Douglas Wilson’s Flags Out Front (Canon Press, 2017) is an amusing novel with a P.G. Wodehouse flair that will delight those depressed by the sight of Christians perpetually playing defense. The hero is an apparently milquetoastish Christian college president who providentially becomes a media target and turns out to (a) have guts, (b) rake in the contributions, (c) brilliantly turn the tables on journalistic assassins, and (d) get the (incredibly beautiful) girl. No sex, violence, or bad language.

For those who tolerate some obscenities and profanities, Ernest Gaines’ The Tragedy of Brady Sims (Vintage, 2017) is a sad, lyrically written novella that needs a Blues accompaniment. With a worldview opposite that of Flags Out Front, it could be called “Flags at Half-Mast,” as characters carry out what they are purportedly fated to do.

Walter Wangerin Jr. fans will enjoy Wounds Are Where Light Enters (Zondervan, 2017), a collection of short stories that show God’s working in a variety of lives. Ray Bradbury, best known for his science fiction novels, was also a talented short story writer, and the Kent State University Press is working its way through his corpus: Volume 3 of The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury (2017) includes his prolific writing in 1944 and 1945.

Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Red Sky at Noon (Pegasus) has Jan. 2, 2018, as its official publication date, but I’ll jump the gun because it is a fine war novel with vivid descriptions of cavalry battles outside Stalingrad in 1942. Its sympathetic hero, writer and political prisoner Benya Golden, has been freed from the Gulag because Josef Stalin in his desperation wants cavalry soldiers who have already given up hope and are willing to go on near-suicide missions. The downside is unsurprising in a war novel: lots of violence, an instance of adultery, and occasional obscenities from Gulag prison guards, Russian soldiers, Stalin, and Stalin’s son.

David Baldacci’s The Fix (Grand Central, 2017) is a bestseller with relatively mild language and scenes but lots of bad writing. Jack Grimwood, the author of Moskva (Thomas Dunne, 2017), writes as you’d expect a person with his last name to write: His grim novel shows the corruption of the last years of the Soviet Union and offers powerful passages but lots of bad language and several adulterous scenes.

BOOKMARKS

Theodore Cabal and Peter Rasor II try to be creation peacemakers with Controversy of the Ages: Why Christians Should Not Divide Over the Age of the Earth (Weaver, 2017). Michael Chaberek’s Aquinas and Evolution (Chartwell, 2017) shows that Darwinist tendencies at today’s Vatican are counter to Catholic tradition and incompatible with teaching by Thomas Aquinas.

Bradley Gardner’s China’s Great Migration (Independent Institute, 2017) sees the willingness (or necessity) of peasants to move from the countryside to cities as the fount of China’s national prosperity. Vanity Fair’s Schools for Scandal, edited by Graydon Carter (Simon & Schuster, 2017), includes articles about leading campus scandals of the past 25 years, including phantom charges at Duke and Virginia and big problems at Hillsdale and Harvard.

Arthur Cotterell’s The Near East (Hurst, 2017) is a succinct survey of 4,000 years, marred by one un-Biblical assumption: “The incredible story of David’s slaying of Goliath, the giant Philistine champion, clearly has a legendary source.”

Eugene Rogan’s The Arabs (Basic, 2017) is a readable history of the past five centuries, but its account of the last century shows an anti-Israel bias. Three times on page 253 we learn that Palestinian Arabs lost “their country” but had “trust in the justice of their cause”—we don’t hear the same about Israel’s Jews.

Rogan barely mentions two Arab massacres of 50 and 76 Jews in April 1948 but gives gruesome detail of an attack that month on an Arab village that resulted in 110 villager deaths. Although Arabs enormously outnumbered Jews, Rogan says the latter’s victory was “more a matter of manpower and firepower than willpower.” —M.O.