Category: Book Recommendations Page 4 of 6

Nothing like getting to the end of a thousand page book only to find out it’s part one of two, and the second one is even longer. I guess that’s the downside of using a Kindle.

But honestly, I’m really glad I didn’t know these books were so long, and that there were two of them. That would have scared me off before I even started, and I’m really glad I read them. It took me six months to get through both, and I found myself bummed at the end that I was saying goodbye to the Henry family.

I’d learned about World War II in school, and I’ve read lots of novels over the years that took place during that time. But these books took me into World War II. The length of these books offered something else as well–a sense of how long World War II really was for the people who lived through it, and how massive the war actually was. The books travel through Berlin, London, Pearl Harbor, Singapore, Midway, Russia, Poland, England and Washington DC, all through the eyes of one American military family. I learned a ton and enjoyed my way through it. Highly recommended.

(Profanity sprinkled throughout, and adultery is a major plot line–though not explicitly or without consequences.)

Unveiling Grace by Lynn Wilder

This is the story of a woman who left Mormonism after 35 years, during which she was also a Brigham Young University professor I don’t know many Mormons, but Mormonism has interested me for a long time. Probably because I would have made a really good Mormon in my younger years–squeaky clean, really great at following the rules, earnest and passionate. In fact, part of what makes this book valuable to evangelical Christians like me is that we can very easily fall into the same traps of legalism that bind Mormons. As the title suggests, it was encountering the beauty of God’s grace that changed everything for the author and her family.

This book is a little long-winded so parts of it dragged, but still a very interesting and profitable read.

Different by Sally and Nathan Clarkson

Sally Clarkson, who has written many books on parenting and home life, co-writes this book with one of her sons. Nathan was an incredibly challenging child–extremely OCD, ADHD, defiant and argumentative. This is the story of their journey as mom and son, and parents of all kinds of kids will be encouraged and inspired by it.

The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper

I have no idea why it took me so long to read this book. It’s a memoir of growing up in Liberia, a place that haunts my dreams and felt like home for a long time–so I should have read it years ago.

Liberia’s history gets ignored a lot of the time–maybe because it doesn’t fit the common racial narrative. In the 1800’s, freed American slaves agreed to be sent back to Africa to start an American colony. And so Liberia was born–by pointing guns at the native people. The Black American colonizers kept a stronghold on the government and most of the economy for decades until 1980, when a military coup of native Liberians took over. They murdered the ruling party and destroyed the economy, and in 1989, the country was plunged into a tribal civil war for 15 years that could only be described as a living hell. Meanwhile, many of the Americo-Liberians, now thrown out of power, migrated to the United States.

The House at Sugar Beach is the story of one privileged Americo-Liberian girl and her native Liberian friend, who for a time lived side-by-side–until everything in their lives changed. Even those with no connection to Liberia will love this very well-written, witty, fascinating story about a little-known part of history.

The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whateverby Jamie Wright

Jamie Wright is either famous or infamous in missionary circles, depending on who you talk to. The blog she kept during her five years in Costa Rica was known for being blunt, transparent, and hysterically funny. This memoir can be described in the same way, but goes deeper into her story. Jamie is not afraid to ask the hard questions or expose the hard truth, and I’ve always appreciated her for that.

I don’t agree with a lot of Jamie’s theology or her conclusions, and I’m not into the whole profanity-on-every-page thing that she is known for. But I think that what she has to say is important, and that missionaries should read the book. We need to think through what she says and what our response should be. I wrote mine here.

When Feelings Are Sovereign: Two Books About the Body

By Amy Medina

On August 13, 2018

In Book Recommendations

When I was a young girl, I had a phobia of crossing streets. I would avoid it whenever possible, even if that meant walking much farther away. When it was absolutely necessary to cross a street, I would cling to whoever I was with as if my life depended on it.

I was kind of a wimpy kid, so I just figured that this phobia reflected my general cautiousness. Most people were braver than me, I thought.

When I was about twelve, my mom casually referred to a story of how I was almost hit by a car when I was two. I was immediately interested, which surprised my mom because she thought I had remembered it. So she told me the story in detail, of how a car was speeding on a residential street and had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting me. I was fine, but my mom, the driver, and myself were all in tears.

Not long after hearing the story, I realized that my paranoia of crossing streets had disappeared completely. Understanding the cause of the phobia was all my brain needed to get rid of the fear. Though I didn’t know it at the time, it was my first experience with the effect that trauma can have on the brain.

I realize that this example of trauma is, relatively speaking, pretty insignificant. The older I am, the more I realize how unusual it was that I grew up in a stable, loving home and rather ignorant of the abuse or neglect that so many children experience.

But becoming an adoptive mom propelled me into the world of trauma and trying to understand it, which is what led me to read The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Dr. Van der Kolk delves deep into the research of how trauma (especially in childhood) fundamentally changes the brain. “[Trauma] changes not
only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think.”

This fascinating book was incredibly useful to me as an adoptive mom, helping me to understand more fully what is going on in my children’s brains and what is causing some of their behavior. For example, “Children who don’t feel safe in infancy have trouble regulating their moods and emotional responses as they grow older.” Aha! Just that statement alone explains a lot about a child of mine.

This book gave me significantly more empathy towards friends who have experienced trauma. And even though I wouldn’t describe myself as a traumatized person, it helped me to understand more about my own emotions. “No matter how much insight and understanding we develop, the rational brain is basically impotent to talk the emotional brain out of its own reality.” Yes! I’ve experienced that.

Interestingly, the author explains that the key to developing emotion regulation is in the physical body–by using the mind to be more aware of what is happening in the body when our emotions are out of control. And that by doing so, remarkably, we can actually re-wire our own brains.

It sounds to me a lot like the “renewing of your mind” in Romans 12:2. This is not a Christian book. But what I found especially interesting is that in trying to explain the mysterious connections between brain/mind/body, the author couldn’t help but using (what I would consider) spiritual vocabulary:

“[R]ather than being a passive observer, this mindful Self can help reorganize the
inner system and communicate with the parts in ways that help those parts trust that there is someone inside who
can handle things.”

“There is something very empowering about having the experience of changing your brain’s activity with your
mind.”

What is the Self? What is the Mind? It’s certainly not a biological entity. Could it be, perhaps, the immaterial Imago Dei, the part of ourselves that the Bible would call the Soul?

This concept also begs the question–if the Soul and the Body, working together, are able to re-wire–literally change the biology–of our brains in order to recover from trauma, then why then does our culture tell us that we must give in to our emotions, “follow our hearts,” in order to find personal fulfillment? Why is the key to conquering traumatic experiences lie in connecting our mind with our body, but when it comes to sexuality, personality, and gender expression, we are supposed to ignore our physical bodies?

It was these questions that I took into my next book, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality by Nancy Pearcey. And I was fascinated by how, even though The Body Keeps the Score and Love Thy Body are written on very different topics and on very different premises, they speak to each other.

Even though Nancy Pearcey never references Dr.Van der Kolk, she takes his concepts to their logical end: If we are able to use our mind and body to change our feelings, why do we consider our feelings to be sovereign in our lives–even over our own bodies?

“The body has become a morally neutral piece of matter that can be manipulated for whatever purposes the self may impose on it—like pressing a mold into clay or stamping Lincoln’s profile on a copper penny,” Pearcey writes. She explains how current cultural ideas about unborn life, sexuality, gender, and family all come down to a very low view of the physical body, which leads to an extremely fractured view of the Self….which, ironically, is exactly what trauma therapy strives to fix.

It’s interesting how willing I am to apply Van der Kolk’s research when I am feeling afraid or anxious, because I want to control unpleasant feelings. But what about happiness that is actually rooted in selfishness? What about jealousy or bitterness–emotions that are easy to relish? If I can use my body and my soul to rewire uncomfortable emotions, why not others as well–emotions that the Bible would call ‘sin?’ Pearcey writes, “We do not choose our feelings, but we do choose our behavior and identity.”

She doesn’t parse Scripture in her arguments–that’s not what this book is about. She uses biblical worldview–the over-arching, big-picture view of life presented throughout the Bible–to explain the significance of our biological bodies. “In one sense, our bodies even have primacy over our spirits. After all, the body is the only avenue we have for expressing our inner life or for knowing another person’s inner life. The body is the means by which the invisible is made visible.”

Pearcey also explains how the roots of the mind-body dualism that is so prevalent in our culture traces back to Rousseau. Worldviews all come from somewhere, and ideas have consequences. She writes, “Humans are not self-creating, self-existent, self-defining beings. We all look to outside sources to inform us about who we are and how we should live. We look for a rule or grid to help us decide which feelings and impulses are good versus those that are unhealthy or immoral and should be rechanneled.” Where is my grid coming from? Rousseau? Or the Bible?

I don’t fully understand all of this. I am not a doctor or a psychologist or a scientist. I’m just a thinker asking questions. So if you challenge me on these thoughts, I’m not sure I’ll have the answers. If this fascinates you, read these books. Seriously, read these books, and read both of them together. Then let’s have a conversation.

The Story of Reality

By Amy Medina

On May 25, 2017

In Book Recommendations, How Americans Think

This story is not a fairy tale, but rather it is the Story all fairy tales are really about. Indeed, almost every tale ever written is an echo of this story embedded deep within our hearts. Yet this story is not a tale at all since the Story is true.

As I read The Story of Reality, I kept thinking, “Where has this book been all my life?”

Every religion tells a story of reality. Every philosophy and every individual outlook on life is a take on the way someone thinks the world actually is. There is no escaping it.

I’ve looked for a book like this for years. I can remember sitting on the floor of the Christian bookstore (back when Christian bookstores were a thing), scanning through dozens of books, trying to find one suitable to give to a non-Christian friend. I wanted something that explained Christianity in a compelling, winsome way, but wasn’t overly academic or complicated. I was looking for this book. I guess I never found it until now because it was just published in January.

Gregory Koukl’s The Story of Reality: How the World Began, How it Ends, and Everything Important that Happens In Between is kind of a worldview book, but not really. It’s kind of an apologetics book (a defense of Christianity), but not really. It’s kind of like a fascinating conversation with a really smart, really kind, Christian friend. That’s what it feels like.

There is a saying that has been helpful in some ways but I think is misleading in this regard. The saying goes, ‘God has a wonderful plan for your life.’ From what I understand now, that perspective is in the wrong order. The Story is not so much about God’s plan for your life as it is about your life for God’s plan. Let that sink in. God’s purposes are central, not yours. Once you are completely clear on this fact, many things are going to change for you.

This book is extremely readable and entirely enjoyable. It’s only 200 pages. It’s non-fiction, but written like a story, in a conversational, highly understandable, relational tone. It’s easy enough for a 14-year-old to understand, yet profound enough for a deep-thinking adult to contemplate.

Now, I realize that the idea that God is in charge is bothersome to many people, but what is the alternative? If someone is not in charge, then no one is in charge, and that seems to be a big part of our complaint about the world to begin with.

From now on, this is the book I will give to a friend who has an interest in Christianity. This is a book I will read aloud with my kids when they are young teenagers–allowing us lots of time for all the conversations it will spark. But this is not a book just for inquirers into Christianity. It’s for any Christian who wants a shot of adrenaline, a reminder of who we are and why we are here and what we are living for. This book truly is a gift to God’s Church, and I hope that you’ll look for ways to use it in your circle of influence.

First, trouble, hardship, difficulty, pain, suffering, conflict, tragedy, evil–they are all part of the Story. It is the reason there is any Story at all. The Story not only explains the evil people do; it predicts it. Our world is exactly the kind of world we’d expect it to be if the Story were true and not just religious wishful thinking.

Second–and more important–our Story is not over yet. Evil did not catch God by surprise.

Read These Books

By Amy Medina

On March 5, 2017

In Book Recommendations

Recommendations from the last six months of reading:

Passages Through Pakistan: An American Girl’s Journey of Faith by Marilyn Gardner

In her introduction, Marilyn Gardner writes of visiting, as an adult, her childhood home in Pakistan:

“[My traveling companion] looked at me, measuring her words. ‘A compound like this must have made life as a child in Pakistan at least somewhat bearable,’ she said.

I stood still and stared at her in shock. Bearable? Bearable? I repeated the word to myself. I said it aloud. ‘Bearable? It was more than bearable. My childhood was extraordinary.'”

In this beautiful memoir, Gardner exquisitely captures the life of a third-culture kid. She spent her entire childhood in Pakistan, went off to boarding school 800 miles away at age 6, struggled through furloughs in America, battled to find her identity, yet looks back with wonder and awe. She brings her readers into the sorrow and joy of boarding school; she is deeply honest in her assessment of her younger self; she poignantly expresses the tension of growing up between worlds. I highly recommend this memoir to anyone who wants to better understand the TCK experience.

*half of the proceeds from this book go to help refugees

Seven Women: And the Secret of Their Greatness by Eric Metaxas

I had mixed feelings about this one. I really enjoy biographies (especially by Eric Metaxas), and I appreciated that he chose some well-known, and some lesser-known women for this book. Like his other books, it was filled with well-researched, fascinating detail. All the subjects he chose were women of faith; however, while venerating each woman, he failed to grapple with the somewhat convoluted and even disturbing aspects of some of these women’s theology. Of course, I am interested in reading the biographies of women of all beliefs, but I’m not necessarily going to endorse their theology–yet that’s what it felt like Metaxas was doing.

Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War by Steve Sheinkin

I picked up this book because my education on the Vietnam War pretty much consisted of what I had seen in Forrest Gump. I’m a college graduate, yet this very important part of America’s history had never been covered in any class.

Wow. This book had a slow start, but once I got into it, it was riveting. By telling the story of the man who leaked the truth about the Vietnam war to the American people, Daniel Ellsberg, I learned so much about the Cold War, the four U.S. presidents involved in Vietnam, and the massive lies each of them told the American public. Of course, the climax was Watergate and Nixon’s resignation. It was eerie to read a story that parallels so much of what is happening in today’s political world.

Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

This was my Christmas break novel, and though it wasn’t the best I’ve read, I really enjoyed what it taught me about the Japanese internment during World War II. A delightful historical fiction novel with some substance.

Saving My Assassin by Virginia Prodan

Though this is not the best-written book, the story itself is astonishing. This memoir takes place in Romania during the Cold War, and the author describes how she first became a lawyer, then a Christian, and fought for the rights of Christians in the Communist courts. After unsuccessfully trying to shut her up, the government sent an assassin to her office. The events which lead up to this event and what happened after it are nothing less than Providential. Truly an inspiring story.

The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids by Madeline Levine

This book is a few years old now, but still just as relevant. The take away? Your kids need your relationship more than they need your stuff. They need to develop character more than they need to be the best athlete, student, or musician. Protecting them from all of life’s hard things doesn’t produce happy kids–it actually does the exact opposite. An important book for today’s parents.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

By Amy Medina

On December 11, 2016

In Book Recommendations, Poverty

To be virtuous is a luxury of the rich.

I just made that up. I’m well aware that it’s certainly not a true statement of everyone, as many rich people are evil and many poor people are virtuous. But it is much, much easier for a rich person to choose to be virtuous than it is for a poor person.

And if you don’t believe me, then you’ve probably never been poor.

To be poor in Annawadi, or in any Mumbai slum, was to be guilty of one thing or another. Abdul sometimes bought pieces of metal that scavengers had stolen. He ran a business, such as it was, without a license. Simply living in Annawadi was illegal, since the airport authority wanted squatters like himself off its land.

I read Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo about a month ago. I had planned to include it in my semi-annual list of books to recommend, and then I realized that I just can’t stop thinking about it. Even a month later. This is one of those books that changes you. You can’t be the same after reading it.

A few weeks ago, Abdul had seen a boy’s hand cut clean off when he was putting plastic into one of the shredders. The boy’s eyes had filled with tears but he hadn’t screamed. Instead he’d stood there with his blood-spurting stump, his ability to earn a living ended, and started apologizing to the owner of the plant.

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know that poverty is always on my mind. I am surrounded by it. I struggle daily with what to do about it. So as I read this book, even though it is about a slum in India, I felt like it was describing the lives of those on the other side of my fence.

True, a few residents trapped rats and frogs and fried them for dinner. A few ate the scrub grass at the sewage lake’s edge. And these individuals, miserable souls, thereby made an inestimable contribution to their neighbors. They gave those slumdwellers who didn’t fry rats and eat weeds, like Abdul, a felt sense of their upward mobility.

This book has inestimable worth in helping the average (rich) westerner to understand the vast complexity of poverty. How it’s not just a matter of providing seed money or sending a Christmas shoebox or paying for a good education that is going to get someone out of poverty. That ethnicity and religion and politics and most importantly, worldview, have far deeper ramifications than we realize.

In this way [Sunil] learned that policemen sometimes advised the road boys about nearby warehouses and construction sites where they might steal building materials. The cops then took a share of the proceeds.

Probably what was most valuable to me in this story was the importance of virtue in poverty alleviation. And how the poor can’t really, truly be helped until integrity is valued in a society. And how we can’t expect poor people to be virtuous until the rich are virtuous as well–starting with the government, the business owners, and the elite.

‘Out of stock today’ was the nurses’ official explanation. Plundered and resold out of supply cabinets was an unofficial one. What patients needed, families had to buy on the street and bring in.

I don’t think that my fellow Americans really understand the level of corruption that exists in the developing world, and how much it contributes to poverty. I certainly didn’t get it until I had lived outside of America for many years. And I think that this is one of the main reasons why westerners’ poverty-alleviating efforts often hurt more than they help.

In newspaper interviews, Gaikwad spoke of his search for unschooled children, and his hope of giving them the sort of education that would lift them out of poverty. His less public ambition was to divert federal money to himself.

The biggest revelation of this story comes in the epilogue. It’s the sort of thing that I thought should have been included in the prologue, because finding out the truth of how this book came to be written made me want to start over from the beginning and read it again. But since the author obviously wanted it left for the end, you’ll just have to trust me when I say that this book is incredibly powerful–and it will change your life.

The crucial things were luck and the ability to sustain two convictions: that what you were doing wasn’t all that wrong, in the scheme of things, and that you weren’t all that likely to get caught.

‘Of course it’s corrupt,’ Asha told the new secretary of the nonprofit. ‘But is it my corruption? How can anyone say I am doing the wrong…when the big people say that it’s right?’

The subtitle of this book is Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. To be honest, I didn’t see much hope in this book. It is deeply disturbing and terribly depressing and really not redemptive. But it’s necessary, because poverty is real. Far more real and far more prevalent than those of us with manicured lawns want to admit. And if we want to be a generation of rich people who really do help the poor, then that must start by really understanding poverty.

Among the poor, there was no doubt that instability fostered ingenuity, but over time the lack of a link between effort and result could become debilitating. ‘We try so many things,’ as one Annawadi girl put it, ‘but the world doesn’t move in our favor.’

Though the gospel was nowhere to be found in this story, I kept thinking about the difference it could make. In promoting the value of human life. In valuing justice and truth. In offering forgiveness. In providing hope. And it reinforced to me the necessity of the gospel not just taking root in individual’s lives, but the importance of it transforming whole societies by becoming a worldview of influence.

‘Always I was thinking how to try to make my life nicer, more okay, and nothing got better,’ Sunil said. ‘So now I’m going to try to do it the other way. No thinking how to make anything better, just stopping my mind, then who knows? Maybe then something good could happen.’

Those of us whose lives are nicer, are better, we don’t often realize how powerful we really are. Or how responsible.