Thanksgiving week is the best time of year for homeless persons looking for food handouts—but why are they homeless? Addiction, alcoholism, and mental illness are leading causes, but Michael Ullman’s Household Deformation: The Rise and Permanence of Modern Homelessness (National Homeless Information Project, 2025) also shows the impact of family non-formation and deformation. Divorce and loneliness contribute to an increase in Read More ›
Intellectuals who paid attention when Molly Worthen became a Christian—see Olasky Books for August—should note as well the publication this month of Charles Murray’s Taking Religion Seriously (Encounter). In it the formerly agnostic scholar gives reasons, including “the brute facts of the big bang,” for his new belief in God. Much of the book details Murray’s exploration of Christian claims. Read More ›
Rosh Hashanah—the Jewish new year’s celebration—begins on September 22, so this is a good time to review four new Judaism-related books, starting with the entertaining Eminent Jews (Henry Holt, 2025). David Denby offers four long but readable chapters on Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, Norman Mailer, and Leonard Bernstein. The Brooks section is best with its specific detail of how the genius of Read More ›
This month is named after the emperor Augustus, but I’d rather think of it as a month for Augustine, the saintly theologian who died almost 1600 years ago. Augustine’s City of God, 1300 or so pages in modern translations, is a lot to lug to a desk, so I recommend Gregory Lee’s The Essential City of God: A Reader and Read More ›
This summer I’ve read two ambitious books that succeed, two that partly succeed, and an unpretentious one that holds true to its roots. Let’s start with Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History from the Puritans to Donald Trump (Forum, 2025). Molly Worthen walks us through four centuries of mystery history: Some leaders gain followers by charm but charisma is more Read More ›
Is anything new under the sun except books? My own preference by oceans and lakes is for books that raise energy levels. Others prefer calming waves. So here are two of the former and two of the latter. Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway (Viking, 2024) shows the power of DNA. Harkaway is the son of masterful British spy novelist David Read More ›
Thomas Howard’s Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History (Yale University Press, 2025) brilliantly flips the meme summarized by Christopher Hitchens in the title of his 2007 book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. I debated Hitchens that year and offered examples of Christian compassion that should have pushed him off absolutism, but he was adamant: “Everything.” Howard, Read More ›
Eight days from now comes the most controversial day of the year. Easter bunnies and eggs (if you can afford the latter) mask the debate, but Gary Habermas jumps into it in On the Resurrection: Refutations (B&H Academic, 2024). Unlike other books that merely assert what the Gospels say, Habermas painstakingly undermines one by one the arguments that Jesus was Read More ›
Rational people differ on Who God is or what gods are, but should we all believe that the world is the product of intelligent design? That’s what a smart New York columnist, a smart Roman essayist who died in 43 BC, and the smart Discovery Institute researchers who follow science, all contend. The new book, by New York Times columnist Read More ›
Sixty thousand Union soldiers led by General William T. Sherman killed the Confederacy with their famous “March to the Sea” in 1864—but 20,000 enslaved blacks liberated themselves by marching with them. Bennett Parten’s Somewhere Toward Freedom (Simon & Schuster, 2025) tells that often-neglected story and brings out emancipation excitement. Parten also reports disappointment as Reconstruction faltered, land-reform lagged, and Somewhere Read More ›