Elliot Ritzema

Category: Books

  • Where the Reformation Came From: A Review

    This history book has a history.
    The first edition of Roots of the Reformation: Tradition, Emergence, and Rupture was published in the spring of 2012. In May of that year, historian Carl R. Trueman wrote a review of the book that pointed out several factual errors in the portion of the book that covers the Reformation. The following month (as pointed out by Trueman), the publisher, InterVarsity Press, acknowledged the errors and pulled the first edition (you can see here that Amazon no longer sells it).

    In September 2012, IVP Academic issued a second, corrected edition. Books and Culture ran a review of the second edition in early 2013, in which the reviewer wrote:

    To its credit, IVP ceased publication of the first edition of this volume shortly after its release when it was brought to the company’s attention through scholarly reviews (especially the online review of Professor Carl Trueman) that it contained an embarrassingly high number of inconsistencies, mostly inaccuracies of names and dates. In response, a press release was issued stating that the “text did not represent the academic standards we as a publisher hold ourselves to, and we decided to take full responsibility for them.” Well done, IVP! As a result, the following review is far more positive than the original version.

    But a bad reputation is hard to shake. There are two comments on this Books and Culture review. The first is someone, clearly lacking in reading comprehension, who says that the book has “been pulled from the shelf due to many factual and historical errors.” The second is me pointing out to this commenter that even a cursory reading of the review would show him that it is of the second edition. Seriously. Some people can’t wait to spread negativity.

    Considering this backstory, the main question to address is, “Are the errors corrected?” The answer is yes, as far as I can tell. It was difficult to find all of Trueman’s references, since the new edition has different page numbers, but the ones I was able to find were indeed corrected. I was able to find a few typos, but that is not terribly unusual for a book of this length (480 pages, including indices). The most egregious one was on page 351, where there is an italicized heading, The Bishops’ Bible and the Authorized Version, followed by a space and a different heading. I imagine that, in light of Trueman’s criticism that so much space was devoted to the King James [Authorized] Version, this section was excised, but the heading was mistakenly left.

    The further question is, “Is this book worth reading?” The answer is a more confident yes. Evans is a medieval historian, and so is on solid footing when she is dealing with the period leading up to the Reformation. The book comes in three parts: the first is organized largely topically, and deals with the germination of several areas of questioning during the first centuries of the Christian era. The second deals with medieval developments, such as universities, the growth of monasticism, and the stirrings of reform. The third deals with the Reformation and its aftermath. The Lutherans and the Reformed, not surprisingly, get the most scrutiny, but space is also given to the Anabaptists, the English Reformation, and the Counter-Reformation. Evans closes the book with a reconsideration of some of the questions dealt with in the first part, showing how those questions were answered (or explored in different ways) in the Reformation and post-Reformation. In all, this is a good read for someone (especially a Protestant) who is interested in the connection between the Middle Ages and the Reformation.

    ★ ★ ★ ★

    Note: Thanks to InterVarsity Press for a review copy of this book. I was not asked to give a positive review.

  • My Boss Is a Jewish Carpenter: A Review

    Since 1989, Tim Keller has been pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Many people in his congregation have questions about how their faith and work can coexist. This book, co-written with Katherine Leary Alsdorf, the head of Redeemer’s Center for Faith and Work, is his response to their questions.

    The book comes in three parts: in the first, he writes about how God intended work to be from the beginning. In the second, he deals with the problems we have with work in a fallen world. In the third, he lays out the different effects the gospel has on work: it fits work into a different story, it gives us a new understanding of what we are doing when we work, it gives us a different set of ethics to apply at work, and it gives us new energy for work.

    As is typical with Keller, he draws on a wide variety of sources to make his arguments and illustrate his points, like jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, theologians John Calvin and Martin Luther, and philosophers Alasdair MacIntyre, Luc Ferry, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Some of Keller’s favorites are early 20th century British writers like C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Dorothy Sayers, and they make several appearances as well.

    When many people think about work, they think about the business world. I know my thoughts tend to move in that direction, since that is the world I live in now. But this book is about work in general, and does not focus explicitly on business. However, Keller does give several business-related examples and illustrations. He gives a sketch of a few ways the gospel might influence business in the chapter “A New Story for Work,” which I think is worth quoting in part:

    While from the outside there might not be immediately noticeable differences between a well-run company reflecting a gospel worldview and one reflecting primarily the world-story of the marketplace, inside the differences could be very noticeable. The gospel-centered business would have a discernible vision for serving the customer in some unique way, a lack of adversarial relationships and exploitation, an extremely strong emphasis on excellence and product quality, and an ethical environment that goes ‘all the way down’ to the bottom of the organizational chart and to the realities of daily behavior, even when high ethics mean a loss of margin. In the business animated by the gospel worldview, profit is simply one of many important bottom lines (167–68).

    Every Good Endeavor is a theologically robust reflection on the nature and purpose of work from someone who has spent a lot of time reflecting on it. It corrects many misunderstandings about work and gives a positive vision for what it can be. I recommend it highly.

  • Eleven Rings to Rule Them All: A Review

    Phil Jackson won 11 championship rings as coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers between 1991 and 2010. Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success is an autobiography of sorts, focused on those 11 championship seasons (plus the two he won as a player with the New York Knicks in 1970 and 1973). In it, Jackson recounts the lessons he learned in his attempts to turn teams from a bunch of “lone warriors” into a cohesive unit. In professional basketball, where players are encouraged by their friends, handlers, and the media to think of themselves as individuals and even brands, the greatest competitive advantage of Jackson’s teams at their best was their ability to set aside egos and put the team first.

    This book is filled with interesting stories about Jackson’s life and the colorful personalities he worked with, and is an entertaining and quick read. Jackson’s stories about how he dealt with difficult characters like Dennis Rodman and, later, Kobe Bryant were particularly interesting, and I found some of Jackson’s coaching practices, like giving a specific book to each of his players every year, fascinating. However, I found by the end that I didn’t have a lot of admiration for Jackson as a person. It wasn’t that I disliked him, but I felt that the aura of imperturbability that he projected on the sidelines was tarnished by hearing him talk about what happened behind the scenes. He rarely if ever seemed to tell stories that reflected badly on himself—a classic sign of someone who lacks humility. Also, he still complained about the officiating in some games even though they happened years ago.

    What I found most interesting about the book was Jackson’s account of his spiritual journey. He was born into a fundamentalist Pentecostal family where both of his parents were ministers, and decided in his early adulthood that the Christianity he grew up with wasn’t for him. Over the years he created his own eclectic spirituality, including elements of Native American religion, Zen Buddhism, and Christian mysticism, and incorporated several of the practices he found helpful into his coaching. As a Christian, I wished that he had been able to find that Christ was big and deep enough to meet all of his needs, but perhaps Jackson was presented in his youth with a Christ that was narrower than he is in reality. That, in my opinion, was the saddest part about this book.

  • You’ve Got to Draw the Line Somewhere: A Review

    Henry Cloud is the coauthor of the perennial psychology bestseller Boundaries, which has spawned a series of other books (Boundaries in Dating, Boundaries with Kids, Beyond Boundaries… I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we get Boundaries for Grandparents, Boundaries with Siblings, The Return of Boundaries, Boundaries Strike Back, Boundaries: First Blood, Part 2, etc.). The latest in this series is Boundaries for Leaders.

    In his solo books, Cloud tends to focus on the psychology of business and leadership, drawing on his experiences as a consultant. This book is Cloud’s plea for leaders to foster the kind of culture that enables their people’s brains to work optimally, using the three “executive functions” of the brain: attention to what is relevant, inhibition of what is distracting, and the working memory to always stay aware of relevant information.

    The boundaries Cloud writes about for the bulk of the book have to do with setting the right emotional tone, staying connected, reducing negativity, focusing on things that can be controlled, creating the right values, and fostering an environment of trust. At the end, he writes about the leader creating boundaries for him- or herself.

    For the most part, these boundaries seemed obvious. Of course people need to be in a good place emotionally if they are going to be a positive contributor. Of course people need to focus on what they can control rather than wring their hands over what they can’t. Of course people need to stay connected if they want to accomplish anything. Of course nothing good is going to happen in a culture of mistrust. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; I subscribe to Samuel Johnson’s dictum that “people need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.”

    But this book isn’t just a restatement of the obvious. Cloud’s major contributions are that he roots his insights in neuroscience, and he makes creating the right kind of culture the responsibility of the leader. That’s the “ridiculously in charge” of the subtitle. Leaders, Cloud says many places throughout the book, get what they create and what they allow. It’s a heavy responsibility, but one that leaders everywhere need to be reminded of.

    Note: Thanks to HarperBusiness for a review copy of this book. I was not asked to give a positive review.

  • We’ve Got a Job to Do: A Review

    There have been several recent books arguing that Christianity is not just about believing the right things; instead, Christianity is a total commitment to following Jesus in all of life, and following Jesus together with his other followers.

    This genre has become popular, I think, because it is scratching an itch that many Christians have. The bar for being a Christian, at least in recent years in the US and Canada, has been set rather lower than it is set in the Bible. This low bar is defined as follows: believe Jesus died for your sins and you will go to heaven when you die. That’s it. Whatever small amount of guidance there is in this truncated gospel for how to live life now is limited to individualistic platitudes about being a nice person. So there have been books that argue for an expansion of the definition of “gospel,” like Scot McKnight’s The King Jesus Gospel, and there have been books that argue for a more radical lifestyle on the part of Christians, like David Platt’s Radical (I’ve read both and recommend them both).

    Now Richard Stearns, the president of World Vision US, has entered this genre with his latest book, Unfinished: Believing Is Only the Beginning (ebook here). His first book, The Hole in Our Gospel, was released in 2011. I read it then, and this year my church went through the video curriculum associated with it during Lent. That book had a similar argument—that Christians were meant to do something with their lives besides just believing—but it focused particularly on the obligation Christians have to serve the poor. This book is broader in scope; it is about nothing less than finding our purpose in life by continuing Jesus’ mission of advancing the kingdom of God. Stearns writes in the introduction:

    I believe there is a direct connection between the unfinished work of God’s kingdom and our sense of feeling incomplete in our Christian faith because there is a connection between our story and God’s story. If we are not personally engaged in God’s great mission in the world, then we have missed the very thing he created us to do.

    Stearns begins the book by talking broadly about the meaning of life, about God’s story, and the reason why Jesus left. This is all important stuff, and I understand his desire to begin by grabbing the attention of the largest possible audience, but I thought his discussion was so broad that it was not likely to convince the unconvinced. He really hits his stride in chapter 4, “Magic Kingdom, Tragic Kingdom, and the Kingdom of God.” From here on, he argues that God has put us on this earth to advance his kingdom, and we will never really be satisfied with our lives unless we commit to following wherever he leads and obeying whatever he commands.

    I agree wholeheartedly with Stearns’s argument, and recommend this book. I found myself encouraged at some points and challenged at others. I can also think of several people I know who would benefit from reading it. But the big question is, “Is this book enough to convince the unconvinced?” In other words, is the argument that Stearns lays out in this book enough to convince people that they have believed an incomplete gospel and cause more people to enlist as foot soldiers for the kingdom? I read James K. A. Smith’s Imagining the Kingdom a few months ago, and I am still haunted by his argument that we are shaped more by our liturgies than by our principles. In other words, assenting to rational arguments doesn’t shape people so much as their habits. In light of that, I was glad to see at the end of this book that Stearns included a “What Are You Going to Do about It?” section. Only time will tell, but this book has the potential to get more people off their butts and enlisted in God’s kingdom. I think it will speak particularly to those who already feel their lives are incomplete in some way.

  • A Contrarian’s History of Christianity: A Review

    I have been hooked on Rodney Stark’s writing since I read his The Rise of Christianity in college. Stark is a sociologist by training, and that book was his first foray into writing about the history of Christianity from a sociological perspective. What I appreciated about that book, and all of his books that I have read since then, was his data-driven approach, lively and clear writing style, and contrarian streak. Maybe it is because he works as a professor in the social sciences, a guild in which it is popular to see all religion as a social phenomenon and nothing more, but Stark seems to relish thumbing his nose at the “conventional wisdom” of the sociology of religion—especially Christianity.

    This book, The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion, draws together and expands on several of his other works on the history of Christianity. His chapters on the early spread of Christianity draw on The Rise of Christianity and Cities of God; his chapter on the Crusades draws on God’s Batallions; his chapters on the medieval era, the Reformation, and after draw on For the Glory of God and The Victory of Reason. In it he continues his contrarian streak by arguing, among other things, the following:

    • The popularity of Oriental religions (in addition to Judaism) in the Roman Empire paved the way for the spread of Christianity.
    • In spite of some anecdotal evidence, the early Christian mission to Diaspora Jews was largely successful.
    • Most early Christians did not come from the ranks of the economically downtrodden, but from the upper classes.
    • It would have been better for Christianity if Constantine had not become a Christian.
    • Paganism was not stamped out by post-Constantinian Christians, but survived for centuries afterward and slowly died out or was incorporated into popular Christian practice.
    • “The Crusades were not unprovoked,” and “were not conducted for land, loot, or converts” (234).
    • The idea that there was “warfare” between Christianity and science is a later fabrication. In fact, Christianity was essential to the scientific revolution.
    • The Spanish Inquisition was not as cruel, and not as widespread, as it is often made out to be.

    As with any overview, there is some oversimplification. And even readers who largely agree with Stark’s premises, like myself, will find things that they disagree with. But overall, this is a highly readable and entertaining 30,000-foot overview of the history of Christianity. I recommend it.

    My only major complaint comes from the fact that I make a living as an editor. I know what good editing looks like, and this book was edited sloppily. A few examples:

    • page 156: Robin Lane Fox is referred to as “Robert.”
    • page 195: Peter Brown is referred to as “Roger.”
    • page 203: The island nation of Cyprus is called “Cypress.”
    • page 249: “Canvass” should be “canvas.”
    • page 334: Edgar Allan Poe’s middle name is misspelled “Allen.”
    • page 337: “Pouring over” should be “poring over.”

    If anyone at HarperOne is reading this, you know what to do. The rates for my work are quite reasonable, and the quality is no doubt higher than what you are getting now.

  • Is God a Threat to My Happiness? A Review

    Ron Highfield, a religion professor at Pepperdine University, thinks that even among people who believe in God, there is a suspicion that he might not always have their best interests at heart. Although they might be reluctant to admit it, they think that God might come between them and being truly happy, and so they hold him at arm’s length. There is a deep, and at times unacknowledged, fear that God will make them do things they don’t want to do, like become a missionary in some godforsaken corner of the world.

    Highfield has written God, Freedom & Human Dignity to calm those fears and give us a more accurate depiction of God than we are likely to get from quotes we see on the Internet, much popular Christian literature, and indeed, some churches. In part one, he tells the story of how we came to have such a “me-centered” self as our cultural default. He draws on the work of philosophers Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre to show that our modern understanding of the self roots human dignity and freedom internally: in the self and its autonomy. If we understand our dignity and freedom to be rooted within, then we will inevitably see God as a threat to our true fulfillment. Even if we acknowledge God, we treat him as a sort of superhuman vending machine that we can attempt to cajole into doing our bidding. He is the means to another end, rather than an end in himself.

    In part two, Highfield looks at the “God-centered” self, and shows that “the view of God, freedom and dignity brought to life in Jesus Christ addresses the pain and paradox of the human condition and secures the hope that we will experience our true greatness and inherit our promised glory” (113). He argues that dignity is not something that humans inherently possess, but instead is something that is conferred on us by the fact that we are loved. This love is not human love—which can decrease or ultimately cease—but God’s eternal, unchanging love. Likewise, freedom is not the ability to do what we like whenever we like, because not all of our momentary desires arise from our true selves. Rather, freedom is “the power to live as we were created to live and to be what we were meant to be” (183). Freedom has a goal beyond mere autonomy, and if freedom is not exercised toward that goal, it is not true freedom. Again: “Even if circumstances permit us to act for our self-realization, that is, to do what we want, we are not genuinely free in those acts unless we want the right thing. You cannot be free in willing evil because the desire for evil keeps us from realizing our true selves” (189).

    This is a powerful book, and it strikes at the heart of why the very thought of God in our modern world leaves so many people cold—even some people who believe in God. When I first started the book, I thought the central question Highfield was responding to—”Is God a threat to my happiness?”—was strange. Nobody really asks that question, do they? I still think that most people do not ask that question in so many words, but I do think that in many people there is a vague uneasiness that God might not want for me what I want for me. This is an excellent book for anyone who struggles with that kind of uneasiness.

    On the other hand, I think there is another issue in how our “me-centered” selves think about God that Highfield did not address. It is the sense that God is not “other” at all: he wants me to be happy the way I define “happy,” i.e., by giving me whatever my me-centered self wants. This book addresses well the concerns of those who might see an all-powerful God as a threat, but what about those who have such little awe for God that they have domesticated him? It isn’t fair for me to ask Highfield to address a different set of questions in an already strong book, but I do think that this would be fertile ground for a different book.

    Note: Thanks to InterVarsity Press for a review copy of this book.

    UPDATE: I noticed my friend James posted a review of this book the same day I posted this. Go on over to his blog and check it out.

  • Tell a Story that Captures Hearts: A Review

    Imagining the Kingdom is the second volume of a projected trilogy by James K.A. Smith called Cultural Liturgies. In the first book, Desiring the Kingdom (which I have not read, but Smith gets the reader up to speed in the early parts of this book), Smith argued that humans are primarily shaped more by the imagination than the intellect. It is the stories we inhabit, and not so much the arguments we believe, that give our lives purpose. In other words, “we don’t think our way through to action; much of our action is not the outcome of rational deliberation and conscious choice. Much of our action is not ‘pushed’ by ideas or conclusions; rather, it grows out of our character and is in a sense ‘pulled’ out of us by our attraction to a telos [end or goal].” We are shaped by the liturgies that tell attractive (not attractive in the sense of “pleasant,” but rather, “resonant”) stories and fuel our imaginations, whether those liturgies are secular or religious: “Through a vast repertoire of secular liturgies we are quietly assimilated to the earthly city of disordered loves…. So we toddle off to church or Bible study week after week … without realizing that we spend the rest of the week making bread for idols (Jer. 7:18).”

    In this book, Smith looks specifically at what that insight means for the practices of worship and Christian education. The book comes in two parts. In part 1, the theoretical part of the book, Smith walks the reader through expositions of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Pierre Bourdieu, asking what their theoretical models of how we are formed might mean for how we worship. In part 2, the practical part, Smith talks explicitly about how the theory discussed in part 1 reframes Christian formation and gives a fresh understanding of how worship works.

    Smith intentionally pitches this book to be accessible to both worship practitioners and the academy, meaning that one audience will think there are too many footnotes, and the other will think there are not enough.

    It is an enjoyable and thought-provoking (as well as, it is hoped, practice-provoking) read. Throughout, Smith attempts to practice what he preaches by telling his readers stories that enable them to imagine what he is talking about. One of my favorites comes early in the book, when he talks about the disconnect between thought and action he experienced when he was reading (and approving) the agrarian writer Wendell Berry while sitting in a Costco.

    But since the ultimate goal of the book is the renewal of practice, I was hoping for a bit more in part 2. How can this formation take place? What are some habits of worship that can be used to re-orient us? If we are shaped by stories, I wanted Smith to tell stories about how it has been done in a few communities. Smith points, for example, to the importance of the arts for the church, but by the end of the book I was not quite sure exactly what he meant: painting during a worship service? Liturgical dance? Preach stories instead of sermons? Although I deeply resonated with the argument of Imagining the Kingdom, I think there is a danger—like reading Wendell Berry in Costco—of reading, agreeing, and yet not having the map to get to the place Smith is pointing us to. Perhaps Smith plans on doing more of this in volume three.

    Note: Thanks to Baker Academic for a review copy of this book. I was not asked to give a positive review.

  • What’s Wrong with Capitalism? A Review

    The goal of the Church and Postmodern Culture Series is to examine some aspect of postmodern theory and determine what it might mean for the church. In this, the latest book in the series, theologian Daniel M. Bell, Jr. mines the thought of Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault to see what they might be able to teach the church as it confronts capitalism.

    However, not all Christians believe the church ought to “confront” capitalism at all. Some Christians defend capitalism as beneficial to, or at least compatible with, Christianity. But as series editor James K. A. Smith writes in the foreword, “By locating the challenges for Christian discipleship in arcane cults or sexual temptation or the ‘secularizing’ forces of the Supreme Court, evangelicalism tends to miss the fact that the great tempter of our age is Walmart.” We are content to ask ourselves whether capitalism works, but Bell asks the question, “What work does it do?”

    When Bell criticizes capitalism, what he means by “capitalism” is not the free market, but the dominion of the market—the marketization of all of life. Bell does not propose socialism or communism or any other economic system as a viable alternative. Rather, he pits capitalism against what he calls “the divine economy.” He writes, “By setting Christianity against [capitalism] I am suggesting that the market should be neither total nor free. That is, it should not be the central institution in life and society, nor should its capitalist logic go unchecked. More specifically, I am suggesting that the market, and indeed the discipline of economics, should be subordinated to theological concerns.” The market economy, for Christians, should be subordinated to Christian virtues like generosity and justice.

    The main insight that Bell takes from Deleuze and Foucault is that capitalism is an economy of desire. That is, in spite of the claim that capitalism enhances freedom, it actually disciplines desire in a way that precedes and shapes what choices people are able to make.

    Bell’s alternative to capitalism is not a blueprint that he intends the world to follow; it is a call for Christians to act economically the way they say they believe. We were, Bell says, “created to desire God and live in communion with one another in God” rather than pursue individualistic self-interest, as capitalism instructs us to do. We were meant to find our rest in God, rather than experience a restless and unrelenting desire for more stuff. We were meant to serve the common good, because our neighbor has a claim on us; we are not limited to voluntary associations, as capitalism has taught us to believe. Bell claims that capitalism’s Christian defenders tend to have a distant God who is not active now in bringing about human sanctification. If God is not active, and we are left to shape life as we see fit, then all we can do is manage sin, and capitalism is superior to the economic alternatives. But even though the kingdom of God has not yet come in its fullness, God is active in bringing it about even now; and so an alternative to capitalism is possible.

    There is more food for thought in this book than can be contained in a short review. Even though it is challenging reading, particularly in the early chapters when Bell is discussing Deleuze and Foucault, it is rewarding. Bell does give examples of how the divine economy is being hinted at even now, such as L’Arche and the Catholic Worker movement, but I wish that he had made room to go into more detail and to tell more stories about how they challenge capitalism. I recommend it to any Christian who is interested in economics.

  • 10 Books I’d Like to Read in 2013

    Last year I wrote a post on 10 books I wanted to read in 2012. Of the nine that I listed (the tenth was a request for a recommendation), I read three: Pride and Prejudice, G. K. Chesterton’s Autobiography, and Political Visions and Illusions. Another, N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God, I read about 300 pages of and decided to take a break.

    Even though I’m glad I read many of the books I ended up reading instead (like Unbroken, which I hadn’t even heard of at this time last year), I think the act of setting the goal was good. So here are 10 books I’d like to read in 2013:

    1. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I saw the musical and the movie this year, and enjoyed them both. And even though this book is well over 1,000 pages, I think reading it is an attainable goal. Especially since I’ve already read 600 pages so far.

    2. The Triumph of Christianity by Rodney Stark. This is another one that I started reading in 2012, and would like to finish. Stark is a bold historian and an entertaining writer.

    3. The Moral Vision of the New Testament by Richard Hays. This was on the list last year, but I never got around to it. I can’t let this one go, though; I’m sure I’d love it if I got into it.

    4. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Another one from last year’s list. Whether I get to this one all depends on whether I can make it through Les Mis first.

    5. The City of God by Augustine of Hippo. Maybe I’m too ambitious with this one, but it’s a classic of theology and political philosophy and I’ve only read bits and pieces.

    6. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. A book on writing that everybody seems to recommend.

    7. The Bible Made Impossible by Christian Smith. A contrarian book on evangelical hermeneutics. Maybe I’m a nerd, but I can’t get enough of this kind of stuff.

    8. and 9. Center Church and Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller. I enjoy Keller’s perspective on just about everything he has a perspective on, and he came out with two books in the last six months that both look fantastic.

    10. What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth by Wendell Berry. Part of my ongoing effort to make up for a serious lack of education in economics. And Berry, unlike most people who write on economics, is a wonderful writer.

    I’m sure I’ll end up reading some wonderful books this year that I have not yet heard of. My biggest challenge will probably be to resist the lure of reading free or cheap books (which some publishers are kind enough to offer me in exchange for a review) in favor of deliberately choosing books that will help me grow in important areas.

    What other books would you recommend I put on my list this year?