Blogging for Books--This is Your Brain On Sports

This was a delightful book. If you've ever wondered, as I have, how it could be psychologically possible to enjoy following and rooting for the Buffalo Bills, this is the book for you. Not only do the authors explore the anecdotal evidence on hometown loyalty, home-field advantage, and rivalries, but they use solid research in behavioral economics and cite a number of well-run studies and test cases, not to mention piggybacking on giants in the field like Kahneman, Ariely, and Lowenstein.

If that wasn't enough to make an interesting book about the social science of sports, the writing is downright funny as well. I thumbed to the index as soon as it arrived to make sure that there weren't going to be too many Bills jokes (only Bills fans are allowed to make fun of our team, after all) and was relieved to discover that the Browns are more often the target of their NFL barbs.

Towards the end of the book there are several chapters devoted to serious and downright important topics too, such as bias in moral judgment, the finish-line effect, the data of performing in the midst of trauma, and even a case-study from a patient in a coma. It was a fun, quick book, and I'd highly recommend it to even a casual sports fan.

Blogging for Books--Through A Man's Eyes

I often find it illuminating to read multiple books at a time, and the three books that I happened to be reading simultaneously this last week were particularly interesting to play off one another. From the Blogging for Books program I was reading "Through A Man's Eyes" by Shaunti Feldman, a primer for the uninitiated Christian woman on "the visual nature of men." I was also working through the local library's copy of Betty Freidan's "The Feminine Mystique," and re-reading the 16th century "Book of the Courtier."

Each one of these books was trying to say something about the obvious but slippery subject of the difference between men and women. In each book I found myself nodding at a particular sentence or two and saying "yes, I wouldn't have thought to put it like that, but I find this to be almost universally true." In each book I also found thoughts to which I reacted with outright disgust and disagreement.

To be brief, the Feldman book fared extremely poorly in comparison to the others. It was technically weak, full of junk science, suspect popular theology, and often bordered on the downright offensive. Yes, a man is a different sort of creature than a woman. There is no unfolding of this truth which would justify the sort of oppressive restrictions that Feldman proposes for both sexes as a consequent. She commits the double sins of inventing a convenient history in which her particular argument finds its moment of crisis in the present age and in commandeering a complicated and inexact science (the nature of the brain) for her own agendas. I would not recommend the book.

In contrast, the Friedan book, despite its own issues with junk science and missing the tone of its own moment in history, is a provocative and well-constructed challenge to the spirit of its time. For better or worse, the arguments about a woman's relationship to her career and her home have been framed by Betty Friedan, and her work on the subject is the right place to start.

And then there's Castiglione. He writes in the form of a dialogue, so often the truly awful and misogynistic statements you'll find within his pages are rebutted or argued by another speaker several pages later. Whether or not you believe the culture of 16th century Italy was fair to its women, the women certainly were treated as human beings. Within the pages of Castiglione are complex and nuanced appeals to the social good, metaphysical formulations of truth and love, and several different principles on which a man or a woman might "do" ethics. Yes, the characters in the dialogue often make barbarous proposals for their women. But the women speak back and answer for themselves, and they answer not as anatomical eye candy which is obligated to be hidden, nor as victims demanding restitution, but as full human beings.

Rooted in Design-Blogging for Books

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Tara Heibel and Tassy de Give’s book Rooted in Design. The printing and photography are exceptionally well executed throughout, and it’s certainly the most beautiful book to look at I’ve picked up in the last few months. I appreciate that it could function as a coffee table book without taking up the inordinate amount of space that most “coffee table” books require. Within the beautifully printed pages, however, are a feast of excellent ideas for the uninitiated hoping to bring some green life into their house. From wall mounts to suspended chandeliers and terrariums, Heibel and de Give provide thoughtful and creative ideas for decorating one’s interior home with plants, moss, and arrangements. Even a cursory thumb through the book gave me several ideas that I immediately brought to my wife’s attention. (We’ve yet to put them into execution, however.) Especially helpful are the 13 pages at the end which provide sufficient but not overwhelming details for looking after plants, watering, and pruning. I would suggest, were a second edition ever to be released, that the photographs be identified with common English names of plants and referenced alphabetically at the end of the book with the Latin names italicized beneath, instead of the other way around. I would also suggest that a wider variety of domestic settings be photographed, as the majority of the photos appeared to come from urban apartment settings of a uniform age and state of decay. (There were few photographs of the sort of suburban house which I inhabit.) I am very grateful to the authors for their guide to indoor planting.

Blogging for Books-Speak Now

Speak Now is the best written book I've ever reviewed for this program. It is an account of the Hollingsworth v. Perry civil trial which resolved the conflict surrounding California's Prop 8 and eventually made it before the Supreme Court. The trial is recounted by Kenji Yoshino, a married gay Professor of Constitutional Law at the NYU School of Law.

Regardless of your views on the controversial subjects explored in the trial, the books is excellent reading. Yoshino presents a compelling case for why trials (instead of popular referendums) are the appropriate venue to force an "unusually direct, disciplined, and comprehensive confrontation between opposing sides." In reviewing the documents and retelling the story of the trial, Yoshino accurately and concisely documents what the plaintiffs and proponents of Prop 8 had to say about the nature of rights, the definition of marriage, the history of discrimination, and the future of the family. Along the way, Yoshino makes some important distinctions between legislative and adjudicative facts and the process of rational-basis review that would be otherwise lost on laypeople like myself.

While Yoshino does write from a position of admitted bias, he portrays his political and ideological opponents with dignity and sympathy, further underscoring his point that the courtroom is a just and humane venue to hold civilized argument over one of the most pressing issues of our time. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject.

How to Tie a Tie-Blogging for Books Review

This is a good book to judge by its cover. Enclosing 127 helpful and well-illustrated pages is a beautifully bound nylon cover with a sharp Repp pattern. (If you don't know what a Repp pattern is, you can learn about it from the book.)

For those of us who didn't grow up in the world of high men's fashion, this book is a wonderful introduction to the many worlds beyond the half-windsor knot. It's always difficult to print instructions on something complicated and kinesthetic, like attempting your own bow-tie. But even if this book can't take you all the way there, it can give you an idea of what knots may lie within your grasp (and eventually around your neck) and you can perfect your technique on Youtube.

What I found most helpful were the introductory section (a tutorial on how to pair fabrics, colors, and styles) and the final fifteen pages. (A guide to "finishing touches," including square folds, cuff-links, shoes, etc.)

Unfortunately, the book is as depressing as it is instructive. My ties don't match my suits particularly well, my suits aren't well made or well fitted, and I don't have any of the fine accessories that I ought to be a well-dressed man. At least this way, however, I know better.

The Ancient Path-Blogging for Books review

The Ancient Path is supposedly a book about the early Fathers, but it turns out to be much more a story of a modern monastery in Arkansas founded and sustained by the author of this book, John Michael Talbot. The Fathers are present, to be sure, but only as one element in a complex and well-told journey from rock and roll to the monastic life. Perhaps it is because the story ends in a monastery that Mr. Talbot chooses to describe his path as "ancient," but his reading of the Fathers is much more in dialogue with the modern evangelical Protestantism which he chose to leave partway through his Christian life than with the early controversies of the primitive church. Each of the thirteen chapters corresponds to some topic on which Mr. Talbot has clearly meditated, sung, and prayed. From analyses of Community to Jesus Christ to the Episcopate, he unfolds his meditations slowly and conversationally. At worst, they sometimes sound like old Sunday School lessons and twist texts like the Didache into making points in contemporary controversies that were never intended by the authors. At best, he is a wise Christian elder unfolding the wisdom of many centuries worth of prayer and contemplation. The Ancient Path is not a gateway to the Patristic  literature, but a wonderful portrait of a man who found and loved the Fathers on his own journey.

Richard John Neuhaus, A Life in the Public Square

This book did exactly what it was supposed to. Once I finished the final chapter, I thumbed through to the list of Neuhaus' books and jotted down several of his more important titles, underlining "The Naked Public Square" several times. I had met Neuhaus' name in various places, in a bibliography here or in a footnote by way of rebuttal there. His death almost immediately preceded my entry into the public world of political commentary and philosophy, and I've been reading works ever since that were shaped by his legacy without ever having read any of his original works. I was glad to finally make his acquaintance, and if only to disagree with him I've become convinced of the necessity of meeting him in his own works.

The writing itself gets better as the book goes on. The early descriptions of Neuhaus' childhood and schooling contain interesting trivia, but too many pages are wasted describing boyhood scenes with dubious bearing on his later career that could have detailed more of his later public controversies and opinions. Boyagoda manages to hold a reasonable position of neutrality throughout, especially regarding Neuhaus' conversion from Lutheranism to the Roman Catholic church.

I'd be happy to recommend this book to anyone interested in the modern history of politics and religion. One of the great fables of modern politics is that you must be on one side of the left-right spectrum or another. I'm not sure that Neuhaus would have said differently, but Boyagoda makes a compelling case that his own life works to disprove the idea.

For Men Only, by Shaunti and Jeff Feldhahn

I suppose the best preliminary question is not whether this particular book is any good, but whether it's even possible to write a good book--at least one that isn't mealy sentiment and common nonsense--about one gender to another. Whatever might be generally true of enough women that someone might dare to write it down, is astonishingly false about some other woman somewhere. Writing about the genders is like writing about America. Whatever you say is true, the opposite is true somewhere else. Confusing this further, there are several truisms about women espoused in For Men Only that might be vaguely correct about American women between the ages of 26 and 49, but are certainly not at all descriptive of African women, or Victorian women.

With all that said, For Men Only doesn't come off quite as poorly as you'd expect. It's biggest flaw actually turns out to be the underlying assumption that a happy marriage is one in which the husband and wife keep up the constant sensation of "being in love" for as long and as powerfully as possible. Being in love, of course, and enjoying that love in romantic and sexual fulfillment, is quite pleasant. It is not, however, helpful for very long in building a successful marriage, or in understanding, so far as such a thing can be done, what a woman is. 

Raised Right by Alisa Harris

If I could chat with Alisa Harris, I'd ask her why she chose to subtitle her book "How I Untangled My Faith from Politics." The process she describes doesn't sound like an untangling as much as it does a reconciliation. She doesn't throw Christianity in the trash when she learns about the poor, but learns the true meaning of Matthew's gospel. She doesn't put her Bible on the shelf when she learns how corrupt politicians can be, but rather becomes as "shrewd as a snake." Still, she insists on delineating her faith (a socially conservative Pentecostalism) as something provincial and outgrown while only thinking about the Faith, the timeless and universal truth of which her parents were a variation, in doubtful language.

Alisa's story is a common one; she grew up buying into the unthinking fundamentalism of her church and friends, believing her little congregation privy to all truth. She traveled, and realized the world was a bigger place than she had originally suspected. Her story is printable largely because of the stringency of her particular background--a simplified version of Christianity with all the peripheral and minor doctrines magnified to distortion--and because of her ardent and over-susceptible childhood, which she paints as rather tragicomic.

I'm still not sure why the book, in the end, was necessary. Alisa becomes a Democrat, which is a perfectly normal and reasonable thing to do; but it doesn't sound like her decision was a reasoned one. She records no arguments or debates; she unveils no revelations. She simply finds the world big, weeps a bit, and then, apologetically, votes for Obama. She finds that the litmus tests of homosexuality and abortion are insufficient to keep her voting red; but says anything about homosexuality or abortion beyond "I once was much more sure about these issues." It's fine to doubt, and indeed, better to doubt honestly than to be stupidly sure. But did young Christians need another book of heartfelt doubts? I believe Ms. Harris to be a talented writer. Perhaps in her next book we'll hear some development on these doubts as she makes her way through the wide world.

Average Joe by Troy Meeder

Troy Meeder's book Average Joe is an unwelcome review. I do not delight in criticizing his work, and in many ways, I think it harmless. As an autobiography, or even as an apologia for his life, it does no ill. As a Christian document, it is dreadful. Average Joe is intended as a defense of the working-class man, a man who may not have received what he expected from career or fortune, but who remains faithful to his God and family nonetheless. Mr. Meeder recounts his own experiences of failure and wisened hindsight to affirm such men. He mistakenly counts the biblical heroes among them. Whoever King David was, he was by no means an "average Joe." Nor was Paul, nor Jesus. This would be near to suggesting that Mozart was an "average composer" who, by his sheer grit and American spirit, wrote some darned-good symphonies. It is either a gross historical error or a complete redefinition of the word "average."

I wondered, as I began to read this book, whether I might find anything approaching Horace's exhortation to the Golden Mean; satisfaction by balance. Mr. Meeder is, regrettably, uninterested in balance. (He denounces compromise) In fact, I don't believe Mr. Meeder writes with any intention other than defending himself. He may not be wrong to do so--he seems, from his own portrait, at least, an honest and sincere man--but it is not wisdom to be commended to others. At various points Mr. Meeder assures the "average" man that the future is all foreintentioned by a loving God. Only a few chapters later, he insists that the whole problem boils down to our choices. His description of the spiritual life is inseparable from his experience of the California outdoors. He describes and petitions God in the pseudoromantic language of the modern praise chorus. He is unashamedly anti-intellectual (taking time for several incursions against lawyers, the educated, and those that would frequent "metrosexual coffee shops") and asserts the great fundamentalist arrogance: My ignorance is as enlightening as your knowledge. I believe, at root, this is the thesis of his whole book: My mediocrity is as satisfying as your accomplishment.

The book contains very little in the way of instruction for the "average Joe" initiate. Meeder's spiritual counsel only touches on sin management, with the remedy of "try harder" urged in various ways. At his worst, he appears to be advocating his experience as the destination of all Christians: What we all really need is to be middle-class Republican American evangelicals. Many of these types are my dearest friends, but most of them sense that they aren't the climax of Christendom. I'm afraid that Mr. Meeder thinks he is, or at least his purified version. He looks at Paul and David, and sees cowboys! Mr. Meeder may wish his life to be read in the Ford truck commercial voice, but he ought not suggest it be used for the Bible.

Andy Stanley's Enemies of the Heart

Mr. Stanley, author of Enemies of the Heart, is an able Christian psychologist, but an incomplete Christian theologian. As is the case with many books in the Christian self-help genre, Mr. Stanley isolates several common negative behaviors, and after his explanation of them prescribes several counteractive measures the reader might take. His summary of the modern man’s crisis is a sort of heart-sickness, expressed in Guilt, Anger, Greed, and Jealousy.

Mr. Stanley’s solutions to these problems are the four corresponding behaviors of Confession, Forgiveness, Generosity, and Celebration. There is little obviously wrong with Mr. Stanley’s ideas of Christian behavior, but he provides little insight on how one moves from Greed to Generosity. He says, sometimes decorated in deistic language, the usual self-help answer: just remember this truth and try a little harder. Most of us will find that this is like being told the answer to being fat is being thin; or that the solution to being sick is just becoming healthy.

Of course we can all stand to learn more about virtue; the accumulation of ideas is always helpful. And of course we can always do a better job of exerting our self-will. But is this really the answer to our moral problems? This question is the meeting-place of theology and psychology, and in books like Enemies of the Heart theology is left unexplored. Perhaps this is for simplicity, but it is done at the expense of insightful and helpful psychology.

To meaningfully answer the sorts of questions he raises, Mr. Stanley would need to discuss his views on the problem of evil. Why do all of us tend to greed in the first place? What is it that keeps us from deciding such behavior away? The way Mr. Stanley writes, one would think that Greed and Guilt were dark gods, powerful and personal enough to act on their own accord, yet somehow able to be banished by self-will.

It may seem a heavy burden to lie on the backs of popular psychologists and amateur moralists, that they take up theology as well. Yet, just as one can’t talk well about playing the clarinet without also talking about music, neither can one discuss the human ψυχή without giving some thought to the broader disciplines to which it serves. Answering the question “what is evil” is not a fanciful theological exercise or a task reserved for the intellectual elite…it is the foundation of any discussion, simple or scholarly, of what is the matter with men.

I Kissed Dating Goodbye

"The best relationships are between two people who care more about each other's good than their own momentary pleasure."

Six years ago I was taking a walk with the girl who would become my wife, and she told me I'd need to read I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Josh Harris. It was a book she'd read at age 13 during a community symphony rehearsal, and as she sat in the auditorium she'd nodded along to all the good sense she found. My own expectations of the book were low. I opened it anticipating an out-of-touch primer on romance in the style of certain conservative southern Christian colleges, where coeducation fraternizing is prohibited except under supervision and even then carried out in painfully absurd legalism. What I found instead was all the balance and sense that I'd noticed was missing in romantic love everywhere else.

You see, the world at large thinks Christians gone mad on religion for insisting on chastity, and most Christians seem to think the world at large is gone mad on sex to so utterly ignore all religious learning on the subject. The more important and wonderful a thing is, like a war or an election, the more likely people are to tell absurd lies about it. In the cases of sex and religion, either the Christians are telling a very great lie about the dangers of sex or the rest of the world has made a dreadfully dangerous whitewashing of religion; someone is making a grave mistake. As far as I can tell, Joshua Harris has said in the simplest and sanest way the answer to this riddle: The best relationships are between two people who care more about each other's good than their own momentary pleasure.

You see, if one of these views is madness and one is sanity, the saner one ought to cohere with the other sanities we find universal; the sorts of sanities that, when lost, we can recognize as madness. In which system is affection best preserved, in which system is wisdom beyond moment-to-moment passion? Where could one find respect, liberty of will (in a meaningful sense), and honesty? You find these things when two people care more about each other's good than their own momentary pleasure.

And this one sentence is the whole brilliance of the book. Harris has some good ideas about how this might practically play out in his "standards" of courtship, some of which contain the same broad wisdom, and some of which are fairly provincial. He touches, however, a great truth in this book, and it was upon this principle that my wife and I built our dating days into a marriage.

Soulprint

Mark Batterson, lead pastor of National Community Church, is a gracious and well-spoken counselor. His book Soulprint is a collection of past sermons discussing how one finds identity in God, using the biblical pattern of David. Batterson calls for self-awareness, integrity, and the peculiar self-debasement that marked David; a sort of undignity that I've never heard anyone explain convincingly. Batterson calls us to be God's unique poiema, the craftsmanship of a personal Lord.

The structure of Batterson's thesis is taken from significant markers in David's life: his slaying of Goliath, his flight from Saul, his adultery with Bathsheba, etc. I am uneasy when I see this sort of case drawn out of writings that were composed by and for people who hadn't the slightest notion of 21st century identity problems, if they were even concerned about individual identity as all. In fact, as far as I understand the culture of the high Hebrew kingdom, it was a society in which the people found their meaning more in community than in individual selfness. King David was, of course, a spectacular personality, but in every way the exception to the rule of this people’s worldview. I would never dare to suggest in the modern and unlearned manner that timeless truths can’t be drawn from story; but I do worry when I sense that the story is misunderstood. Take for example, Batterson’s analysis of David plundering Goliath’s armor. Batterson, in his convincing and encouraging manner, reads a message of lifesymbols and altars into the episode; and in doing so he brushes aside (as he does with David’s rejection of Saul’s armor) an episode rich in its original meaning, and much more like the stories of Achilles and Patroclus than the story of Denis Waitley. The problem is not that Batterson says anything wrong; it is that he misrepresents his sources.

With that said against him, Batterson writes with a comprehensive and compassionate insight into the condition of the 20^th century man, and his antidote to the identity dilemma is perfectly placed: To find out who you are, find God.