Reading List Summer 2022
Posted on: May 18, 2022
Summer is when I catch up on much of my backlog (at least ideally!) as I travel more on business in the summer than any other time of the year. I have a pretty tall stack of books from previous lists, so this list will be a little shorter than my usual summer selections, but I’m still looking forward to adding a few things to the pile.
For leadership, I have these:
- Jason Young & Jonathan Malm. The Come Back Culture: 10 Business Practices that Create Lifelong Customers. Baker 2022. Jason is a double-alum from NGU and is an outstanding leader in the field of hospitality.
- D. Michael Lindsay. Hinge Moments: Making the Most of Life’s Transitions. IVP 2022.
- Erik Weir. Who’s Eating Your Pie?: Essential Financial Advice that Will Change Your Life.Forefront 2022. My friend Erik generously donated copies of this for our 2022 graduating class and made sure I received one too.
- J. Frank Harrison III. The Transformation Factor: Leading Your Company for Good, for God, and for Growth. Greenleaf 2022.
- Noel M. Tichy. The Cycle of Leadership: How Great Leaders Teach their Companies to Win. Harper 2004.
- Randy Alcorn. Managing God’s Money: A Biblical Guide. Tyndale 2011.
For history, here are my selections:
- Brendan Payne. Gin, Jesus, and Jim Crow: Prohibition and the Transformation of Racial and Religious Politics in the South. LSU Press 2022. Brendan chairs NGU’s history department and this is his first book (with a top academic publisher, to boot!).
- O. S. Hawkins. In the Name of God: The Colliding Lives, Legends, and Legacies of J. Frank Norris and George W. Truett. B & H Academic. 2021.
- J. Gerald Harris. The Rise and Fall of the Conservative Resurgence: The Southern Baptist Convention, 1979-2021. Trust House 2021.
- Joyce Wood. Anderson University. Arcadia 2011. I’m cheating a bit with this, since I’ve finished it already, but I love to read college histories.
- Alan Taylor. Thomas Jefferson’s Education. Norton 2019.
For theology / cultural engagement, I have included
- Jake Meador. What Are Christians For?: Life Together at the End of the World. IVP 2022.
- Dustin Benge. The Loveliest Place: The Beauty and Glory of the Church. Crossway 2022.
- Mark Coppenger, William E. Elkins, & Richard H. Stark III. Apologetical Aesthetics. Wipf and Stock 2022. Not only is this topic one of my favorites (I lecture frequently on it), but several of the contributors are NGU alums, including co-editor Ricky Stark; many of you know his mom, Karen Salerno at the Taylors Free Medical Clinic.
- David Dockery. What Does It Mean to Be a Thoughtful Christian? Lexham 2022. • Derwin L. Gray. How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and the First Christians Knew, about Racial Reconciliation. Tyndale Momentum 2022.
- Michael Walsh. The Devil’s Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West. Encounter 2017.
- David Mamet. Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch.Broadside 2022. Mamet is one of America’s leading playwrights and experienced a late-in-life conversion to orthodox Judaism, which has deeply influenced his thinking about contemporary culture.
My book of poetry is Bobby Rogers’ Shift Work: Poems. LSU Press 2022. Bobby and I taught together at Union, and he’s one of America’s most important Christian poets and a wonderful teacher-mentor.
My novel is an older one that’s been showing up on a lot of lists these days as it deals with the early church and its relationship with Rome: Henryk Sienkiewicz. Trans. W. S. Kunicazk. Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero. Hippocrene 1997 (originally published 1896).
My “fun” books are
- Joe Navarro. What Every Body Is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed Reading People. Morrow 2008.
- Malcolm Gladwell. The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War. Little Brown 2021.
- Johannes Nathan & Frank Zollner. Leonardo: The Complete Drawings. Taschen.
- Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Thomas Jefferson Foundation 2002.
