, but as I suggested in that latest newsletter, we are very, very grateful for those keeping this family biz alive. Thank you one and all. Your orders and notes and calls have been appreciated, believe me.

I also hoped you enjoyed those links to a podcast on which I appeared to talk about Advent reading and the reminder of our own “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” bi-weekly podcast. Check them out (and share if you are so inclined.) You can watch them at YouTube or listen on Spotify or Apple.  Again, we are grateful and hope that our story of the sort of stuff we do here somehow encourages you in living out your own story, even in your own “hopes and fears of all the years…”

Which brings me to this short BookNotes.

I feel compelled to share a few ideas for you about what some call a “blue Christmas.” I’ve been to some “Blue Christmas” services where people lament and wail and offer up their grief to God, a special sort of Christmas gift of shared sadness. I’ve been to others that while they may not sing “Joy to the World” they are only just a tad more gentle, with quiet verses and soft candles. Services that offer a place to ponder the season in light of our hurts and sorrows and worries are a godsend. However, it seems to me that one hour out of a busy season of ho-ho-ho-ing isn’t enough. We need to make space for God to touch our hurting hearts. Advent is a perfect time for getting in touch with such stuff. We should be glad that the liturgical cycle of the church year affords us this time of attending to longing and unmet hopes.

First one we highly recommend.

The Advent of Justice: A Book of Meditations by Richard Middleton, Brian Walsh, Sylvia Keesmaat, and Mark VanderVennan (Wipf & Stock) $15.99  / OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

Although not only about grief and loss exclusively my favorite Advent devotional remains the small, Bible-rich set of reflections, The Advent of Justice, which you may find helpful even if (maybe especially if) you are worried and/or jaded or disappointed.

I read through this short book every Advent, not only because all four authors are among my good friends but because I know of no other book that connects Old and New Testament (and longing, lament, hope and promise) so very, very well. I guess one might say it is Brueggemann-esque — provocative wisdom drawn from close socio-cultural reading of the settings of the Biblical texts. I think it is nothing short of brilliant… it understands the context of the prophets, the looming concerns about exile, and the facts-on-ground-questions about poverty and displacement and full-bodied hope. This was first done by the social justice ministry and public theology organization in Canada, the Centre for Public Justice. The evocative writing of these four is rooted in the practice of waiting even while attentive to the realities of pathos. You’ve never read an Advent book like this and you, too, may revisit it often.

4 on hard times /  4 on hard Advents

Here, then, are four books (of many, many) about sorrow and lament and sadness in our Christian lives. And then I’ll name four that are specifically about attending to those realities during Advent and the Christmastide season which follows. I hope these are helpful.

Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive Russ Ramsey (Zondervan) $29.99  // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I’ve commented about this already, describing it as a book I really, really liked and very highly recommend to one and all. Each chapter explores the hard times of a certain painter and how his or her work can remind us of our own deeply human hurts and struggles. It is not a downer of a book, but is edge-of-your-seat informative and yet, in an allusive and gracious way, invites readers into the stories of these painters (some religiously-inclined some less so) and their visions of life and hard times.

I am honored to have an endorsement blurb on the inside (and, please know, it really is an honor.) Russ Ramsey wrote a previous book like this called Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art Through the Eye of Faith which I thoroughly enjoyed. This one is (as Douglas McKelvey puts it) “highly entertaining and informative” but “in the end they reveal themselves as hospitable invitations to get to the transcendent heart of things.”

The storytelling is great, the artwork shown is moving, the ways in which such stories shape our hearts and unleash something — this book is worth every penny. And it will allow you to honor your own human story, even if it is sad or complicated.

A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in the Rituals of Grief and Healing Amanda Held Opelt (Worthy) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

Again, I have written about this at length before but wanted to just remind you of it here, now. Amanda (the sister of the late author Rachel Held Evans) was in great grief after the rather sudden and unexpected death of her sister. The short version is simple: she found great comfort in exploring various grieving practices in various cultures, exploring what they get at, what they offer, why some folks do these (sometimes slightly odd to most) customs and how they can bring healing and resolution. I really, really enjoyed this book, its creative style reads like great nonfiction reporting and memoir, almost, and its advice is offered with a light touch.

Sarah Bessey (herself a very talented writer) says, “One of the best books I’ve read in ages… a profound, mystical, and even haunting book that will be a faithful companion to all of us who have seen trouble.”

Walking with God Through the Valley: Recovering the Purpose of Biblical Lament May Young (IVP Academic) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

This is brand new and I haven’t read it all but I’m happy to announce that this is really, really good, a refreshing deeply Biblical study (but not unaware of the deeper philosophical and theological questions that ensue as you unpack texts of lament and ask the big questions of theodicy.) And yet, not only a Biblical study, it is deeply pastoral, human-scale, an invitation to get real with God and each other and use these passages in our own faith communities. We need to learn to practice lament in our own lives and in our churches. This book offers an excellent foundation.

We have a good number of books about lament — Biblical and more experiential — and this tends to be a bit headier, exploring how lament “echoes throughout the pages of Scripture.” But May Young — who chairs the Department of Biblical Studies, Christian Ministries, Intercultural Studies and Philosophy at Taylor University. — knows how to teach and how to inspire and how to even come alongside us, guiding us towards how to engage the texts of lament and explore them in our own contexts.

Bible teacher Andrew Abernethy says that Walking with God Through the Valley is, “A fantastic book! Not only do we learn more about cement, but we are propelled through personal examples to practice lament individually and communally.”

Ingrid Faro of Northern Seminary says,

“This is the book on lament that we’ve been waiting for and need.”

 

The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope Curt Thompson (Zondervan) $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

I promised that this would be a short BookNotes column so I do refer you back to one of the other times I explained why we so appreciate Dr. Curt Thompson and why The Deepest Place is so very, very important for us today.

It is on the nature of suffering but it is no dry treatise on the reasons for suffering. Nor is it merely a pious reminder to trust God in all things. Curt is a neuroscientist and therapists (see some of his own unique and wise therapeutic practices in his fascinating, beautiful book called The Soul of Desire: Discovering the Neuroscience of Longing, Beauty, and Community) so he knows a bit about what really gives folks a sense of hope, how our characters can be profoundly shaped in Christ-like ways as we learn resilience and authentic flourishing.

There are fabulous stories in this wise book and it is — as author Ian Morgan Cron puts it — “a spiritual formation tour de force for anyone ready to look life’s inescapable pain in the eye and make something better of it.” Jessica Honegger notes on the back that this book can give “durable hope.”

Blue Christmas: Devotions of Light in a Season of Darkness Todd Outcalt (Upper Room) $14.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

This may be a fairly conventional Advent devotional — a nice page or two a day during the season — but written for those who are hurting or down. Reflective and honest but still mostly about Advent. While it suggests (on the back) that “for many, this time of year magnifies loneliness, anxiety, grief, and despair” Blue Christmas doesn’t dwell too bluntly on the hurts and fears. I wish it were a bit more raw, but it wants to offer some bit of charm, I guess. Outcalt is the lead pastor of a large United Methodist Church and has written a lot of books (including one about praying through cancer. He understands.)

There are closing prayers for each devotional and some additional prayers in the back which are honest and useful. Also discussion questions.

There is also a short “Blue Christmas” worship service outline in the back with sample invocations and prayers, litanies and carols, nicely structured.

A Weary World: Reflections for a Blue Christmas Kathy Escobar (WJK) $16.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80

This one, by an author we deeply respect (who pastors an innovative and inclusive church in North Denver called The Refuge), may be a tad more profound, including a deep understanding of those who are demoralized due to injustice in the world, those who, need to lament not just due to their own difficulties but because they bear some of the weight of the world…  A Weary World offers understanding about the great sadness in the world this time of year when many are worried and exhausted and when, not only do some of us struggle, but the whole world seems so disordered. She offers a lot of allusive insight, great reflections exercises and more.

Kathy has done Blue Christmas services for years and they have been sincerely appreciated, especially among those who want something substantive but will not settle for religious cliches. There is extra digital content for worship ideas and study groups at the publisher’s website.

Wounded in Spirit: Advent Art and Meditations David Bannon (Paraclete Press) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

This is a remarkable (and very handsomely designed) hardback with artwork, each devotional inspired by painters who were troubled and sad.  I have raved about this extraordinary book before and extreme David Bannon’s insight and care immensely. (Philip Yancey, who knows a thing or two about such things, wrote a breathtaking foreword.)

Not unlike the new one by Ramsey, listed above, Bannon used these artist’s stories of loss and depression to console his own emotional sadness in his own time of loss and struggle with depression. A powerful story… a great resource.

Honest Advent: Awakening to the Wonder of God-with-Us, Then, Here, and Now Scott Erickson (Zondervan) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Again, this is one we’ve highlighted often, before. Some really like it, not only for the hipster graphic art, but because it is written in conversational, honest, storytelling, almost memoir style. This is a bit edgy, kind of cool, by a really raw writer who is a young-ish artist. He understands the creative impulse, has a less than typical sort of spirituality, and enhances his good book with lots of graphics and illustrations (that are black, white, and gold; very cool!) This is all about needing to be real during this season, being honest about the audacious story of Mary and Joseph and the incarnation, but also about our own feelings of alienation and discontent. Can we be honest about all that, bringing it all together? This fresh and engaging book (now out in a paperback) will be a book for those who may not want a more typical book of holiday cheer.