Books

Our spring books issue includes annotated lists of top titles on religion and the nation's founders, religion and the Civil War, evangelism and youth ministry.

Our spring books issue's reviews include Jason Byassee on David Ford, Shirley Showalter on Carlos Eire, Dennis O'Brien on Terry Eagleton, LaVonne Neff on Elias Aboujaoude and others.

A manifesto hardly seems like the right genre for David F. Ford. The Irish Anglican theologian has made a career partly with the splendid encyclopedia The Modern Theolo­gians, a book regularly blessed by graduate students facing their exams.

The most famous farewell addresses in the history of the American presidency are those delivered by two of the greatest military leaders to occupy the office: George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower. Both warned of the threat that military power and its interests posed to the nation.

Enough already. Do I need yet another book to tell me that the latest technology is messing with my head? Late medieval church leaders, after all, didn't care for Gutenberg's invention, without which the Reformation would have remained a purely local aberration.

Douglas Alan Walrath's astute survey of American novels about clergy is essential reading for budding pastors—as well as for anybody who wants to understand why we American clergy are the way we are.