The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot)

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has a lot in common with Killers of the Flower Moon.  Both are fascinating pieces of on-the-ground journalism about events that happened decades ago;  both Grann and Skloot worked extensively with living family members of the people involved, and helped solved mysteries the family members never had answers to.  …

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Middle Passage (Charles Johnson)

Middle Passage was not at all what I expected it to be.  I expected a historical novel about, well, the Middle Passage.  Which Middle Passage is, in the most basic sense.  But it’s also an adventure story, and a short-but-dense philosophical musing on race, identity and America.  In the end, the best description I can …

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (Trevor Noah)

I had never heard of Trevor Noah until he took over The Daily Show from Jon Stewart.  (I’m not well-versed in the comedy world, so he was probably way better known than I realized.)  I don’t watch much TV, but I did watch some of his standup comedy on YouTube.  He’s funny, of course.  But …

Black Like Me (John Howard Griffin)

  Rest at pale evening… A tall slim tree… Night coming tenderly Black like me. –Langston Hughes I can’t remember where I first saw Black Like Me recommended.  But I didn’t see it just once.  It kept popping up, over and over again, as a good introduction for white readers to the social reality of …

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Mark Noll)

The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind. So begins Mark Noll’s prophetic, sad, disturbing, and vitally important book. This is a difficult post for me to write for a number of reasons. Not because I don’t know what to say. It’s more a question of where …

Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (Christine Leigh Heyrman)

I got this book several years ago. At the time I thought it sounded fascinating (and it is), but for whatever reason I never got around to it till now. But I’m actually glad I waited. Southern Cross makes so much more impact, and is so much more timely, in today’s post-Trump evangelical landscape. It’s …

The Call of the Wild (Jack London) and White Fang (Jack London)

There are good reasons I’m reviewing these two books together. It’s not just because they’re both by Jack London, and both about dogs in the Klondike. Let me back up a bit. I went through a bit of a Jack London phase when I was a teenager – 14 sounds about right. I don’t remember …