Tag: book-review

My Year in Books – 2025

~ jbwatson ~ Leave a comment

I failed. Miserably. For only the second time since I started keeping track, in 2007, I did not read fifty books last year. In 2018 I read forty-five. For some reason, this year I only read forty. And I really have no explanation for why. Looking back over my last and seeing which months I read a lot and which I did not, I cannot identify any particular reasons. Regardless, I shall have to be more diligent in the year ahead.

Now for what I did read, though.

The first book I read in 2025 was one given to me by my father, Ted Leavengood’s Ted Williams and the 1969 Washington Senators. My father grew up a Senators fan and he told me that this book would help me to understand his frustration when the team moved to Texas. Ted Williams, the Hall of Famer and hitter extraordinaire, was hired to manage the Senators and he led them to their only winning season. They had never won more than 76 games in a season before, but he led them to a record of 86-76. It was a fluke, though, as they won only 70 games the next season and 63 the year after that. But the book explains the maneuvering of the team’s owner, who wanted to relocate the club. Williams would manage the team during its first season in Texas too, where they went just 54-100. Between 1973 and 1985, the club would have thirteen different managers before Bobby Valentine took the helm for the better part of eight seasons.

That was not the only baseball book I read in 2025. One Tough Out, by Rod Carew and Jaime Aron, tells the story of Carew’s childhood, his incredibly baseball career, the loss of his daughter to leukemia at age 18 and the resulting toll that took on his family and his own health struggles, including kidney and heart transplants. I Was Right On Time, by Buck O’Neill with Steven Conrad and David Wulfs, tells the story of Owens, who had a tremendous career in Negro League Baseball and became the first African American coach in the MLB. He became an untiring ambassador for the history of the Negro Leagues and a driving force behind the Negro League Museum in Kansas City. Robert Peterson’s Only the Ball Was White is a history of African-American players and teams. My son gave my Robert Whiting’s The Meaning of Ichiro, which seems to also have been published as The Samurai Way of Baseball in softcover. It recounts the absolute single-minded focus of Ichiro’s father in raising Ichiro to be a baseball superstar—which both explains Ichiro’s incredibly skill as a player but also leaves one wondering how he did not learn to hate baseball rather than to love it. The book also explores the Japanese approach to baseball—vastly different than the US style—and the success, or lack thereof, among Japanese players coming to the US and American players going to Japan. Averell Smith’s The Pitcher and the Dictator tells the intertwining stories of Satchell Paige and Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic, as well as other players who played in the Dominican. It’s quite possible that the 1937 series in the Dominican included the best collection of baseball players ever assembled. But the book also includes insightful accounts of racism and politics.

Nikki Haley’s If You Want Something Done… is a short book with interesting overviews of ten women who played important roles in history—some well-known and others I had never heard of before. Lisa Rogak’s Propaganda Girls is a fascinating look at women who served in the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, during WWII.

Alexei Navalny’s Patriot is an autobiography that managed to escape the Russian government even though Navalny did not. Much of the book was written while Navalny was in prison and it grows increasingly snarky as it goes along, but that is not surprising given the way that he was treated by the Russian government. Eventually, of course, he was killed by poison, though the Kremlin denies involvement. He was probably the most prominent and visible opponent of Putin in Russia in recent years.

Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom draws from the work of a number of philosophers, activists and thinkers to describe what freedom is and how we are in danger of losing it. He has spent considerable time in Ukraine and that features prominently in the book. I definitely do not agree with Snyder on everything but he offers thought provoking insights that need to be taken seriously. Kaitlyn Schiess’s The Ballot and the Bible is subtitled “How Scripture Has Been Used and Abused in American Politics and Where We Go from Here”and she addressed the way in which Bible verses are pulled into political debate—sometimes accurately, but often not—and what should be done about that. Anne Applebaum’s Twilight of Democracy examines changes that have taken place in Poland, Great Britain and the United States, with considerable discussion of Hungary as well. Like Applebaum, I could recount examples of people that used to be my friends, who agreed with most of the time politically, but who have embraced politicians and political positions that I never would have imagined—resulting sometimes, unfortunately, in a loss of friendship.

I read a variety of history books. Dean Jobb’s A Gentleman and a Thief tells the incredible story of Arthur Barry, an audacious thief during the Jazz Age who stole the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars worth of jewelry from some of the country’s richest families—not uncommonly while they were in the house or even sleeping in the room he was robbing. David Von Drehle’s Triangle tells the story of the shirtwaist industry, the efforts of those who fought for safe and fair employment practices and the details of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911.

Barbara Tuchman’s The First Salute offers a look at the Revolutionary War from a unique perspective, blending the conflicts between England, France and Holland with the Revolution and emphasizing the role of the navies in the conflict. David Hackett Fischer’s Washington’ Crossing is a sizable book (nearly 600 pages) that recounts how the titular event, as well as the determination of Washington and others, kept the American fight alive in the first year of the Revolutionary War when it seemed that the British were going to win easily.

History Matters is a collection of speeches and writings by David McCullough, assembled by his daughter and long-time assistant after his passing. Anyone who really cares about history should read everything McCullough ever wrote, I think, but this book in particular shares why it is so important that we study and seek to learn from it.

David Waldstreicher’s The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley is an excellent biography of a too-often-ignored figure in American history. (I actually had someone tell me a few years ago that Paul Laurence Dunbar was the first African-American poet in the US because Wheatley didn’t count. Not only does she count, she died almost a century before Dunbar was born). Richard Brookhiser’s John Marshall is an outstanding biography of the man who is perhaps the most well-known and most influential Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in the nation’s history. Linda Hirschman’s The Color of Abolition capably tells the story of the fight for abolition, including the leading figures in that fight.

Larry Tye’s The Jazzmen is an outstanding joint biography of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Elizabeth Varon’s Longstreet is a solid biography of the general who became Lee’s most trusted commander after Jackson died but who spent the rest of his life wresting with the realities of the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg, including his own failure to protest more strongly to Lee about his plan for what’s most commonly known as Pickett’s Charge. McKay Coppins was given virtually unlimited access to Mitt Romney and his personal writings, resulting in what will surely be the definitive biography of a man who has been far more involved in recent American history than is often recognized. Anyone who wants to understand him should read Romney. It made me both like and dislike him at times and Coppins writes fairly about him, I think. Amy Coney Barrett’s Listening to the Law explains her position on the responsibility of judges, at all levels, when it comes to deciding cases. I was reading it at the same time I was reading Brookhiser’s biography of John Marshall, which was particularly interesting. I still dislike the way that Coney Barrett became a justice of the Supreme Court but I do appreciate her thoughts on the way judges should do their job.

Jason Hundley’s first book, Beyond the Shallows, is a book about spiritual maturity and the importance of taking seriously the condition of our hearts. John Piper’s What is Saving Faith? Is Piper’ argument that true, saving faith will result in treasuring Christ above all else. It is consistent with Piper’s Christian Hedonism and the bottom line is that affection for Christ is a necessary element of true faith.

Alan Bandstra’s Beyond Control is a terrific book about the importance of effective classroom management, which includes more than simply controlling student behavior. I would recommend it for any teacher.

As per usual, I read the latest offerings from the fiction writers that I enjoy: James Patterson’s The House of Cross and Return of the Spider (Alex Cross series), Paranoia, with James Born (Michael Bennett series) and The Picasso Heist (a stand-alone book that says it is all true except for the parts that aren’t—which really leaves you wondering), Daniel Silva’s An Inside Job, End Game by Jeffrey Archer (the end of the William Warwick series), John Grisham’s The Widow, and David Baldacci’s Strangers in Time. I enjoyed the Grisham book and the Baldacci book was unlike any of his other books I have read. I thoroughly enjoyed it and hope he writes more like it.

I read Brad Meltzer’s The First Counsel, the first Meltzer book I’ve read, and Elizabeth George’s A Slowly Dying Cause, the first George book I’ve read in a while. Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad is an interesting book. As always with Whitehead, it is well written. It weaves together some realities of the Underground Railroad with some fictional aspects of it—such as it being an actual railroad that traveled underground. And for a classic, I read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. While I wouldn’t necessarily say that I enjoyed it, it is alarming how much of what it describes can be seen happening in the real world today.

One more—Air Castles, by my friend David Paul, who is, I believe, in his eighties now. It is a collection of stories about his life, many of which are humorous and a number of which also include valuable life lessons.

So, that’s my 2025 in books. I certainly hope to reach or exceed fifty again in 2026. Given how rarely I post here any more I have considered ending this blog, but I hope you enjoyed this quick overview of my year in books. Happy reading!

My Year in Books – 2024

~ jbwatson ~ 1 Comment

Another year has arrived, meaning it is time for another review of my year in books. I read fifty of them in 2024. So, here we go.

The first book I read was 24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid by Willie Mays and John Shea. It was an enjoyable read, providing an interesting look at what baseball was life when Mays played but also his life outside of baseball. It was a Christmas gift from my son and proved timely since Mays passed away in June. Another Christmas present was Joe Posnanski’s The Baseball 100. Anyone who reads the book will take issue with some of the players Posnanski included, or the order in which he placed them, but it is an excellent book providing fascinating details about one hundred incredible ballplayers as well as personal anecdotes from Posnanski, who is a fine writer.

Katie Ledecky’s Just Add Water tells her life story, so much of which is centered around swimming. It is an enjoyable read and it is encouraging to see just how much fun she has swimming. Even as perhaps the best female swimmer in the world, with innumerable records to her name, she truly enjoys swimming. Misty Copeland’s The Wind at My Back is sort of an autobiography and a biography of Raven Wilkinson, who became a mentor to Copeland.

Woody Holton’s Liberty Is Sweet is a good book. He overreaches with his subtitle, though; “The Hidden History of the American Revolution” clearly implies that Holton uncovered some fascinating details that had somehow gone unnoticed—but he didn’t. While the book is voluminous—some 560 pages of text and another two hundred of notes and sources—I don’t think he revealed anything I had never heard or read before. He may be the first person to put it all in one book, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a one-volume exhaustive history of the Revolutionary War, but honestly, his short overview of the ten years following the war that he included at the end of the book was perhaps the most insightful.

Allen Guelzo’s Robert E. Lee: A Life is a notable addition to the already numerous books on Lee. Guelzo is probably most recognized as an expert on Gettysburg, but he writes a well-researched and balanced account of Lee’s life. Erik Larson took his gifted approach to writing history to the story of the battle of Fort Sumter in The Demon of Unrest. Anyone wanting to understand everything that was involved in that conflict would do well to read this book. Andrew Delbanco’s The War Before the War capably traces the fight of enslaved Africans seeking freedom from the time of the American Revolution to the Civil War. But Samuel W. Mitchum Jr.’s It Wasn’t About Slavery is a pitiful attempt at showing that the South was motivated by things other than slavery when eleven states seceded from the Union, but his arguments fail, badly. Anyone with the desire to do so can discredit what he thinks are his strongest arguments within a matter of minutes if they are willing to search online for the full text of the documents he likes to cite. And anyone doing so will find that it actually was about slavery. The Crooked Path to Abolition by James Oakes, on the other hand, capably shows that while Lincoln’s position on slavery changed over time in terms of his strategies, his position as an opponent of slavery itself was much more consistent than he is often given credit for.

Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave is his autobiographical account of being tricked in New York, kidnapped in Washington, D.C., and sold into slavery for twelve years. The story gained significant attention a number of years ago when a movie of the same title was made.

Rachel Devlin’s A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America’s Schools, recounts the incredible bravery and fortitude of the girls who integrated American schools in the 1950s. While boys were involved in desegregation efforts as well, it fell disproportionately to girls, as Devlin explains. She interviewed many of the women who fought that fight and this is a book I would recommend to anyone wanting to learn more about that part of America’s history. Anne Gardiner Perkins wrote Yale Needs Women, and that was an eye-opener for me. I had no idea that Yale had not admitted female students until 1969. The book recounts the challenges they faced, the reluctance of so many to allow them to attend the school and the determination with which so many pressed on.

T. Martin Bennett’s Wounded Tiger is a sizable but fascinating book that intertwines the stories of Jacob DeShazer, Mitsuo Fuchida and a missionary family. Highly recommend.

Liz Cheney’s Oath and Honor is her accounting of the events of January 6 and her stand against Donald Trump, especially following his role in those events. She defends her service on the January 6 Select Committee. No one who despises Cheney will be swayed by the book—especially those who agree with Donald Trump and his recent claims that she should be put in prison—but as one of very few Republicans who was willing to stand up to Trump publicly, her side of the story deserves to be read. And Michael Wolff’s Landslide will also be dismissed by the MAGA crew, but the story he paints of the end of the first Trump administration shows why so many are concerned about what the Trump Presidency 2.0 is going to look like. Going back to his breakout period following Watergate, one wonders where Bob Woodward gets all of his information—and whether or not it is all accurate. If it is, Peril, which he co-wrote with Robert Costa, is, if anything, even scarier than Landslide. Tulsi Gabbard’s For Love of Country was shallower than I expected. I was disappointed at how dismissive of Gabbard the Democrats were in 2016. I do not think she is a Russian agent or even a Russian defender but I am not sure I want her as the head of national intelligence, either.

Elijah Cummings, with James Dale, wrote We’re Better Than This. Cummings represented the congressional district that includes Baltimore for twenty-four years. There is probably more that I would disagree with him on politically than agree but his commitment to finding ways to get along with people and be respectful even when he disagreed is something sorely missing in politics today.

Andrew Whitehead’s American Idolatry examines the dangers of Christian nationalism and shows how anyone who is not careful can easily go from nationalism to other dangerous -isms, like racism. Paul Miller’s The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong with Christian Nationalism was the better book, I thought, but both are thought-provoking. The beginning of Russell Moore’s Losing Our Religion probably comes closer than anything else I have read to describing how I have felt over the past few years as so many people I thought highly of and often agreed with have become lockstep adherents of Donald Trump, even to the point of ignoring when and how he clearly acts inconsistently with what the Bible teaches.

Timothy Keller’s Jesus the King, which was previously published in hardcover as King’s Cross, explains the life of Christ, based on the account provided by Mark, with unique insights and reminders. R.C. Sproul’s A Taste of Heaven is a short book that puts proper worship into perspective. Even shorter, Bob Kauflin’s True Worshipers gives keen perspective on what it means to worship God. Steven Lawson’s The Daring Mission of William Tyndale is a short biography of the man who was cruelly executed for translating the Bible into English.

Karen Swallow Pryor’s The Evangelical Imagination looks at the term “evangelical” and at how one’s understanding of it has been shaped by art and popular culture. The subtitle, “How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis,” gives you an idea of the argument that she makes. Rosaria Butterfield’s Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age is a good book, but there were a few times when I thought she went too far in her position. Nancy Pearcey’s The Toxic War on Masculinity does a capable job of outlining the concern she has about the culture’s attitude toward masculinity but I thought it was longer than it needed to be. Richard Alan Fuhr, Jr. and Andreas Kӧstenberger wrote Inductive Bible Study, which is essentially a guide on how to do that. Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett, in The Deconstruction of Christianity, do an excellent job of defining deconstruction, explaining what it is and explaining how to come alongside those who are “deconstructing.” And Christopher Ash, in Zeal Without Burnout, provides a short book with important insight into the very real issue of burnout.

Christopher Knowlton’s Bubble in the Sun is fascinating look at the original development of Florida real estate—the people involved, the money involved and the fabulous crashes involved. Tecumseh and the Prophet, by Peter Cozzens, is a well-written book about a part of American history that I did not know much about before beyond the battle of Tippecanoe. And The Curse of Beauty by James Bone was an intriguing read about someone I had never heard of—Audrey Munson—but whose face and even figure I have probably seen. Bone calls her America’s first supermodel, and she posed for an incredible number of statues during the Gilded Age but then spent the last 64 years of her life in an asylum.

The Outer Banks of North Carolina is perhaps my favorite place on the planet and I read a few books about that area this year. David Stick’s Graveyard of the Atlantic is an overview of the hundreds of ships that sunk off of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, as well as stories of incredible rescues of the passengers and crew on board some of those ships. John Railey’s A Murder in Manteo is not as well-written as his The Lost Colony Murder on the Outer Banks, but it is an interesting read and is different from the earlier book in that someone was convicted of the murder—though Railey thinks it was the wrong man. His Andy Griffith’s Manteo was the better of his two books I read this year and it was fun to get a look into the relaxed Griffith in his adopted hometown, but I am not sure Railey successfully made his case that Manteo was the real Mayberry. Scott Dawson’s The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island contributes to the discussion about what happened to the Roanoke colonists and lends some credence to his suggestion that they never really left the Outer Banks.

Mark Pryor’s The Dark Edge of Night is the second book in his Henri Lefort series. It has what readers of Pryor have come to expect but he weaves in some Nazi experiments being done on children that have their foundation in reality. Alex Cross Must Die, by James Patterson, is exactly like every other Alex Cross book in tempo and excitement and Crosshairs, the latest Michael Bennett book co-written by Patterson and James O. Born is, too. John Grisham’s Camino Ghosts is the third book in his Camino Island series and, for my money, probably the best of the three. Jeffrey Archer’s An Eye for an Eye is the penultimate book in his William Warwick series and, as he always does, he has Warwick, his family and the police department constantly battling Miles Faulkner. Daniel Silva’s A Death in Cornwall is the latest Gabriel Allon book. It was an enjoyable read, but one really does have to suspend reason when considering everything that Allon is able to get away with as the retired head of Mossad. I think David Baldacci’s A Calamity of Souls may be my favorite fiction book by a bestselling author that I read this year. In many ways I found it reminiscent of Grisham’s A Time to Kill, but it was certainly no copycat story. Colson Whitehead’s Crook Manifesto continues the saga of Ray Carney’s life in 1970s Harlem that began in Harlem Shuffle. Whitehead is an excellent writer, period. Sarah Crouch’s Middletide is her debut novel but will not, I am sure, be her last. Set in the Pacific Northwest, it creatively intertwines a couple of storylines and ends with an unexpected twist.

I’m halfway through my next book—another baseball book that I received for Christmas. Perhaps you’ll find a title in the overview above that you would like to read. Whether it’s something here or something else, happy reading.

Photo: Getty Images

My Year in Books – 2023

~ jbwatson ~ 2 Comments

I read fifty-three books in 2023. And here, without further ado, is my overview. As usual, I will address them more or less by genre or topic and not in the order in which I read them.

Jon Meacham’s And There Was Light is an excellent biography of Abraham Lincoln. With the abundance of Lincoln biographies already in existence it is understandable to be a bit skeptical of whether or not yet another one could really add anything new to our understanding of Lincoln. Pleasantly, Meacham manages to do that. Allan Gallay’s Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire is a hefty book but one that I would strongly suggest for anyone interested in in first English attempts at colonizing the New World or in Raleigh himself. And yes, I spelled the title correctly; there were, evidently, numerous spellings of Raleigh’s name, and that is the one Gallay went with.

Larry Loftis’s The Watchmaker’s Daughter is a terrific biography of Corrie ten Boom. Even for those who know her story, I would highly recommend reading this book. And Ron Rapoport wrote a first-rate biography of Ernie Banks with Let’s Play Two. I did not know much about Mr. Cub before reading it other than that he was a great baseball player and always seemed to enjoy the game. Those things are true, and reinforced by the book, but it also gives a look at Banks’ personal life (difficult) and details of his career.

David Maraniss is an excellent writer and his Path Lit by Lightning, a biography of Jim Thorpe, is no exception. This, too, is a hefty book, but it would be enjoyable reading for anyone interested in Thorpe, in professional sports in America (particularly baseball and football), in the Olympics, in the boarding schools attending by so many Native American youth of Thorpe’s generation, or just in that period of history in general.

Barack Obama’s A Promised Land may be the most well-written political autobiography I have ever read. I am sure that Obama had someone helping him with it, but its readability is also a testament to the fact that Obama is a good writer and an effective communicator. I did not anticipate that Obama would change my mind on any political issues on which we disagree, and he did not, but it is worth reading, especially for anyone who enjoys presidential history. So Help Me God, by Mike Pence, is a very readable autobiography that makes clear that Pence is the decent person he seems to be. Given the way Donald Trump turned on him on January 6, 2021, Pence does an incredibly admirable job of treating Trump fairly, and even admiringly, up to that point in the book. But he makes no apologies for his actions on January 6 and reinforces, for anyone who cares, exactly why Donald Trump should not be elected president again. But if Pence doesn’t convince you, read Cassidy Hutchinson’s Enough. On the one hand, the book amazed me in its revelation of just how much power and influence someone so young was able to wield in the Trump White House (Hutchinson is only 27 now). On the other hand, and unfortunately, her first-person accounts of what went on in that White House—particularly after the elections in November 2020 and on January 6, 2021—do not shock. She famously testified before the January 6 Committee, of course, and Trump responded to her testimony—then and since—the way he usually responds to anything and anyone he doesn’t like: like a playground bully. But for the life of me I cannot see that Hutchinson had anything to gain if her story is not true.

A disappointing read was Robert Dallek’s How Did We Get Here? The subtitle is “From Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump” and the book purports to show how previous presidential administrations paved the way for the election of Donald Trump. This is an important thing to understand and I was interested in knowing what a respected historian like Dallek would have to say about it. Unfortunately, this reads as chapter-long overviews of the presidents Dallek chose to include—nice, short, historical overviews that are fine in and of themselves—but that completely fail to answer the title’s question. Dallek’s own politics are revealed more often, and more clearly, than they should be in a book like this. Dallek did not include every president from TR to Trump and that might be fine. What is bizarre, though, is the fact that he did not include any president between Reagan and Trump! To think that it would be possible to show how previous presidencies led to the election of Donald Trump without addressing at all the preceding twenty-eight years and the presidencies of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama is just plain foolish.

In part because of the debates around recent presidential elections—and, because of the increasing tendency of states to want to award all of their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote—Tala Ross’s Why We Need the Electoral College is an important book. For those who understand the electoral college—including how it works and why the founders set up our presidential elections the way that they did—it will not share much that is new, but it will serve as a valuable reminder of why we should be very careful when it comes to discussions of eliminating it.

Elizabeth Rogliani’s How Progressivism Destroyed Venezuela: A Cautionary Tale struggles a bit at times but overall it is an insightful and important examination from someone who grew up there of how the progressive politics of Venezuela’s recent “leaders” have destroyed the country.

I was excited to read Mari Eder’s The Girls Who Stepped Out of Line, which tells the stories of fifteen women who “changed the course of WWII” as the subtitle states. I was particularly excited because Eder is herself a retired Army general. Unfortunately, the book was disappointing. Yes, the stories told are interesting, but Eder makes some factual blunders in the book which she should have known and/or her editor should have caught. Also, the end of the book strays into her own political opinion. On the other hand, David Denton’s The Reverend Spy was a delightful look at how a pastor was able to serve America as a spy for America, in America, during WWII. It was loaned to me by a friend or I doubt I ever would have come across it.

T. J. English’s Dangerous Rhythms is a captivating story of jazz and the influence of organized crime in the early years of jazz. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the appearance of so many jazz greats in its pages. David Kirp’s Improbable Scholars is a celebration of how a city in New Jersey has turned around a failing school system. Unfortunately, like most books of this ilk, it is a wonderful story about committed educators but falls short of anything that other places could implement in their own struggling schools. And, of course, a strong left-leaning political bias peeks through.

David Grann’s The Wager is an incredible story. If it were fiction, readers would, understandably, say, “Okay, he took it too far, that is no longer believable.” Since it is not fiction, the reader is left in awe of what humans are capable of enduring. Grann’s account of the shipwreck of The Wager in 1740 and the ensuing fight for survival and return to England was named Best Book of the Year by multiple publications and it is easy to see why. John Carlin’s Playing the Enemy tells the story of Nelson Mandela’s election as president of South Africa, and the beginning of his term in office, with rugby as the backdrop. The book was the inspiration for the movie Invictus and it offers a masterclass in dealing with people with whom you disagree in pursuit of a worthy goal. It also provides insight into how deeply rooted Apartheid was in South Africa.

Charles Person’s Buses Are A Comin’ is his first-person account of being one of the African-Americans selected to be part of the first Freedom Rides challenging the segregation of buses and bus stations. It is an important book and one that I will surely read excerpts from to my class when teaching about the Civil Rights movement.

Richard Snow’s Disney’s Land tells the story of the imagining, construction and opening of Disney Land. In the course of doing so, it provides a look at Disney as a person, his marriage, his personal interests and hobbies and his unique style of management. That Disney Land was not a flop after the chaos of its first day is a testimony to the desirability of what Disney wanted to accomplish. The book would be particularly interesting to anyone who is a fan of Disney—the man or the company.

Shane Claiborne and Michael Martin wrote Beating Guns both to address the issue of gun violence in America and to propose alternatives, such as literally beating guns into gardening tools. Some of the book comes across as a bit too Pollyanna-ish but it does ask some real questions that deserve real answers. I just do not think it is as easy as they want to make it seem.

Saying It Well, by Charles Swindoll, is essentially a primer on how to communicate effectively. What I personally found most interesting was Swindoll’s overview of how he prepares his sermons. The End of Average, by Todd Rose, is an overview of the problem of doing things based on averages. He presents evidence that while average may have its place, almost never is there anyone who actually is average. For example, the design of airplane cockpits for an average pilot resulted in a wide variety of issues for the actual pilots of those planes. The point of the book is to resist averages and embrace uniqueness.

Victory, by A.C. Green, is a collection of advice and life lessons from Green, a former NBA star. This was a book that my father actually sent to my son, but I decided to read it, too. It would be of most interest to someone who likes basketball, but I appreciated Green’s clear stance on doing what is right even when that is not popular or easy to do. Kidnapped by the Taliban by Dilip Joseph is the author’s account of exactly what the title says, something that occurred while he was doing medical work in Afghanistan. It is an engaging, and at times harrowing, story.

Ken Ham’s Divided Nation is a short book, easy to read, and is Ham’s commentary on the importance of a biblical worldview, especially in this age in which such a worldview is increasingly unpopular. Those familiar with Ham will not find a lot of new information here but it is a pertinent reminder. Roger Erdvig’s Beyond Biblical Integration is a book targeted at teachers and is an effective tutorial on doing more than just integrating biblical concepts and Bible verses into classroom lessons. Inside the Nye Ham Debate lists Ken Ham and Bodie Hodge as the authors, but Hodge is really the author. He interviewed Ham and included some of his comments in the book verbatim. The book purports to be an in-depth look at the well-known debate 2014 debate between Bill Nye, “the Science Guy,” and Ken Ham. The book does include the full transcript of the debate, which can be a valuable resource, but the book itself has some definite weaknesses. For one, while Ham is given the opportunity to provide further explanation of some of his debate answers, and Hodge provides yet more detail, Nye was apparently not given that opportunity. Granted, the book is published by Master Books, which has published most of Ham’s books and is a Christian publisher, so it is understandable that presenting the creationist side is their goal. But the book’s subtitle is “Revealing Truths from the Worldview Clash of the Century.” That should entail a deeper revealing of both sides. After all, there is no harm is exposing more of Nye’s position. If Nye was given the opportunity to expand on his answers and declined, that’s one thing, but I do not recall any mention of that being the case. The book’s other weakness is that Hodge is Ham’s son-in-law and more than once the book seems to stray into hagiography.

I am not sure if excitement would be the reaction of most people upon discovering that John Piper had written a 750-page book entitled Providence but that was my reaction, and the book did not disappoint. Piper provides a thorough examination of God’s providence, or “purposeful sovereignty,” as seen throughout the Bible. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: His Life and Relevance for the 21st Century is written by Lloyd-Jones’s grandson, Christopher Catherwood. It is an excellent read and fulfills the subtitle’s claim.

Robert Lewis’s Raising a Modern Day Knight is not a new book by any means, but as the father of a teenage son, it seemed an appropriate time to read it. While Lewis lays out a specific plan that was adopted by him and two friends for teaching their sons what it means to be a man, including ceremonies and the creation of a family crest, many of the principles he includes are valuable even if the details of the process or not of interest.

Martin Marty is considered one of America’s preeminent religious historians, and his October 31, 1517 is a short but worthwhile overview of the Reformation. William Barker and Samuel Logan are the editors of Sermons That Shaped America. It includes some interesting choices—some of which I question really helped shape America—and leaves out others that might have been better choices, but it is worthwhile reading, both for the content of the sermons and for the introduction that reading them can provide to previously-unknown ministers and theologians.

Is Christianity the White Man’s Religion? by Antipas Harris has parts I may disagree with, but it addresses a number of relevant questions, such as why the Bible seems to endorse slavery and why Jesus is so often depicted as European. If nothing else, it effectively answers the question in the negative. C. Herbert Oliver wrote No Flesh Shall Glory in the 1950s, and it, too, effectively quashes any notion that racism is biblical. What is sad is that Harris needed to write his book more than sixty years later since the same question is still being debated. Skot Welch and Rick Wilson attempt to do the same thing in Plantation Jesus. Again, I don’t agree with them on everything, but I applaud their efforts to set the record straight on the ridiculous notion that the Bible condones slavery or racism.

Constantine Campbell’s Jesus vs Evangelicals showed promise initially. It seemed that it was going to be what I expected it to be—a look at how so many Evangelicals have abandoned, or conveniently set aside, their biblical convictions in the pursuit of political victory. But it strayed from that. Partially that may be due to the fact that Campbell lives in Australia now, but some of what he had to say left me wondering how in the world he had ever been a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. The book purports to be “an insider’s critique” but I would have to disagree. He is not as faithful an adherent to what evangelicalism is—or is supposed to be—as he would have us believe.

Joseph Stowell’s Eternity was written almost thirty years ago and I don’t know that it is still in print. I found a used copy. Stowell is one of my favorite Bible teachers and this book is among the best of his that I have read. It does not give much insight into what heaven will be like; rather, it shows how the reality of heaven should shape the lives of Christians here and now.

Fiction this year included James Patterson’s Triple Cross and Cross Down (with Brendan DuBois), both part of the Alex Cross series, and Shattered and Obsessed (with James Born) in the Michael Bennett series. I have written about both of those series before, so I will add only that this is the first of Patterson’s books co-written with DuBois that I recall reading. I do not know how much Patterson writes and how much his co-authors write, but there seemed to be a distinct difference in how Nana Mama was portrayed—and not for the better. Also, in Cross Down, Cross’s partner, John Sampson is the narrator, something that it takes a bit of getting used to. Thomas Perry’s A String of Beads is the second of Perry’s books that I’ve read, but the first featuring Jane Whitefield, who is apparently the main character in nine Perry novels. Whitefield is Native American and Perry connects that—and Native American culture and religion—to some of her abilities in protecting innocent people whose lives are at risk. That makes for some interesting character details but also sometimes seems a bit unbelievable.  I have read all of Mark Pryor’s Hugo Marston novels. Die Around Sundown is the first installment of his new series featuring Inspector Henri Lefort. Fans of Marston will likely enjoy Lefort, as well. Gabriel Allon is back at it in Daniel Silva’s The Collector. It is, of course, quite unrealistic that Allon would be able to do all of the things he does in this book, but Silva continues to create enjoyable stories that intertwine international espionage and the art world. Find Me by Alafair Burke was an pleasurable read. It leaves the reader wondering—and going back and forth—in trying to determine who to believe and who really is the victim. I was disappointed by John Grisham’s The Exchange. It was supposed to be a sequel to The Firm, but it really wasn’t. Other than the fact that Mitch McDeere makes a visit back to Memphis early in the book, and the memories that that brings, the book could have been written about completely different characters and been the same book. Jeffrey Archer’s Traitors Gate continues the ongoing battle between William Warwick and Miles Faulkner. But the plot this time centers around a theft more bold that anything Archer has written about since Honor Among Thieves. I had not read a David Baldacci book in a few years but I did read One Good Deed in 2023. It was an enjoyable read. It was apparently intended as a stand-alone book, not part of a series based on a character, but there are now two more books featuring Aloysius Archer. The book is set in 1949 and tells and interesting story. I think one of the reasons I had abandoned Baldacci books was the increasing inclusion of sex, and this book does have that too, unfortunately.

In the Time of the Butterflies, by Julia Alvarez, will celebrate its thirtieth anniversary in 2024 but I just finally read it in 2023. It is a wonderful work of historical fiction, telling the story of three sisters who worked against the dictatorship of General Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. A fourth sister, who was not involved, tells the story. If it were possible to remove two or three sentences from the book, I would recommend it for high school students. Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is often assigned reading for high school students, and it has a lot of good things going for it. It tells the story of a Native American teenager in Washington state who decides to attend the high school in the local all-white town rather than the school on his reservation. What Alexie describes is a conflict that I have read about from others and have witnessed firsthand with a number of Native American students I have had the opportunity to work with. Unfortunately, the book also includes a lot of adolescent “humor” and references to sexual activity. Arthur Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, however, is a novel—a graphic novel—that I would highly recommend. It tells the story of Spiegelman’s father during the Holocaust and it depicts the Jews as mice and the Nazis as rats. I am not big of graphic novels and had never read one in its entirety until this one, but it is both a creative and effective way of presenting this important history.

Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck and Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front were the “classics” I read in 2023. The Steinbeck book I had read in high school but wanted to reacquaint myself with it. I am not sure why I had never read Remarque’s book, but it is certainly worth reading. It is intriguing to read the perspective of a German soldier in WWI determined to oppose hatred—especially knowing what happened in Germany not many years later. I understand the book has been made into a Netflix movie, but I haven’t seen it and that is not why I read it.

So, there it is, another quick overview of another year of books. I hope it prompts you to check out a book or two for yourself.