As I've noted before (here, here, and here), I enjoy browsing booklists and looking at book recommendations. This latest list is well worth a scan. Following are a few excerpts:
From Nancy French -
Quiet Strength: the Principles, Practices, and Priorities of a Winning Life, by Tony Dungy and Nathan Whitaker
I’m not a football fan, but I became interested in Coach Tony Dungy during Superbowl XLI — when, of course, the Indianapolis Colts defeated the Chicago Bears and Dungy became the first African American head coach to win the Super Bowl. (Plus, he’s only the third person in NFL history to win Super Bowl as a player and head coach.) In Quiet Strength: the Principles, Practices, and Priorities of a Winning Life, he tells how he achieved this occupational success without compromising faith or family. I’m sure the book will tell how he turned around the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and became the winning-est coach in history. I’m sure it will also tell of his journey to Indianapolis, where he cemented his football success. However, the book promises to be about more than just football. It’ll tell about overcoming challenges: for example, being the third black NFL coach ever, raising six children (the last three of which are all adopted), and grappling with his son’s suicide at end of ‘05 season. His faith has pulled him through many hardships, a message that’ll resonate even among those who don’t know the difference between a red zone and the end zone.
For Women Only: What You Need to Know about the Inner Lives of Men, by Shaunti Feldhahn
I have a general aversion to “marital advice books.” However, the author’s appearance on Focus on the Family was so popular, James Dobson asked her back for three segments. This got my attention. The author, who’s Harvard-educated, uses systematic surveys to back up her anecdotal observation about the sexes and marital interaction. Also, it’s not an “I am woman hear me roar” or “how to get your husband to take the trash out” type tome. Rather, the book is an appreciation of the unique composition of the male brain and an exploration of the appropriate response to these unique creatures. In an age where men are portrayed on every television commercial as blubbering idiots, this book is a welcome and readable manual on how women can show respect and love to the men in their lives.
How to Raise an American, by Myrna Blyth and Chriss Winston
At my daughter’s Philly public school, patriotism was as popular as a case of head lice. It taught the “values of our pluralistic democracy” instead of citizenship. Plus, the pledge of Allegiance was considered too “exclusive,” so they took out “under God” and before doing away with it altogether. Not surprisingly, kids today are less patriotic than parents. How to Raise an American combats this “patriotism gap” with practical advice. This Memorial Day, for example, my husband and I printed out coloring sheets of Congressional Medal of Honor winners for our small children. Over crayons and cookies, we taught them about Alvin C. York, a Tennessee pacifist who nevertheless showed great heroism fighting Germans in WW1. Then we watched the black and white 1941 movie Sergeant York (with Gary Cooper), which surprisingly held my kindergartner son spellbound for its two and half hour running time. I would’ve never thought of such an activity before reading this book, which also has vacation suggestions, movie recommendations, and dinner discussion prompts for children of all ages. Having seen the Philadelphia public-school system up close, I realize the need for this book. After all, if patriotism is a four-letter word in the “birthplace of freedom,” it needs reinforcement everywhere.
— Nancy French is the author of Red State of Mind: How a Catfish Queen Reject Became a Liberty Bell and cofounder of Evangelicals for Mitt.
From Noah Millman -
One of the more interesting public policy related books I’ve read recently is Joe Williams’s Cheating Our Kids. If you want to understand why it is so hard to reform public education in America — No Child Left Behind notwithstanding — read this book. Williams is an education reporter formerly with the New York Daily News; he knows his stuff, and he tells a depressing story with clarity of analysis and of prose.
Nicolas Ostler’s Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World (reviewed a couple of years ago by John Derbyshire in this space) is an absolutely perfect non-fiction beach book, the kind of book that is continuously feeding your head yet like Cleopatra “makes hungry where most she satisfies.”
- Noah Millman is an investment banker who lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son. He blogs at The American Scene.)
From Michael Potemra -
Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta, edited by Brian Kolodiejchuk (Doubleday).
After her death, it emerged that Mother Teresa had had great struggles with doubt. Like Martin Luther King’s struggles with the flesh, this reminded us that the great saints are also in many ways people like ourselves. I look forward to getting an inside view of this woman who truly loved God in her neighbor.
Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and the Aesthetic of Revelation, by John D. Sykes Jr. (Missouri).
Two captivating religious novelists who have the gift of breaking through bourgeois complacency. I find Percy compelling even at his most didactic — and here’s the thing: I did so even when I strongly disagreed with his pro-life message. When I converted to the pro-life cause a few years ago, I was quite surprised that some pro-lifers looked down on, e.g., his 1987 novel The Thanatos Syndrome as too heavy-handed and preachy; I had thought it was quite moving. Who knows, finally, why do these works reach some people? Perhaps Sykes will tell us.
— Michael Potemra is National Review’s literary editor.
From Harry Stein -
The Forgotten Man, by Amity Shlaes
I’m a big fan of Shlaes, and look forward to reading her revisionist history of the Depression. Having grown up in the sort of household where capitalism was suspect and FDR was a demi-god, I can’t wait for chapter and verse on the real goods.
Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences, by Ward Connerly
Connerly, the longtime crusader against racial preferences, is a hero of mine, and I found his autobiography — published in 2000, and due to reappear shortly in an updated edition — immensely stirring. Anyone looking for another reason to loathe Al Gore should check out the scene where, after a series of acrimonious exchanges at a White House meeting on race with Connerly and other conservatives, the then-vice president gives Connerly’s hand such a prolonged vice-like squeeze that Connerly realizes he’s actually trying to hurt him.
Paris in the Terror, by Stanley Loomis (also here)
A terrific read. I stumbled across a copy last year in a local library and just picked up one of my own on the web for a couple of bucks. All you need to know about the French. (Especially recommended to Michael Moore).
Debunking 9/11 Myths, by the editors of Popular Mechanics
Now that 35 percent of Dems profess to believe that Bush had advance knowledge of the attacks, this point-by-point refutation of this most pernicious strain of contemporary hysteria is especially useful for dog days around the pool with New York Times-reading friends and relatives.
The Last Days of Socrates (four dialogues), by Plato
My wife told me to put this in. She says it makes me seem smart (as opposed to merely pretentious) because it has great contemporary resonance, touching as it does on the dangers to a republic of faint hearted and weak-willed politicians in a time of moral corruption. It is not impossible that at some point I will look at it.
— Harry Stein is a contributing editor of City Journal. A journalist and novelist, he is most recently the author of The Girl-Watcher’s Club and How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy: (And Found Inner Peace).