Nonfiction November is finally here! I love Nonfiction November because I get to share my love of nonfiction with the rest of the book blogging community and somehow end up with even more books on my never-ending to-read and to-buy lists.
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Books
When Christian Nationalists Control the Court: A Review of American Crusade
If I could summarize Andrew Seidel’s new book American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom in one word, I would say it is difficult. At times it is difficult to comprehend due to legal jargon (even after the author purposely trimmed the fat, so to speak) but it is immensely difficult to stomach. This was a book I had to read slowly and take plenty of breaks from. It wasn’t a fun book, and it wasn’t intended to be.
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It’s Almost Nonfiction November, the Best Time of Year
I am so beyond excited to announce that in a few short weeks, Nonfiction November will be back, and with a brand new host: me!
I participated in Nonfiction November last year in my own quirky way by completing all of the though-provoking prompts in a single post, but in 2022 I’m doing it the way it’s meant to be done, one week at a time. And more than that, I’m hosting week 4!
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Book Review: Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Since its release in June 2020, Kristin Kobes du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation has been required reading for anyone seeking to gain a full perspective on the Christian Nationalist movement in the United States and how it got this way.
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I Read the Gab CEO’s Awful New Christian Nationalism Book So You Don’t Have To
Let’s be clear: a Christian Nationalist is not a person you want to be. But leave it to Christian Nationalists to embrace Christian Nationalism, and to make it look like the right thing to do.
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Book Review: Of Popes and Unicorns by David Hutchings and James Ungureanu
Of Popes and Unicorns: Science, Christianity, and How the Conflict Thesis Fooled the World by David Hutchings and James C. Ungureanu is one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read.
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Was Science Really Born in Ancient Greece?
There is no question more tempting to the historian of science than the age-old “When did science begin?” The most popular answer to this question has to be “Ancient Greece!” It was Carl Sagan’s answer, and it was Simon Singh’s. This week, I found that it was also Andrew Gregory’s answer.
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Book Review: Bodies on the Line by Lauren Rankin
If there is one good thing that has come out of the fight for abortion rights this year, it is that there are so many great books coming out which tell the story from every angle. Published in April 2022, Lauren Rankin’s Bodies on the Line: At the Front Lines of the Fight to Protect Abortion in America is the go-to book to learn about the unsung heroes of the abortion access movement: clinic escorts.
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Book Review: Wrath of Angels by James Risen and Judy Thomas
In the last month, we have heard countless Republicans and anti-abortion advocates trying to use the recent uptick in vandalism against crisis pregnancy centers as proof that the pro-abortion side is the side of violence. James Risen and Judy Thomas’s 1998 book Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War blows that entire argument out of the water.
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Book Review: Carl Sagan: A Life by Keay Davidson
Read moreAll his life, Carl Sagan was troubled by grand dichotomies—between reason and irrationalism, between wonder and skepticism. The dichotomies clashed within him.
. . . In the final analysis, he was the dichotomy: the prophet and the hard-boiled skeptic, the boyish fantasist and the ultrarigorous analyst, the warm companion and the brusque colleague, the oracle whose smooth exterior concealed inner fissures, which, in the end, only one woman would heal.
Keay Davidson, Carl Sagan: A life, p. 1