Books

I kept quiet about my faith for fear of embarrassment. Then I read Anne Lamott, and suddenly I wasn't so alone.

These days, we need a strong current of theological explication of Christian eschatology. Richard Middleton has stepped forward—and his book doesn't even mention zombies.

Morton Kelsey showed me that I was under a spell that needed to be broken.

Richard Hays has said for years that he's working on something about "echoes of scripture in the Gospels." But life intervened, so he has produced this slim volume as an appetizer.

A pet peeve of mine is the pigeonholing of authors—especially the label "nature writers" inflicted on certain writers of immense spiritual power.

I read Lauren Winner's new book with the sort of joy one feels when watching someone utterly hit their stride.

Princeton Theological Seminary can be a lonely place for an African American professor. During a difficult period, I saw Isabel Wilkerson on PBS.

I was 29, agonizing over a decision, when I came upon a little book by Robert Ochs.

Instead of sitting down to rage at a blank page again, I grabbed a copy of Don Quixote. Three days later, the ice of time had cracked.

Study of the Armenian genocide has attracted many fine scholars, but Ronald Suny's book stands out.

When I was 13, my pastor slipped me Glenn Clark's The Soul's Sincere Desire. Within three pages, I knew I had a soul.

In her 11th novel Toni Morrison returns to the foundation of most of her fiction: childhood and its traumatic effects.

Karl Ove Knausgaard forced me to cancel six months of my life in order to fixate on 30 years of his.

The appeal of Abandonment to Divine Providence is its simple, lyrical repetition of a single idea: whatever happens is the will of God.

The "Fall of Rome...is not a historical event; it's more akin to a theological idea." So proclaims Douglas Boin, sacking the understanding of early Christian identity that has prevailed since at least the second century.

Christian Smith and Hilary Davidson's book is a tale of two ways of life: with generosity and without.