Capsule Reviews: Thomas Sowell’s Intellectuals and Society; Tolkien’s The Silmarillion

Here are short reviews of two interesting books I’ve read recently. Enjoy!...

NT Wright Interview about Heaven

I happened across a wonderful interview that Time Magazine did just recently with Bishop NT Wright. Wright, one of the foremost theologians and biblical scholars of our time (and an excellent writer for both academic and popular audiences) discusses the misconception that most Christians have about heaven.   And, I’d add, most non-Christians. Before I was a Christian, I thought that what Christians...

Review: “The Moral Instinct”

An article appeared in the New York Times recently called “The Moral Instinct.” The tagline is “Evolution has endowed us with ethical impulses. Do we know what to do with them?” The author, Steven Pinker, is a professor of philosophy; in the article he dissects the concept of morality, where it comes from, and what we ought to do about it, especially in a culture with competing ideas of what...

Book Review: Sex God

I’ve worked through several books in the past few months: Unhooked, A Return to Modesty, and Can’t Buy My Love, looking at how each of these authors dealt with the challenges facing women in this culture. But though each author had valuable insights, I wanted more: an attempt to understand why things are the way they are, and where we can go from here. So I’d like to wrap up this series of...

Book Review: Can’t Buy My Love

Over the past few weeks I’ve been doing some reading on femininity, exploring different perspectives on the problem of being a healthy woman in our modern culture. So far, I’ve looked at Wendy Shalit’s A Return to Modesty and Laura Sessions Stepp’s Unhooked, each of which helpfully articulate some aspects of the problem. But as I read these and other books along similar lines, I found myself...