Travels With Susan

This is a challenging book for the ordinarily intellectually equipped reader, but well worth the work.  John Polkinghorne is both an accomplished scientist and an ordained Anglican Priest. He calls himself a "bottoms-up thinker".  That is, he is a scientist who looks at the evidence and reaches conclusions about the general state of the world and the unvierse from what he sees.   In this series of lectures he explores the basics of Christian faith in both theological and scientific terms framed  in the statements of the Nicene creed.  Before you reject faith based on your understanding of science, you should read this book.  If you think the claims of faith conflict with the claims of science, you should read this book.  If you are a faithful person seeking understanding, then you should definitely read this book.

In this amazing book Scott Peck, familiar to many readers as the author of "The Road Less Traveled" discusses his experiences in participating in exorcisms.   The importance of this book is that, in a very specific way, Peck describes his experiences as a psychiatrist and medical doctor in confronting Satan in others.  He freely admits that, prior to these experiences, he didn't believe in the existence of Satan.  This description, written in scientific terms, is an important discussion of the nature and cause of evil in the world.

This book was originally published around the time that Jack Kevorkian was killing people in the name of compassion.  With the Terri Schiavo case, it has become extraordinarily relevant again.  Bill Mc Kibben, reviewing this book for Salon, an online magazine said, after reading it,
"

"The Road Less Traveled" has been on and off the New York Times bestseller list since approximately the Precambrian Era, which of course means I came to his new book prepared to dismiss it as fluffy self-help. And I disagreed with him about the issue at hand, euthanasia, which was a second strike against him, since we read mostly to confirm our own wisdom. All of which is to say what a bracing shock it was to actually plow through "Denial of the Soul" and discover not only that it was stern and serious stuff, but that Peck had managed to change my mind about the subject of dying."

This is an important book and one which I intend to read again.  Terri Schiavo's death is NOT just about preparing an advance directive.  It is about taking life and death seriously, about valuing life and death as part of the tasks that God has assigned to us.

I devoured this little book in one night.  It is that interesting.  At least to me.  Gladwell explores what some refer to as the adaptive unconscious-  that mode of thinking that lets you drive or walk or play the piano without thinking about it on a conscious level.  It is also that mode that governs your reactions under stress.   The research he explores turns a lot of ideas about decisionmaking on its head.  I read this book with such great interest as a trial lawyer because, first, when you are in trial you are making decisions in a split second which will affect the outcome of the case and you are also, simultaneously, reviewing the split second decisionmaking of others. This decisionmaking, while unconscious, can be trained.  It is training this  decisionmaking process that we are doing when we learn a new sport or how to drive or how, yes. to play the piano. 

I remember thinking when I suffered a fall myself, that I needed to fall sideways if I could to avoid breaking anything.  It was a mode of decisionmaking which I learned from skiing where you learn how to fall in a way that avoids injury.   I remember when I walked into the middle of an armed robbery in progress how I thought to myself, if I look dead they will stop shooting at me.I feigned total collapse and the shooting stopped.  This sort of split second thinking has often been ignored in the study of consciousness  or not explored sufficiently.  Certainly in our everyday decisionmaking we act as if it did not exist.  We commonly ask people who were in an accident to give us a second by second description of what happened when, in truth, very few people can.  Most of their memories exist on this unconscious level and whatever they tell you is, in fact, a reconstruction of what happened not what they actually remember. 

This is a fascinating book and one well worth reading if you are interested in the human condition.

A professor of statistics investigates the claims of major environmentalist groups and finds them....um....lacking.   If I could do it, I would make this book required reading in college.  I haven't finished it. All those statistics make for tough slogging through the data but I have read the first hundred pages and I keep on going because this book is a comprehensive look at a lot more than the environment.  It is  about the true state of the world.  It's controversial and well worth reading.

As always, prepare to have to think.   This is a wonderful book for believers who understand that theology is faith in search of understanding.  John Polkinghorne takes on the nature of God and the Universe and develops a new synthesis of science and relgion demonstrating, among other things, that there is no inherent conflict between scientific understanding and religious understanding of the universe.  Indeed, as he notes at its highest level, physics and theology are almost indistunguishable in the questions they seek to answer.  Polkinghorne comes to a conclusion that God though eternal is also temporal-- i. e. acts in time not completely as an outsider.  He grapples with the issue of predestination which is encompassed in the issue of temporality and concludes that God does not foreknow the outcome of every single decision but does know the general direction, that God has created a universe which has its own rules and its own being separate and apart from Him.  He regards the Bible as a record of man's engagement with God without denigrating the great books of other religions.  Those books also reflect man's engagement with God.  They are part of the facts that a bottoms-up thinker must account for.

He does not attempt to answer completely and fully every question.  Indeed, he addresses most of the questions that have occupied theologians over the last two thousand years.  But he is attempting to steer the discussion in a new direction-- the direction of synthesis of the knowledge of the universe gained from man's experience of God and man's knowledge of scientific principle.  A great read and well worth the effort. 

This little book is a quick and important read. When the Catholic Church in the person of Pope Pius XII took a stand against Stalin and the spread of Communism after World War II, the left decided to attack him by making the most damaging allegation it could-- that he had secretaly collaborated with Hitler. In this book Rabbi Dalin demolishes that leftist created myth and shows that Pius XII lead the church to shelter and protect the Jews from the Nazis to the extent that he could without destroying the Vatican and often encouraged priests and nuns to take actions which put themselves in danger. It takes a long time to dismantle the lies of the left but this is one patient writer who has dismantled this one little set of lies. Worth reading and worth having in your library.

Biography of a leading 60's radical turned Republican.  This book is chock full of good information.  It is long. If David Horowitz can say something in 300 words instead of 150 he will.  But it is well written and gut wrenching for those of us who made the same journey from left to right.  It takes a lot of courage to say "I was wrong", as Horowitz does here.  Doubtless I like this book because I agree with him.  Like Horowitz, my journey from left to right was not about basic morals but about what really works.  The truth is that all those staid conservative morals are what most people have to do to have a happy and productive life. Loyalty, faithfulness, hard work and individual responsibility lead to happiness.  Capitalism, it turns out, produces more wealth for just about everybody than socialism.  The people who lose out under capitalism are not the poor but the bureaucrats. 

This book is especially valuable for the insights it gives to the new left movement.  David was there. Most of what he writes about is what he saw and heard.  Read it.   

The last in Jan Karon's Mitford series, but fear not, she's starting a Father Tim series.

If you are going to read only one book about economic development in poor countries, this is the one.  Hernando De Soto (no- not the Florida explorer -- he died a long time ago) explains how property becomes capital-- i. e. property which can be developed, used as collateral, easily exchanged for other property, and details some solutions for improving a failing situation in poor countries.  He convincingly argues that the ancien complicated and cumbersome systems in use provide protection enough for the rich but no protection for the poor of what they have worked and saved to accumulate.  READ THIS BOOK

Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin

A remarkable book with remarkable insight by an autistic adult. 

An Oklahoma City reporter's investigation of John Doe 2-- the Middle Eastern man who was seen with Timothy Mc Veigh at the time of the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in 1995