Travels and travails: seven books

History

The Victorians and the Holy Land

Allan Chapman
Eerdmans, 266 pages

Academics are not known for being the most riveting of wordsmiths, but Allan Chapman, an Oxford scholar and professor of the history of science, is cut from an entirely different bolt of vellum. His interests range widely, his fascination with his subject matter is contagious, and his previous books have created ­something of a Chapman fan base. His colleague at Oxford, Nigel Frith, applauds Chapman’s “well-known beguiling characteristics of clarity, buoyancy, and the transmission of fascinating nuggets of information.” In this book, those nuggets span 2,000 years of ­history. Chapman, intent on leaving no bone worth chewing un-gnawed, features Egyptologists, linguists, archaeologists, adventurers, opportunist tour guides, and exploitative entertainers out for plunder, fame, and fortune. The book chronicles one aspect of the relationship between Britain and the Middle East, as Victorian technological innovations—photography, steam-powered trans­portation, the telegraph—exposed the public to new discoveries in the Holy Land, its monumental tombs, mummies, and treasure troves of gold and precious gems. British people became excited about these newly accessible faraway lands that featured so prominently in the Bible. Interest grew about the Holy Land’s peoples, along with their treasures and their beliefs about God. The new technologies accelerated a frenzied, bandwagon effect that led to an industry that helped people travel to the Holy Land, not so much as pilgrims, rather as pious tourists. —Douglas Bond

Read WORLD’s full review of this book here.

Medical ethics

No More Tears

Gardiner Harris
Random House, 464 pages

For over a century, Johnson & Johnson built itself into the most trusted brand in America. It was a name synonymous with safety, innocence, and family. But behind the soothing image of baby shampoo and Band-Aids lay a far darker reality. In No More Tears, veteran journalist Gardiner Harris dismantles the myth, revealing a company that systematically placed profits over people while hiding behind its carefully cultivated reputation. Drawing on five years of exhaustive research, Harris exposes how Johnson & Johnson marketed asbestos-laced talc, misled doctors and patients about dangerous drugs like Risperdal and Duragesic, and pushed defective medical devices onto the market. With chilling examples, he shows that the company’s greatest innovation wasn’t a product but a strategy, mastering emotional trust to shield itself from scrutiny even as scandals piled up. Harris’ reporting is clear, powerful, and, most of all, utterly devastating. He paints a portrait of a corporation that weaponized public goodwill, contributing to not just private tragedies but national health crises. No More Tears is not merely an exposé of one company; it’s a searing indictment of how easily faith in American institutions can be bought, and how much damage is done when that faith is betrayed. —John Mac Ghlionn

Read WORLD’s full review of this book here.

Biblical studies

Everything Is Never Enough

Bobby Jamieson
WaterBrook, 288 pages

In this extended meditation on the Book of Ecclesiastes, Bobby Jamieson applies ancient wisdom literature to our contemporary fast-paced world. He begins by asking why we aren’t happier. After all, don’t we live among technological marvels and material luxury? But despite our advancements, this hyperconnected world seems filled with unprecedented struggles. We might not lack money or goods, but too many of us lack enjoyment. Jamieson reminds us that this sense of discontentment is nothing new and “there’s nothing new under the sun.” Half the book explores the absurdity of life, noting that our work, leisure, and money can’t satisfy us. Our minds rebel against the ephemeral absurdity of our existence, and Jamieson shows that Ecclesiastes lays bare the angst of every human heart. But despite its brief absurdity, life is good, and the second half of Everything Is Never Enough examines that goodness. Life is God’s gift to us, and He means for us to enjoy that gift with a sense of generosity toward others, not resenting our finitude. Nothing will ever be enough, until we understand that Jesus is the only thing that can satisfy our souls. —Collin Garbarino

Chinese history

Voice for the Voiceless

Dalai Lama
William Morrow, 256 pages

When China’s People’s Liberation Army invaded Tibet in 1950, political and spiritual authority in Tibet rested on a 15-year-old boy who would later embark on a harrowing journey through the Himalayas to exile in India. Since then, the Dalai Lama has traveled the world teaching on compassion and nonviolence and writing Oprah-style self-help books. His newest volume, however, tackles a more substantive subject: his multidecade engagement with Chairman Mao, Deng Xiaoping, and other Chinese leaders in hopes of resolving the Tibet question. In this slim memoir, which intersperses the blow-by-blow foreign policy account with occasional digressions into history and philosophy, the Dalai Lama depicts governmental intransigence in the face of his continual openness to a “middle way” of autonomy within China, along the lines of Hong Kong or Macau (not that it’s worked out especially well for Hong Kong of late). But China has no incentive to pursue such a policy, and it is waiting for the octogenarian monk to die, hoping his cause will die with him. —Daniel R. Suhr

Read WORLD’s full review of this book here.

Literary criticism

William Faulkner in Holly Springs

Sally Wolff
University Press of Mississippi, 196 pages

Southern literature scholar Sally Wolff broke new ground with her book Ledgers of History: William Faulkner, an Almost Forgotten Friendship, and an Antebellum Plantation Diary (LSU Press 2010), which focused on Faulkner’s friendship with Edgar Wiggin Francisco Jr., who was from Holly Springs, Miss. Francisco’s son also knew Faulkner, and Wolff showed how these friendships with this father and son gave the Southern author significant material concerning the antebellum South for his novels and stories. Her new book, William Faulkner in Holly Springs, is a scholarly sequel, expanding our understanding of the importance of this small town in Mississippi which had “proximity and convenience, family and acquaintances, and historical lore”—the perfect cocktail for Faulkner’s rendering of the South and its discontents. Faulkner visited the town often, and listened carefully to the people who lived there and told him their memories and folklore. Wolff makes a strong argument that small Holly Springs played a large role in Faulkner’s art, drawing on its people for some of his most famous literary characters and the drama of domestic, political, and economic life both before and after the devastation of the Civil War. —Doni M. Wilson

Read WORLD’s full review of this book here.

Church history

Lower Than the Angels

Diarmaid MacCulloch
Viking, 688 pages

Award-winning historian of Christianity Diarmaid MacCulloch notes that from the very beginning sex has been a central topic of concern to the Church, and he aims to convince modern readers that “there is no such thing as a single Christian theology of sex” but rather “a plethora of Christian theologies of sex” when the full record of Church history is taken into account. He notes that leaders in the early church held celibacy in a much higher regard than marriage, and that monasticism “gave an unparalleled opportunity to seize one’s own fate and exercise personal choice” in fully pledging oneself to worship and serve Christ in singleness. This changed during the Reformation when Luther saw celibacy as impossible due to the pervasiveness of sexual desire, vigorously pushing for individuals to get married so as to discourage sinful lust. It’s a helpful overview of where the Church has been, but the book gives the impression whatever views on sex and gender came to dominate at any given time was about who managed to elbow out the competition most swiftly in the moment. MacCulloch puts more emphasis on the events of Church history than the words of the Bible, and his personal desires color his opinions. He is gay and describes himself as “a candid friend of Christianity,” and he goes astray suggesting that Christianity’s evolving understanding of sex and gender should soon embrace the LGBTQ movement. —Flynn Evans

Read WORLD’s full review of this book here.

Christian faith

Walking in God’s Will

Costi W. Hinn
Zondervan, 240 pages

Process, prayer, prudence, priorities, permission, perspective, and peace: These are the seven fundamentals of Christian decision-making that Arizona pastor Costi Hinn identifies in Walking in God’s Will. And yes, he intentionally placed peace last. Feeling “a subjective peace about a decision” is dessert, not the main course. Objective peace, meaning that those who love you are not fighting you about a decision, is much more important. By “process,” he means making sure you have actually done or examined the other six items he lists. Don’t make any decision before you have counted the cost. Hinn’s book targets some of the usual suspects: analysis paralysis, procrastination, failure to consider the spiritual dimensions of a big decision. It also contains a full chapter on the doctrine of Scripture—something Hinn calls “the most unlikely chapter in a book on God’s will” but heartily defends as necessary because “the most important truth is not what Costi says but what the Bible says.” Walking in God’s Will would be useful for anyone facing a major decision but ignorant of how to proceed. Hinn faithfully presents the teaching of Scripture such that, in this book, what Costi says is what the Bible says. That’s not a small achievement. —Caleb Nelson