Books

Todd Purdum's work of journalistic history on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is ultimately a story about politicians doing the right thing.

Philip Jenkins vividly synthesizes a specialized historiography: World War I as a global religious conflict.

Erika Hayasaki, having reported on a succession of traumatic events, read about a popular university class on death. She decided to enroll.

Owuor's novel wrestles with Kenya's bitter remnants of colonialism. Yet it suggests that the future can be shaped by people who are willing to incorporate the past with honesty and integrity.

Updike's religious explorations are what make his writing so interesting, and Adam Begley explores them well. But he devotes too much space to trying to link fictional settings and characters with Updike's real life.

In two pages, you go from a simple devotional habit to being sucked into the vortex of global power plays. You must be reading Brueggemann.

In this long, freewheeling conversation with the Heidelberg Catechism, Eberhard Busch sometimes uses the document for leverage against distortions in the contemporary church, and sometimes challenges its assumptions.

C. L. Seow explores how the book of Job might have been understood by its original writers and audiences, and how we might look at it now.

Alistair McGrath offers an intellectual history of Emil Brunner's life and thought—and pleads for a recovery of his theology.

Matthew Bowman invites readers to rediscover the once-powerful promise of liberal evangelicalism, which he sees a pastoral middle way between the secular city and fundamentalism.

The story of John de Gruchy’s grief for his eldest son is wrenching. Yet he also wants to offer an account of Christian hope that has both biblical and scientific integrity.

The book publishing world depends on buzz. The best kind of book buzz is created by readers who tell their friends about the books they love. Anyone who is part of a circle of reading friends knows that, despite dire predictions about the demise of book publishing, the appetite for reading books is alive and well. But readers have to find out about a book somehow, and that is where promotion comes in—either by publishers or by the authors themselves. I understand the growing need for writers to promote their own work.

Steven Miller positions evangelicalism as the foil for other thinkers, movers, and shakers: it seemed so powerful and ubiquitous that those outside of the tent felt compelled to address it.

Rowan Williams favors a kind of secularism that requires an honest broker to mediate and manage genuine difference, rather than one that aspires to little more than maximized choice.

I recently interviewed cultural anthropologist and New York Times columnist Tanya Luhrmann about prayer and religious experience. After the interview, I asked her for some recommendations of books on prayer that are not "how-tos." What are some books that can help me understand prayer more conceptually and experientially?