The dog days of summer have been punishing this year in much of the United States. The extreme heat and, in the South, high humidity have strongly incentivized each of us to find shelter inside air-conditioned buildings. The increased time indoors before the crisp days of Autumn arrive provide us with some good opportunity for reading.
Below, you will find reading suggestions from our group that come from a wide range of disciplines and topics. We think these selections will be great for personal and family reading. Most of all, we think they will broaden your understanding of God’s creation and His work in it because they have had that result in our lives. Please leave us your favorite reads in the comment section.
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Doris L. Bergen, ed., The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-First Century, Critical Problems in History series (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), 298 pages.
The essays that comprise this volume deal with the intriguing history of military chaplaincy as well as the sometimes controversial relationships between chaplains and their soldiers, governments, and God. As the title suggests, the historical analysis is broad, sweeping from the first to the twenty-first century. Yet the book is not a dry collection of dates and figures. Rather, the most valuable part of this book is the way its authors deal with the aforementioned relationships. For instance, the contributors raise questions about chaplains who at best witnessed and at worst legitimized things like “the zealous cruelty of the crusades, the viciousness of early modern warfare, modern total war, Nazi genocide, or the Vietnam War and the My Lai massacre” as well as slavery and apartheid (21–22). The writing of Bergen, well-known for her contribution to the field of genocidal studies, is especially insightful with regards to such questions. While military chaplains and those interested in pursuing a career in military chaplaincy will have the most heightened interest in this work, the book is accessible to everyone and is worthy of your time.
—Recommended by Joshua R. Colson
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D. Glenn Butner Jr., Trinitarian Dogmatics: Exploring the Grammar of the Christian Doctrine of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022), 270 pages.
Butner’s Trinitarian Dogmatics is a valuable resource for a variety of reasons, but primarily because it will refresh and sharpen your understanding of key theological concepts on the doctrine of the Trinity—concepts such as consubstantiality, simplicity, perichoresis, inseparable operations, and communion. The book will acquaint you with key theological doctrines, some of their major historical proponents, as well as the biblical texts that support them. Rarely are these three components—theology, history, and Scripture—so clearly explored in a single work, but Butner does so masterfully. If you have never formally studied the doctrine of the Trinity and Trinitarian language before, the book will certainly stretch you and require a slow, careful reading. If you are familiar with the doctrines listed above, Butner’s work will deepen and broaden your understanding of Trinitarian dogmatics.
—Recommended by Jesse Owens
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William F. Byrne, Edmund Burke for Our Time: Moral Imagination, Meaning, and Politics (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2011), 238 pages.
Certain unlikely thinkers occupy the broader evangelical imagination, e.g., G. K. Chesterton, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, John Stott, Flannery O’Conner, Charles Taylor, and Robert P. George. Another such figure is the underappreciated Anglican figure, Edmund Burke (1729–1797). I have resisted the temptation to recommend too much about Burke, who is the subject of my ongoing dissertation work. But like the other thinkers listed above, he is someone with which we should be much more familiar. One day, I hope to appropriate what we can learn from Burke for a specifically Christian audience.
Byrne’s volume is a good introduction to key concepts of Burke’s ethic. He does not write as an evangelical, and this book is not an introduction to Burke’s Christian thought per se. Rather, Edmund Burke for our Time introduces readers to Burke’s basic view of the world, human beings, society, politics, and telos. It highlights the role of universal principles as well as circumstances in ethical deliberations. In many ways, Byrne’s book is an exploration of political theology, which is a vital component of a full-orbed theology, and a worthwhile investment of time.
—Recommended by Matthew Steven Bracey
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David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (New York: Riverhead, 2019), 368 pages.
Some years ago, Malcolm Gladwell published Outliers in which he promoted the “10,000-hour rule”: to become an expert in something, you must give yourself to it for at 10,000 hours. Gladwell’s exploration of this concept was effective and made a huge impression in the popular imagination of the time. In Range, David Epstein challenges Gladwell’s argument, observing that it works for certain skill sets but not others—a point with which Gladwell seems to agree, since he endorsed Epstein’s book. Epstein speaks about the importance of being a generalist. In a world that focuses on specialists and treats generalists, frankly, unfairly at times, Range is a breath of fresh air.
Range reminds readers that specialists do not necessarily have an edge on generalists. Epstein does not write as a Christian, but I am reminded of the unity of the knowledge and the merit in seeing how different disciplines and spheres relate under the sovereign Logos. I do not agree with everything in this book, but it has many interesting components relating to the human brain, perception, technology, knowledge, and, of course, the merits of generalization.
—Recommended by Matthew Steven Bracey
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C. Stephen Evans, A History of Western Philosophy: From the Pre-Socratics to Postmodernism (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2018), 600 pages.
There is no shortage of introductory philosophy books out there, especially in relation to Western Philosophy. Most offer a larger overview of works and help readers see the connectedness of various streams of thought. Evans is no exception. However, the strength of his work comes in its largely biographical framing. He works through various important philosophers of Western Philosophy, noting their context and giving a strong overview of their work and influence. So much of philosophy is understanding what has come before a particular idea and also, what has resulted from it. This book helps readers do both.
—Recommended by Christopher Talbot
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Thomas Fleming, A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War (Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo, 2013), 354 pages.
In my experience, it is rare to find a historian who is thinking in wholly new ways about a subject. Normally, the dominate narratives of a particular topic will guide the researcher through well-worn channels of thought where he or she might highlight a specific point of interest that has been previously overlooked. However, Thomas Fleming’s A Disease in the Public Mind shows how delightful it can be to blaze your own path of research and thought. Fleming’s analysis of the growing sectional divide in American politics and culture from the founding period through the Civil War period offers an interesting and unique argument about how the debate over slavery and immediatist abolitionism pushed the politically and culturally distinct sections of the country into separating. Perhaps most fascinating is seeing how prescient it is for us to think through how political demagoguery polarized the country in the 1830s–1850s and how the public of the North and South grew increasingly distrustful of elites and the federal government.
—Recommended by Phillip T. Morgan
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Margaret Hodges, Saint George and the Dragon, ill. Trina Schart Hyman (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984), 32 pages.
My four-year-old is a voracious reader. We are beginning only now to work on letter sounds, of course! But his appetite for being read-aloud to is nearly bottomless. Thankfully, there is a whole world of longer-form picture books that are absolutely delightful, as well as intellectually stimulating. I had this retelling of a segment of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene story tucked away for when the boys were a little older, since the illustrations of the dragon accurately depict him, in Piglet’s words, as “One of the Fiercer Animals”; but when I pulled it out during a recent afternoon thunderstorm, we were enthralled with the visual and literary depiction of the endurance and bravery of the Red Cross Knight. Hyman’s full-page illustrations are beautiful, but I especially loved her detailed border work, suggestive of later children’s book author/illustrator Jan Brett. I am a novice in attempting a poetic understanding of fairy tales, so I am still contemplating the symbolism present in the healing stream and apple dew that revive Saint George; I suspect baptism and the blood of the new covenant, taken in the Lord’s Supper; but see and judge for yourself!
—Recommended by Rebekah Zuñiga
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Jennifer Pepito, Mothering by the Book: The Power of Reading Aloud to Overcome Fear and Recapture Joy (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2022), 239 pages.
I started this book on a whim using a library reading application on my phone, but I ordered my own copy as soon as I had finished it; I knew I would need a physical copy (or two) to reread, reference, and give away. I do not usually think of myself as a person that struggles with anxiety, but I immediately recognized in myself the latent fears of motherhood that Pepito addresses in her book: “fear of the baby years,” “fear of my children being behind,” “fear of not having enough,” and “fear of not being able to manage,” among others (9–10). Pepito addresses how each of these fears crept into her life by telling a part of her personal story and then shows how the Lord taught her to overcome fear using His Word and the classic children’s literature she read aloud to her children. Pepito provides actionable prompts, suggested memory verses, and related books for both kids and mom at the end of each chapter, making her book not just an interesting mental exercise in how literature can help us in life but an actual launching pad for overcoming fear day-by-day through the words of great books and the Word of the Book.
—Recommended by Rebekah Zuñiga
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Andrew Peterson, The Wingfeather Saga (Colorado Springs, CO: WaterBrook, 2021), 1520 pages.
My wife and I regularly host one of the small groups of our church. It has been our pattern now, for two summers in a row, to read Christian fiction together as a group. Last year we read The Chronicles of Narnia. This year we read through all four books of The Wingfeather Saga. Peterson is a master storyteller. There are clear homages to the Christian greats J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis and yet plenty of Peterson’s own personality and work shine through. The books are not forced moralisms but well done and emphasize themes of family, sacrifice, courage, and redemption in ways that feel compelling and natural. I found myself up late on more than one occasion to finish one of the books because I could not put it down. (To see a fuller reflection on the series, see our review.)
—Recommended by Christopher Talbot
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Eleonore Stump, The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2016), 116 pages.
Fellow HSF contributor Chris Talbot recommended this little book to me in passing a few months ago, and I was hooked as soon as I started reading it. As the title suggests, there is an ongoing debate as to whether the God of the philosophers (particularly Aquinas)—the God of classical theism—is the God of the Bible. Stump’s thesis is that the God of the philosophers is indeed the God of the Bible. She attempts to prove her point by exploring Aquinas’s theology of immutability, eternality, and simplicity. According to Stump, some philosophers and theologians have misunderstood Aquinas and misappropriated his theology so that some versions of classical theism are at odds with the God of the Bible. However, according to Stump, when Aquinas is rightly understood, there is correspondence between classical theism and the God of the Bible. Stump argues, in her own words, “that the God of classical theism is the engaged, personally present, responsive God of the Bible” (18–19); He is the God of the Bible.
Stump’s account is compelling. She is a clear writer, and her arguments are easy to follow. I was most intrigued by Stump’s account of God’s relationship to time, especially the relationship between God’s foreknowledge and human freedom, which have significant importance to Reformed Arminianism. Stump’s work is not an easy, poolside read, but it is worth your time.
—Recommended by Jesse Owens
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Craig L. Symonds, The U.S. Navy: A Concise History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 136 pages.
Anyone with an interest in U.S. naval history knows that volumes upon volumes could be written about each year of its existence. For instance, one of the most important works on maritime warfare is Samuel Eliot Morison’s fifteen volume History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. However, chances are that, like me, you do not have the time to read such extensive treatments. Thankfully, Craig L. Symonds, Professor Emeritus of history at the U.S. Naval Academy, has written this handy, concise history of the U.S. Navy from the Revolutionary War right up to the modern day. While it is concise, Symonds’s writing is marked by careful erudition that provides readers with the essentials of naval history while also pointing them in the direction of further research if something piques their interests. This is simply a must-read for anyone with an interest in naval or military history.
—Recommended by Joshua R. Colson
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Jane Ziegelman, 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement (New York: Harper, 2010), 253 pages.
Jane Ziegelman’s 97 Orchard is a delightful cultural history of European immigration to New York City from the 1850s through the 1920s. Each chapter details the lives and diets of specific German, Irish, Italian, and Eastern European emigrant families who made their way to America and found lodging in the tenement at 97 Orchard Street. Even though Ziegelman’s focus is culinary history (she serves as the director of the Tenement Museum’s culinary center in New York City), she masterfully weaves in the experience of trans-Atlantic migration, cultural acclimation and assimilation, labor, and complex family lives to produce a rich cultural history that is beautifully written, informative, and full of rich detail. As an added bonus, the book is sprinkled throughout with historic recipes for meals such as savory hasenpfeffer, tantalizing cranberry strudel, and, for the more adventurous, imitation pate de foie gras.
Particularly refreshing in a time when many historians delight in publicly humiliating America for all its faults, Ziegelman does not take that approach. She forthrightly explores the many challenges that these immigrant families faced while simultaneously recognizing that for them even the slums of New York were a place of unimagined bounty and opportunity compared to their previous homes. More, the hard work, frugal lifestyle, and tight-knit communities of these newly arrived families soon produced intergenerational wealth that led them to move away from 97 Orchard Street, leaving room for the next national group seeking a new home in America. A wonderful read for anyone, 97 Orchard will be most appealing to those with a love for good food and uplifting stories of grit and success.
—Recommended by Phillip T. Morgan
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