Olasky Books: A Tragedy with Comic Moments, a Comedy with Tragic Moments

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quoted in 1983 the best explanation for evil developments that he had heard: “Men have forgotten God. That’s why all this has happened.” David Baerwald’s engaging historical novel, The Fire Agent (Spiegel & Grau, 2026), provides evidence of that:  Baerwald shows how both brilliant German chemist Fritz Haber and Japanese fascists made wealth and power their gods.

The main character is the author’s grandfather, Ernst Baerwald, a German Jew who led an adventurous life that included years as a spy in Japan. His cover was corporate work for what became IG Farben: Chemists saved lives by developing a cheap nitrogen fertilizer that multiplied crop yields, but they also produced chlorine gas used in World War I and hydrogen cyanide-based Zyklon B used in gas chambers.

The Fire Agent shows how heroes sometimes face hard choices that can end with the destruction of what they prize. Ernst Baerwald, who knew Japan’s militarists needed to be stopped, used his knowledge of gas lines and burnability to propose the US fire-bombing of Tokyo and people he loved. The biggest bombing, in March 1945, probably killed more Japanese than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima later that year.

Baerwald’s novel is a tragedy with some delightful moments. By comparison, The Blue Flame (Hachette, 2026) by George Pelecanos is a comedy in that the main character, lonely widower and private investigator Derek Strange, happily finds he can still solve a crime—and has a reason for living. Pelecanos is a masterful social realist who conveys well his street-level knowledge of characters and landscapes in Washington, DC, far removed from the bright lights of the political arena.

Many novels glamorize the young, so older readers will enjoy a valuing of age and experience. That’s also an implicit lesson within Ben Peterson’s Community, Character, and the Governance of the Social Commons (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026). Peterson emphasizes the importance of community and criticizes political philosophers who hype individual autonomy. He shows why we need “thick relational networks, especially the church.”

The One and the Ninety-Nine by Luke Burgis (St. Martin’s, 2026) similarly notes how “social technologies like dating apps are creating a feedback loop of the pseudo-self.” They optimize for the lowest-friction interactions possible. Burgis shows how we’ve moved in our “Dopamine Culture” from play a sport to watch a sport to “Gamble on a Sport,” and from marriage to “Sexual Freedom” to “Swipe on an App.”

Resisting Therapy Culture (IVP, 2026) critiques trendy self-care and wellness importunings, along with over-medicalization and underappreciation for normal cycles of stress and rest. Matthew Loftus, who teaches and practices family medicine at a mission hospital in Kenya, emphasizes resilience rather than reliance on drugs, and shows how Christ and compassion make a big difference.

Thomas Woodward and James Gills in Epigenetics and the Architect: Evidence of Design at the Frontier of Biology (Discovery Institute Press, 2026) explain that the Human Genome Project discovered an orchestra, but the epigenetic code is the orchestra conductor. Another analogy that shows the wonder of God’s creation: If DNA is like a computer’s digital memory, it’s astonishing that “millions of bits of vital data are inscribed in other specialized codes embedded in the interior wiring, keyboard, screen, outer casing, and many other parts of the computer.”

In Olasky Books I rarely quote other reviewers, but a City Journal review said what I’d say regarding Brian Goldstone’s Pulitzer Prize-winning but ideologically-loaded There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America (Crown, 2025). John McMillian notes that Goldstone emphasizes housing costs, yet minimizes personal behaviors that “remind one of a bad horror movie, where the dangers are obvious to everyone except the characters themselves.” Maybe you’ve seen the great commercial: Hide behind the chainsaws!… To the cemetery!

Briefly noted

How to Travel: An Ancient Guide for the Modern Tourist (Princeton, 2026) is a charming collection. For instance, Herodotus wrote that no Egyptian dinner party was complete without a man carrying around a wooden effigy of a corpse in a coffin: He would show it to each partygoer and say, “Drink up and be merry, but look upon this, because you’ll be like this when you’re dead.”

Something for many as the school year begins: Douglas Groothuis in Taking Back Truth (Baker, 2026) shows how to identify and resist ideologies that go with a typical college crowd on subjects including gender, abortion, and morality. Something for specialists: Gone for Good: Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition, edited by Mark Elsdon (Eerdmans, 2024), is useful for those who fear being submerged.

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