Quest: A reader’s life

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. 

Time now for our occasional feature we call Quest: conversations with thoughtful leaders about three books that have shaped their thinking. Not necessarily their favorite books, we're talking about the books that have most influenced their lives and their calling.

MAST: Yeah, the segment is built off of a concept we publish each month in WORLD Magazine, and we’ve invited our resident logophile here at The World and Everything in It George Grant to lead this discussion. 

George is an author in his own right, and he felt like a natural choice for this. And as you’ll hear, this segment took a bit of an unexpected turn.

GEORGE GRANT: Today, I'm speaking with the New York Times bestselling author and my dear friend for almost four decades now, Stephen Mansfield. 

Stephen, when did you first realize that reading could shape your life?

STEPHEN MANSFIELD: Well, George, as you know, I spent my teen years behind the Iron Curtain. My father was an army officer, we were in Berlin. And so reading Time, Newsweek, Look, National Geographic, any of those publications—I wasn't so much into books then—made me … it was immediate. If something was going on in Washington, it had implications for where I was living. We found out what the Russians were thinking by reading New York Times and other publications. 

So in my teen years, reading periodicals made me realize how vital reading was for understanding the world in which we live because literally it was telling me about the geography where I lived at that time, and I was there for six or seven years.

GRANT: Okay, well, let's just get straight to the books then. I want to hear about your list.

What's the first book on your list, and what was going on in your life when you first encountered it?

MANSFIELD: Well, the first book that ever really deeply impacted me, because I became a Christian late in my life, was Plain Speaking, An Oral Biography of Harry Truman by Merle Miller. 

Now, it's an unusual one because it was controversial later on. I was a college student, I was fishing around as to what I was going to major in. I had a sense of history because my parents were both deep history readers. But when I read Plain Speaking, which was, again, an oral biography, lots of interviews put together in an actual transcript form, I began to understand how a life came together and how a life could be written about and how a life could be reported. And given that I've spent a lot of my life writing biography, I look back and realize that book really profoundly impacted me. 

It was controversial later because Harry Truman protested a little bit and some things that he had said probably in his older age. But the way it looked at a life in 3D deeply impacted me.

GRANT: So now what's the second book that influenced you and how did it deepen you or widen you, shape you?

MANSFIELD: Well, George, I'm not doing this because you and I are on this program together, but in all truth and before God, the next book that impacted me was a book called Bringing in the Sheaves, Transforming Poverty into Productivity, which released in about 1985. 

I was the pastor of a small activist church in Abilene, Texas. Remember now, I was raised in Europe, and we were trying to make an impact in our community. And I read this book and it was the first book I read that really articulated biblical compassion for the poor, the downtrodden, the hurting, but it was what you did in bringing biblical theology and beefy, exciting Christian history to that subject that transformed this young pastor. 

We did everything you suggested. We had bags, grocery bags filled with peanut butter and all the stuff you recommended. We called it Isaiah 58, we put a mobile building in our yard.

So I'm not just saying this because we're talking, you know that. Bringing in the Sheaves, Transforming Poverty into Productivity, 1985, changed my life. And by the way, thousands of others, because we started a lot of Isaiah 58s around the country.

GRANT: And we got to know each other not too terribly long after that, after you moved to the Nashville area. And you started another ministry called Isaiah 58 here!

MANSFIELD: Yeah, I found my church in downtown Nashville, and I got to tell you, that's impacted thousands and thousands of people. So my point is not to brag about me, my point is to brag about your book. It is still having an impact on the streets of America.

GRANT: Okay, let's go on to your third book. Enough about me [chuckles].

MANSFIELD: My third book was What I Saw at the Revolution, A Political Life in the Reagan Era by Peggy Noonan. And it was about the Reagan era, it was about the Reagan revolution with Bush following, but it was the way that she wrote and the techniques that she used. She drew some techniques from John Dos Passos. She had ways of reflecting, writing about her own thoughts in a given experience, etcetera.

It taught me some things about writing that I have used to this day. It freed me as a young writer. And as you say, we met not long after and you gave me my first opportunity to write a book, and that book was very much in my head as I launched into my meager little literary career. 

So I'm very grateful for it in combination with all that you taught me earlier on.

GRANT: You know, she is such a wonderful writer to this day, her editorials in the Wall Street Journal are just must-reading every single week. She's a remarkable writer. Even when I disagree with her, I love her writing!

Three books, let's tie them together. What links them, and how have they shaped the way you think, the way you work, the way you live?

MANSFIELD: Well, your book deepened an understanding of a biblical worldview, and then I brought that to the other two books in thinking about great lives, in thinking about biography, in thinking about the impact that even someone like me could have by obeying biblical truth. 

I'd have to say that what they did was they formed an understanding of leadership and impact on society that great leadership can have under the hand of God. 

And that's been with me ever since, of course.

GRANT: Stephen Mansfield is the best-selling author and internationally sought-after speaker, leadership coach, and my friend. His books, articles, and podcasts are all available on his website, and that address is stephenmansfield.tv.

Stephen, thank you so much.

MANSFIELD: Great to be with you.

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