Born Again and Again, by Megan Westra

Megan Westra was raised in a strong Christian tradition.  Her family and church immersed her in the Christian faith, and she first committed to following Jesus at age four.  Given the young age and her lack of memory, she spent a good deal of her childhood doubting her salvation and seeking to be "born again . . . and again."  In college, she began having revelations that expanded her view of faith, leading to several moments of feeling like she was truly being born again into new understanding.  In her book Born Again and Again: Jesus' Call to Radical Transformation she chronicles her journey and digs into areas of faith and practice in which she has learned and grown.

The strongest theme throughout the book is that we, a church, should be about "connection over consumption."  The modern church, especially in the evangelical tradition in which Westra (and I) grew up has placed a strong emphasis on personal salvation and a personal, individualized faith in Jesus.  That emphasis misses the greater calling of community and communal life.  All Christians can benefit from a reminder that faith is not just about connecting with God, but also about connecting with our neighbor.  She uses this filter throughout the book as she discusses politics, race, economics, and gender.

Westra's book is reactive to the white evangelical faith of her upbringing.  She finds it wholly inadequate in light of her new-found wokeness.  In the areas mentioned above, she provides some historical background in an attempt to discredit American evangelicalism.  Like every human expression of faith in every period of history, culture and sin have played a role in shaping the institutions and expressions of the Christian faith, so correctives and reforms are always necessary.  But she has little good to say about, specifically, American evangelicalism.  Despite its whiteness, American evangelicals led the charge in eradicating slavery, in establishing institutions such as hospitals and schools that continue to serve humanity, planting churches and leading revival movements that brought faith to many across the US, and creating a foreign missions movement for spreading the gospel around the world.  To the extent that these positive contributions are mentioned, she is dismissive of them due to racist elements of the movements. 

Like many of her ilk, she is critical of capitalism and American democracy.  This shouldn't be hard for her to see, but if she truly is interested in addressing poverty, history and experience have shown that this is best done through capitalism and free markets.  And it should go without saying that socialism and communism have inevitably led to repression of religious expression everywhere they have been tried.  Her recommendations for community action are fully on board with socialistic and anti-capitalistic tendencies which, in the long run, create more poverty and less religious freedom.

As much as I appreciate Westra's commitment to being the presence of Christ in her community, which, as she tells it, is quite diverse racially and economically, and has plenty of needs, her solutions are feel-good but ineffective.  I would love to see more people who have her commitment to know the poor not as subjects but as friends and neighbors, but who will offer solutions that lead away from dependency and toward increased participation in the free market system and the free society, toward connection with their communities by providing goods and services in mutual exchange.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures, by Jennifer Hofmann

I was very much looking forward to reading Jennifer Hofmann's The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures.  It sounded like a Kafka-esque story of a bureaucrat caught in the cogs of his own bureaucratic system.  That is true of the story; it definitely hearkens to Kafka, especially in the early going.  Bernd Zeiger established his place in the Stasi with his manual "The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures," but now at the end of his career, his relevance is tenuous. 

Zieger uses his resources to try to track down Lara, a young lady with whom he crossed paths and became obsessed with.  Like many East Berliners, she is missing.  The government doesn't want to admit that East Germans are fleeing the country, but the allure of the West is too strong for many living under communism.  The story of his search becomes flashbacks, and flashbacks during flashbacks, building a twisted chain of events that eventually will turn Zeiger's methods back on him.

In the same vein as Kafka's fiction, Hofmann's story give a glimpse into life in East Berlin in the post WW2 era, right up to the fall of the Berlin wall.  The story itself didn't grip me, and the cultural and historical material took a back seat to the story.  There were some interesting twists, but ultimately I was disappointed.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Abled: Same But Different, by Cathleen Morita

The genetic disorder EBF3-HADDS was only identified a few years ago, but there is already a children's book that features a child with HADDS.  Chase was one of the first kids diagnosed.  His mother Cathleen Morita has written about Chase in a new children's book Abled: Same But Different.

By showing bits and pieces of Chase's life and experiences, she shows that he's a little boy like so many little boys, and loves to do the same things many little boys like to do, but he does things differently and experiences things differently.  The cute illustrations show him at home in Hawaii, enjoying the beach, his dog, and many different activities.

Abled is a great resource for kids with HADDS and other disabilities, as well as their care providers, teachers, and families, to get a glimpse into life with HADDS.  What a joy for a child with this newly diagnosed, rare disorder to see, in storybook form, a child with the same diagnosis he or she has!

My daughter is delighted to read a book about a child
who has the same diagnosis she has!

My wife's blog review:
https://ebf3blog.wordpress.com/2020/08/07/abled-the-hadds-book/

Men to Avoid in Art and Life, by Nicole Tersigni

Nicole Tersigni's idea for Men to Avoid in Art and Life is fun and silly and sure to bring a smile to the women in your life.  She takes classic art and adds captions to bring some more modern sensibilities to the fore.  She divides the book into sections dealing with mansplaining, sexperts, and misplaced concern.

This is funny stuff, even if it does base its humor on stale stereotypes about male attitudes and behaviors.  Only the thinnest skinned man will be offended, and men and women alike will get a chuckle about the familiarity of the scenarios.  (But it's other men, not me. . . .)

By the way, for the art lover, she provides a listing of the works and artists, as well as the museums where the are found.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

American Crusade, by Pete Hegseth

If you watch Fox News, you have likely seen Pete Hegseth on TV.  He's a passionate conservative voice, an Army vet who calls his fellow Americans to defend our freedom and way of life.  In American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free, Hegseth hits conservative hot-button issues, showing the distinctions from liberalism, and calling on Americans to join his crusade.

Despite the militaristic language, Hegseth's fight is not with arms but with ideas.  The ideas he's fighting against are familiar to conservatives: globalism, genderism, socialism, secularism, environmentalism, elitism, multiculturalism, and Islamism.  His examples and explanations of conservative positions are simple without being simplistic.  His passionate defense of freedom and conservative ideas is clear and solidly argued. 

Hegseth is worth reading and worth listening to for his common-sense, well-reasoned conservative positions.  If you are on the fence, trying to decide between blue and red, conservative or liberal, Trump or Biden, give Hegseth a read.  Whatever your starting point or presuppositions, he's sure to make you think.


Thanks to NetGalley for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Minutes to Die, by Susan Sleeman

I always appreciate when a follow-up book exceeds its predecessor.  Minutes to Die is Susan Sleeman's second book in her "Homeland Heroes" series.  Minutes to Die is set shortly after Seconds to Live, but focuses on a difference set of main characters.  We see cameos from the characters from the first book, but Sleeman changes the focus to FBI Agent Kiley Dawson and ICE Agent Evan Bowers.  They are working together to prevent an attack on the anniversary of 9/11 that, their intel has said, will kill millions of Americans.

Kiley and Evan have some history they have to work through.  Evan is crazy about her, but Kiley has yet to forgive him for some of his past failures.  Reluctantly, she brings him into the investigation and they work closely throughout the book.  Over time, she grows to appreciate him and forgive him.  My main criticism of Seconds to Live was that he suspense portion of the book took a back seat to the romance.  In Minutes to Die, I was pleased to see that it was the opposite.  Yes, the budding romance is a theme throughout, but it is easily overshadowed by the investigation and tension building up to the anticipated attack.

This is an example that I just thought was funny.  Call me sexist, but I don't see scenes like this written in suspense novels written by a man.

He released her and stepped back.  "As much as I want to kiss you right now, I think it would be a good idea for us to put whatever this is going on between us on the back burner." . . . He knew she needed to succeed so she never had to live with the guilt of failing to stop the most deadly terrorist attack even perpetrated on American soil.

I know it sounds like I'm making fun.  Maybe I am, a little, cynical, un-romantic guy that I am, but seriously I was quite pleased that this passage was not typical of the book as a whole.  Minutes to Die is told in a straightforward way, focussing on Kiley's leadership and giving details of the investigation coming together with the team's various investigative skills and a little bit of luck.  It seems like Sleeman paid more attention to the technical, tactical, and logistical details of the investigation than she did in Seconds to Live--another plus.

Given the improvement of book 2 over book 1, I look forward to the anticipated book 3, to be released next year.  Romance or not, I am sure, like book 1 and 2, will be an enjoyable read. 


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Calling Bullshit, by Carl T. Bergstrom

Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West's Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World could not have come at a better time.  Well, maybe about three months ago would have been a better time.  The year 2020 has, so far, been primarily marked by Covid-19 and the response to it.  If you're like me, you are frustrated by the conflicting information given out by the media and the array of "experts."  Yes, a few of these folks have been studying contagious diseases for years, but then all these other "experts" chime in with their newly minted charts and graphs and "science" and "data" and we are left not knowing who to believe.  Politicians and the press say "listen to science" and "follow the data" then scientists disagree, data changes, and settled science suddenly becomes yesterday's news.

Bergsrtom and West, both professors at the University of Washington, bring some much-needed level headedness into the data-saturated, 24/7 news, social media world we live in.  (But due to the date of publication, Covid-19 is not part of this book.)  As they define it, b.s. (they use the word throughout, and call me prudish, it's just not a word in my vocabulary, so I'll use the short version in this review) "uses the language of math and science and statistics to create the impression of rigor and accuracy. . . .  New-school b.s. can be particularly effective because many of us don't feel qualified to challenge information that is presented in quantitative form."  A side comment about TED talks cracked me up.  So many people think a TED talk is the gold standard of authoritative, but they write "the TED brand of b.s. is just a cocktail of sound-bite science, management-speak, and techno-optimism."

We have access to more data than ever, but much of it is not reliable due to its source or presentation.  Bergstrom and West cover the various ways we are presented with b.s. and offer guidance to resist being taken in.  A favorite is numbers.  They "feel objective, but are easily manipulated to tell whatever story one desires."  Even better when data is presented in chart form.  Their section on charts and graphs may be the most useful part of the book.  They show the many ways an easy-to-read graph that seems to make a clear point may be concealing the very information you need.

In spite of their pretty clear lean to the left, they are balanced in their examples across the ideological spectrum.  Suffice it to say that no ideological group is exempt from the desire or habit of manipulating data and information to make a point.  Whether you are reading a Twitter post, watching the evening news, or even reading a paper in an academic journal, you will be better equipped to evaluate the information--and spotting b.s.--thanks to Bergstrom and West.  If someone starts a sentence with "studies say," "according to science," or something like that, put up your b.s. detector.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!