A Top Ten List

This Tuesday will mark the last time ever that I will sit in a class as a student (maybe that’s why they call the Ph.D. a “terminal degree”). I’ve read an enormous amount over the past two years, so I thought I’d look back and try to rank which books have been most influential on my thinking. Since I couldn’t narrow it to ten, here’s my shot at the top eleven:

11. Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church by Kenda Creasy Dean

10. Simulacra and Simulation by Jean O. Baudrillard

9. Making Social Science Matter: How Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again by Bent Flyvbjerg

8. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel Huntington

7. The Logic of Practice by Pierre Bourdieu

6. The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God by Jürgen Moltmann

5. Democracy and Tradition by Jeffrey Stout

4. The Resources of Rationality: A Response to the Postmodern Challenge by Calvin O. Schrag

3. Being and Time by Martin Heidegger

2. The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology by Jürgen Moltmann

And the most influential book I’ve read in the past two years…

1. Truth and Method by Hans-Georg Gadamer