Augustine

I can’t think of certain books apart from the place in which I read them. The City of God, an attempt to see the hand of God in the destruction of a Christianized Rome at what was thought to be nearly the end of history… I associate that with a gas station coffee shop in a Minnesotan prairie town.

My wife had been stationed there for a few months for her medical work, and I’d just returned from a stint abroad and had a few weeks off. The gas station was the town’s only coffee shop.

And the book was amazing.

Augustine’s wordy and cumbersome, but the ideas hit me as amazingly relevant, even there. The gas station attendant gossiped with a farmer about the rape of a girl in their church as I read Augustine’s consolation to men and boys who had been raped in the sacking of Rome.

A couple farmers and the owner of the egg-processing plant (the town’s only industry) met every Tuesday and Thursday to discuss the inevitable fall of the U.S. due to its godlessness as evidenced by Hollywood, while I read Augustine’s critique of the theater and the way in which God may have saved the Romans by destroying the Coliseum.

I found myself arguing with a lot of the book, but it seemed far more insightful an analysis of late-20^th-century society than any of the modern religious pundits.

I wouldn’t have said the same the first time I read The Confessions. It struck me as pretentious. But I’ve re-read it twice since reading The City of God, and I’ve liked it more each time.

Ahmed Rashid

            Jihad: the rise of militant Islam in Central Asia, by Ahmed Rashid, struck me initially as strong journalism with a hint of paranoia and cynicism.

            But after spending several years in the regions Rashid describes, I’ve changed my analysis. I would still recommend it to a newcomer, but I now think it’s not paranoid or political enough, and insights I perceived as the result of serious investigative journalism could probably be made by anyone with language skills who was willing to hang out for a few hours with taxi drivers.

He gets some great interviews with officials in political opposition organizations that seem to contradict both the U.S. and Central Asian depictions of those groups.

I’d still recommend it for anyone new to the region.

Jeremy Waldron

If there is no recognized source of absolute truth, then how can we know what’s right?

In Liberal Rights, Jeremy Waldron attempts to make a philosophical case for the need for universal human rights as a guide for ethical behavior.

The problem he runs into, though, is similar to that of the economic and political reformers in Anna Karenina: they accounted for the soil and water and seeds and technology, but didn’t account for the nature of the peasants. Waldron accounts for the social and ethical issues, but doesn’t account for the nature of humans: we cannot be counted on to act in our own best interests.

Liberal Rights isn’t bad. It’s thoughtful and well written. But it didn’t succeed with me. I ended up going back to the Bible.

Maureen Greeley

When I ordered Maureen Greeley’s Wolf, I was expecting a thoughtful naturalistic analysis of a creature that fascinates me. Instead, I found an oversized picture book containing a lot of anti-Christian, anti-Western propaganda disguised as environmentalism.

Dick Keyes

In True Heroism, Dick Keyes examines the collapse the ideas of the “heroic” in modern culture. Kierkegaard said the same the same stuff in the previous century. 50 years from now, it may be worth reading as a historical document.

Jared Diamant

Just judging the author by his resume, Jared Diamant looks like an interesting person to meet. He holds advanced degrees in several fields that fascinate me, and he’s able to communicate.

On the off chance that I’ll never actually meet him, I’ll give his Guns, Germs, and Steele a plug and go on record saying that I’m looking forward to reading his other books.

I don’t think he dealt seriously with the issue of historical anomaly in world history, especially when it is related to worldview-changing people or ideas, but his thesis that geography is a key determiner in shaping civilizations had never been presented so clearly to me before. It’s a nice rebuttal to some of the arrogant human-centered explanations for global inequalities.

Josh MacDowell

Evidence That Demands A Verdict, vol. I and II are lengthy outline-formatted apologetics for most of the major Christian doctrines and most of the major Western objections to Christianity. More than a Carpenter is the pocket-sized, reader-friendly version of the most popular of those arguments.

There was a time when I scorned More than a Carpenter: I wanted the real thing, so I memorized large portions of the outlines in Evidence. I worked them into conversations whenever possible with my classmates and professors. Note: I didn’t say “friends”. From what honest people have told me, I wasn’t the friendliest person at that time.

After about four years of winning arguments and losing friends, I started wondering if Jesus would have appreciated my readiness to jump to his defense. Several years later, I read Kierkegaard, and realized that he and MacDowell would probably have been on opposing sides. I found myself strongly on Kierkegaard’s.

From all I’ve heard, MacDowell is sincere and has helped many people to love God and follow Jesus. I haven’t met any of them, but I hope they’re out there.

Thomas E. Szasz

In The Myth of Mental Illness, Thomas Szasz applies Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts as the key influencers of scientific thought to psychology, resulting in a questioning of the possibility of any mental illness being scientifically defined given the incredible range within the human norm of mental functions and the lack of an objective standard.

If you read this, as I did, right after high school, it may shake you like it did me. I stayed up at nights arguing with it for quite a while.

But a few years ago, I picked it up again, and it seemed like the type of ramblings you read from people who describe themselves as “activists”. It’s a lot of sound and fury, but little of it is original (wise fools pop up all over medieval literature), and it’s largely irrelevant for anyone committed to dealing with suffering.

I would recommend it, though, for psych majors who are starting to confuse Freud with God.

Soren Kierkegaard

I knew Kierkegaard was a 19^th-century northern-European philosopher. I’d heard that he was a depressive and that his ideas started the movement from rationalism toward Nietzsche.

All of that is true.

Unfortunately, I drew the conclusion from this that I wouldn’t like him. The conclusion doesn’t follow.

It started when, a few weeks before moving away from the U.S., my wife gave me a copy of Provocations, a selected reader of his works. I usually prefer to see authors explain themselves; not just read over “best of” selections from other readers who happen to know publishers. In this case, though, the book left me stunned. It showed the Dane as witty, sarcastic, biting, devout, passionate, disconnected, and in all much more human and likeable than most writers I’d associated with words like “19^th-century northern-European philosopher”.

Before we left the U.S., I picked up Fear and Trembling, Sickness Unto Death, and Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing.

Fear and Trembling changed my life. It ranks among a handful of books that I’d recommend unhesitatingly to anyone asking… well, anyone who’d ask anything. I’d work it into more conversations, but saying the names of certain authors sounds snobby.

Sickness Unto Death convinced me that I’d found not only a favorite author, but a Master and mentor who understood things about me that I was only starting to discover.

Purity of Heart… Well, by the time I finished, I felt increasing confidence that I’d be willing to argue for his position as a founder of Christian Hedonism as much as for existentialism.

Either/Or came in a package several months later. It’s by far the most difficult of his works for me. I don’t think I understand half of it, and I’m not sure which half. It almost lost me. (A point of interest for those rare people who read Kierkegaard and John Piper: Either/Or contains an illustration of the precedence of joy over duty in determining ethics that is almost identical to Piper’s illustration of a man giving flowers to his beloved.)

But almost a year later, I found myself in an English-language book store again, and the used book shelf held This Present Age, Practice in Christianity, and Works of Love.

This Present Age was shorter, so I started there. It’s witty, but it’s the only one of his books that feels dated. My present age is not like his.

Practice in Christianity and Works of Love present the same basic ideas, but in very different styles. I’m glad I read them both, but if I were to do it again, I’d probably only choose one. The problem is, I’m not sure which one.

The Concept of Anxiety was the only book other than Either/Or that lost me. I could follow the general thread of his argument through the book, but I lost a lot along the way.

For Self-Examination, and Judge for Yourself are among his easiest to understand. They introduce many of the key concepts for his other works, and include some of his best parables. I wish I hadn’t read them last.

I’ve read several translations of some of these books now, and I’ll strongly recommend the Princeton editions—especially those edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. They run twice the price of some of the anthologies or popular versions of his more famous titles, but the notes and translation style are worth it.

He wrote a lot, and I’m looking forward to adding to this list. Or maybe just re-reading the ones already included. I know I have more to learn from him.

Toni Morrison

In The Bluest Eye, a young girl goes crazy after being raped by her father. In Beloved, an escaped slave kills her daughter and then wrestles with the ghost.

So they aren’t books for teaching sixth-graders about symbolism and poetic language.

But they are beautiful, and they show truth, and redemption rings through them like a fundamental tone.

Playing in the Dark, a collection of essays on literary criticism, is the only book I’ve read by her that didn’t touch me. And I’ll take the blame: I haven’t read Edgar Allen Poe enough to appreciate her criticism.

But her novels grab and compel. I approach them with caution, knowing they will leave me changed.

For the record, I appreciated the movie, Beloved, but for very different reasons than I appreciated the book. I’m not sure if there’s a correlation between liking one and liking the other.