Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand (Random House) In 1943, Louis Zamperini planned to be preparing for the Olympics. Instead, he was shot down over the Pacific Ocean, enduring weeks adrift at sea, fighting off sharks, starvation and Japanese fighters reigning down bullets….
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Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster) Everyone’s talking about Jobs’ biography, so you might as well cave and give it a go. One observer noted that decades from now, we will remember Jobs in the same way we remember…
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The Artist’s Rule, Christine Painter (Sorin Books) Our heart requires space to listen, to ruminate and to waken to life — and then (and only then) can we truly create. This is the guiding assumption of Painter’s work. Crafted as…
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The Pietistic Impulse in Christianity, editors Winn, Gehrz, Carlson and Host (Pickwick) In many circles, particularly academic ones, the word pietism is used as an insult. Though self-proclaimed pietists have at times encouraged unfortunate postures (individualism, privatism, bad ecclesiology), the…
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Between Heaven and Mirth, James Martin (HarperOne) Martin’s subtitle (Why Joy, Humor and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life) tells you where he’s heading. Martin believes that revelry, enjoyment, the “ability to laugh at life’s absurdities” are…
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The Fire that Consumes, Edward Fudge (Cascade). Before there was Rob Bell, there was Edward Fudge. Of course, before Bell, there were numerous voices (stretching back to the Patristic Fathers) questioning how we are to understand Scripture’s teaching on Hell….
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All is Grace: A Ragamuffin’s Memoir, Brennan Manning and John Blase (David C. Cook). Brennan Manning has been a voice for the radical truth of God’s grace, a gift that flows freely into all the broken places of the human…
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Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, Glen H. Stassen and David P. Gushee (IVP) Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount has long fueled Christian imagination and social rebellion. The Sermon offers Jesus’ tangible expression of what the Good Life in…
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Scripture and the Authority of God, N. T. Wright (HarperOne) Few theological ideas seem more pivotal as well as more problematic that getting some kind of agreement on what exactly the Scripture is — what does Scripture do for us…
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Justice in Love, Nicholas Wolterstorff (Eerdmans) Often, the Christian themes of justice and love are held in tension. Philosophers have posited them as incompatible starting points for thinking about ethics while the rest of us have often wondered if the…
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Allah: A Christian Response, Miroslav Volf (HarperOne) Theologian Miroslav Volf grew up in war-ravaged Croatia, a nation wrecked by ethnic and religious violence between Christians and Muslims. As a result, this question of how Christians interact with Muslims comes from…
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Welcoming Justice: God’s Movement Toward Beloved Community, Charles Marsh and John Perkins (IVP) Through his prolific pen, Marsh, professor and director of the Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia, has sketched historical accounts, a memoir and a…