So before the year is over, we thought we\u2019d offer our own version of a best books list. Not all came out in 2019 \u2014 sometimes it takes us a year or ten to get to something, or back to it \u2014 but as we read them over the past twelve months, we thought they\u2019d resonate with our readers.<\/p>\n
Virginia DeJohn Anderson,\u00a0Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n While this book is over a decade old, I still love Creatures of Empire<\/i>, which I reread this fall when I was teaching it for a seminar for first-year undergraduates. I had previously taught it for a seminar for first-year students in our history Ph.D. program, which shows how the book manages to be both intellectually exciting but also accessibly written. I love how Anderson calls attention to the centrality of animals in the initial contact and conflicts between Native Americans and English settlers. In a religious studies classroom, the book is also useful as a way to introduce how different religious worldviews shape how people relate to non-human creatures and how, more generally, people make sense of new things only by drawing on the categories and frameworks that are familiar to them. Finally, the book is full of fascinating details that make for excellent party conversation, like the fact that the English settlers once tried to domesticate beavers and that the Narragansetts initially interpreted pigs as a type of woodchuck. Whenever I bring up these facts at parties, people are happy, not only because they\u2019re fascinating, but also because people are happy I\u2019ve moved on from talking about eating muskrat during Lent<\/a>\u2026 \ud83d\ude42\u00a0\u00a0(Melissa Borja)<\/em><\/p>\n While I teach courses on the history of war, I don\u2019t normally like to read narrative histories of warfare. But I\u2019ll always make an exception for Rick Atkinson, who brings a journalist\u2019s talent for crisp storytelling and thick description to the study of the past. Alas, if the timing of his World War II trilogy<\/a> is any guide, we\u2019ll have to wait several years to read the next installment in his account of the Revolutionary War.\u00a0(Chris Gehrz)<\/em><\/p>\n Michael Benson,\u00a0Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n You may not accept that\u00a02001<\/em>\u00a0is the greatest film of the twentieth century, but you would be wrong (!). Benson\u2019s book is brilliant in many ways, but it is above all a study of genius \u2013 what happens when one of the all time great directors works with one of the greatest of cinematographers, with the finest and most innovative genius in special effects, with the greatest figure in costume, and so on \u2026 and look what they produce. Stunning.\u00a0(Philip Jenkins)<\/em><\/p>\n Mischa Berlinski,\u00a0Fieldwork<\/a><\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/i>The author says it up front, so I\u2019m not spoiling the story. This novel is the story of how a Berkeley-trained anthropologist kills an evangelical missionary in the mountains on the border of Thailand and Myanmar. By the end, this most empathetic novel makes both persons intelligible.\u00a0(David Swartz)<\/em><\/p>\n Bowler is, of course, a fantastic writer, meticulous researcher, and brilliant historian. Which is why we are so #blessed that she has brought this skillset to the topic of female religious celebrities. Despite significant transformations in the study of American religion, the study of American evangelicalism often tends toward more traditional narratives that privilege male dominated power structures, institutions, and theological traditions. The role of women\u2014and sparkly celebrity women at that\u2014has received scant serious scholarly attention. But if we think in terms of demographics, and in terms of religion as a cultural phenomenon, the women at the center of Bowler\u2019s book are at the center of evangelicalism itself.\u00a0(Kristin Du Mez)<\/em><\/p>\n M.J. Carter,\u00a0The Strangler Vine<\/a>\u00a0<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n A rollicking adventure story so textured you can taste and smell the jungles of India in the early nineteenth century. It\u2019s also a damning indictment of imperialism.\u00a0(David)<\/em><\/p>\n Ernst J\u00fcnger,\u00a0A German Officer in Occupied Paris: The War Journals, 1941-1945<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n J\u00fcnger (1895-1998) was an astonishing genius who kept breaking new literary and cultural ground right up into his nineties. His\u00a0War Journals<\/em> show J\u00fcnger interacting with a dazzling set of wartime intellectuals in Paris and elsewhere, while recording very thinly coded attacks on Hitler that could easily have got him executed. Yes, there are moral quandaries about J\u00fcnger on every page, but the book is so very rich and rewarding.\u00a0(Philip)<\/em><\/p>\n Jill Lepore,\u00a0These Truths: A History of the United States<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n My graduate adviser liked to say that he wrote as a historical \u201clumper,\u201d crafting grand narratives in part to let young \u201csplitters\u201d like me dismantle his overarching interpretations. So I\u2019m inclined to admire anyone ambitious enough to write a single-volume narrative of American history, stretching from 1492 to the present. But however well or poorly Jill Lepore\u2019s lumping endures subsequent splitting, I think that\u00a0These Truths\u00a0<\/em>will stand as a powerful statement on the practice of history itself: an extended reflection on the nature of historical evidence and interpretation, and a reminder that history is a kind of literature, from one of the best writers in the guild.\u00a0(Chris)<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019m currently reading Kathryn Long\u2019s God in the Rainforest<\/em>, which I\u2019ve been looking forward to for so many years. Not disappointing! Long refuses to tell a simple story of the 1956 killings of five evangelical missionaries by the Waorani people in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the events that followed. She rejects both missionary hagiography and the \u201cblack legend\u201d of missionaries who serve as agents of cultural and economic imperialism. Hers is a fully human story, and a Christian one: \u201cChristianity may be demonstrated as much by a willingness to spoon liquid down the throats of people suffering from influenza as from feats of missionary heroism.\u201d\u00a0(John Turner)<\/em><\/p>\n Douglas Kaine McKelvey,\u00a0Every Moment Holy<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n This is a collection of modern \u201cliturgies,\u201d beautifully written prayers for a wide variety of modern life events ranging from \u201cFor the Changing of Diapers\u201d to \u201cBefore Consuming Media.\u201d I have taken to saying the \u201cMidday\u201d prayer when I start to lag at work in the middle of the afternoon, and a friend with a serious medical issue was blessed this past year by the prayer \u201cFor the Morning of a Medical Procedure.\u201d\u00a0(Andrea Turpin)<\/em><\/p>\n John O\u2019Malley,\u00a0When Bishops Meet: An Essay Comparing Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The highly-decorated Georgetown University historian has written major monographs on all three modern Catholic ecumenical councils. In this short volume, he distills his learning into one highly readable essay.\u00a0(Tal Howard)<\/em><\/p>\n With beautiful clarity, grace, and superb scholarship, Lucy Peppiatt explains how we have all been wrong. It is our translation choices of key biblical passages (such as Genesis 1-2 and 1 Corinthians 11:2-16) as well as our lack of understanding about the historical context of the biblical world that has made us interpret the Bible as enforcing female submission. The reality is much more in line with Christian theology \u2014 God sets women free. I agree wholeheartedly with Peppiatt\u2019s concluding prayer \u2014 instead of scripture used to oppress and silence women, may instead \u201cthe promise of the Spirit for freedom\u201d triumph in the church today.\u00a0(Beth Allison Barr)<\/em><\/p>\n Duncan Ry\u016bken Williams,\u00a0American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Atkinson,](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/168\/2019\/12\/British-Are-Coming-200x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Rick Atkinson,\u00a0The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Bowler,](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/168\/2019\/12\/Preachers-Wife-197x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Kate Bowler, The Preacher\u2019s Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Long,](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/168\/2019\/12\/God-in-the-Rainforest-212x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Kathryn Long,\u00a0God in the Rainforest: A Tale of Martyrdom and Redemption in Amazonian Ecuador<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Peppiatt,](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/168\/2019\/12\/Rediscovering-Scriptures-Vision-for-Women-200x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Lucy Peppiatt,\u00a0Rediscovering Scripture\u2019s Vision for Women: Fresh Perspectives on Disputed Texts<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n