Book Reviews from 2018

I’ll never forget one of the hardest Christmases I’ve had. Though I love all the elements of the season—the colors, the lights, the decorations, the smells, the treats, and the celebration of Christ’s birth—it wasn’t “the most wonderful time of the year.” And the reality is that the holidays are terribly hard for many people.

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I sat on the edge of the bed, tears streaming down my cheeks, shoulders low with suffering. I was, once again, crumpled and bowed by depression. Two months prior to this episode, I watched my mother breath her final breath. Six months before that, I walked through the terminal of the Atlanta airport, blood still

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William F. Buckley famously said of the mission of National Review, “It stands athwart history, yelling Stop.” Ben Sasse’s new book, Them: Why We Hate Each Other–and How to Heal might similarly be summarized as one that stands athwart society, pleading, “Don’t you see what’s happening?” Them “is not about politics,” Sasse, a United States

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Political philosophy is rarely a topic of conversation in popular culture today. Streaming video services like Netflix and Hulu alongside myriad social media platforms generally provide more than sufficient entertainment to forestall discussions of the finer points of political theory—though, in fairness, both Facebook and Twitter routinely provoke considerable volumes of political squabbling. Even so,

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The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt is, in the authors’ own words, “about wisdom and its opposite” (p. 1). Based on an article the duo originally wrote in the September 2015 edition of The Atlantic, the book focuses on three “Great Untruths” that have grown in popularity the last

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Steven Waldman’s book Founding Faith: How Our Founding Fathers Forged a Radical New Approach to Religious Liberty is, at heart, a book about getting history right. It seeks to insert a composed, though not detached, assessment of our Founders’ vision of religion and religious liberty into the culture wars over religious freedom. The assertion underpinning this

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If you have a child with autism like I do, you’ve probably devoured stacks of books on the subject. Videos, articles, seminars, podcasts—you’re on your way to becoming a self-taught expert if you’re not already there. You probably have a few super-powers up your sleeve by now, too, like dismissing judgmental stranger-stares, discarding unwanted advice,

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I am a father of two young sons. Being a dad to them is challenging yet infinitely rewarding. I can’t imagine life without them. They bring our family so much joy. Though I fail often as a dad, I’m reminded daily of God’s grace as my wife and I strive to point them to Jesus

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