To make up for last week's silence, today I am reporting on the last two week's worth of reviews.
In honor of the Banner of Truth Minister's Conference, we posted three reviews of Banner books: God's Righteous Kingdom by Walter Chantry, The Doctrine of Repentance, a Puritan Paperback by Thomas Watson, and Sinclair Ferguson's meaty volume on the thought of John Owen in John Owen and the Christian Life. We unhesitatingly recommended all three books.
As promised, Leslie Wiggins supplied the second installment of reviews of Lydia Brownback's new On-The-Go Devotionals from Crossway. She ranks Contentment: A Godly Woman's Adornment just as high as she did the first devotional, Trust.
In the past two weeks, Tim Challies posted five reviews of five disparate books.
23 Minutes in Hell by Bill Wiese is a companion volume for Don Piper's 90 Minutes in Heaven, and presents similar theological problems.
Next Tim reviewed Why Good People Do Bad Things by self-help guru Debbie Ford. He critiques it for many reasons, one of which is Ford's propensity to appeal to herself as highest possible authority.
The Soloist, by journalist Steve Lopez, is a human interest story about the friendship between Lopez and a homeless mental illness sufferer named Nathaniel Ayers, who happens to be a violin prodigy. It will be made into a movie this fall and will star Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. The book can be gritty - Tim attaches a language advisory to his review.
This week Tim returns to one of his favorite themes - how boys become men, and how they often fail to do so. Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax identifies five factors driving this growing male epidemic.
Also this week, Tim reviews Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell, an autobiographical account of a Navy SEAL's adventure in Afghanistan, and his perspective on the the ways in which the US government and media fail its soldiers.
Finally, I (Mark Tubbs) have submitted two reviews of books that providentially go cheek-by-jowl. I wouldn't recommend you read Unbinding the Gospel, a book encouraging mainline churches to evangelize, without R.C. Sproul's little book Saved From What? at your elbow. In Unbinding the Gospel, author Martha Grace Reese asks the very important question, "From what are we saved?" just two pages from the end of the book, and leaves the answer dangling. Sproul, on the other hand, spends 123 pages providing a conclusive and biblical answer to Reese's question. Both Sproul's book and Reese's book excited and encouraged me for very different reasons.
Enough already - eleven books for you to read about, and at least nine of them worth a read through. We'll be back next week with a few more reviews.
