It seems that every other week, another think piece or investigative report drops about how much social and personal dislocation Facebook, Twitter, Apple, or Google have caused. From privacy invasions to behavioral addictions, what seemed like promising technologies and harmless baubles have become a source of perennial worry. We—the authors of think pieces, the heads […]
Monday, 01 July, 2019 by Leslie A. Wicke
Every spring the Lent debate erupts anew in Protestant circles, and we go another round arguing about the church calendar and the utility of spiritual disciplines.[1] The Daniel Fast, and Rick Warren’s looser Daniel Plan for dieting, are regular guests in the fasting discourse as well.[2] More recently, intermittent fasting diets have entered the public […]
Monday, 22 April, 2019 by Leslie A. Wicke
Introvert,” “extravert,” “sensing,” “perceiving”—odds are you’ve encountered these terms or their source, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). In The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing, Merve Emre (a professor of English at Oxford University) provides a frustrating but ultimately thought-provoking account of the MBTI and its creators, Katharine […]
Friday, 01 March, 2019 by Leslie A. Wicke
Nearly a quarter of a century on from the publication of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, author Mark Noll and other interested parties reflect on how things have and haven’t changed. The result—The State of the Evangelical Mind: Reflections on the Past, Prospects for the Future—provides an assortment of essays that do not so […]
Wednesday, 30 January, 2019 by Leslie A. Wicke
Words like “globalism,” “nativism,” “populist backlash,” and “liberal elites” pepper thinkpieces trying to make sense of anti-EU movements and Donald Trump’s presidency. Amidst the speculation, John Judis has written a short book arguing for the importance of nationalism and the dangers of ignoring it, holding forth the promise of an explanation for recent events. He […]
Tuesday, 01 January, 2019 by Leslie A. Wicke
Rachel Hollis has done a lot of things. Growing up in a tragic family situation, she moved to Los Angeles in her teens, married a marketing professional in the entertainment industry, worked as an event planner, had four children and fostered others, took up blogging, started a business, wrote novels, ran marathons, and describes herself […]
Tuesday, 01 January, 2019 by Leslie A. Wicke
It’s fitting that a book about the phenomenon of “spiritual fluidity” or “religious multiplicity” should aspire to be several things at once. Duane R. Bidwell’s When One Religion Isn’t Enough: The Lives of Spiritually Fluid People aims to describe the experience of participating in more than one religion while also helping the spiritually fluid feel […]
Thursday, 27 December, 2018 by Leslie A. Wicke
Hector Macdonald’s recent book, Truth: How the Many Sides to Every Story Shape Our Reality, is ruthless in its timeliness. Over the past several years, a blend of technology, political events, and social change has attenuated the gatekeepers of knowledge and subjected us to a deluge of information. Macdonald has stepped forward to address our […]
Tuesday, 16 October, 2018 by Leslie A. Wicke
The goal of a book review is to give the reader some idea whether the book is one they should read. In the case of a book in publication for as long as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, that function has been fulfilled many times over. In light of the recent Hulu series based on […]
Tuesday, 04 September, 2018 by Leslie A. Wicke