Lukacs explains that the Last European War began in September 1939, whereas the Second World War began in December 1941.  In this book, Lukacs (born in Budapest, Hungary in 1924) helps to explain how Europe found itself in this cataclysm just two decades after the end of World War I.  One fascinating aspect of Lukacs' argument is his insight that Europe would be eclipsed by the United States as the Last European War would give way to the Second World War -- and both the allies and the Axis powers saw this. This realization, Lukacs argues, largely explains Hitler's timetable.

Along the way, Lukacs tells the story of the war's early years with skill and style.  He reveals an uncanny understanding of the personalities and dynamics that led to the war, and he takes ideas seriously.  Lukacs is also quite ready to confront established theories about the war and settled opinions about its causes. The Last European War, first published in 1976, is now available in a new edition from Yale University Press.

An excerpt:

The French, unlike the English, feared death more than they feared defeat.  But this statement, so cruelly condemnatory at first sight, must be qualified to a certain extent.  The English, who had not been conquered by an invader for nearly one thousand years, knew in their bones that their defeat would mean a kind of death for England, that its effect would not be temporary.  The French, on the other hand, knew in their heads, if not in their bones, the memory of national defeats together with the memory of their national recoveries. Still, in 1940, they gave up too easily.

This short book is filled with insight and inspiration.  Dr. Akin, who serves as President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, offers biographical portraits of William Carey, Adoniram (and Ann) Judson, Bill Wallace, Lottie Moon, and Jim Elliot.  Of these, Dr. Akin writes:  "All of them suffered and experienced trials and the testing of their faith.  Some were even martyred.  Yet they persevered."

The world really was changed by the service and witness of these Christian missionaries, and readers will risk a changed perspective and a challenged heart by reading this book.  It's a risk you ought to take -- and to pass along.

Gura, who teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, offers a pleasing and stimulating combination of historical analysis and the study of ideas.  In addition, he is a good writer whose style will keep readers attentive and interested.

In essence, Transcendentalism was a movement that transformed American individualism from a reflex into a religion.  As Gura explains, "Transcendentalism thus was another in a long line of attempts to redirect the still incomplete American experiment, in this case by anchoring it in the sanctity of each individual's heart."

The Transcendentalists included, most famously, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, along with Margaret Fuller.  They were associated with Unitarianism, Harvard University, Boston, and the early history of the American republic.  They were eccentrics -- but eccentrics with vast influence, then and now.

Gura adds spice to his narrative, citing Annie Russell Marble (who knew the Transcendentalists first-hand) as "a race who dove into the infinite, soared into the illimitable, and never paid cash."  Nevertheless, the movement was hugely influential in moving the center of meaning into the realm of the individual consciousness.  Traditional theism gave way to panentheism and a vague spirituality. The path was set for the development of individualism as a total worldview -- and for the shaping of the American mind.

Gura's American Transcendentalism is a book that helps to explain the present, as well as the past.

Just in case anyone might miss how to apply this, C. J. and his team go right after major temptations inherent in worldliness.  Craig Cabaniss writes about worldliness and media with good insight.  To no surprise, Bob Kauflin goes after music, bringing the same theological insights he brings to his music ministry.  Take this zinger, for example:  Bob warns that a sign that music has become an idol is when our passion for Christ has waned but our passion for music has not.

Dave Harvey writes about worldliness and "our stuff."  (Loved his warning about "virtual giving.")  C. J. then turns to worldliness and dress, offering good and much needed advice, and Jeff Purswell then concludes by talking about the Christian's right understanding of the world.  We are not here by accident.

Worldliness offers other good features, including a foreword by John Piper.  Most importantly, the book is Gospel-centered and avoids both legalism and antinomianism.  It is also well-timed for the Christmas season.  Read it, savor it, ponder it . . .  and then give a copy to someone else.

In Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are Fleeing and What to Do about It, Duin argues that "many, many evangelical Christians are slipping out or barely hanging on to their churches."  Those words are sure to gain attention.

Duin backs up her argument with a solid mass of statistics.  Church attendance figures are misleading and bloated when supplied by churches themselves.  Statistics often cited to comfort church leaders are based on overly optimistic and dated reports.  The more current and research-based numbers are scary.  The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago estimates that church attendance has fallen from 41 percent of the population in 1971 to 31 percent in 2001.  At those rates of decline, no one will be attending church in 2031.

Of course, statistics are of real but often limited value.  Duin then goes on to offer reports laced generously with reflections on her own experience.  That blending of the personal and the professional is what makes the book interesting -- and what makes it perplexing.

Just about any evangelical reader will find much here that seems real and sufficiently scary.  Most will nod in agreement when Duin points to certain trends and practices as contributing to the decline in church membership and attendance.  Critics of the mega-churches will find criticism here, as will critics of the seeker-sensitive movement, Reformed theology, and just about everything else.  Duin laments the lack of strong biblical preaching and teaching, but she also argues that many of the "teaching" churches lack a real connection with the problems of people in the pews.  She laments the mainstreaming of the Charismatic movement and relates her own very diverse background in basically unsatisfactory church experiences.  She is especially outraged that women are overlooked, under-appreciated, and often taken for granted.  Double that for unmarried women and single mothers.  She seems to oppose complementarianism but never actually declares herself.  This much is clear - she is not happy (and that goes for many of her friends and family members as well).

She wants churches to think "out of the box" and to engage the real needs of their own members.  She wants churches and church leaders to know that single people need help getting married.  She wants less fluff and more substance,  But, honest to goodness, I have no idea what the church she is seeking would look like.

Should church leaders read the book?  Yes.  Quitting Church will force pastors and church leaders to ask some very basic questions about the church -- and about their churches.  There is a lot to think about here.  She speaks of people who "need sermons on unanswered prayer" who instead are confronted with "PowerPoint presentations on attaining breakthroughs."  She offers anecdotes sure to arrest your attention.

Just be aware of the participant/observer tension found throughout this book, and read it as if you are in a conversation with a religion editor for a major national newspaper.  Listen, think, and take notes.

An excerpt:

My research suggested that people are simply not being pastored.  Often ministers are out of touch with what's happening on the ground, as they are surrounded by a wall of secretaries and voice mail.  Congregants have to wait up to a month for an appointment, if they can get in at all.  Once-a-week home Bible study groups lack depth and theological know-how for help with the serious problems many of us face.  Many churches refer people to professional counseling that costs at least seventy-five dollars an hour. Those lucky enough to have a health plan that pays for counseling usually find the only counselors on approved HMO lists have no concept of a Christian worldview.

Born in the old Russian Empire in 1898, Golda Mabovich migrated to America as a little girl, settling with her family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  As a girl and young woman, Golda became urgently committed to the Zionist cause and moved to what was then known as Palestine in 1921 with her new husband, Morris Meyerson (she later Hebraicized her name to Meir).

When Israel emerged as a new nation in 1947, Golda was already recognized as a major figure in Zionist ranks.  She later moved through a succession of offices and responsibilities in the Israeli government, serving as Foreign Minister before becoming the nation's first woman Prime Minister in 1969.

American readers of Golda, a new and fascinating biography of Golda Meir by Elinor Burkett (Harper), are likely to remember Golda' starring role in history, especially on the international stage.  In a sense, Golda Meir's leadership role cemented Israel's special place in the American consciousness.  Even President Richard M. Nixon seemed to melt in her presence, and Israel got what the nation needed from America -- vast financial support, overt and covert political support, and the sale of advanced American armaments and weaponry.  This was a grandmother who did business.

Less known to most Americans, but essential to this story, is Golda Meir's political liberalism, her early decision to abort a baby ("her Zionist obligations simply did not leave room for a child") and divorce from her husband.  Her story is instructive at many levels, telling the story of modern Israel through one woman's role and legacy.

Her story is also a personal and national tragedy, as her legacy continues to divide the nation.  I found Elinor Burkett's biography of Golda Meir to be most helpful in understanding the cataclysmic and chaotic events of Israel's history, the internal divisions that existed in Israel from the beginning, the nation's quest for a unified identity, and the socialist experiment that many intended the new nation to become.  On every page the backdrop is the young nation's brave fight for survival.  The story of Golda Meir is often not pretty, but it is never boring.

An excerpt:

Her people adored her for all the wrong reasons -- for how safe her towering strength made them feel and for the aplomb her edgy wit lent them -- rather than because they heard their own hopes and dreams reflected in her exhortations about socialism, equality, and self-sacrifice.  While she was celebrated across the planet as the first personification of strong female political leadership, on the most pressing international issue -- the alarming rise of terrorism -- she was cast aside as a Cassandra despite what history has shown to be her prescience.  In her every attempt to move Israel toward peace, she was hemmed in -- by the great game between the United States and the Soviet Union and by Israel's political landscape as much as by her own obduracy.

And despite the reality that her nation's political paralysis constrained her from accomplishing much of what she longed to do, she was nonetheless forced to stay in office well beyond her time because there was no other way for her to protect a nation at risk, from its neighbors, its refugees, its economic precariousness, and its own contentious divisions.

A woman of greater wisdom might have resigned and let the younger generation battle it out, no matter the cost.  A leader of foresight might have told her people everything they didn't want to hear, that the situation was not sustainable, that a dozen problems were woven into the national fabric, and that they were living on quicksand.  A creative prime minister might have devised new approaches to everything from ethnic divisions to peacemaking.  And an innovator might have burst the bubble of arrogant self-consciousness by explaining that the political system was ossified or acknowledging that Israelis were not, in fact, the new superheroes.

Now, in Who's Your City?, Florida takes a closer look at the importance of place.  The jacket for the book declares that where you live is "the most important decision of your life."  Well, book jackets are made for exaggeration, but Florida's argument is important nonetheless.

Florida describes the world as "spiky."  He provides visual evidence for his theory by the use of graphs that identify concentrations of "cultural creatives" by means of relative spikes off of the global image.  Thus, regions such as the North East corridor and Silicon Valley show up as huge spikes on the map.  The point is very clear -- these creative individuals are unevenly distributed around the world, and even around the United States.

Furthermore, Florida shows how that these "cultural creatives" cluster themselves together and now choose where to live in terms of the culture they prefer and the amenities they demand.  Some communities will be winners, but most will be losers.

Beyond all this, cultural creativity is clustered now in giant mega-regions such as greater Paris and the technology-rich cities of the Pacific Rim, as well as in huge regions of density within the United States.

One of the key insights of the book is that many people now choose where they want to live as a first decision -- even before career and other choices.

Florida's work is not without its critics, but the basic argument he presents is difficult to refute.  For the intelligent Christian reader, the book raises several issues.  The clustering of creative populations seems to correlate with areas evangelical churches have found difficult to reach.  The creatives are clustered in more secular regions of the nation.  All this should be underline one major aspect of our Great Commission challenge in America and around the world.

An excerpt:

As the most mobile people in human history, we are fortunate to have an incredibly diverse menu of places--in our own countries and around the world--from which to choose.  That's important because each of us has different needs and preferences.  Luckily, places differ as much as we do.  Some have thriving job markets, others excel at the basics, like education and safety.  Some are better for singles, others for families.  Some are more about work, some play.  Some lean conservative, others liberal.  They all cater to different types, and each has its own personality, its own soul.

In Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947 (Belknap Press), historian Christopher Clark traces the emergence of Prussia as a global superpower and its collapse into national non-existence after World War II.  Clark tells the story very well, explaining how Prussia, originally just one among several German kingdoms, emerged as the organizing center of a unified, ambitious, and militaristic Germany.

Along the way, Clark offers insights that help to explain the unfolding history of Europe and points to the coming debacles of World Wars I and II -- both wars forever linked to Prussian militarism and expansionism.

An excerpt:

On 25 February 1947, representatives of the Allied occupation authorities in Berlin signed a law abolishing the state of Prussia.  From this moment onward, Prussia belonged to history. . . .

Law No. 46 of the Allied Central Council was more than an administrative act.  In expunging Prussia from the map of Europe, the Allied authorities also passed judgment upon it.  Prussia was not just one German territory among others, on a par with Baden, Wurttemberg, Bavaria or Saxony; it was the very source of the German malaise that had afflicted Europe.  It was the reason why Germany had turned from the path of peace and political modernity.  'The core of Germany is Prussia,' Churchill told the British Parliament on 21 September 1943.  'There is the source of the recurring pestilence.'  The excision of Prussia from the political map of Europe was thus a symbolic necessity.  Its history had become a nightmare that weighed upon the minds of the living.

Now, in The Courage to Be Protestant, Wells offers what amounts to a fifth volume in his series--a capstone to his argument.

In The Courage to Be Protestant, Wells bravely criticizes those who would offer theological and spiritual reductionism in the name of marketing as well as those who would steer the Evangelical movement toward the postmodern embrace of the "Emergents."

Looking at present-day Evangelicalism, Wells sees shrinking doctrine and a disappearing church.  It takes no courage to "sign-up" as a Protestant, he argues, but it takes considerable courage to believe and act as a Protestant.

The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World is must reading.   After reading this book, go back and read Wells' previous four-volume series.

An excerpt:

Traditional Christian faith holds to the outside God who stands over against us.  He is known not because we have discovered him, but because he has made himself known in Scripture and in Christ.  We are not left to piece together our understanding of him.  He has unveiled and defined himself for us.  He has broken his concealment.  He has come into view and has told us who he is and how we are to live.

The inside god of this contemporary spirituality is different.  He emerges out of the psychology, the inner depths, of the seeker.  He is known through and within the self, and we piece together our knowledge of him (or her, or it) from the fragments of our experience coupled with our intuitions.  In so many ways this god, this sacred reality, is indistinguishable from how we experience ourselves.

I discussed this important book with author David Wells on the June 5, 2008 edition of The Albert Mohler Program [listen here].

The concept of multiple intelligences is both helpful and transformative, broadening the concept of intelligence to cover, for example, emotional intelligence as well as the knowledge of facts and concepts.  It takes little reflection to recognize that a failure to develop emotional intelligence can doom an individual to ineffectiveness -- no matter how much knowledge the person possesses.

In Five Minds for the Future, Gardner points to five different modes of thinking, described as minds, that will be vital for effectiveness and success in the future.  It is no accident that the book is published by Harvard Business School Press.

Gardner describes the disciplinary mind, the synthesizing mind, the creating mind, the respectful mind, and the ethical mind as five essentials for the future.  Christian readers will gain a great deal from reading Gardner's book.  Much of what he has to say is immediately applicable to life, to ministry, to education, and to parenthood.  Christians will want to say more than Gardner says in many respects, but his analysis of these five minds should be very helpful to the reader.

As a matter of fact, I found the book immediately relevant to my responsibility as an academic president -- and to the work of the Christian ministry.  His secular analysis should lead to good biblical reflection.  As I read his layout of these five minds, I thought of Paul's instruction to ministers in 1 and 2 Timothy.

Five Minds for the Future will help parents to think about their children in a new light.  The Christian parent must aim for more than is found in Gardner's secular analysis, but certainly not for less.  The same is true for the Christian educator.

An excerpt:

When one speaks of cultivating certain kinds of minds, the most immediate frame of reference is that of education.  In many ways, this is appropriate: after all, designated educators and licensed educational institutions bear the most evident burden in the identification and training of young minds.  But we must immediately expand our vision beyond standard educational institutions.  In our cultures of today--and of tomorrow--parents, peers, and media play roles at least as significant as do authorized teachers and formal schools.  More and more parents "homeschool" or rely on various extra-scholastic mentors or tutors.  Moreover, if any cliché of recent years rings true, it is the acknowledgment that education must be lifelong.  Those at the workplace are charged with selecting individuals who appear to possess the right kinds of knowledge, skills, minds--in my terms, they should be searching for individuals who possess disciplined, synthesizing, creating, respectful, and ethical minds.  But, equally, managers and leaders, directors and deans and presidents, must continue to perennially develop all five kinds of minds in themselves and--equally--in those for whom they bear responsibility.

The bar mitzvah celebration has roots in medieval Judaism, but it became an important part of American Judaism only in the twentieth century, Oppenheimer explains. "The typical bar or bat mitzvah ceremony--the religious part, anyway--is quite simple. A boy of about thirteen, or a girl of about twelve or thirteen, leads a portion of the traditional Jewish Sabbath service and reads aloud some of the Bible portions assigned to that week," he summarizes. "The event is supposed to mark the moment when a young Jew assumes the responsibilities of religious adulthood."

The big problem is that few people really seem to believe that the bar mitzvah does any such thing. The thirteen-year-old who celebrates the bar (for boys) or bat (for girls) mitzvah is still a thirteen-year-old. Furthermore, the ceremony has been eclipsed by the celebration that follows. In wealthy Jewish communities, these parties are often outlandishly expensive. Oppenheimer provides an insider's perspective on this transformation of the tradition.

Reading Thirteen and a Day is an introduction to many of the issues facing contemporary American Judaism and a truly interesting historical and sociological analysis of a familiar ritual. Christians reading the book are likely to think about how we conceive of early adolescents and the transition to adulthood -- and the challenge of instilling a clear identity within our own children.

An excerpt:

The popularity of the b'nai mitzvah is not the result of their usefulness. There is no strong evidence that the bar or bat mitzvah will reverse Jews' low birthrates or counter religious indifference. While committed Jewish families see b'nai mitzvah as necessary to raising a good Jewish child, that is no way to account for adult b'nai mitzvah--and what's more, it's no way to account for the enthusiasm of the children themselves, whose excitement has little to do with abstract notions of Jewish survival. B'nai mitzvah cannot be explained through Torah, which nowhere mentions the ceremony; Jews are not commanded to celebrate the mar mitzvah.

Rather, they are commanded to act like Jews; to pray, to tell the story of the Exodus every Passover, to reproduce young Jews, to circumcise the boys. But as rewarding as the Jewishly lived life can be, and as fun as reproduction is, they seem to express inadequately our religious peoplehood. What evangelical Christian express by being born again, or Mormons by going on a two-year mission, Jews express through the bar and bat mitzvah. They proclaim their commitment to Judaism every time they say their prayers, but this is the only time that make that commitment with an audience watching.

One of the most interesting of these is Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning by Jonah Goldberg. A popular conservative commentator long associated with National Review magazine, Goldberg is a very capable writer. He has a rare ability to inject humor into serious argument -- and to get away with it.

In Liberal Fascism he goes after the impulse to combine utopian visions with intellectual arrogance and a willingness to coerce others into compliance. Goldberg rightly traces the modern ideology of fascism back to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and deals forthrightly with the fascist ideology of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement. He then proceeds to argue that contemporary American liberalism embodies a new form of fascism -- a fascism with a smiling face, perhaps more therapeutic than terrifying.

Goldberg offers solid insights in this book, and Liberal Fascism is a good introduction to many of the debates now raging with American culture. He also provides historical analysis and a sense of intellectual context. Nonetheless, the book has a major problem -- its title.

Given the horrifying experience of the twentieth century, we should be extremely reluctant to use the term fascism without a direct reference to the murderous regimes of fascist Europe -- and the Third Reich in particular. Intellectual credibility suffers when words are used carelessly and wrongly. Jonah Goldberg rightly complains that liberals often wrongly accuse conservatism of being latent fascism when engaged in argument. True enough, but turning the word on liberalism scarcely helps. Intellectual discourse and political debate are reduced to name-calling, and understanding is often lost. Liberal Fascism is worth reading, but the book and its argument would have been stronger and more credible without the reference to fascism.

An excerpt:

Again, it is my argument that American liberalism is a totalitarian political religion, but not necessarily an Orwellian one. It is nice, not brutal. Nannying, not bullying. But it is definitely totalitarian -- or "holistic," if you prefer -- in that liberalism today sees no realm of human life that is beyond political significance, from what you eat to what you smoke to what you say. Sex is political. Food is political. Sports, entertainment, your inner motives and outer appearance, all have political salience for liberal fascists. Liberals place their faith in priestly experts who know better, who plan, exhort, badger, and scold. They try to use science to discredit traditional notions of religion and faith, but they speak the language of pluralism and spirituality to defend "nontraditional" beliefs.

The story of Washington the city is inseparable from the story of the Founders and their heirs -- and the story of the new nation. The very existence of the city is a monumental achievement, and the establishment of a new capital for the nation did not make sense to all. New York and Philadelphia (and Philadelphia even more than New York) offered amenities and cultural institutions that Washington would not have for over a century and beyond. The new District of Columbia was largely a swamp, but the Founders has a bold vision. George Washington was himself determined to see the new capital express the grandeur of the new nation's vision and commitment to democracy. When constructed, the Capitol was the largest building in the young nation, and the White House was the largest residence. Both basically stood in bare fields.

There is more to this story -- much more, in fact. Bordewich's account takes the reader only up to the early nineteenth century. Nevertheless, by that time Washington the city was a fact, and the outlines of modern Washington were already visible. Washington: The Making of the American Capital is a great story that is well told.

An excerpt:

Today some 550,000 Washingtonians live at the core of a linear megalopolis with millions of inhabitants, extending deep into Maryland and Virginia. The tacit assumption that the capital would always be a white man's city --no one even remotely imagined otherwise in the 1790s--has also been overthrown by time: today 57 percent of the city's inhabitants, most of the leading members of its municipal government, and a significant portion of its business establishment are African American. The skeleton of L'Enfant's grand plan survives, adapted to the exigencies of modern life. His boulevards continue to shape (and confuse) the flow of traffic, nudging the eye toward the magestic symmetries that lie half-buried, like an elegant palimpsest, beneath the modern cityscape. The White House remains where L'Enfant put it, although a more fearful age has hemmed it in with fences, barriers, and rings of invisible security to a degree that would have profoundly dismayed Americans of the 1790s, who expected even their highest officials to be easy of access, and available to them at almost any time. The Capitol, too, remains what the Founders intended, much larger and grander than it was two centuries ago, of course, but still framed by the proportions sketched by William Thornton on the steamy island of Tortola, and more than ever a magnet to the eye, proof to all of the astonishing persistence of American democracy.

David Maraniss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author, takes us back to the 1960 Olympics where so many of these changes began in Rome 1960: The Olympics that Changed the World (Simon and Schuster). Those games started just one week after the espionage trial of Francis Gary Powers ended with his conviction in Moscow. The Cold War was at its height and the old order of the colonial age was breaking up. New ideals of individualism and new ideas of the role of sports in the culture and the economy were coming to the fore. All of these changes were on stage in Rome as the Olympic Games began.

Maraniss offers here a book that surprised me at many turns, and I found that reading Rome 1960 was a good way to watch the current games in Beijing with greater insight. As Maraniss argues, the shape of the modern games as we know them now was "coming into view" in Rome.

An excerpt:

Television, money, and drugs were bursting onto the scene, altering everything they touched. Old-boy notions of pristine amateurism, created by and for upper-class sportsmen, were crumbling in Rome and could never be taken seriously again. Rome brought the first commercially broadcast Summer Games, the first doping scandal, the first runner paid for wearing a certain brand of track shoes. New nations and constituencies were being heard from, with increasing pressure to provide equal rights for blacks and women as they emerged from generations of discrimination and condescension.

The singular essence of the Olympic Games is that the world takes the same stage at the same time, performing a passion play of nations, races, ideologies, talents, styles, and aspirations that no other venue, not even the United Nations, can match. The 1960 Games came during a notably anxious period in cold war history; almost every action in Rome was viewed through the political lens of those tense times.

But China, more clearly than most nations, is captive to its history -- and there is no way to understand the China we will see on television in coming days without understanding China's more recent history. The challenge lies in finding an adequate one-volume history.

Just in time for the Olympic Games, Jonathan Fenby has written Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to the Present (Ecco/HarperCollins). Fenby's work is the best one-volume work on modern China I have yet found, and it is must reading for anyone who wants to understand China at this crucial moment. Fenby, who writes and explains well, traces China's history from the Qing dynasty, through decades of war and revolution, to Mao and the rise of Communist China, to the great shifts in Chinese life and culture as China enters a global age.

An excerpt:

This book has argued that, for all the manifestations of modernity, China's history is not another country. Now, the cumulative effects of the process launched by Deng Xiaoping are leading to a phase that could be plucked right out of imperial dynasties or from the republic. If Mao was the strong, willful dynastic founder and Deng the consolidator who saw a way of renewing the mandate, Hu Jintao can be taken as a successor who holds the keys to power but cannot turn them as his predecessors did. True, there is no organized opposition to confront the Communist dynasty, no Red Army lurking in the backwoods, no political movement marshalling resistance in the countryside. But the regime faces a different kind of risk, which again has its roots in China's early history. Since the First Emperor in AD 221, rulers have feared losing control of major forces in society, whether they take the form of questioning officials and scholars, military commanders, or, in the last decades of empire, the modernizing gentry. Today, those impelled by the rush to the market and material self-improvement march increasingly to their own drum. Interest groups, individuals and competing power centres proliferate within the overall supposedly unified structure. State -owned enterprises join private firms in playing the stock exchange and using their positions to maximize profits. The result is an authoritarian state which increasingly lacks authority, an empire without an emperor.

The fact is that children will play.  As Chudacoff remarks, "Kids still find ways to be kids."  In the colonial era, children were more likely to be involved in "roving about" the outdoors and improvising games.  Later generations of parents encouraged more formal play and childhood itself was more celebrated.  Over time, play would be transformed by efforts to keep young boys off the streets, to teach adult roles through gender-specific play, and to free the natural creativity of the child.

More recently, play has been redefined by the development of technologies like computer games, by concerns about gender and child safety, and by changes in family structure and parenting.  The book is thought-provoking and insightful.

This excerpt suggests how changes in family life lead to changes in play -- and in the relationships between parents and children:

In the twentieth century, two related forces converged to alter the playtime of preadolescents in significant ways.  Fist, the extension of compulsory schooling filled much of all children's daytime hours, regardless of social class, incidentally strengthening peer cultures that increasingly socialized young people in play choices.  A partial reduction in a child's family responsibilities, resulting in part from smaller family size and the spread of labor-saving electric appliances, helped create time after school and in the evening during which youngsters could interact with their peer group or play alone with a new cornucopia of commercial playthings.  And during the first half of the century, at least, this playtime often took place away from adult supervision in private bedrooms and other secluded areas of the home.

At the same time, much of what is presented as archaeology is openly hostile to the truthfulness of the Bible, leaving many Christians wanting to know more but unsure of where to turn. The Archaeological Study Bible: An Illustrated Walk Through Biblical History and Culture [Zondervan] is the best resource for this need.  Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and Duane Garrett of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary served as editors for this project.

One of the great strengths of this project is the placement of such helpful material alongside the biblical text.  References to seals, monuments, places, and cultural artifacts are described and explained, often with full-color photographs.  The Archaeological Study Bible is a great advance and a wonderful addition to the Christian's bookshelf.

See also my article, "How Should We Think About Archaeology and the Bible?"

An excerpt:

Above all, the Puritans use the truth of adoption to transform God's needy children through powerful comforts.  Thomas Hooker shows how adoption comforts them in the face of their unworthiness, outward poverty, the contempt of the world, infirmities, afflictions, persecutions, and dangers.  When oppressed with sin, buffeted by Satan, enticed by the world, or alarmed by fears of death, believers are able to take refuge in their precious, heavenly Father, saying with [Samuel] Willard, "Am I not still a child?  And if so, then I am sure, that though he correct me (and I deserve it, nor will I refuse to submit myself patiently unto it) yet he cannot take away his loving kindness from me."

The decade of the 1970s is now a generation behind us, but the cultural and political movements of that pivotal decade set the stage for so much of what we face in our current times.  In terms of national politics, two great developments stand out.  On the Left, the nomination of Sen. George McGovern became the pivotal event of the decade, even as the rise of a reinvigorated conservatism became the great event on the Right.

Author Bruce Miroff of the State University of New York at Albany takes his readers into the heart of the McGovern campaign in The Liberals' Moment: The McGovern Insurgency and the Identity Crisis of the Democratic Party [University Press of Kansas, 2007].  There is no way one can make sense of the modern Democratic party without understanding this campaign.  The issues of that campaign still define the Left, as do many of the individuals involved in the campaign (such as Bill Clinton).  The Liberals' Moment should be read by all who want to understand our current political context -- both liberals and conservatives.

An excerpt:

Despite the landslide defeat, the McGovern campaign bequeathed to the Democrats a talented, youthful cadre of strategists, organizers, and wordsmiths who as they aged would largely shape the evolution of the party over the following decades. Every presidential campaign brings new activists into electoral politics, and some stay for the long haul. But for Democrats, the McGovern campaign produced a more distinctive and influential generation of political operatives than any campaign since. We can identify McGovernites--a term I use descriptively, hoping to detach it from the pejorative implications it is often given by right-wing commentators. But we do not speak of Mondaleites, Dukakisites, or Goreites, and even the senior Clintonites were McGovernites further down the political road.

Many liberals would prefer to look back on the McGovern campaign with nostalgia rather than discomfort, as the last time they could feel passionate and honest as they rallied behind one of their own in a presidential election. Certainly, later insurgent liberals, who have never made it past the primaries, have not paid much heed to the electoral vulnerability of liberalism that the McGovern campaign made palpable. Yet any future campaign mounted by the liberal wing of the Democratic Party needs to grapple with these vulnerabilities. Several characteristics of the McGovern campaign that offered plump targets for the Republicans remain of great relevance today, and liberals cannot evade the problems that they pose if they want credibly to renew their claim to the party's leadership.

The urgency?  Dr. MacArthur rightly believes that "nothing matters more than what Scripture says about the good news of salvation."   His book was a much-needed corrective to dangerous misunderstandings of the Gospel found commonly among some evangelical teachers twenty years ago.  The release of this new edition, updated after two decades, is an alarm that these misrepresentations of the Gospel still threaten today.

I was recently asked to rank the most important evangelical books of the last twenty-five years.  In my judgment, The Gospel According to Jesus belongs in the top ten of that urgent list.

An excerpt:

The gospel in vogue today holds forth a false hope to sinners.  It promises them that they can have eternal life yet continue to live in rebellion against God.  Indeed, it encourages people to claim Jesus as Savior yet defer until later the commitment to obey Him as Lord.  It promises salvation from hell but not necessarily freedom from iniquity.  It offers false security to people who revel in the sins of the flesh and spurn the way of holiness.  By separating faith from faithfulness, it teaches that intellectual assent is as valid as a wholehearted obedience to the truth.

Thus the good news of Christ has given way to the bad news of an insidious easy-believism that makes no moral demands on the lives of sinners.  It is not the same message Jesus proclaimed.