Books
Relevant Magazine: Remembering Dr. King
In recognition of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Relevant Magazine just posted a short essay of mine about Dr. King: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. published five books in his lifetime; a sixth was released after he was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39. They are all seminal works for American [...]
On the Origins of Books
Sometimes when I’m reading a good book, I come to a particular sentence or phrase that seems to have around it an aura of origin-ality. I can’t help but wonder if this line might have sparked the creative fire that ended up as the book in my hands. I’m struggling this morning to come up [...]
iCEO: Part One
The last great book I read in 2011 will be Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. This is the first of two planned posts about Steve Jobs, consisting mostly of random thoughts about the book. Part Two will come next week. 1. Steve Jobs is a valuable book, if we let it be. For all sorts of folks: [...]
Top 10 Books of 2011
Some friends and I put together a list for Relevant Magazine of the Top 10 Books of 2011. Here is that list. Maybe the only things better than reading a great book are talking about a great book with someone who has read it too, and recommending a great book to someone you just know will [...]
Dorothy Day’s Birthday
Today is the birthday of Dorothy Day – the journalist and social activist who co-founded the Catholic Worker movement. To mark the occasion, I’m posting the essay I wrote about Day’s classic autobiography, The Long Loneliness. The essay first appeared in Besides the Bible: 100 Books that Have, Should, or Will Create Christian Culture (Biblica, 2010). I also encourage you to [...]
Book Recommendation: The McDonaldization of the Church
Slow Church started as a hunch. It started, for me, when I was researching the Slow Food Movementfor a book I was writing about gluttony. (Of the seven deadly sins, gluttony is the one most likely to actually kill me.) There was no flash of light, no catch of breath or buckled knees. It just simply [...]
Reading List for a Road Trip
I leave Tuesday morning for a lightning fast solo road-trip across the country: 2,900 miles, Silverton to Philadelphia, in five days, with a brief detour southward to visit The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. An important part of any reader’s travel plans is deciding which books he or she should take. My M.O. is to [...]
First We Read, Then We Write
Yesterday I finally picked up a book I’ve been meaning to read since it came out in February 2009. “First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process” is a thin volume (about 100 pages) packed with hard-won wisdom about reading and writing from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s books, essays, and journals. Dozens of great [...]
