Books

Review: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond My rating: 3 of 5 stars In short, Europe’s colonization of Africa had nothing to do with differences between European and African peoples themselves, as white racists assume. Rather, it was due to...

Crossway e-Book Sale! Every Book Just $6!

Crossway is selling all of their e-books for just six bucks a piece—until Jan 15th. Here’s a little gem from one I picked up, Mark Dever’s The Message of the Old Testament: Promises Made. I’ve been planning on buying this for some years now as a homiletical aid....

Review: Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books

Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books by Tony Reinke My rating: 3 of 5 stars What I have learned from about twenty-years of serious reading is this: It is sentences that change my life, not books. What changes my life is some new glimpse of truth, some powerful...

Review: Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft

Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft by Thor Heyerdahl My rating: 3 of 5 stars If not a book for guys, at least a book clearly written by one. There wasn't a single word about the relationship of the six guys on the raft that I noted—it's all adventure. My rating: 5...

Make A List; Check It Twice

This is a good time of year for me to remind you and you of an important principle: don't listen to Logos when they let their marketing folks write the following: The sheer volume of content in Logos base packages makes them incredibly valuable. There's a fundamental...

Grudem on Selfishness

I think the following comments from Grudem's Systematic Theology are very insightful—and needful for preachers. It's easy to preach so hard against selfishness that one erases part of the image of God! Other definitions of the essential character of sin have been...

Truth and Beauty

Derek Kidner is a commentator who writes not just insightfully but beautifully. Don't miss his commentaries on Genesis, Psalms (vol. 1 and vol. 2), Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. They are gifts to the church. I'm not familiar with Stephen Motyer (a relation to J. Alec, I...

NIV Books of the Bible

Biblica now has an edition of The Books of the Bible set in the NIV, though it’s just the New Testament (at least I can’t find an entire Bible on their website). The new edition is set in a serif typeface rather than the odd, hybrid typeface used for the TNIV editions...

Bible Typography Manifesto

I’ve released a manifesto, and I invite you to sign it. “Manifesto” sounds a whole lot nicer than “private opinion,” and that’s my only excuse for using such a grandiose word. The format is slightly tongue in cheek, but the upshot is serious. I’m a Bible curriculum...

Review: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas My rating: 3 of 5 stars I'm hovering between three and four stars here, because I did enjoy the book. Quite a stirring narrative. But, to put it too bluntly, I don't have a fundamental trust in the theological...