My 10 Best Books of 2015

Here's the 10 best books I read for the year.  Not necessarily the best, just my 10 best.  One lesson I learned is to not write summaries 10 months after the fact, however.

1) Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America by Richard Hughes
One sentence rub: A history of the churches of Christ from their origin in the 1800s until now which argues that the movement largely transitioned from a sect (set apart from other brands of Christianity) to denomination during that time.  
     If you're going to get one book on the history of the restoration movement, make it this one.  But remember, good history doesn't pander to heritage, and instead it exposes the good, bad, and ugly wherever it falls.  The Bible itself is not rosy on heritage--if it were, you wouldn't have the Judges, Bathsheba, Ananias/Sapphira, or Peter's constant mishaps.  Just as with the history of anything in which human beings are involved, the history of the churches of Christ since the time of Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone has had bright spots as well as lumps.  Like the Bible talking about King David's immoralities, Hughes doesn't sparse embarrassing moments.  Particularly troubling was the fact that the church, by the 1960s, tended to reflect more the country at large as opposed to the revolutionary nature of the gospel.  Segregation is a case in point on this: instead of recognizing Paul's words in Galatians 3:28 that "we are all one in Christ Jesus," (a la there is neither black nor white), churches bought into society at large, believing integration to be deleterious to its welfare.
   The other thing good history writing always does is make a point.  It's not enough to chronicle events--you need to tell me why it's important.  Again, this is something the Biblical histories did as well.  The book of Kings and the book of Chronicles both narrate the same events, and yet their tones are different.  Kings, written as a lament for Israel's collapse and destruction, demonstrates the depravity of the nation that was reflected in the depravity of its kings; Chronicles, written in anticipation of new Jerusalem, is much more positive, and it emphasizes the goodness of people who turned back to the Lord (even Manasseh, the most evil of all, had his coming-to-God moment).  The point Hughes calls to mind throughout the book is both a great insight, as well as a caution.  Though the churches of Christ have always seen themselves as non-denominational or a-denominational, with successive generations, the movement little by little frittered away the beliefs and practices that made them unique.  Pacifism, personal evangelism, modest living, all things that fell by the wayside as the American nation grew wealthier, more powerful, and demanded preeminent loyalty from its citizens.
   It's a tough task writing a history for a movement that denies any history that began at any point after Pentecost.  There are a few other histories that I'm aware of.  Ed Harrell has one, but it only focuses on the 20th century.  The other is the four-volume Search for the Ancient Order--I haven't read it, but I get the gist that it's a little more on the rosy rah-rah side.  In terms of good history, though, there's no match for Hughes.  


2) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

     No, no, no.  Goodness no.  This is not a book about a berserk ballerina starring Natalie Portman.  Think instead, Kafka writes non-fiction.  You can't predict the future, you do a poor job explaining the past, so keep your eyes peeled a little bit more in the present, because in our vastly complex society, there's no telling what unexpected event might wreck your existence next.  There's your one sentence summary.
   A black swan is some type of big event that is unpredictable or improbable but changes everything (kind of like seeing a black swan when you're whole life you've assumed there were only white swans).  September 11, Great Crash of 1929, collapse of the Berlin Wall, advent of computers.  All events that couldn't be foreseen, and yet shaped our future tremendously.  In fact, because they are improbable by nature, we have a big blind spot for these bad boys--especially negative black swans (i.e. the bad unexpected stuff)--and this causes us as a society to be affected even more detrimentally when bad things happen.  (It's the equivalent of not having plans for your family in case of your death, because it's so improbable... the problem is that if it happens, the fallout is huge).  But as society has become more complex and unpredictable, we've increased our blind spots because we go about with our inductive empirical observation, telling ourselves that all the things we've learned are all there is, and things we haven't learned can't hurt us.
     Some people hate him.  Especially smart people.  Mainly because he says their whole life's work is bunk, and if you're in the projection business--big bunk.  I picked it up off a best business book list, but it's practical in whatever field you're in.  It was a treat reading it side by side with Reviving the Ancient Faith.  (That said, having reread this all, everything I said looks like unintelligible trash... just get the book).
     One Sentence Rub: The thing you never saw coming messes things up in ways you never saw coming, and unfortunately, people keep believing that there's not another thing coming because our worldview is too simple.


3) Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by NT Wright
One Sentence Rub: The Christian hope is, and has always been, the resurrection of our material bodies, and this also includes a restoration of the earth when Christ returns and all is made new in a new heavens and new earth, but in our closet gnosticism we've forgotten how to read our Bibles to see what clearly appears.
     When you die, if you're good, you go to heaven as a disembodied spirit, and you get to float in the clouds with God and the angels like water vapor in the sweet by and by.  It's a purty picture, but not a biblical one, and it drives N.T. Wright nuts.
     Wright's big contention is that modern day Christians tend to be much more Platonists and Gnostics than we realize.  We laud the spiritual world and trash talk the physical.  We can't wait to die and go to heaven, and so we bemoan the physical body as only an evil shell that entraps our eternal soul.  And to boot, this world is not my home--so we await the sweet by and by long after this crummy world is destroyed in a wave of fire, and we can exist away from all this material existence.
     And yet, this is not the picture the Bible paints.  Why would Paul go through such trouble writing of a physical, material resurrection of our bodies (unfortunately, the word "physical" in 1 Corinthians 15 may not mean what we initially think it means, and it often obfuscates that Paul is definitely talking about a material resurrection of our bodies).  Why would the New Testament go to such ends to stress that Jesus was physically resurrected in a body of flesh and wasn't a ghost (Luke 24:39) and that we would share resurrection bodies like His (Philippians 3:21).  And why would Paul claim that the whole creation groans to be redeemed in the same way that we will be?  And why does the Bible talk of the earth being made new in Isaiah, 2 Peter, and Revelation if it didn't mean it?  The fact of the matter is that God's creation is good and we are good.  We've been corrupted, but we can be redeemed now, and will be fully redeemed from our corruption at His coming.  The Bible picture is not one of escapism: God saying "this world stinks, sorry about that, let me destroy it and take you back to where I live."  The Bible picture is one of reconciliation: God saying "yes, you've made a mess of yourselves and of the goodness of creation, and even though you are now ostracized, let me show you how I can make you new and come to be with you."
     The book is a perspective changer.  It also makes you feel a little stupid for no seeing it before.
     The author, N.T. Wright, is one of the foremost New Testament scholars, and this book is his cliffnotes version of the much larger The Resurrection of the Son of God.  Anglican, insightful, and easy-to-understand, he reminds me of a modern day C.S. Lewis.  And like Lewis, anything that I've picked up by Wright has been great.  He's fun to watch videos of too.  But then again, most Brits are fun watching videos of.


INTERMISSION: And then there's a big gap.  Whereas books 1 to 3 scores an A+ on my highly subjective and questionable rating spectrum, everything below, while still spectacular, didn't leave quite as much impact.  Interesting aside: I finished the first three books within a few weeks of each other in early January.  It's rare that you're lucky enough to leap from one heavy hitter to another without anything barfable in the middle.  Of course the downside is that after starting the year on such a high note, there's nowhere to go but down.


4) Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World by Camp
One Sentence Rub: Remember those things in the Bible that talk about turning the other cheek and selling all you have and giving it to the poor?  Yeah, quit finding loopholes out of that.   
     A play on the names of two of the most popular Christian living books: CS Lewis's Mere Christianity + Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship (the former I love; the latter, eh, but other's go bonkers for it).  As such, it also plays on the same themes of what Christianity means and why the grace that bought us requires much more than lukewarm adherence.  But Mere Discipleship is hardly a reiteration of former books--instead, it is a forceful reminder that Jesus meant what he said in His teachings and the demands he makes of his disciples.
    In Christian America we pledge our allegiance to the flag rather than to a kingdom that is not of this world (and we reconcile the dissonance by saying we belong to a Christian nation).  We use politics as a spiritual hammer--a way to elect our boys into office and force others to act as Christians (the modern version of Constantine, who in the 300s AD forced pagan nations to either be baptized or die).  We read of Jesus telling us to "turn the other cheek," but in our ramped up gun culture we've somehow managed to write off those clear commands with shoddy logic referencing sword carrying, Roman soldiers, or parables.  We read the story of the rich young ruler and say "it was bad for him to have possessions because they came between him and God, but Jesus isn't saying that it's bad for us to have possessions."  We know the gospels are radical, and we demonstrate this in our natural reaction to try to weasel out of the demands they make.
     One of the passages Camp uses that struck me the most was Matthew 20:25-28.  We get so wrapped up in the way the world works that we put more trust in its systems than God's.  We live in a world where might makes right and meekness is a synonym for weakness (I saw a Trump campaign performance declaring "deal from strength or get crushed everytime").  It's hard to trust in God, to turn the other cheek, to live through service because it's contrary to all we observe.  But that's exactly what Jesus demands in Matthew 20:
25 Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 26 Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— 28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
     And that's the lure of politics as well.  We of little faith can't believe God's will can be done if xyz politician isn't there to make sure it's done.
     If I was teetering on the pacifism ledge before, this pushed me over (unless Richard Hays' Moral Vision of the New Testament got me there first).  If I wasn't already apolitical, it would've pushed me that way too.

5) Dinosaur Heresies: New Theories Unlocking the Mystery of the Dinosaurs and Their Extinction by Robert T. Bakker

One Sentence Rub: It's about dinos, and it's not an encyclopedia.   
     Boy I love my dinos.  Ever since tiny Tim, that little bugger in Jurassic Park, chased Alan Grant down in the film talking about dino books, I'd been on a hunt to find a good read on dinosaurs.  Unfortunately, the field is so littered with dinosaur almanacs and encyclopedias that finding a good scholarly read was a pain.  Ran into a paleontologist who recommended this little monster.  Written in 1986, so who knows how outdated some of the theories are now, but three decades ago they were cutting edge:
-dinosaurs were warm blooded
-dinosaurs weren't stupid
-some dinosaurs had feathers and turned into birds (actually, I can't remember if I'm reiterating Bakker here on this latter point or just talking about what they talked about in Jurassic Park)
     Bakker made a name for himself expounding the warm-blooded theory, and while I'm not a paleontologist, I get the feel that it's the widely accepted theory now.  How else could gargantuan beasts keep the mammalian kingdom under their thumb for millions of years if all the lions, tigers, and bears had to do was wait until winter to chomp on the lethargic zero-metabolism brumating beasts that couldn't hide from anyone because they're the size of a bus?  That's pretty much the argument.  And in the book, all the other chapters stem out from that and support it.  Checks out.
   Bakker supplies his own sketches to the book which are fantastic in their own right.
   Boy I love my dinos.


6) Watership Down by Richard Adams
     One Sentence Rub: It's about bunnies.
     For awhile when my wife was wanting a rabbit (yet another pet to add to our eclectic menagerie of two dogs, a small dragon, and a 125lb tortoise), I had running deal with her: read this book, and you get your bunny.  I figured her desire for a rabbit couldn't overcome her dislike for reading.  It was a good bet.  Last year I finished watching Lost, and of the myriad books you see Sawyer running through, I still remember his grinning description of this one: "It's about bunnies."  Spot on.  It's about bunnies.  Bunnies looking for a new home.  Bunnies avoiding dangers.  Bunnies looking for female bunnies in order to do the things that bunnies do.  The thing that made Star Wars great wasn't the sci-fi part of it, but that it told an age old tale of adventure, friendship, and redemption that just happened to be in a galaxy far far away.  Same here, it's just happening in your back yard.  Your back yard in England, I mean.  Bunny lover or not, it's a classic.


7) From Hell by Alan Moore
Once Sentence Rub: Jack the Ripper was the doctor, let me tell you why in  a comic book.   
     If you glanced at the name and assumed another religious book, you'd be wrong.  Very wrong.  About as wrong as wrong is from right.  But not quite that wrong--it's  not a Satanic manifesto, it's just about Jack the Ripper.  Any comic dork knows Alan Moore: he's the creator of Watchmen and V for Vendetta, he's the Tolstoy of graphic novels, a man who helped transform comics from a pulp medium to something with meaning.  From Hell is at once true crime, a Ripperologist hypothesis, a tour guide through fin de siecle  London, and tense-pacing historical fiction balled up into one--all of it infused with philosophical conversations on life, death, and meaning.  Just to illustrate how deep this 572 page graphic novel is, you can go on Amazon and buy a 300 page companion (I think those are called cliffnotes) to go with it.  I'd always been curious about ol' Jack, but with myriad theories, suspects, and writings, I've never known where to start.  This was as good a place as any.

8) I, Claudius by Robert Graves
One Sentence Rub: Historical fiction written as autobiography that traces the ascendence of a lame stutterer to the most powerful throne in the world.  
     "I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot," or "That Claudius," or "Claudius the Stammerer," or "Clatu-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius," am now about to write this strange history of my life."  
    Nearly as brutal and wastefully extravagant as Tiberius and Caligula before, and as Nero after, and yet with this one opening sentence there's instant sympathy.  That's what great writing does.  Brings understanding to the perplexing, humanity to the inhumane.  Grave's book of historical fiction is ranked #14 on Modern Library's list of 100 best books of the last century, and it follows this unlikely emperor from his childhood as a limping, stammering, longshot for the role of Caesar to his throning moment after Caligula's assassination.  Ironically, he likely lived long enough to become emperor because no-one ever saw him as a threat for the throne with all his ailments.  If he wasn't an emperor, you'd think he'd fit well into the book of Judges with other underdogs like Gideon, Ehud, and Jephthah.  Like From Hell, a great way to understand a little about the historical period without having to read boring histories.



9) Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America by Jeff Ryan

One Sentence Rub: The title already says it; if you like the red plumber, just read it.   
     The good thing about 7 billion people living in the world is that it works out into a lot of authors.  And those lots of authors write lots of books.  So you're rarely going to be starved of a book on a particular subject area.  A history of Nintendo from its lowly card-playing company roots in the early 1900s to its transition to the video game industry is going to have two main characters: Shigero Miyamato and his red-clad brainchild, Mario.  Donkey Kong, all the Marios, Zelda... they're all in there.  If you never played video games, it's still a good book; but if you did, and if you grew up on Nintendo consoles, the book is going to be pulling at all kinds of heart strings.  

     Deeper question: Without Luther, the Reformation doesn't take the same shape it did, does it?  Without Hitler, what then?  And if no Miyamoto, what about my video games?  There were too many embers in each of those scenarios to not have a Reformation, second World War, or video games, but they'd definitely have taken a different shape without the major players.  Without Miyamato, sure we'd have games to transform us into the living dead, but we wouldn't have a mustachioed plumber leading the way.  Forbid a blue hedgehog trying to do it...

10) History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage
One Sentence Rub: The impact of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and coke in shaping history... and somehow in all the hubbub, koolaid gets left off the list.   
     I don't read a lot of pop-history or pop-science.  I have a few Erik Larson books on my shelf, waiting to be read, and everyone tells me I need to get my hands on some Malcolm Gladwell.  (Eventually).  Also, I typically get bored with books that cover a lot of ground, have wide scopes, and bounce around between several topics.  That said, I enjoyed 6 Glasses.  Maybe not as much as everyone else, but enough to include it on here.  He gets you the alcohol and the caffeine: beer, wine, spirits, and coffee, tea, coke.  I especially enjoyed reading about alcohol distillation and 18th century coffee houses--the Starbucks before there were Starbucks--that were springs of fomenting rebellion for ready, alert minds.  However, I feel for all the positive blather I've heard about this book, I should've liked it more.


Honorable Mentions:
While Noise by Don DeLillo: A book about death.
The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis:  A book about death.  And then life after death.
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather: A book about death, and an archbishop.
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis: Fantasy with ten teaspoons of allegory.  Probably someone dies.

     And there you have it.  By next update, I'm hoping to be a daddy.  We'll just have to see when God wants that buckaroo to pop out.