A Guy in the Pew

This is a name-droppers dream: my law school friend Ruth Marcus (now an opinion writer at the Washington Post ) has a column tdoay about Candy Bombers , a book written by my friend Andrei Cherny. (Really, they are both my friends--you can check out my Facebook page for proof. Grin). In any event, Ruth's op-ed and Andrei's book are both worth reading. Here are some highlights from Ruth's column: The city is in dire straits -- its economy shattered, its citizens desperately hungry. Random violence is rising, electricity is sporadic. Three years after the invasion, hope for a brief occupation has faded. The mission is to build democracy from the ruins of dictatorship, but sober analysts question whether a flaw in the national character makes freedom unattainable. This is not Baghdad 2008 but Berlin 1948, which makes the reunified German capital a particularly fitting venue for Barack Obama's speech tomorrow. The lush Tiergarten where Obama will speak was then a wastela...

I have been meaning to blog about my friend Andrei Cherny's new book The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour for some time. Now I have a great excuse. Talking Points Memo is doing its book blog about the book. You can find the posts here . Andrei starts off the conversation: The Candy Bombers was an attempt to write the kind of character-driven, narrative history that I enjoy reading but - more importantly from the standpoint of this discussion - it was also an attempt to excavate a "usable past" for progressives, something we talk a lot about but have not done enough of. About four years ago, I asked myself these questions: If, in this era of Abu Ghraib and a descending situation in Iraq, America is doing the wrong things in the world, when were we most clearly doing the right thing? If we are at a low ebb of our standing in the eyes of people in other nations, when were we most beloved and admired and trusted around t...

Through Tobias Haller (and he got it from Grandmère Mimi :) What we have below is a list of the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing users. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school (actually, I used stars), italicize the ones you started but didn't finish. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Anna Karenina The Brothers Karamazov Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies War and Peace Vanity Fair The Time Traveler’s Wife The Iliad Emma The Blind Assassin The Kite Runner Mrs. Dalloway Great Expectations American Gods A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Atlas Shrugged Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books Memoirs of a Geisha Middlesex Quicksilver Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West The Canterbury Tales *** The Historian : a novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Love in the Time of Cholera Brave New World The Fountainhead Foucault’s Pendulum Middlemarch Frankenstein Th e ...

Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics writes about his unexpected love of the Harry Potter series. I must admit that I had exactly the same reaction: initial disinterest followed by a rapid and addicting read of the entire series in a matter of weeks: When it comes to Harry Potter, I was a late adopter. For years, I chuckled at the avid readers who camped out at book stores the night before the latest book’s release. My wife is hard to buy for, so when she mentioned half-heartedly that she should read Harry Potter because all of her friends were fans, I bought her the boxed set of the first 6 volumes. She read about 10 pages to humor me, and has not picked them up since. Months later, looking for something to read one day as I left for the airport, I grabbed the first book of the series from her bedside table. I was instantly addicted, and proceeded to plow through all seven books during the next 4 months. I can’t articulate what is so great about these books, but rarely have I enjo...

Now this is cool--a large group of scholars have organized a blog devoted to C.S. Lewis. You can find it here . Here is a smaple post about the Narnia series: Ever since they were published in the 1950s, C.S. Lewis's seven Chronicles of Narnia have puzzled readers. The puzzle has to do with the fact that the seven stories have no obvious unifying theme. Three of the books seem to be clear Biblical allegories. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a retelling of the Gospel story. The Magician’s Nephew gives us a version of the creation account from the Book of Genesis. The Last Battle reimagines the end of the world and the final judgement, as told in the Book of Revelation. But the other four Narnia Chronicles have no obvious scriptural foundation. Why does the Christ-like figure of Aslan enter the story among dancing trees in Prince Caspian? Why does he fly in a sunbeam in The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader'? Why is he mistaken for two lions in The Horse and His Boy? Why doe...

One hundred years ago social gospel founder Walter Rauschenbusch published hte now famous book Christianity and the Social Crisis . in hoonor of that anniversary, his great-grandson Paul Raushenbush published Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st century , which includes the text of the original book with a contemporary response to each chapter. This week on Beliefnet, Raushenbush is having a very interesting dialogue on the relevancy of the Social Gospel with Bill Hybels, senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church. I am sure that the editors of Beleifnet were expecting a debate, but the dialogue is actually far more interesting than any debate could be. Here is a sample post by Pastor Hybels: Pastor Raushenbush was right in predicting that he and I would feel essentially the same way on the Sandwich/Jesus issue. Stretching the metaphor a bit, I would add that the acid test for whether a person has indeed eaten the "Jesus" sandwich is whether or not he or she ...

Busted Halo is one of the more interesting religious websites--it is geared toward religious seekers in their 20s and 30s. Mike Hayes, the managing editor of Busted Halo has just published a new book, Googling God , that focuses on the issue of the religious life of those in their 20s and 30s. Here are some highlights frtom Hayes' description of what the book is all about: When Paulist Father Brett Hoover and I founded BustedHalo.com in 2000, our mission was to minister to the “spiritual but not religious crowd” in their 20s and 30s. Much of our early research led us to think differently about young adults and how technology was influencing their lives. Of the more than 600 young adults we interviewed from across the country 89% stated that the number one thing they wanted in a spiritual website was information that they could find quickly and then get out. The validity of that early research has been borne out in my experience ministering to young adults over the last seven yea...

J.K. Rowling has stated what should be ovious to any reader of the Harry Potter series--particularly the final book: The book is inspired by Christian themes (Spoiler Alert) : CHRISTIAN motifs play a central role in the Harry Potter stories, author JK Rowling told an American television audience on July 29. Participating in a question-and-answer session on the NBC news magazine show Dateline, Rowling was asked by a child in the studio audience what the significance of her calling Harry Potter the “chosen one” might be. “Well, there -- there clearly is a religious — undertone,” to the stories, Rowling said. She added that it had “always been difficult to talk about that because until we reached Book Seven, views of what happens after death and so on” an explicit discussion of the books’ Christian motifs “would give away a lot of what was coming.” Rowling stated “my belief and my struggling with religious belief, and so on, I think is quite apparent in this book.” Asked by the televis...

The Christian Post is reporting that Dr. James Dobson (who does not appear to have read any of the books in question) is advising Christian families to avoid the Harry Potter series: "‘In a story about Christians' views on the Harry Potter books and films, reporter Jacqueline Salmon wrote that ‘Christian parenting guru James Dobson has praised the Potter books,’’ the statement read. ‘This is the exact opposite of Dr. Dobson's opinion – in fact, he said a few years ago on his daily radio broadcast that ‘We have spoken out strongly against all of the Harry Potter products.’’ The reason the ministry leader is against the material is obvious given the presence of magical characters (witches, wizards, ghosts, goblins, werewolves, poltergeists and so on) in the Harry Potter stories. ‘[A]nd given the trend toward witchcraft and New Age ideology in the larger culture,’ FOTF added, ‘it's difficult to ignore the effects such stories (albeit imaginary) might have on young, impre...

J. Peter Pham, director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University in Virginia, has a very interesting review of Pope Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth. The entire review is well worth a close read, but here are some highlights: As JESUS OF NAZARETH unfolds, it is clear that its author has little patience for popular modern Christologies portraying Jesus as wise teacher on a par with the founders of other religious or philosophical movements, or as a preacher of tolerance and understanding, or even as a political revolutionary. No wonder the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger investigated the Christological writings of Jesuit theologians Jacques Dupuis and Roger Haight and more recently issued a warning about those of another Jesuit, Jon Sobrino, who in its view transgressed into those respective faulty understandings. (In the interest of full disclosure, I was a student of Dupuis, whose official defender...

Christianity Today has announced its 2007 Book Award Winners. Here is the process Christianity Today used to select these books: "This year, 43 publishers nominated 291 titles. CT editors selected the top books in each category, and then panels of judges—one panel for each category—voted. " Winners include: The Language of God: 'A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S. Collins ( Free Press ) Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham ( Eerdmans ) The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World by Miroslav Volf ( Eerdmans ) Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? by Philip Yancey ( Zondervan ) Christianity Today has an evangelical focus, but I think many of these books are worth reading by Christians of all denominations.

One of the books that I want to read is Dr. Francis Collin's The Language of God . Dr. Collins, as you may recall, is was the leader of the Human Genome Project, and his book describes how and why he came to believe in God. This book is particularly timely in response to the anti-religion polemics coming from such well-respected scientists as Richard Dawkins. I recently ran accross s a very interesting review in the December issue of First Things by Stephen M. Barr, theoretical particle physicist at the Bartol Research Institute of the University of Delaware. (Sidenote, this is where Nicholas Knisely did his graduate work in physics). As Barr relates in the review , Collins' conversion began at the side of a hospital bed: "It was in medical school that [Collin's] atheism suffered a blow: "I found the relationships [I] developed with sick and dying patients almost overwhelming." The strength and solace so many of them derived from faith profoundly impressed ...