Category: Reviews (Books)
Happiness, Virtue, and the Bastard Science
Happiness is a personal problem. Or so it may seem. Consider the self-help section. A library of recent books offers just the right mindset, self-care regimen, or practical hack for troubled souls who, presumably, hope that one more piece of...
Hinterland: Review of an Apocalypse
Shattered souls and ruined lives are the plot, and the ever-burgeoning, post-industrial wastelands created by the forces of global capitalism are the setting in Phil A. Neel’s gripping and brutal new book Hinterland: America’s New Landscape of Class and Conflict....
Uncertainty Requires Courage: Adam and Eve, Strange Allies, and the Quest for Common Ground
An atheist, a Christian, and a Jew start talking about science and faith. This might seem like it is either the lead up to joke or the beginning of a fight. Instead, it was the setting of a meeting I...
Book Review: The Decadent Society by Ross Douthat
Although the word “apocalypse” in contemporary popular imagination connotes “the end of the world,” the word in biblical and theological literature means an “unveiling” or a “revelation.” In apocalyptic literature, the truth about reality is not always what it seems....
Book Review: What is a Girl Worth? by Rachael Denhollander
Abuse memoirs abound. But not many abuse memoirs describe the abuser being brought to justice. This is because not many abusers are brought to justice. As Rachael Denhollander reports in her new memoir, What is a Girl Worth?, for every...
Book Review: Kids These Days by Malcolm Harris
For awhile in the Mere O Writers Room we had a quote from one of our members pinned as the channel topic: “It’s hard to transgress liberalism with strippers.” It’s a memorable way of making an important point: Once you...
Guide Us Home: A Review of On the Road with Saint Augustine
George Harrison’s final album Brainwashed opens with a joyful anthem to the possibilities of the road. Whimsical ukulele jangles and burnished slide guitar snakes around the classic Liverpudlian voice as the famously “spiritual” Beatle sings, “If you don’t know where...
Book Review: The Economist’s Hour by Binyamin Applebaum
In his new book, The Economist’s Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society, New York Times editorial writer, Binyamin Applebaum, tells the story of the rise of unfettered free market policies and the damage those policies caused...
Book Review: Beyond Authority and Submission by Rachel Green Miller
Radical feminism and toxic masculinity each constitute a real plague upon the church today. Those who write against one of these errors usually find themselves in a position where their opponents will react harshly. Taking a stand against both errors...
Book Review: The Household and the War for the Cosmos by C. R. Wiley
One of the persistent irritations of the debate about ecological health and climate change is the routine pitting of the life of people against the life of the earth. Thus Sen. Bernie Sanders recently endorsed abortion as a licit strategy...