Category Archives: Non-fiction

Non-fiction

What Would the Founders Think?

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What would our founding fathers think of today, Election Day 2012? Author Ron Chernow talks about it:

Washington did take public opinion into account. In fact, during his first term as president he made a tour of the Northern states and a tour of the Southern states because he wanted to hear what people had to say about the Constitution and the new government. So, he wasn’t oblivious to public opinion, but it wasn’t a situation where you had poll numbers on an almost hourly basis that you’re consulting.

…

People might disagree with him, and they certainly did, but they never felt that they would be betrayed by him. There was an extraordinary sense with all of the early presidents of authenticity, that is, what you saw was what you got. These were not people capable of that kind of guile. That mystic bond I don’t sense with either Obama or Romney.

Author Jon Meacham also answered the question what Jefferson would think about modern elections: “Let’s stipulate that this is an unknowable question. That said, Jefferson loved big political fights, and while he often said he disliked controversy, in many ways political strife was the air he breathed. So he’d enjoy this dash to the finish.”

Non-fiction

Skipping Around the Bible

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Kathy Keller, wife of New York pastor and author Tim Keller, reviews Rachel Held Evans’ new book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master”, asking some hard questions about the book’s intent. Keller writes, “Evans wants to show that everyone who tries to follow biblical norms does so selectively—’cherry picking’ some parts and passing over others. She also says she wants to open a fresh, honest dialogue about biblical interpretation, that is, how to do it rightly and well.” But Evans apparently cherry-picks on her own, some of it for humor’s sake, some of it seriously.

See many positive reviews on Amazon.

Non-fiction, Publishing

Of the Books Written on Lincoln There Shall Be No End

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“There are so many Lincoln geeks that buy everything new that comes out,” Cathy Langer, the lead book buyer at the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, tells Stephanie Cohen of the Wall Street Journal. Cohen goes on to report Langer’s claim “that in her years as a buyer, she has rarely turned down a title about the 16th president.” One such book is Killing Lincoln, which has sold over two million since its release a year ago September. Cohen states some 16,000 books have been written about President Abraham Lincoln, and there’s more to come.

To illustrate the volume of existing Lincoln works, the Ford’s Theatre Center for Education and Leadership in Washington created a three-story, 34-foot tower sculpture out of Lincoln titles, meant to “symbolize that the last word about this great man will never be written,” according to the center.

Perhaps I should start writing a series of short volumes on the ignored presidents, like Polk, Hayes, Tyler, and Garfield. I could call them Thrilling Histories, e.g. The Thrilling History of James K. Polk. Or maybe they should be called the Presidential Insider’s Guides. Or maybe the What You Didn’t Learn series. (via Frank Wilson)

Non-fiction

Link sausage, 10-3-12

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Oh bother. That network that shows re-runs of Burn Notice has moved NUMB3RS into that Wednesday night slot. So I’m supposed to watch Judd Hirsch instead of Gabrielle Anwar? I don’t think so. Sure, I’ve seen every episode three or four times, but frankly I prefer that NUMB3R.

From Fox News, we get word that an English dialect has died.

In a remote fishing town on the tip of Scotland’s Black Isle, the last native speaker of the Cromarty dialect has died, taking with him another little piece of the English linguistic mosaic.

Scottish academics said Wednesday that Bobby Hogg, who passed away last week at age 92, was the last person fluent in the dialect once common in the seaside town of Cromarty, about 175 miles (280 kilometers) north of Scottish capital Edinburgh.

And finally, Andrew Klavan posts a clever trailer for a book for women, on how to understand men.

Come to think of it, why is this a problem? Isn’t the complex supposed to comprehend the simple?

Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me, by Ian Morgan Cron

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Ian Morgan Cron grew up with a deep, unsatisfied hunger for the love of his father. He tells the story of his struggle to understand and forgive in the memoir, Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me, A Memoir… Of Sorts. His father was, when Ian was young, an executive with a motion picture company. The family lived in Europe and hobnobbed with movie stars and political figures.

Then his father’s career crashed on the rock of his alcoholism. The family moved home to Greenwich, Connecticut, to a life of marginal poverty (sure, it wasn’t Harlem, but the contrast of their own lives with those of their wealthy neighbors just made it harder for the kids). His mother made a new career in time that gave them some financial stability, but his father’s continuing blackouts and rages left wounds Ian couldn’t deal with.

In his religious life, Ian went from an innocent, youthful love of Jesus to bitterness and atheism, when Jesus failed to give him the one thing he asked for—a sober father. He experimented with drinking, was scared by his own reaction, and settled into drugs for a while before taking up drinking again.

It was only after many years that Ian learned his father’s great secret—he’d been a CIA agent. Many spies are alcoholics and narcissists, he learned. They’re suited to the life.

Only the realization that he was himself turning into his father drove Ian to seek counseling, and finally to reconcile with God.

Ian Cron writes with a light touch and the kind of mordant humor you’re familiar with if you’ve read authors who suffered child abuse (and believe me, you have). His account of his journey back to faith is in many places touching and moving. The personal revelation that reconciles him to Christ at one point is one that some Christians may have trouble with. I’m not sure about it myself, but I generally try not to judge another Christian’s deepest confidence.

Hints in the course of the story suggest to me that Cron’s final faith road brings him closer to Tony Campolo than to James Dobson, but those hints are lightly touched on and need not spoil the story for those of us who trust the Bible more than our hearts.

Recommended, especially for Christians who come from dysfunctional homes. Or those who want to understand them better.

Authors, Non-fiction

Hunter Baker Interview

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Hunter Baker talks about the ideas in his latest book, Political Thought: A Student’s Guide (Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition), with Brad Jackson and Allysen Efferson of Coffee and Markets. Dr. Baker explains the publisher’s intent of the series and that wanted to write a political book anyone could read.

Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

Light: C. S. Lewis’s First and Final Short Story, by Charlie W. Starr

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If Lewis’s epistemology has a center, it is in fact, not truth, because truth is always about reality—one step removed from the thing itself.

Winged Lion Press is a small publisher concentrating on C. S. Lewis- and mythopoeic-related material. I received a free copy of Light: C. S. Lewis’s First and Final Short Story from publisher Robert Trexler.

Many, if not most, C. S. Lewis fans are familiar with a story called “The Man Born Blind,” published posthumously in 1977 by Lewis’s literary executor, Walter Hooper, in the book The Dark Tower and Other Stories.

A few years ago, a different version (and a later one, in the opinion of Charlie W. Star, author of Light) was acquired by a collector of Lewisiana. The manuscript’s provenance is cloudy, but handwriting and ink strongly indicate that it’s genuine. This story carries Lewis’s own title, “Light” (the title in Hooper’s volume was his own invention, as the version he had had none).

Of all Lewis’s writings, “Light” is probably the most enigmatic. It springs from his most profound thinking on meaning and reality, and these are deep waters indeed.

I should caution you that unless you’re a hard-core Lewis fan, you may find this book kind of hard going. The grass here is tall indeed. I couldn’t help thinking of A Canticle for Liebowitz, as Charlie Starr manages to find material for an entire (and not short) book in a four page story. But for the Inklings enthusiast, there’s much of interest here.

The story is examined from several directions, but perhaps the most fascinating are those of dating and meaning. The two are closely related, as Lewis’ friend Owen Barfield clearly remembered seeing a version of the story in the late 1920s, some time before Lewis’s conversion. But Starr argues (pretty convincingly) that this version was written around 1944. His argument is that Lewis must have nursed this story, re-writing it from time to time, over the course of his lifetime, so that it meant rather different things at the end than it did at the beginning.

Light is not for the casual reader, but I recommend it for the hard-core Lewis fan.

Authors, Non-fiction

A Documentary on Walker Percy

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Walker Percy, preview two from Winston Riley on Vimeo.

This one-hour program on author Walker Percy will be worth any booklover’s time. Image Journal notes:

Now, it would hardly be true to say that Percy’s been forgotten—two major biographies of him have been published and his books continue to sell well. But we are convinced he should be even more widely read. . . . The experts consulted are extremely well chosen, and include the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and psychiatrist Robert Coles, novelist Richard Ford (who has long cited Percy’s Moviegoer as his inspiration for becoming a writer), the late historian and novelist Shelby Foote, Paul Elie (author of The Life You Save May Be Your Own), and biographer Walter Isaacson (whose most recent book was about Steve Jobs).

Non-fiction, Reviews

Review: Groupthink Can Run Both Directions

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Nutrition news is ripe for overstatement. You might say there are fruit flies of hyperbole swarming many popular reports on select health benefits. Take this example from a site I won’t name (not naming my source would be in keeping with many health reports): “In parts of China where people eat a lot of vegetables such as garlic and onions, villagers have one-quarter as many cases of cancer as people in the rest of the country.” Perhaps that’s true, but it doesn’t mean that the health claim the writer makes in using this example is true or as strong as he says it is. There are likely many combined reasons that guard these Chinese from cancer.

In popular news, nutrition reports can be maddening. Often, the news will simplify a report too far, like saying coffee is linked to hallucinations when the report is actually inconclusive. Or a report may be accurate and the study reported on simplistic. So when I began reading Ty Bollinger’s book, Cancer: Step Outside the Box, I hoped for sound-mind descriptions of alternative cancer treatments and the health benefits of various food products. I fear, however, it has too many fruit flies.

The first thing Bollinger wants us to believe is that pharmaceutical companies and certain medical groups do not want us to heal from cancer or find its cure. They want to make money off of our disease, so they have stifled real cures like apricot seeds in favor of their money-making treatments: surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. He argues that the FDA and other agencies are pressured by lobbyists to ban nutrition and promote manufactured drugs. Some leaders are pressed to promote something regardless of clinical evidence and others are steeped in a groupthink that prevents them from questioning the promotion. Continue reading Review: Groupthink Can Run Both Directions →