Matt Haig's "The Midnight Library" is a delightful piece of science fiction-- think Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" crossed with string theory and a clinical psychology manual.
Book review: “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig
Book review: “The Faith of a Heretic” by Walter Kaufmann
As a religious person, "The Faith of a Heretic" was hard to read because many if its criticisms were so accurate. But I think such criticisms can only be good as they help us identify the faults that may be invisible to us.
Book review: “Ich und Du” by Martin Buber
In I-It relationships, you treat others something to be used, as means to your own ends. In I-Thou relationships, you encounter another being as unique and unlimited as yourself.
Book review: “Morality” by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Rabbi Sacks' last book "Morality" is a deeply moving call to action to rediscover our shared responsibility to one another. If COVID-19 teaches us anything, it is that we need each other and our actions have direct consequences on those around us.
Book review: “10 Books that Screwed Up the World”
"There is nothing so absurd, that it can't be said by a philosopher." Wiker's thesis is that ideas have power, and a lot of them can be dangerous. OF the 14 books be reviews, some would be universally condemned such as Hitler's Mein Kampf-- but others were written by eminent scientists such as Darwin's "Descent of Man."
Book review: “The Physician” by Noah Gordon
11th century Christian from England disguises himself as a Jew so he can train as a physician in a Persian hospital. Historical fiction at its best! It captures an era that I wish we engaged with more.
Book review: “Becoming Wise” by Krista Tippett
A beautiful example of the fact that if you sit down and talk with someone from a different background, a different faith tradition, a different culture, you will come to love them and find wisdom there.
Book review: Isaiah Berlin’s “The Power of Ideas”
Perhaps the statement "ideas have power" sounds super-obvious. But if that's the case, we had gosh darn take a moment to examine what ideas are driving us. A timely book considering the strong ideologies present in politics today.
Book review: “A Secular Age” by Charles Taylor
Most accounts of secularization are pretty flat: the march of clear and virtuous reason against the suffocating faith of the Middle Ages. Charles Taylor gives much more detailed account than these over-simplifications-- and regardless of your background, Taylor's work is an engaging read.
Book review: “C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason”
Materialism (the idea that there are no supernatural causes) is such a fundamental assumption of modern science, rarely will anyone take the time to state it. But here, C. S. Lewis takes the existence of reason itself as a refutation of materialism. A great analysis by Reppert.
