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Reviews

Book reviews from the writers and editors of Current


REVIEW: The Scientific Study of Religion We Don’t Need

Jesse Smith

A study of religion that serves two masters fails in predictable fashion

REVIEW: The Country Under Heaven

Jon D. Schaff

A haunted and haunting journey through uncanny (big) valley 

REVIEW: High Hawk

Melanie Springer Mock
March 10, 2025

All of life is a mystery

REVIEW: Against Worldview?

Rick Kennedy
March 6, 2025

Academic freedom + romantic individualism = one huge mistake

REVIEW: Storylife

Courtney J. P. Friesen
March 4, 2025

Homer for our time

REVIEW: Renaissance Man

Eric Miller
February 28, 2025

Charlie Peacock’s memoir drives deep into evangelicalism’s historic twentieth-century turn

REVIEW: Heavy Metal Nursing

Robert Erle Barham
February 20, 2025

Stay here. Feel this.

REVIEW: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union

Robert Tracy McKenzie
February 12, 2025

When religious nationalism becomes a religion of nationalism

REVIEW: Two-Step Devil

Paul Luikart
February 6, 2025

In her new novel, Jamie Quatro turns against facsimile for the sake of reality itself

REVIEW: Glimmers of Truth

LuElla D'Amico
February 5, 2025

We need a theology of fiction

REVIEW: California’s Pilgrimage

Rick Kennedy
February 4, 2025

What’s so special about the Golden State?

REVIEW: Slave Trading in the Civil War South

Evan Kutzler
February 3, 2025

The demands of capital savaged hope

REVIEW: The Beechers

Peter Porsche
January 29, 2025

America’s ‘most influential family’ had troubles familiar to most of us today

REVIEW: Our Nazi

John H. Haas
January 28, 2025

A past failure of moral judgment sounds an alert today

REVIEW: American Covenant

Shirley Mullen
January 22, 2025

Yuval Levin aims for institutional reform. He needs a different target.

REVIEW: Death of the Author

M. Elizabeth Carter
January 14, 2025

Can ever-advancing technology be brought under the reign of love?

REVIEW: Quiet in a World of Distraction 

Abigail Wilkinson Miller
January 9, 2025

Hope and quiet walk hand in hand

REVIEW: Hateful Jane Austen 

Jon D. Schaff
January 8, 2025

All you need is love?

REVIEW: X Factors

Jim Cullen
January 3, 2025

Harari synthesizes his synthesis in yet another masterwork

REVIEW: Wendell Berry’s New Decade of Sabbath Poems

Shirley Kilpatrick
December 23, 2024

The watcher is not alone

REVIEW: Van Gogh Might Break Your Heart Too

Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt
December 20, 2024

What does it mean to be alive?

Review: One Year in the Future of Medicine

Jonathan D. Riddle
December 17, 2024

Learning from the textbook of the community

Faithful with Small Things Like These

Joseph K. Griffith II
December 12, 2024

The unexpected consolation of the anti-‘Christmas Carol’

REVIEW: The Wood at Midwinter

Lucy S R Austen
December 10, 2024

The shocking things saints do

2024 in 25 Current book reviews

Nadya Williams
December 9, 2024

What’s the measure of this year? A story in Current book reviews.

REVIEW: Letters to a Future Saint

Melanie Springer Mock
December 3, 2024

Exhortations to patience and hope

Review: Christian anti-liberals

Daniel K. Williams
November 27, 2024

Who needs religious pluralism?

REVIEW: The Catholic Kids’ Cookbook

Dixie Dillon Lane
November 26, 2024

The joy of cooking is for kids too

REVIEW: Postpartum Depression in America

Beatrice Scudeler
November 21, 2024

Beyond the baby blues

REVIEW: Words for Conviviality

Jon D. Schaff
November 8, 2024

Don’t be a tool

REVIEW: Great Expectations

Joshua Hren
November 4, 2024

Vinson Cunningham’s novel tells of more than a mortal God

REVIEW: Stone Circles

Philip Jenkins
October 31, 2024

Stonehenge is not alone

REVIEW: Aching to Be Seen

Felicia Wu Song
October 18, 2024

‘Connective labor’ is the real work that lies ahead

REVIEW: Do Good People Make Better Runners?

Greg McBrayer
October 17, 2024

An ethicist and world-class athlete reflects on her sport

REVIEW: That One Note that Holds Life

Amanda McCrina
October 16, 2024

For this composer, creativity and purity walk hand in hand

REVIEW: A Report from Wartime Kyiv

Julie Durbin
October 15, 2024

Illia Ponomarenko profiles a love that does not flee

REVIEW: I Cheerfully Refuse . . . to Give Up Hope

Ronni Kurtz
October 14, 2024

Hope wins

REVIEW: The Latino Century

Michael Jimenez
October 9, 2024

An anti-Trump conservative makes his case—and his plea

PREVIEW: Blue Walls Falling Down

Joshua Hren
October 8, 2024

A novel that chronicles questions beyond our ability to answer

REVIEW: ‘To Catch Those Voices from a Distant Age’

David A. Michelson
October 3, 2024

In Peter Brown’s journey, wonder and disquiet led the way to late antiquity 

REVIEW: Reading as Divine Encounter

Andrew J. Pottenger
October 2, 2024

David Michelson recovers an ancient spiritual practice

PREVIEW: The Spirit of the Game

Paul Emory Putz
September 30, 2024

Christians and big-time sports: It’s more than ‘Sportianity’

REVIEW: The Salt of the Universe

Lisa Diller
September 27, 2024

Amy Leach reckons with her heritage while staying faithful to it

REVIEW: Is Potty-Training What You Will Do with Your One Wild and Precious Life?

Agnes Howard
September 23, 2024

On the merits and limits of pro-natal progressivism

REVIEW: The After Party

Sadie Vanderzyden
September 17, 2024

In search of political and ecclesial sanity

REVIEW: Shepherds for Sale?

Daniel K. Williams
September 16, 2024

Megan Basham’s theology is compromised and her history misguided

Interview: Timothy Larsen on George MacDonald’s Diary of an Old Soul

Timothy Larsen and Nadya Williams
September 13, 2024

Timothy Larsen is the McManis Professor of Christian Thought and Professor of History at Wheaton College. He is a Contributing Editor at Current and as of this summer, the author of four books on the nineteenth-century Scottish George MacDonald. This has to be some sort of record, and so, I appreciated the chance to ask…

REVIEW: The Realm of the Dog

Katy Carl
September 11, 2024

In Paul Luikart’s stories, raw strength and immense depth work side-by-side

REVIEW: Where Is Freedom in This Book?

Jon D. Schaff
September 10, 2024

Timothy Snyder’s thin take on freedom reflects larger, more troubling deficits

LONG FORM: Whose Culture? Which Solidarity?

Christopher Shannon
September 9, 2024

Further reflections on James Davison Hunter’s ‘Democracy and Solidarity’

REVIEW: Homeschooling Boys

Ivana Greco
August 30, 2024

Educators could benefit from a very close reading of Calvin and Hobbes

REVIEW: A Manual for Homeschooling

Dixie Dillon Lane
August 29, 2024

Swanson’s book provides inspiration of the most practical kind

REVIEW: Genesis by Way of Gilead

William B. Fullilove
August 23, 2024

What if John Ames’s sermons on Genesis were gathered in one volume?

 REVIEW: This Is Remarkable 

Tiffany Eberle Kriner
August 22, 2024

Reading Genesis with Marilynne Robinson

REVIEW: How Information Overload Destroyed American Democracy (Maybe)

Russell Arben Fox
August 14, 2024

Can a people survive when truth is beside the point?

REVIEW: Still the Jeremiad

Christopher Shannon
August 13, 2024

James Davison Hunter turns to ‘culture’ for hope. Can it deliver?

REVIEW: Richard Nixon’s Graceless Religion

Daniel K. Williams
August 8, 2024

Nixon sought redemption—but on his own terms

REVIEW: Pivot Points

John Plating
July 31, 2024

Marvin Olasky’s story puts politics in its place

Current’s 100 Books of the 21st Century

Nadya Williams
July 30, 2024

In response to NYT’s list of 100 books of the 21st century, we at Current have compiled our own list.

REVIEW: The Moral Vision of American Leaders

Christopher Gehrz
July 30, 2024

Olasky gives us America’s story through the lens of character, experience, and faith

REVIEW: Animal Spirits?

Eric Miller
July 26, 2024

Jackson Lears takes us where few historians have dared—or even seen

REVIEW: The Iconoclast

Jim Cullen
July 25, 2024

Jackson Lears’s lifelong quarrel with the meritocracy that produced him

REVIEW: Keeping the Republic

Geoffrey Kurtz
July 19, 2024

It’s not just the Constitution that haunts us

REVIEW: Origins of the Just War

Christopher W. Jones
July 18, 2024

Does belief in an independent moral standard aid or hinder justice?

REVIEW: God Gave Rock & Roll to You

Melanie Springer Mock
July 17, 2024

The historical effects of Jesus Music roll on and on

REVIEW: Books for Children

Abigail Wilkinson Miller
July 16, 2024

Wonder, virtue, and more

REVIEW: Get Married!

Ashley Fitzgerald
July 15, 2024

What both spreadsheets and life stories are telling us

REVIEW: Jesus and the Powers

David Anthony Basham and Joseph K. Griffith II
July 2, 2024

In our harum-scarum political moment, the Via Media beckons

Uncut version: Jesus and the Powers (Review)

David Anthony Basham and Joseph K. Griffith II
July 2, 2024

This is the full-length, uncut version of the review we are running today at Current.

REVIEW: Gun Country

Joseph P. Slaughter
June 25, 2024

The Eisenhower administration helped arm America to the teeth. Who knew?

REVIEW: Striving—Not Stuck—in the Middle

Elizabeth Stice
June 20, 2024

Only dead people rest easily in boxes

REVIEW: Manhood, Patriarchy, and Father Time

Felix James Miller
June 14, 2024

A new study reveals what evolutionary biology can—and can’t—illumine about fatherhood

REVIEW: Slow Productivity

Christopher J. Lane
June 12, 2024

Slowing down—but for what?

Interview: Miles Smith’s Religion and Republic: Christian America from the Founding to the Civil War

Miles Smith IV and Daniel K. Williams
June 10, 2024

The Early Republic saw religion or faith—not “churches” per se—as worthwhile and important for a healthy society.

REVIEW: Written in Water

Matthew Mutter
June 7, 2024

In her study of ‘the classic’ in art, Rochelle Gurstein summons us back to a common world

REVIEW: Basketball’s Magic

Paul Emory Putz
June 3, 2024

Before there was Michael, there was Magic

REVIEW: Stalking Joy

Christina Bieber Lake
May 30, 2024

Who was Flannery O’ Connor? A new biopic’s portrait almost convinces.

REVIEW: The Liberal Jeremiad

Christopher Shannon
May 29, 2024

What is the basis of Samuel Moyn’s hope?

REVIEW: Plato Goes to China

Justin Vlasits
May 23, 2024

In Bartsch’s study, surprising insights into both ancient texts and our present circumstance emerge

REVIEW: Bad Therapy

Ivana Greco
May 17, 2024

The field of pediatric mental healthcare needs a better understanding of health

REVIEW: U Sad, Bro? 

Elizabeth Stice
May 16, 2024

Frat life takes a lucrative—and criminal—turn

REVIEW: Kids Are People Too

Agnes Howard
May 10, 2024

The reasons for having children are self-explanatory. Why are we rejecting them?

REVIEW: A Vindication of Mary Wollstonecraft

Beatrice Scudeler
May 9, 2024

Wollstonecraft’s relationship to Christian faith defies partisan classification

FILM FORUM: Civil War, III

Jeffrey Overstreet
May 3, 2024

In Civil War, camera-wielding Truth-Tellers face trials by fire

FILM FORUM: Civil War, II

David Head
May 2, 2024

Alex Garland gives us war without politics—or meaning

FILM FORUM: Civil War, I

John H. Haas
May 1, 2024

Alex Garland’s film makes the (first) Civil War seem suddenly—and fittingly—near

REVIEW: A Life in Books

Lucy S R Austen
April 29, 2024

A memoir of reading, a memoir of joy

REVIEW: Fragile Objects

LuElla D'Amico
April 24, 2024

Katy Carl’s stories revive and renew the spiritual vision of Flannery O’ Connor

REVIEW: The Exvangelicals

Nadya Williams
April 23, 2024

There’s more than one way to deconstruct

REVIEW: The Believer

Jim Cullen
April 18, 2024

Guelzo’s Lincoln clarifies the moral foundations of democratic patriotism in a corrosive age

REVIEW: The Last Best Hope

Jon D. Schaff
April 17, 2024

Allen Guelzo turns to Lincoln to issue a message to America 

INTERVIEW: Shirley Mullen on the Courageous Middle

Nadya Williams
April 16, 2024

Wanted: those with the skill and desire to host difficult conversations

Nancy French, Ghosted—a conservative, interrupted

Nadya Williams
April 11, 2024

Nancy French’s memoir is a story of God showing love to the weak and redeeming creation while also calling fallible people to restore justice already here on earth.

REVIEW: Permanence, Memoir, and Memory

Dixie Dillon Lane
April 9, 2024

On acknowledging pain without sacrificing hope

REVIEW: Pity for Evil 

Siobhan Heekin-Canedy
April 5, 2024

The story of abortion and nineteenth-century feminism gets its due

REVIEW: Seeking Answers

Carla Galdo
April 4, 2024

Freedom, eternity, and the question of God

REVIEW: In Thought, Word, and Seed

Melanie Springer Mock
April 3, 2024

Amid fracture and pain, Tiffany Eberle Kriner finds hope on a farm

REVIEW: Definitive Lives

Timothy Larsen
April 2, 2024

A story at the intersection of the OED and our quest for meaning

REVIEW: The Art of the Possible

Christina Bieber Lake
April 1, 2024

In Tara Isabella Burton’s new novel, fancy, fantasy, and possibility all point in one direction: home

REVIEW: Light and Hope

William Tate
March 29, 2024

In Jane Greer, John Donne and Gerard Manley Hopkins find a worthy companion

REVIEW: The Value of Homemakers

Ivana Greco
March 20, 2024

The presence of parents throughout the day enriches home and neighborhood alike

REVIEW: Why Aren’t Americans Having Children?

Dixie Dillon Lane
March 19, 2024

In Timothy P. Carney’s book, a complicated question receives an illuminating answer

See all Reviews >