Books

Our fall books issue includes scholars' recommendations of the best recently published books in New Testament, global Christianity and American religious history, and practical theology.

One cold afternoon in 1975 in a small rented bedroom in Antwerp, the young Mormon missionary Craig Harline (Elder Harline in Mormon parlance) had a faith crisis—though it is not quite right to call it that.

What are the best books for ministry written in the 21st century? We asked seven pastors to pick their favorites.

The Deepest Human Life is an elegantly written, impassioned, and sometimes disjointed plea on behalf of philosophy. Scott Samuelson invokes poets, novelists, and theologians to defend the dialectical process that Socrates imparted.

Why do most white evangelicals vote Republican? How has this affected Republican politics? Matthew Sutton gives us our first good account of how and why evangelical political views developed the way they did. Three elements were crucial—premillennial eschatology, World War I, and the Puritan heritage. 

Why did northern whites support a limited set of rights for blacks during Reconstruction, but then abandon them in the 1870s, and do little to stop the racial violence of the 1880s and beyond? Two new books shed important new light on such questions.

"I suppose some liturgical types don't like our Amish novels, and some evangelicals are perplexed by our Catholic stuff. But it used to be worse."

Let it be said at once: this is the best book ever written about Billy Graham. I found this an absolutely captivating book and have read every word, including the footnotes.

This is a book about deep, protracted, unrelenting sadness, and it knows it.