Category: Reviews (Books)
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...
Book Review: Surprised by Paradox by Jen Pollock Michel
The Holy Fool has been a common trope in Christian literature for some time. You can reasonably trace it back to St Paul who, writing in 1 Corinthians, spoke of how the wisdom of God looks to the world like...
We’re All Truman Now: On Shoshanna Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
It’s been over twenty years since the release of The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir. Truman, the star of the show, is unaware that the show even exists. Billions of people around the world watch his every move, tracked...
Christ Ever Present, But to What Church? Reviewing Phillip Cary’s “Meaning of Protestant Theology”
The calls of warning for Protestant theology have been long in the making, or at least for a certain variety of Protestant theology. The 20th century, for all of the ecumenical exchanges which occurred, were rough times for Protestants, as...
Book Review: Jean Vanier: Portrait of a Free Man by Anne-Sophie Constant
In his commentary on the Gospel of John, Jean Vanier writes that: [t]he threat of today’s world with its globalized economy is not just unfettered capitalism but overwhelming commercialization. Advertising and public relations try to shape our cultures, thoughts, imaginations...