Category: Book Reviews

Lewis: Hell’s Operating Principles

  

For many, their first encounter with C. S. Lewis’s marvelous works is The Screwtape Letters. This witty little book, which consists of letters from a superior devil, Screwtape, to a junior devil, Wormwood, continues to be a bestseller. Why? I think it’s because it captures so well the essence of the sinful heart as it displays not only Screwtape’s advice on how to lead a person into hell, but also the manner in which the inhabitants of hell treat one… Read more »

Coolidge: Humor, Humility, & Faith

  

A few weeks ago, I gave an endorsement to Amity Shlaes’s biography of Calvin Coolidge, even though I had only read half the book at that time. I’ve now completed it, and my endorsement not only holds but is greater than before. She presents Coolidge from all angles, inspecting both strengths and weaknesses, triumphs and disappointments. Along the way, she gives many insights into the character of the man himself. He took office as president upon the death of Warren… Read more »

Shlaes’s Coolidge

  

Amity Shlaes is a very good writer. She’s also a top-notch researcher. Her niche is showing how the 1920s and 1930s are not what many people think they were. Tackling academic political correctness is not for the fainthearted, so she apparently has a rather stout heart. I first became acquainted with her writing in the book The Forgotten Man, which lanced effectively the liberal-progressive theme that FDR was the nation’s savior during the Great Depression. Now she has struck again…. Read more »

Up from Slavery: The Character of Booker T. Washington

  

I’ve been reading the autobiography of Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery. The story of his childhood in slavery, the privations he suffered both under slavery and in the years after its abolition, would have made many men bitter. Washington, though, never lost the vision planted in him by God that someday he would be able to rise above it. He learned, along the way, that one’s goal was not to be selfishly motivated but to become the best for… Read more »

Lewis and God’s Severe Mercy

  

In a post a couple weeks ago, I referenced a new book about C. S. Lewis I was reading. Alister McGrath’s C. S. Lewis, a Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet, while not a full biography, nevertheless provides a satisfying interpretation of what motivated Lewis at various stages of his life. Its primary value, though, is his analysis of the significance of the variety of Lewis’s writings, noting how he shifted his emphases throughout his literary career. He began as an… Read more »

An Oasis

  

As promised, Pondering Principles begins again today. My week away was well worth it. I never even touched a computer the entire time. Cruises are a lot about food, but I tried to limit the intake—somewhat. Working out nearly every morning must have burned some of those calories. At least I’m going to tell myself that. It was my first time back in Puerto Rico in about four years, and I was glad to renew acquaintances. The door is open… Read more »

C. S. Lewis & the Joy of Books

  

In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis tells of his childhood fascination with books, a fascination that never went away through a lifetime of reading and writing. See if you can relate to what he says here; I know I can. I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books. My… Read more »