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Book Reviews

Love Your Enemies

We live in an age of contempt. Whatever your perspective politically or socially, you know people who practice contempt for their enemies. Even simply calling them “enemies” speaks to the hyperbole we use, as if people we disagree with are to be conquered, not neighbors and friends to be loved.

Into this sad state of affairs enters Arthur Brooks and his amazing new book Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt. It’s been a long time since I gave a book front page on this blog, but this one is well worth …

Belize, Book Reviews, PathLight,

Rooting for Rivals

Rooting for Rivals by Peter Greer and Chris Horst is one of those books all of us in ministry need to read. The premise of the book is simple: when nonprofit groups work collaboratively, generously, and across organizational boundaries, putting aside rivalry, great things can then transpire. All of us who work in the nonprofit world know how obvious this is, but we also know it should be practiced more frequently. I’m glad Peter and Chris finally wrote what we all needed to hear.

Despite the lovey-dovey image of the nonprofit world, it can sometimes be as ruthless as the …

Book Reviews,

Everybody Always

Everybody Always is the new book by Bob Goff, and I gotta tell you it’s exceptional. Bob had a runaway hit with his first book Love Does, but I worried for my friend because a lot of second books often disappoint. I should have known better — Bob doesn’t do anything halfway, and Everybody Always is fantastic.

Of course, it’s not actually his second book, as he explains at the beginning of the book. His second book is somewhere on a hard drive inside a stolen laptop computer that Bob failed to backup. Oops. But perhaps that’s for the …

Book Reviews,

Zeal Mixed With Theology

In his biography of the Apostle Paul, N.T. Wright emphasized zeal and theology in a way that … well, in a way that worked. There are a lot of books about Paul’s theology, but not many well written biographies. Leave it to N.T. Wright to author a biography about a intellectual from 2000 years ago and make it engaging!

If theology isn’t your thing, I still think you’d enjoy this book. The author takes clues from Paul’s writing as well as from early Church historians to blend together a fascinating profile of the man who did more to spread …

Book Reviews,

The Influential Mind

If you are curious how people make decisions, then The Influential Mind by Tali Sharot is a must-read book. The subtitle of the book, “what the brain reveals about our power to change others,” sums it up really well.

The author has done extensive research and cites her findings as well as other leading experts. Somehow it never devolves into “professional psycho-babble” talk and comes across as easy to understand and comprehend. I now realize that the author put her findings to work and definitely influenced me to appreciate her insights!

If you are in the story telling business — …

Book Reviews,

Top Ten Books of 2017

To help with your gift list, here are my top ten books of 2017:

The “I need something fun to create bar arguments” goes to Tim Harford for his book Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy. Barbed wire? The gramophone? Passports? Curious insights like these fill the book and will create conversation, controversy, and interest.

The “historical fiction that has fascinating characters and everybody is reading these days” award goes to Amor Towles for A Gentleman in Moscow. Set in the first half of the 20th Century, the story of a Russian man …

Book Reviews, Random Thoughts,

Advent

Christmas is four weeks from today, so it is safe to say we are in the season of Advent.

My faith tradition did not place a big emphasis on the Christian calendar, with the exception of Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and of course Christmas Day. But there is great depth, even warmth, when we allow the seasons to enter our daily thinking.

This year I am going to read daily from the book God is in the Manger by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It is a collection of his letters from prison and a few of his sermons. If you are unfamiliar …

Book Reviews,

Leonardo da Vinci

A few days ago I was enjoying a brief visit with long time friends. By a warm fire with a glass of wine in my hand, they asked one of my favorite questions: “So Roy, any book suggestions?”

Without hesitation I said they must read Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson.

Isaacson is one of my favorite biographers because he explains how his subjects — such as Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger, and Steve Jobs — innovate at the intersection of science and art. These are Renaissance thinkers who understood electricity, physics, politics, technology … but also literature, beauty, …