Category: Book Reviews

by Andrew Newberg, M.D., Eugene D’Aquili, M.D, Ph.D., and Vince Rause ★★★★ A single quote from this book probably explains all we need to know about why God won’t go away: So impressive are the health benefits of religion … that after reviewing more than a thousand studies on the…

by Stephen M. Wylen ★★★★★ This book is now fifteen years old, but it remains one of my favorites, and I wanted to share it. Stephen Wylen is a rabbi at Temple Beth Tikvah, Wayne, NJ, and I so enjoyed his book that I asked him to contribute a back-cover…

by Michael Drosnin ★ You knew I’d get to this book eventually, right? Well, I’m here to tell you it’s absolutely brilliant. Drosnin is my idol. With a savvy grasp of human nature, a little computer programming, and a mathematician’s insight into probabilities, he put together a best seller. The…

by Bruce Feiler ★★★★★ “So, Professor, what do we know about Abraham?” I asked. “All we know about Abraham is in the Bible,” he says. “In the ground, there is nothing.” This book is Bruce Feiler’s best. With no archaeological evidence whatsoever to explore, he embarks on his journey to…

by Henry Ansgar Kelly ★★★★ A strange book; I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. Kelly’s premise, and he is quite serious, is that Satan is a badly misunderstood fellow. That the Satan we know today bears little or no resemblance to the Biblical Satan. As far as…

by Jonathan Hill ★★★★★ Wow! This one belongs on my favorites list. I fell in love with this book before I began reading; it’s beautiful enough for the coffee table, and scholarly enough for the library. Thankfully, the writing lives up to the presentation! Hill’s work is enjoyable, frank and…

by Patrick Glynn ★★★★★ This is a book by a believer-turned-atheist-turned-believer. Glynn explains, “After many years of being a philosophical atheist or agnostic, I finally realized that there was in fact a God.” He then leads us on a journey through various lines of thought that eventually coalesced into what…

by Craig R. Koester ★★★★ Koester is relatively conservative; his treatment of John won’t offend traditional Christians by travelling down esoteric or Gnostic highways. Nor does he present many original ideas. This is a book that covers the basics of John’s theology from a Christian viewpoint, and does so very…

by Richard E. Rubenstein ★★★★ After nearlythree hundred years of persecution, Christianity made a breakthrough in 324, when Constantine became emperor of Rome. Led by two charismatic priests—Arius, who preached that Jesus is subject to God, and Athanasius who argued that Jesus is God himself in human form—the debate over…

by Brad Jersak ★★★★ Revelation counsels, “anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.”  This is a book about seeing Jesus, especially in the marginalized. The title derives from an encounter that Francis of Assisi had with Christ in a leper. In that moment, his eyes were opened to…