Social justice book reviews
Three weeks ago, I reviewed my first ever Ian Tattersall book, Masters of the Planet. As I said then, Ian Tattersall is the curator of the American Museum of Natural History’s Spitzer Hall of Human Origins. He’s been involved in paleoanthropology since the 60’s, and his books combine his undeniable expertise with just enough of his own evidence-based opinions and a dash of wit.
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If you have been following my blog for a while, then you might know that I’m becoming a bit of a fanatic for paleoanthropology. The study of human origins has taken over my bookshelf, and I’ve found myself daydreaming about going back to human origins exhibits in museums. This is easy to do each time I get really lost in another book on the topic. This time, that book was Ian Tattersall’s Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins.
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A few months ago, I wrote a rave review of one of my now-favorite books, Andrew Seidel’s The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American. Being such a fan of the book, and being in agreement with so many of Seidel’s ideas, you can imagine how excited I was last October when I learned that I could meet him on his book tour in April!
Of course, his lecture with the Pittsburgh Freethought Community has been not canceled but sadly postponed for obvious reasons. As the PFC’s marketing chair, I had excitedly but prematurely drafted an advertisement for Seidel’s visit. For now, though, I will stash away my excitement for the day when Seidel finally makes it to Pittsburgh and instead share with you 36 of my personal favorite quotes from his brilliant book.
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It can be easy to assume that old books don’t say much. The books themselves often serve as rustic decorations. I’ve definitely been guilty of buying old books with the primary intent of showing them in my collection and a secondary intent of actually reading them. But when I bought The Causes and Cure of Unbelief last fall, I knew I wanted to eventually read the whole thing. After doing so, I learned why some ideas best remain forgotten.
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The gifts I want most are typically books. My husband knows me best, so last Christmas he gave me a copy of science professor Lewis Dartnell’s Origins: How Earth’s History Shaped Human History. I always like to give special priority in my TBR list to books that John gives me, but I was intrigued by this book for several reasons, most of those reasons being the author’s tweets teasing fun facts from the book.
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The Purpose-Driven Life consists of six parts: one for each “purpose” as well as an introduction. Today we are looking at Part 3, which is Purpose #2: “You Were Formed for God’s Family.” In the past, I’ve taken each of the seven sub-sections (one for each day of the week) one at a time, but the chapters I read this week all bleed together, so I believe they can be looked at as a whole. They are:
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If you only know of Richard Dawkins as a militant anti-theist, then you don’t know Richard Dawkins. In his purest form, the man is an enthusiastic and impassioned science communicator, and one of the biggest fans of Charles Darwin that I have ever read. (And a bigot.) This was made crystal clear to me as I read The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. I decided to read this book when everyone on the Internet collectively made it known to me that it was an amazing, must-read book.
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A few months ago, I reviewed my now-favorite nonfiction book, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind by Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey. I had always been curious about human origins, but that book really ignited my interest in the topic of paleoanthropology: the study of ancient hominid fossils. At the end of my Lucy review, I wrote,
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The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? by Rick Warren has been a bestseller in the Christian world for decades. It was on the New York Times Bestseller List for over 90 weeks and sold 18 million copies in its first six years. It has over 215,000 ratings on Goodreads averaging 3.93 stars and over 2,400 ratings on Amazon averaging 4.7 stars.
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This week I finished Andrew Seidel’s book The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American. As is my custom, that means it’s time for a book review! I’m particularly excited about this one, because The Founding Myth is one of the few books that I have rated as five stars on Goodreads—and it’s one the most highly rated books on my whole shelf!
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