Marvin Olasky Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

Marvin Olasky

James K. A. Smith’s How to Inhabit Time offers good advice to someone going through a difficult season: “You might look at the life of an older friend, which seems intentional and grounded and placid, and you imagine it was a straight path.” #Olaskybooks

Marvin Olasky

Don Winslow's City on Fire (Morrow, 2022) is well-reviewed and action-packed. The crime novel's realistic detail gave me a different understanding of Providence (Rhode Island's, not God's), but it's not for everyone: Barrels of gritty violence and language. #Olaskybooks

Marvin Olasky

Jerry Muller's Professor of Apocalypse (Princeton, 2022) is a bio of Jacob Taubes, a Jewish academic fan of Paul's epistles because he saw them affirming our helplessness re. sin (for Taubes, multiple adulteries). Taubes missed Paul's point: Only God saves sinners. #Olaskybooks

Marvin Olasky

Felix Salten’s novel Bambi, published 100 years ago, is newly translated by Damion Searls (New York Review of Books, 2022). It differs from Disney and has too much death for a child to read alone, but it could be gripping bedtime reading by a comforting parent. #Olaskybooks

Marvin Olasky

Ilana Horwitz’s God, Grades and Graduation (Oxford, 2022) contains good news for church/synagogue/mosque members and home schoolers: The subtitle trumpets Religion’s Surprising Impact on Academic Success. #olaskybooks @HorwitzIlana

Marvin Olasky

Alan Furst's historical spy novels are terrific bedtime reading for adults. I've enjoyed the first 5 in the series, all set in 1930s-early 1940s Europe: Night Soldiers (1988), Dark Star (1991), The Polish Officer (1995), The World at Night (1996), Red Gold (1999). #Olaskybooks

Marvin Olasky

Comedian Henny Youngman would have fit perfectly into the Twitter age. Known as the “king of one-liners,” he died 25 Februarys ago at age 91. His happy marriage to Sadie lasted 59 years, which is why his most famous line—“take my wife, please”—was not cruel. (More to come.)

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Marvin Olasky

The New Science of the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most of Humanity by Marshall Sahliins (Princeton, 2022) isn't great writing, but the overall point is important—people throughout human history have not accepted a disenchanted existence. #Olaskybooks

Marvin Olasky

Roll over, Aldous Huxley. Free Fentanyl in Vancouver's brave new world. https://t.co/uqB1NrNibn

Marvin Olasky

Michael Brenner’s In Hitler’s Munich: Jews, the Revolution, and the Rise of Nazism (Princeton, 2022) reports how Jews and many others briefly created a socialist government, and Jews got the blame. (Most were not on the far left, but visible leaders became targets.) #Olaskybooks