I (Tim Challies) apologize for not posting any reviews last week. I was on vacation last week and simply did not have opportunity to connect to the Internet long enough to do the many tasks the are necessary to post the reviews.
But I'm trying to make it up this week. We have five reviews for you, four of which were written by me (books I just happened to read while on that same vacation). The fifth is written by a new Discerning Reader reviewer, James Anderson. James has a review of Only One Way?, a book edited by Richard Phillips. He writes, "for those of us who remain undaunted by such cultural pressures, this book offers an invigorating celebration of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and the biblical message of salvation through Christ alone."
Two of the books I review this week are on the New York Times list of bestsellers. The God Delusion is Richard Dawkins's desperate attempt to prove that God is nothing but a ridiculous and dangerous delusion. Of course I feel he failed in his attempt to show this. The other bestseller, Save Me From Myself is Brian "Head" Welch's story of "How I Found God, Quit Korn, Kicked Drugs, and Lived to Tell My Story." Welch was a founding member of the band Korn but came to Christ and has now written his story.
I also review Wendy Shalit's book Girls Gone Mild where Shalit, a conservative Jewish writer, shows how "Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It's Not Bad to Be Good." It is a counter-cultural book that says what many Christians have been saying all along--that women were created to be women. And finally, I have a review of R.C. Sproul's wonderful new book The Truth of the Cross. It is R.C. Sproul at his best and is well worth reading (and, I suspect, will be worth reading multiple times).
Next week I'll have a review of The Dawkins Delusion, Alister McGrath's response to The God Delusion and will also review Francis Collins's The Language of God, his attempt to reconcile science (and Darwinism, in particular) with faith. Purely coincidentally, the book is endorsed by Alister McGrath. And I suppose we'll see what other books the review team reviews between now and then. Stay tuned!
