Here are our picks for the ten best books of the first half of 2010…
(In order, beginning with our favorite.)

Enjoy!

1. The Wisdom of Stability:
   Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture.
   Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.
   Paperback: Paraclete Press, 2010.
   Buy Now: [ ChristianBook.com ]
   [ *** Read our review *** ]
   
2. Journey to the Common Good.
   Walter Brueggemann.
   Paperback: WJK Books, 2010.
   Buy now: [ ChristianBook.com ]
   [ *** Read our review *** ]
   
3. Imagination in Place.
   Wendell Berry.
   Hardback: Counterpoint, 2010.
   Buy now:  [ Amazon ]
   [ *** Read our review *** ]
   
4. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
   The Essential Box Set.
   15 Cd’s: Hachette Audio,  2010.
   Buy now: [ Amazon ]
   [ *** Read our review *** ]
   
5. The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time
   Judith Shulevitz
   Hardback: Random House, 2010.
   Buy now: [ Amazon ]
   [ *** Read our review *** ]
   
6. The Seven Pillars of Creation:
   The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder.
   William P. Brown.
   Hardback: Oxford UP, 2010.
   Buy Now: [ Amazon ]
   [ *** Read our review *** ]
   
7. Harvesting Fog: Poems.
   Luci Shaw.
   Paperback: Pinyon Publishing, 2010.
   Buy now: [ Amazon ]
   [ *** Read our review *** ]
   
8. Manifold Witness:
   The Plurality of Truth.
   by John R. Franke.
   Paperback: Abingdon, 2010.
   Buy Now: [ ChristianBook.com ]
   [ *** Read our review *** ]
   
9. Imperfect Birds:
   A Novel
   Anne Lamott.
   Hardback: Riverhead, 2010.
   Buy Now: [ Amazon ]
   [ *** Read our review *** ]
   
10. After You Believe:
    Why Christian Character Matters.
    N.T. Wright.
    Hardback: HarperOne, 2010.
    Buy Now: [ ChristianBook.com ]
    [ *** Read our review *** ]

“The Closeting of Religion?”

A Review of
Science vs. Religion:
What Scientists Really Think.
By Elaine Ecklund.

Reviewed by David Anderson.

Science vs. Religion:
What Scientists Really Think.
Elaine Ecklund.
Hardback: Oxford UP, 2010.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

The TV medical-crime series Bones is about a forensic anthropologist, Dr. Temperance “Bones” Brennan, who works at a Smithsonian-like institution and helps FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth solve gruesome murders. Brennan also writes best-selling crime novels when she’s not confusing Booth with medical terminology. The series’ writers make Brennan and some members of her team into almost a parody of rational, just-the-facts-and-no-assumptions scientists, and Brennan’s own complete lack of social graces combined with high intelligence comes close to savantism. Booth, on the other hand, is a former Army Ranger sniper, has a son he adores, wears funky ties and socks, and is a believing Catholic. And herein lies the seed for many of the conflicts of this pretty average guy with the rationalist scientist Brennan.

“Where’s a guy, a normal guy who believes in intuition and the soul and good and evil and God, Where’s a guy who doesn’t believe in all this arithmetic supposed to stand?” (Booth)

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“Equitable, Convivial and Communal”

A Review of
Two New Books on Food and Agriculture.

Reviewed by Brent Aldrich.

Swindled: The Dark History of Food Fraud,
from Poisoned Candy to Counterfeit Coffee.
Bee Wilson.
Hardback: Princeton UP, 2008.
Buy now:  [ Amazon ]

Public Produce: The New Urban Agriculture.
Darrin Nordahl.
Paperback: Island Press, 2009.
Buy now:  [ Amazon ]

I remember reading, just a couple years ago, Liberty Hyde Bailey’s 1916 list of food adulterations: “Bottled ketchup usually contains benzoate of soda… Japanese tea is colored with a cyanide of potassium and iron. Prepared mustard usually contains a large amount of added starch and is colored yellow with tumeric.” He continues on, adding to the lament that “I wonder whether in time the perfection of fabrication will not reach such a point that some fruits will be known to the great public only by the picture on the package or on the bottle.” Reading this, I was surprised to find that what I had understood as a particularly modern problem actually dated back at least to the turn of the last century, and the growth of industrialized processing and agriculture. Bee Wilson’s book Swindled: The Dark History of Food Fraud, From Poisoned Candy to Counterfeit Coffee makes it clear that food adulteration has a much longer history that I had suspected possible; so long as there has been food for sale, there seems to be adulterated food alongside.

Wilson narrates a history of adulteration in food that begins in the middle ages, through the industrial revolution, and encompassing everything on Bailey’s list: the ketchup, tea, mustard, wheat flour, jams, coffee and more, and then continues through the mess of additives, flavorings, and nutrient fortifications that still loom large over our processed food system. So as it turns out, the manufacture of food that is bad for us is not a new problem; Swindled puts our current food economy in a long history of food manipulation, and draws helpful parallels between early food adulterators – replacing some coffee bean with some chicory, for instance – with the contemporary swindlers – empty-caloried sweeteners for sugar or roaster chickens with whole new physiognomies. One of the foods discussed time and again is bread, and the reasons are obvious: “The modern supermarket loaf is almost completely anonymous…Effectively, this is food with no person behind it. By contrast, bread in the Middle Ages was personal. Bakers were obliged to indent the bread with their seal, so that if they did break the assize, it would be easy to track them down and hold them accountable…Bakers were obliged to sell bread by their own hand” (69-70).

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A Review of

Primal: A Quest for the Lost Soul of Christianity By Mark Batterson Harback: Multnomah, 2009. Buy now:  [ ChristianBook.com ] Reviewed by Chris Smith.

Over the last year, Waterbrook Multnomah has released several books that are targeted for evangelical audiences and yet call their readers to depths of faithfulness that go beyond the typical religious understandings of personal piety (I am thinking here especially of Joshua Harris’s Dug Down Deep and David Platt’s Radical).  In this same vein, comes Mark Batterson’s newest book, Primal: A Quest for the Lost Soul of Christianity.  What Batterson undertakes to do in Primal may sound a bit familiar to those who know something of the history of the Christian Church tradition (and the broader Stone-Campbell tradition of churches of which we are part); he poses the question: “[W]hen all the superficialities [that have been building up over two thousand years of Church history] are stripped away, what is the primal essence of Christianity?” (3).  In answer to this question, Batterson offers the “great commandment” of Jesus: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,” and one is, of course, hard-pressed to argue with this claim (although, it is striking that this great commandment is severed in Primal from its twin commandment named by Jesus: “Love your  neighbor as you love yourself.”)

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UPCOMING INDIANAPOLIS AREA EVENT…

WILL SAMSON will be leading a seminar on his book JUSTICE IN THE BURBS, at Grace Community Church in Noblesville on Saturday July 24, from 9AM-12PM.

In the suburban world of nice homes, neat lawns, and new cars, it can be easy to forget the poor and disenfranchised of our world. But we can be a force for the least of these in our county, our city and our world. Join us on Saturday, July 24 from 9:00 a.m. to noon in the North Auditorium for this discussion as we move from apathy and ignorance to concern and awareness.

This is a FREE event, but registration is requested…

Go here for more info and to register:
http://gracecc.org/serve/local-outreach/justice-seminars/

We  have recently made a slight change to our format and the reviews, excerpts, poems, etc. of our Midweek update will be posted to “pages” on the ERB website, and announced via social media.  If you’re a “first-to-know” sort of person, you can get these updates when they first come out in one of two ways:

• Our Facebook Page.
• Our Twitter Feed.

Otherwise, in our regular issue each Friday, we will recap the content of our midweek update.  For instance, this week’s update included:

• [Multimedia Tuesday] NPR Interview with David Crystal, author of A LITTLE BOOK OF LANGUAGE.
• Poem: “Starlight Night” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

In our continuing effort to fund the publication and free distribution of The Englewood Review, we are going to be collaborating more intentionally with Christian Book Distributors. Primarily, we will be offering you the opportunity to buy bargain books from CBD that we think of are interest. Buying books this way is a win / win / win proposition. You get great books for a great price, CBD gets the sale and we get an excellent referral fee from CBD.

This week’s bargain books on the theme
Scripture (Click to learn more/purchase):

	How the Bible Came to Be $2.99 – Save 82% !!! By John Barton / Westminster John Knox Press In a clear and concise way, John Barton explains the process of the development of the Bible. He describes how that which we now know as the Bible came to be written and collected into the authoritative scriptures of the Christian church. With a helpful glossary of important terms, this work is a valuable resource for personal or group Bible studies, beginning Bible students, and all readers who have questions about the origin and transmission of Holy Scripture.
	The Social Visions of the Hebrew Bible $4.99 – Save 88% !!! By John David Pleins / Westminster John Knox Press A full-scale study of the social vision of the Hebrew Bible. Adopting a sociological and historical approach, the book analyzes biblical statements about social ethics within a framework provided by Israel’s social institutions, the social locations of its actors, and the historical struggles for power and survival.
	Theology of the New Testament $7.99 – Save 87% !!! By Georg Strecker / Westminster John Knox Press In this volume Strecker profiles the New Testament with major treatments of Paul, Jesus, the Synoptics, John, and the General Letters. Strecker argues for a rich mosaic of theologies rather than one single New Testament theology. He adopts a redaction-critical approach and thus highlights the background of and relationships among the New Testament writings. Strecker’s relentless pursuit of the distinctive views of each specific writing allows the complexity of the New Testament to emerge. The magnum opus of one of the twentieth century’s most respected theologians.
	Understanding Matthew: The Early Christian Worldview of the First Gospel $2.99 – Save 85% !!! By Stephen Westerholm / Baker This work, a companion volume to Westerholm’s Understanding Paul provides an introduction to the early Christian worldview of the First Gospel. The study is neither a verse-by-verse commentary nor a narrowly focused academic monograph. It is an engaging reader’s guide to Matthew’s worldview and his story of Jesus’ life, preaching, andcall to discipleship. Westerholm’s goal, as he writes in the first chapter, is that readers might “begin to understand how Matthew made sense of things, and to see how it makes sense to make sense of things that way.” His introductory chapter examines the idea of a worldview. He then considers the centralaspects of Matthew’s worldview, Israel’s understanding of God, his dealings with the Jewish people, and Jesus’ preaching about God’s kingdom.
	New Testament Times: Understanding the World of the First Century, Exclusive Full-Color Edition $6.99 – Save 77% !!! By Merrill C. Tenney / Baker This popular guide to the first-century world is now available in full color. The writers of the Bible naturally spoke in the imagery and circumstances of their political and historical situations, and translating their words into our language and modern context can prove difficult. This book thoroughly explores and explains the political, social, and cultural forces of the first century, allowing you a deeper understanding of the world in which the Christian church was born. You will find full-color photographs, maps, and charts throughout the book to help you visualize that world.

Once while peering at the pitiful waves upon a Scottish coastline, I heard a voice from a Minnesota friend cry out, “These waves are huge!”  Huge?  These little ankle-biting waves couldn’t even push a turtle into shore, let alone a surfer.  But my friend did not have the luxury of growing up by the pounding waves of the Northern California Coast, where a bad day displays a series of four foot waves.  She instead marveled at the waves that “towered” over the ones that she had ever seen in the Great Lakes.

My experience with A 30 Day Retreat, by William Mills, reminded me of that coastal experience in Scotland.  I wanted to get a rush and ride the big waves of spirituality, but instead, I found myself wondering how anything could even get propelled.  Yet, despite my lack of enthusiasm for Mills’s book, perhaps one who’d never seen the giant waves of God’s spiritual life would take this book for something amazing.  Mills did, after all, write for a searching audience, not a twenty-something seminary grad.

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Roberto Bolaño was born in Chile in 1953.  He moved to Mexico City in 1968 but returned to Chile in 1973 one month before Pinochet’s coup.  He was arrested as a political dissident.  When he was released he moved first to Mexico and then to Barcelona.  His 10 novels and two short stories  were produced before his untimely death at the age of 50, in 2003.  The novels are just now beginning to appear in English.  2666, is a sweeping, majestic novel that is a result of the “big bang” that Antwerp, at only 78 pages, represented.  2666 is considered by many, including me, to be the first great piece of literature of the 21st century.  The back of the little book contains a quote from Bolaño, “The only novel that doesn’t embarrass me is Antwerp.”

Of the 54 chapters that occur in such a small package one is bumped hither and thither.  You will meet victims of crime, crooked cops, drifters, and misfits.  You will be confronted with poetry and visions of warped time and reality.  This novel will challenge the average reader but is a primer to the methods that Bolaño used in his later career and, whereas, 2666 requires a briefcase to move it from one place to the other, Antwerp will fit in your back pocket.

Antwerp represents a microcosm of not only what the author more fully developed later in his career, but, within its pages lies a microcosm of the human condition.  Crime, aesthetics, poetry, love, constant threats of violence, youth, the aged, in short, reality for the vast majority of humanity are gathered by Bolaño’s pen and we become guests at, literally, the event horizon of existence.

In a foreword added to the book 22 years after it first appeared, Bolaño writes, “I wrote this book for myself, and even that I can’t be sure of.”  This is the end product, it seems, of many days spent in a semi-delirium, convinced that an anarchic end was coming in the revolution of Salvador Allende.  Bolaño describes this novel in organic, living terms and despite the frantic nature of it’s layout and the intense requirement for concentration it demands of its readers, we can be thankful that regardless of for whom this book was written, we are able to read it today.

An excerpt from the new book:

Keeping God’s Earth:
The Global Environment in Biblical Perspective.
Noah J. Toly and Daniel I. Block, eds.
Paperback: IVP Books, 2010.
Buy now [ ChristianBook.com ]

“We are full of life… and we are poisoning ourselves (8).”  This heartfelt plea is like a watermark on every page of Claiming Earth as Common Ground. Andrea Cohen-Kiener experienced an awakening that led her to pursue involvement in recycling plastics, and from that a greater realization that ecology was related to her spirituality.  The Earth, she says, is our ultimate common ground for disparate religion.  It provides not just the well-worn question, “Can religious people save the environment?”  But also a new question, “Can the environmental challenge save religion (2)?”  It is this question that drives her theological reflection (especially chapters 2-5).

Cohen-Kiener advocates a variety of specific practices, not the least of which is an appendix with an exhaustive list of “small steps” to reduce one’s ecological footprint (146-149).  One specific practice focused on gardening and seed conservation (chapter 6). This is imperative because homogenous seed genus is vulnerable to pests and climate changes (93).  The other main practice is the rediscovery of Sabbath.  Lessness is the object of Sabbath, where at least one day is given over to seeking to nourish the soul through slowing down and “greening a day” (chapter 8).  Cohen-Kiener argues that environmental abuse and the reactionary desire to “go green” is at its root a spiritual hunger (117).  Religion can help us “rename and reclaim the subtle spiritual hungers (119).”  As she says, “Environmentalism can save religion by giving us a living laboratory in which we can learn to live up to our religion’s aspirations (144).”

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TREES
F.S. Flint

Elm trees
and the leaf the boy in me hated
long ago–
rough and sandy.

Poplars
and their leaves,
tender, smooth to the fingers,
and a secret in their smell
I have forgotten.

Oaks
and forest glades,
heart aching with wonder, fear:
their bitter mast.

Willows
and the scented beetle
we put in our handkerchiefs;
and the roots of one
that spread into a river:
nakedness, water and joy.

Hawthorn,
white and odorous with blossom,
framing the quiet fields,
and swaying flowers and grasses,
and the hum of bees.

Oh, these are the things that are with me now,
in the town;
and I am grateful
for this minute of my manhood.