And there was light, book club selection September 11

 For book club this month I'm reading Jon Meacham's "And there was light; Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle." (Random House, 2022) By page 140 I was noticing a subtle hint of 21st century moral superiority and self- righteousness in the author's tone.  I grabbed a second Lincoln book from my personal library, Ronald White, Jr.'s "A. Lincoln; a biography." (Random House, 2009) They are both massive books (676 pp. and 796 pp.) The bibliographies/notes sections are so huge and so different, it's almost impossible to check one against the other. I'm supplementing my reading with Paul Johnson's "A History of the American People," pts 3 and 4, which covers 1815-1870, which emphasizes links to England's history and our country's religious beliefs and formation. I was a little fuzzy on the Mexican War and the Nebraska-Kansas problem.

The bibliographies are incredibly difficult, but here are some rough, ballpark stats: Meacham cites Steven Douglas 27 times, White 106 times; Meacham cites Frederick Douglass 58 times, White 30 times. Both men were important, but for telling the story of pre-Civil War America and what Americans thought and believed, Steven Douglas is a better example of the pro-slavery forces Lincoln was up against convincing Americans (many of whom had never seen a black man or a slave) to stop the expansion and then ending slavery.

I've come away from this reading experience with a suspicion that all great heroes of our history will never pass muster because of the 21st century's race problems. They won't survive the Obama presidency and the George Floyd riots which were far more damaging to our national fabric than January 6 riot. Statues will continue to be torn down and schools renamed. 

 In this era of abortion up to the day of birth, maiming children in sex change surgeries, border sex trafficking, and energy and welfare policies that hurt the poor some of our scholars, publishers and activists find 21st c. American morals and ethics superior to the 19th and 18th centuries!

Although White never hides Lincoln's failures, he faithfully follows through on an outstanding study of his growth, integrity, and complexity, as well as his evolution in religious values and struggles. Plus, he's readable. Meacham does say good things about Lincoln but always "balances" with what his detractors from 3 centuries had to say. Cherry pickers for CRT classes will love it. Does Lincoln's passion for saving the country and destroying slavery have to be explained through a (failed) 21st century racialist lens?

I noticed the similarities to what we are going through today. In passionate love for their country, Lincoln and Trump are pretty well matched, regardless of what you think of their causes. And I can't think of any president more vilified than Lincoln except Trump. Lincoln was ridiculed, damned, hated with a passion, lied about, and feared just like Trump is today. There was more than one assassination attempt. The Republican party was in its infancy in 1860, lively and eager, and in its dotage in 2016 and 2020, careless and timid. The Democrats were racists then and they are racists now. The stakes were different, but slavery was embedded in every aspect of American life, even for northerners. The danger from non-elected entities in the deep state are as stubbornly embedded in our way of life as slavery was then. The desire to control others' lives it still with us today. To challenge the deep state today is as dangerous as challenging slavery was then. And abortion, although not a cause for Trump, is OUR moral issue overshadowing all other events and decisions just as slavery was in 1830-1860.

Trinity Forum Conversations | Lincoln in Private: Leadership Behind Closed Doors with Ron C. White (transistor.fm)

Abraham Lincoln's Diary on Apple Podcasts

Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara

"Kara, a fellow at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health and at the Kennedy School, has been researching modern-day slavery, human trafficking and child labor for two decades. He says that although the DRC has more cobalt reserves than the rest of the planet combined, there's no such thing as a "clean" supply chain of cobalt from the country. In his new book, Cobalt Red, Kara writes that much of the DRC's cobalt is being extracted by so-called "artisanal" miners — freelance workers who do extremely dangerous labor for the equivalent of just a few dollars a day.

"You have to imagine walking around some of these mining areas and dialing back our clock centuries," Kara says. "People are working in subhuman, grinding, degrading conditions. They use pickaxes, shovels, stretches of rebar to hack and scrounge at the earth in trenches and pits and tunnels to gather cobalt and feed it up the formal supply chain.""

'Cobalt Red' describes the 'horror show' of mining the element in the DRC : Goats and Soda : NPR

The author doesn't call this slavery, but I do.

"Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced because their villages were just bulldozed over to make place for large mining concessions. So you have people with no alternative, no other source of income, no livelihood. Now, add to that the menace in many cases of armed forces pressuring people to dig, parents having to make a painful decision, 'Do I send my child to school or do we eat today?' And if they choose the latter, that means bringing all their kids into these toxic pits to dig just to earn that extra fifty cents or a dollar a day, that could mean the difference between eating or not. So in the 21st century, this is modern-day slavery. It's not chattel slavery from the 18th century where you can buy and trade people and own title over a person like property. But the level of degradation, the level of exploitation is on par with old-world slavery."

Review from Daily Mail online, January 30, 2023

• Images from the Shabara mine and others in the Democratic Republic of Congo show young children mining 
• They dig for cobalt, the chemical element that is used in almost every tech product, including mobile phones, on the market today
• Apple, Tesla, Samsung and Microsoft are the other end of the complex supply chain

Devastating photos of cobalt mines in Democratic Republic of Congo that power Apple, Tesla and more | Daily Mail Online

Book Club Selections and suggestions, for 2023-2024

Each May our book club selects nine titles for the next September through May reading period. And today was that day.   This year’s selection list was very strong, so I’ll list them all, but first the nine choices. And who would have thought there was anything left to be said about Abraham Lincoln?  I don't know much about flowers, but look forward to reading about the flower designer at the White House who served many first ladies. Having just survived Covid, the Pale Rider about the 1918 pandemic will probably be riveting. Or maybe not. . .  I didn't recommend any titles.

The winners

September 11   And there was light (biography of A. Lincoln) by Jon Meacham (leader undesignated)

October 2    To America; personal reflections of an historian (memoir) by Stephen Ambrose (Peggy)

November 6    House in the sky (hostage memoir) by Amanda Lindhout (Gail)

December 4    Once upon a wardrobe (historical fiction, C.S. Lewis) by Patti Callahan (Linda)

January 8    My first ladies (memoir) by Nancy Clark (Mary Lou)

February 5   Sisters of Sinai (history, 19th c.) by Janice Soskice (Carolyn)

March 4     Pale rider (history, 1918 flu) by Laura Spinney (Isala)

April 1     Soul Survivor (selections of writers) by Philip Yancy  (Marti)

May 6    Fifth Avenue story society by Rachel Hauck (leader undesignated)


Other suggestions, not selected

Home for Christmas (anthology) published by Plough

The burning pages (mystery, Scotland) by Paige Shelton

So help me God by Mike Pence

The important thing about Margaret Wise Brown (children’s book)

Holdout by Graham Moore

The Spy and the traitor by Ben Macintyre

Letter to a promoter for an interview

As my friends and family know, I've been writing this blog for almost 20 years (began October 2003). That's how I met some nice people whom I now follow on Facebook. So, I get offers to review books and do interviews. I did review some books, but I don't anymore, and have republished some canned interviews. Sometimes I get snarky and write back my opinions. I have no idea if anyone reads them. The one I received on Monday, January 17, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day wanted to let me know that young people aren't educated about MLK Jr. because "only 81%" knew about his "I've got a dream speech," and "only 82%" knew about the March on Washington. I think that's fantastic--they probably don't know the year their parents were born, or what happened on July 4. So, here's my response.

Dear XXXX

You’re not making a good case. Considering how LITTLE anyone, let alone youth, know about our history, if 81% know about the “I have a dream speech,” that’s fantastic! I know some who graduated from high school in 1986. One day I asked them a fairly simple question, "Which came first WWII or Vietnam War?" and they didn’t know! That’s the level of history education in our country, and we live in a great school district with high scores. What makes you think this is a lack of resources? I’ve seen Martin Luther’s statue on the internet identified as Martin Luther King! Our young people may know who King is but have never heard of Martin Luther. How many know Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican? Or that there were over 200 bills in Congress to fight lynching, and Democrats voted against all of them? You’ve got some buzz words in this message that tell your mission. . . “democratizing education,” “equal access,” “cause for equality,” “diverse backgrounds.” If you need to know how ignorant U.S. youth are, watch some of the Prager U videos or the Will Witt interviews on college campuses, “What is a conservative?” https://youtu.be/jVJO1IETjC8 Also notice how inarticulate the students are—except for the one or two who can define conservatism.

Also, MLK Day was the day I got your message—how would I do an interview BEFORE today?

Orwellian pleasantries

I’ve been cleaning off my desk this morning, tossing old church bulletins, returned Christmas cards with the wrong address,  articles to read printed from the internet on crime statistics and nutrition, pieces of Fritos and cookies, and came across a quote I had jotted down while reading the website Priceton.org.

“Whenever one hears the dreaded Orwellian pleasantries ‘diversity,’ ‘tolerance,’ or ‘inclusion,’ one knows that another of one’s fundamental, democratic liberties is about to be rescinded by the revolutionary guard of progressive orthodoxy.”  Harley Price.

I think I’ll keep that one and use it when I return a request to review a book or interview an author.  Sounds better than “Are you kidding me?”

Request for reviews is up

I'm not up on publishing cycles, but yesterday I received at least 10 review offers, including children's books, interview opportunities, contemporary music, and one Phd student who needs more for her survey (it was for journalists, so I wrote back and told her a blogger is not a journalist and I was too old). Is this the Trump Bump or is it always like this in January and I've forgotten? A selection of the offers:

. I'm writing to introduce author, presidential expert, and leadership-architect Cash Keahey and his new book EIGHT LEADERTYPES IN THE WHITE HOUSE. 

Kids are growing up in a technological environment, and knowing how to make the best use of good tech is a critical part of preparing them for their future lives. Important 21st century skills such as problem solving, communication and creativity can also be improved with the use of great tech.

launch of author Kim Chaffin's new book  'Simply Blessed: Finding Joy in the Little Things

www.wycliffe.org/community  Yes, its a 7-day digital devotional released as part of the "A Call to Community" campaign for Q1, the landing page 

Donald Lee Sheppard quickly rose through the ranks of major international benefits consulting companies before launching his own employee communications firm, Sheppard Associates. In his new book  The Dividends Of Decency: How Values-Based Leadership will Help Business Flourish in Trump’s America 

In Road Rules for Retirement, Mark shares the many challenges you will face getting to and through retirement. He reveals the many risks you must know about and account for to make sure you never outlive your money. 

Having worked for thirty-five years as a cameraman and producer for every major U.S. television news network and the Foreign Press Corps, Tim Ortman understands firsthand the television news production process with over three decades of experience shooting, lighting, editing, writing, story editing, and producing.   Newsreal: A View Through the Lens When… [Incorgnito Publishing Press, May 2018].

This spring, the University of Notre Dame Press will publish Flannery O'Connor and Robert Giroux: A PublishingPartnership by Patrick Samway, S.J. Flannery O'Connor is considered one of America's greatest fiction writers.

AMIE Cut for Life is a page-turning work of suspenseful fiction that tells the truth about human sex trafficking and female genital mutilation.   At least 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone ritual cutting.  Currently, there is an alarming rise of female genital mutilation in America.

I appreciate you're busy but I just wanted to follow up on the email I sent you the other day; a copy is included below for reference. Here’s the link - http://ammo.com/articles/founding-fathers-quotes

Please let me know if you would like to interview the contest coordinators or need additional giveaway details. https://gives.rockyridgetrucks.com/.  

Dr. Ward is available for an interview, to write an article or to provide commentary on this topic.  Please let me know if you are interested. 

MacDuffie just finished narrating “Unf*ckology” by humorous advice columnist Amy Alkon, which is slated for release this month. She also narrated a documentary about leopards, which will air on the Smithsonian channel later this year. She will soon be narrating Sue Monk Kidd’s latest book, “Dance of the Dissident Daughter: My Journey from Christianity to the Sacred Feminine”; followed by a collection of sharp and elegant essays on faith, values and history by Pulitzer-Prize and National Book-Award-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson.

As it turns out, the old, tired trope that "single life sucks" has passed its expiration date and is ready to be washed down the drain. In her new book, SINGLE GIRL PROBLEMS: Why Being Single Isn't a Problem to be Solved, relationship expert and co-host of Canada's award-winning, beloved national talk show The Goods ANDREA BAIN shares her fresh, insightful, and humorous voice to spill the beans on single life. 

How did I get on these lists?

 

I get about four offers a day to review a book the marketer will send me. For all I know these marketers are all the same person, just using different names--Diane, Kathy, Louise, etc. Some titles are no brainers--fantasy, or murder mysteries, or an extremely obscure soldier of the Civil War. Easy to say No. I don't take those, and once made the mistake of accepting a bio of a guy who had been on the bachelor TV program.  I've been turning everything down (I've been sick), plus I have about twelve inches of books waiting for me to open them. But today's offer looked good. It was about Justice Scalia. How timely. But as I read through the summary, I see the author was going to club the reader (and Scalia) with liberal blather, fake news, and real bias. Not surprising when I took a second look at the publisher. So I responded to the poor woman who probably makes about $5/hr doing this from her home office. 

"Thanks for the offer—this looked good until I saw that [author] thinks Scalia’s philosophy was “flawed.” Nope and No. Norma"

Currently on my table, some opened, read part through, just waiting for me to stop reading my gift books from Mother's Day and Christmas.

"Navigating the road of infertility," by Chrissie Lee Kahan and Aaron Michael Kahan. King Kahan Publishing, c2016  This is really pretty good for a privately published book, and Mrs. Kahan is a school principal who is a good writer. Although it's about their struggles with infertility, it's mainly about their challenges with the foster care system.  They were willing to adopt an older child, even with learning problems, and ran into huge road blocks. The insensitivity of the "system" especially for the needs of the child surprised me, and yet didn't.  I used to chat with an adoption lawyer at Panera's and heard some real horror stories.

"Caught in the Revolution; Petrograd, Russia, 1917--a world on the edge," by Helenn Rappoport, St. Martin's Press, NY: 2016.  I was a Russian major in college so I also had a lot of Russian and Soviet history. Many of my professors had survived WWII and were children during WWI.  In 2006 we visited St. Petersburg (Petrograd, Leningrad).  This is so meticulously researched it's enough to make a librarian cry.  Due for book sales this month, February 2017.

"Continental ambitions; Roman Catholics in North America," by Kevin Starr. Ignatius Press, 2016.  I was ambitious to even accept this HUGE compilation (639 p.) about an era of history and religion of which I know nothing.  Not only am I a Lutheran (church history started 500 years ago for Lutherans), but it seems to begin in the middle of a thought, "Resistance grows against the genocide and enslavement of indigenous people." That's in 1511--before Martin Luther's 95 theses.  I'm in deep water here. So there is a lot of Spanish history and I think we studies some of this in 6th grade and in my college Spanish classes.  I've gone on the internet to review some of Starr's other titles, and he's impressive--State Librarian for California and professor of history at the University of Southern California.  This is a quality book--even has color plates.

Little sins mean a lot

Most of us at one time have said, or thought, something like:

• “So I procrastinate, it’s not like it’s hurting anyone!”
• “Enough about you, back to me.”
• “I deserve this, so I’m treating myself!”
• “If I can’t have it, she shouldn’t either.”
• “I’ll get around to it… or not.”
• “It’s not really gossip if it’s all true, right?”
• (And the granddaddy of them all) “But that doesn’t make me a bad person!”

Are these really sins, you ask? After all, they’re not murder, theft, or violence. Don’t they just mean we’re human?

   
https://www.osv.com/Shop/Product?ProductCode=T1690

Book Reviews--no thank you

Everyday I am offered 2-3 books to review and mention on one of my blogs or on Facebook. These are free, and rarely worth keeping or recommending, but occasionally I get something really good, like the very first book by Pope Francis, co-authored with Benedict, or an interesting first novel or a pink NIV Bible for elementary school girls. Today it was another anti-Catholic, anti-religious book about child abuse. Here’s my not surprising response (I usually just send a “Thanks, not this time” reply).

“Sorry, wrong reviewer, Lissy. I realize you’re just doing your job. Everyday I open the paper or see on the local news about a teacher or coach or youth organization leader who has been charged with crimes against children, yet no one blames the public school system, which has far more employees than religious organizations. And at the same time, we ordinary citizens are called “transphobic” if we don’t want sexually intact men wearing make up and dresses in little girls’ restrooms. Crazy world. This sounds like another religious witch hunt, and we know how those end.”

One time I was sent something on race relations that was really intended to worsen them instead of improve them, so I sent a similar note. Surprisingly, the gal wrote back and apologized, told me she felt the same way (she was black), but needed the job and worked out of her home.

Blacks in America have been sold out by the very liberals who ardently claim to wish them the most good.

Shelby Steele’s book, Shame. Reviewed by Joseph Epstein

“Liberalism in the twenty-first century,” Mr. Steele writes, “is, for the most part, a moral manipulation that exaggerates inequity and unfairness in American life in order to justify overreaching public policies and programs.” This liberalism, which is not your Aunt Bessie’s liberalism but the liberalism that came into play at the 1972 Democratic convention that nominated George McGovern, “is invested in an overstatement of America’s present sinfulness based on the nation’s past sins.”

Mr. Steele argues that liberalism’s efforts to alleviate the past injustices done to blacks in America have amounted to another botched project of that famously failed political construction firm, the Good Intentions Paving Co. “Liberalism,” Mr. Steele writes, “expresses its inborn racism in the way it overlooks the full human complexity of blacks—the fact that they are more than mere victims—in order to distill and harden the idea of their victimization into a currency of liberal power.”

Liberals, Mr. Steele holds, deal in what he calls “poetic truth.” This is a kind of truth “conceived in reaction to the great shames of America’s past—racism, sexism, territorial conquest (manifest destiny), corporate greed, militarism, and so on.” In poetic truth, the world is reduced to victims and victimizers, with liberals alone innocent of evil and thus excluded, by self-dissociation, from the role of victimizers. Under the realm of poetic truth, Mr. Steele explains, the race riots of the late 1960s could find justification and the feminist slogan “woman as nigger” could be taken seriously, while “fifty years of real moral evolution in America” can be entirely ignored.”

No one wants to be someone else’s “good deed project,” whether in a 3rd world country or urban non-profit.

Two local history titles on Jerome, Ohio

I’ve been living in Columbus since 1967, and I admit that until today I’d never hear of Jerome, Ohio, which is just up the road near Dublin, and was described 65 years ago by Johnny Jones, columnist 1940-1971 for the Columbus Dispatch, as “American as apple pie” and off the state highways where you cross the O’Shaughnessy Dam Bridge near the Columbus Zoo. With Dublin spreading out, Jerome had a 90% increase in population in the last decade, from about 4,000 in 2000 to 7500 in 2010. Author of the first book, Les Gates, grew up in Jerome and recorded his fond memories in a small book titled simply “Jerome” (3d ed. 2014). Gates returned to the home place after serving in the military and was in the insurance business for many years in Dublin, OH.  After a few words about his parents and life on the Gates farm at 7379 Brock Road, he continues with memories, photos and descriptions of neighboring farms, the local school and business establishments like the Twin Oaks Golf Course and Seely Grocery Store. Gates is about my age, and includes stories of his years at Dublin High School with photos of his team sports, baseball and football.

In a conversation with another Jerome resident, 99 year old Mary Alice Schacherbauer, Les Gates learned she had a diary of her writings with memories and musings from 1914 to 2014. With his interest in Jerome, Les and his wife Mary decided to edit and publish her memories also  as “Days I remember; my memories and musings from 1914 to 2014. “ Mrs. Schacherbauer is about the age of my parents, so I particularly enjoyed her stories of school in the 1920s, and found to my surprise that people had school buses back then.  My parents lived on farms near Dixon, Illinois, and walked to school. She and her husband Lee married in 1937 and were active in the Jerome United Methodist Church.  She includes family stories and has many fond memories of grandparents and aunts and uncles. Several of her poems are included, and she closes with prayer for “our country, our world, our way of life.” One hundred years old and she has seen a lot of changes, but still enjoys life and especially her memories.

You can purchase one or both titles from Amazon or at local gift shops. Or you can contact Les Gates at goldengator1938@yahoo.com.

Recommended by a Canadian!

"As a pro-America conservative Canadian, I enjoyed this book so much. Lots of answers to some very confusing questions like Public Health Care, Defense and Foreign Policies, role of the US in the world and many more. If you're a liberal, you should read this to understand more about our point of views. If you're a right winger, you still need this great handbook to defend yourself against the Lunatic Leftists. Highly Recommended!" [Amazon Review]

I haven't read too much of this title--already know a lot of it, but it's got some great notes, charts, definitions and web sites. Conservatives need something like this to come up against the in-your-face Alinsky-trained almighty Obamites. And can you believe this was actually at my very liberal public library branch? Throwing a bone to the conservatives in town who pay their salaries. I was so thrilled, but I noticed the titles with which it was keeping company (the ones not checked out but sitting on the new book shelf). I've probably missed a few left and right, but I'm going by cover and spine titles. It's a little like trying to take photos of all the out of state license plates where the Dems were registering voters this past week--gotta work fast.

The political mind

Right is wrong

The wrecking crew

The trainwreck

The last campaign

A time it was

Know your power

The good fight

Bush's law

Fire breathing liberal

Step by step

Against the tide

A time to fight

Who killed the Constitution

Your government failed you

Guantanamo diary

and then there were twenty-one "green titles," from gardening to jobs, too many to list, and not all worthless of course, but many hyping the human caused global climate change myth (it's very lucrative for business, but especially publishers).

I won't provide the links to these title--sometimes librarians just yawn and point when you ask a question (I never did, but I've seen it done). But in case you noticed how the list lists to the left, I'll remind you that among journalists, they are 5 to 1, liberal to conservative; out in Hollywood in the entertainment industry they are 11 to 1, liberal to conservative; but the library profession is 223 to 1, liberal to conservative. Dixie Chicks and Barbra Streisand have nothing on your local library staff selecting titles from LJ and PW while posting their banned books list.

Finding Leslie

I found a terrific reviewer at Amazon this morning, her name is Leslie and that led me to her blog! Oh happy day--a reviewer of Christian books who reminds us to go beyond the anecdote and proof texting and points out what many Christian writers have forgotten

The gospel is the incarnation, sinless life, substitutionary death, burial, bodily resurrection, ascension, and eternal reign of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Not once does she [Fitzpatrick] indicate that the gospel is something "we do." It is a work that is done for us for the glory of God. Our only work is to believe, to look to the crucified. [from her review at Amazon of Elyse Fitzpatrick‘s Because he love me]

I’m so bored with Christian writers who make no or little mention of the cross, pick a verse or two on which to hang their latest need for grant money or donations, and jump into “community,” or “relationships” or “healing,“ or “saving the environment.“ I’m increasingly going back to read the classics or at least books older than me. And that's old!

Go to her web page or her Amazon profile and be refreshed!

The future of conservative books

I've often written about my frustration with the collection policies at my public library, UAPL. It's very difficult for a conservative author to get a review in PW or LJ, and many librarians seek no other source. Like many liberals in the information and education fields, they wear blinders.

Conservatives can’t help but be flooded with “the other side” in information, essays, editorials, opinions and library shelves full of liberal and leftist views. Actually, we benefit from that exchange. We are the “liberals” in the truest sense (we also protect the weakest in society with our anti-abortion stance) because the willingness to take into consideration multiple viewpoints should be the hallmark of liberalism. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work the other direction. Liberals don’t read or review conservative books or magazines, watch conservative shows, and their minds suffer from lack of light and new ideas as a result. And film? Don't even go there. The media--broadcast, cable, newspapers, publishing and the public libraries’ review Bibles, Publisher’s Weekly and Library Journal (owned by the same conglomerate)--are overwhelmingly left wing, but don‘t even see it, because they speak, write and read in an echo chamber. The academy, both private and tax supported, is so packed with liberals in university administrations and faculties that conservatives not only have a problems getting hired and promoted, they probably can’t find advisors for the PhD theses that will mentor and advocate for them so they can even get in the job pool.

About five years ago, some major publishers started their own conservative imprints when they saw how successful some conservative political books were put out by a small, fringe house, Regnery. These imprints such as Sentinel, Crown Forum and Threshold were dedicated to publishing conservative authors (kind of like keeping the funny uncle in a closet off-site). But their titles aren’t well promoted or reviewed and the conservative publishing houses that remained independent are still better for the conservative author than the siren call of the more established liberal houses.

But no matter what happens to those imprints, conservative publishing will certainly survive—and thrive. If liberals continue to ignore the power of conservative books, moreover, the losers will not be conservatives—who cannot help but be endlessly exposed to left-wing views through the networks and leading newspapers—but liberals themselves, complacent in their ignorance of the other side. “There’s always another side, that’s a classically liberal argument,” observes [Adam] Bellow with a laugh. “The problem for contemporary liberals is that they really don’t understand it applies to them.”

Read the whole story
The future of conservative books

I really miss this

As a former Veterinary Medicine Librarian (1986-2000) and before that an Agriculture Librarian (1978-1982) I really miss books like this. Yes, even at $195 I would have purchased it, taking it to lunch and coffee break, swooning over relationships and paradoxes. I might have even posted the cover on my bulletin board and reviewed it in my monthly newsletter about new titles. Reading about bugs always builds my faith in creation. Helminths, arthropods, nematodes, bacteria, worms. Oh, it's all so interesting, but who has the time to keep up?

True Christian Freedom by Samuel Bolton

At one of my other blogs, I posted a year long Puritan reading list challenge. I'm pretty weak in this area, so the only name I recognized was John Bunyun, and I did struggle through Pilgrim's Progress a few years ago, but that wasn't on the list. For your reading pleasure, I'm supposed to be reviewing for my blog One Month to Live; Thirty Days to a No-regrets Life, by Kerry and Chris Shook (Waterbrook Press, a division of Random House, 2008). But frankly, when you've been reading 17th century Puritans, like Samuel Bolton's The True Bounds of Christian Freedom, 21st century Warren-wannabees are pretty thin stuff. Suffice it to say, the 30 day book is boot-strap Christianity, and I don't know a soul who would have the time or patience to complete the daily three "Make it last for life" homework suggestions, or even the "Make it count moments" that precede them.

Day 17

1. "Number a page from one to five, and list five different gifts that you know you possess. Don't be modest [yada yada]. . . This week ask at least 3 close family members or friends to list 5 gifts they see in you. Have them give you their lists. . .compare. . .what's the surprise and why."
2. "In what ways does your current job or career field reflect your passion? If you knew you only had a limited amount of time [yada yada] List the obstacles that prevent you from having your dream job. . . Go over this in prayer with God."
3. "Think through the handful of people who have helped you most in your life. (thinking, thinking, thinking) Now prayerfully consider sharing one of your struggles with someone this week . . ."

Isn't this right out of Willow Creek's Network Guide, which asked for an assessment which you matched with one from three other people? And you had to list your passions? Or am I thinking of What color is your parachute?

Keep in mind, this was just one day--the 17th. This was preceded by several pages of discussing GPS systems, and the Gospel hasn't been leaked yet--not sure the authors get to it. I checked the last few chapters/days and didn't find an explanation of the Gospel. By day 27, it is suggested that if the reader feels a vague, nagging question, sensing her time on earth is running out, she should snap out of her self-focus (which she's just been doing for a month) and start praying for the poor and hurting people on the other side of the world. Would that grab you?

I predict this title (the Willow Creek book says I score high in prophecy and wisdom) will be a very successful--maybe not a best seller like Rick Warren's books, but it has all the elements many church members want--lists, assignments, time frame, God-words, positive pep talks, and anecdotes ranging from construction to leprosy to mountain climbing (which is used as an example of forgiveness rather than the cross).

Entrepreneurship

Next to diphtheria and ophthalmology, I think entrepreneurship is one of our most frequently misspelled words--I misspelled it about 5 times drafting this. Now this book will shatter a lot of myths, "The illusions of entrepreneurship," (by Scott Shane, Yale University Press). Reviewed in today's WSJ by Nick Schulz. My take aways (not quotes):

In the U.S. each year more people start a business than get married or have children.

A typical U.S. entrepreneur is a married white male in his 40s who attended but didn't complete college, and he lives in a city like DesMoines or Tampa, not in California or Michigan (where they chase people out with high taxes and regulations).

The richer the country, the lower its rate of business starts.

Entrepreneurs earn less than those who work for established businesses.

Encouragement by the government to go in to business through the use of protectionist subsidies and tax breaks actually encourages people to enter highly competitive fields, making them more likely to fail.

Vivian and Johnny Cash

Today I had a stack of books and CDs to return to the library, so I was browsing the new book shelf and came across the memoir of Johnny Cash's first wife, Vivian. I'm not much of a Cash fan or even a celebrity hound, but I love to look at the old photos, and I could see the book was full of them. I took it to a lounge chair and read most of the text that wasn't photocopies of the letters (I think I read at another site that they had written about 10,000 pages--a regular John and Abigail Adams, they were) or photographs. After (or during) his drug problem and affair with and later marriage to June Carter, Vivian pretty much retires from public view and leads a quiet life with her second husband. I think they were married 12 years and had four daughters. But June died before John, so Vivian and John sort of make up and they agree (according to her) that she should write "their" story. If you've known any of these "I had nothing to do with the divorce" second marriages, you'll probably believe Vivian.

But what makes this interesting is a few lines in the book about "Ring of Fire," which she says was written by Johnny while they were still married, and that he told Vivian he planned to give June (just a friend and performer) one-half the credit because she needed the money. He also told her it is about a woman's vagina. Based on the memoir, the story about who wrote it was tracked to witnesses (it was written on a fishing trip), and apparently now there is a law suit by his four daughters (and maybe by Vivian's second husband, since some of the millions would have been hers). It wouldn't be the first time good old dad neglected the children of wife number one when it came to the estate, but in this case it involves millions in royalties, and his son by Carter has control of that.

Again, I have no dog in this fight, I'm not a fan. However, based on the fact that Vivian stayed completely quiet and out of his life all those 40 years when she could have made things really difficult for the famous pair, I'd go with her story. Vivian died before the book was published last fall.

The B Word

"How often do we hear and use the B word? We're really busy. Can you think of the last time you asked a friend how she was doing and she said, 'Great. Things are really moving slowly. . .' " p. 20

Yes, if you had asked me, that might not have been my exact phrase, but yesterday when I told a woman sitting next to me in Bible Study, who whispered she'd been too busy to complete the lesson, that I'm never busy, you would have thought I'd said, "I have leprosy." It truly is almost a sin on the level of adultery a large carbon footprint to admit you don't like to feel "busy" or rushed or frantic so you plan accordingly. Living that way--frantic and busy--is the adrenalin rush, the home-grown, safe and legal drug for millions of Americans. But not me.

Usually, I wouldn't choose to read the book I'm reviewing, "One month to live; 30 days to a no-regrets life," but someone noticed my blog and made me an offer I couldn't refuse--a book to write about. I wasn't busy, so after some negotiation, I said Yes. More to come.