Up Next? That Hideous Strength

The next Vital Signs Book Brunch will be at our home on Saturday morning, June 24 at 10. The book under discussion will be a classic by C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength.  The relevance of this novel is greater than ever and a discussion of it (by thoughtful people who actually READ the book!) will undoubtedly be of significant value. Please let us know soon if you’re interested.

Coming Highly Recommended

Here’s a few reading recommendations for your weekend. (You may well want to pass some of these along to others.)

“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (Nicholas Carr)

“What the FDA Hasn’t Told You About Mifepristone” (Erik Baptist, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom)

“The New Great Game” (Joel Kotkin and Hügo Krüger)

“Are We the Byzantines?” (Victor Davis Hanson)

And three from me:

“Nothing Good Does God Withhold” 

“The Real St. Patrick” 

and “Heroes in My Library”

And a book I just finished and loved, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (Anthony Estolen)

The Next VSM Book Brunch Is "Politically Incorrect"

"Political correctness, at its heart, is the effort to dissolve the foundations on which the American and European culture has been built.  It has been a demolition project: undermine Western civilization in whatever way possible...For those of us who love the West, it's a daunting battle."

This is from the preface of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization, an enlightening, inspiring, and even fun book by Providence College English Professor, Anthony Esolen. I've just finished the first chapter ("Ancient Greece: Love of Wisdom & Beauty") and I'm finding it really terrific reading. I'm delighted we chose it as the book for the next Vital Signs Ministries Book Brunch on Saturday, March 25 from 10-12.  

So, if you haven't signed up, do soon ASAP. Then put the date on your calendar, get a copy of this extremely interesting (and remarkably easy-to-read) book, and get going!

For the Next Book Brunch, It's Clarence Thomas

Here's giving you plenty of time to get ready...

The next Vital Signs Ministries Book Brunch discussion will be on Saturday, September 10 at 9 AM. And in celebration of the Roe v Wade reversal, we will honor one of the paramount heroes of the struggle by reading and discussing together Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, edited by Michael Pack and Mark Paoletta. Let us know if you're interested.

By the way, here's a bit of what Christian Book Distributors say about the book:

“Who is Justice Clarence Thomas, in his own words? 

In the follow-up to the wildly successful documentary by the same name, Created Equal builds on dozens of hours of groundbreaking, one-on-one interviews with Thomas to share a new, expanded account of his powerful story for the first time. 

Producer Michael Pack and Mark Paoletta, a lawyer who worked alongside Thomas during his confirmation, dive deep into the Justice’s story. Drawing on a rich array of historical documents and unreleased conversations with Thomas, his wife, and those who knew him best, Created Equal is a timeless account of faith, race, power, and personal resilience.”

A Remarkable New (Yet Very Old) Christian Adventure

 If you loved Pilgrim’s Progress, now you need to read what inspired it. Labyrinth of the World was written 55 years prior to Pilgrim’s Progress yet it remains virtually unknown to English readers. Now, thanks to Timothy Price, this work has been made more available in a beautiful new edition.

Eugenics: Alas, the Past is Yet Present

Modern “eugenics” emerged as an application of Darwinism in the late 1800s. Social scientists believed they could “improve the human race” by encouraging the “well-bred” and healthy to procreate, while discouraging (or even, for some, forcibly preventing) the poor, the sick or just the “undesirable” from having children. 

While eugenics typically brings to mind the Nazi effort to exterminate six million Jews during the Holocaust, the idea’s intellectual development is largely American. For example, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger openly advocated for eugenics, and actively worked to advance birth control with African American women as part of what she called the “Negro Project.”

By the way, the organization she founded is the best example in our culture of systemic or structural evil. Planned Parenthood kills black babies at a rate five times higher than children of other ethnicities...

Read the rest of this enlightening BreakPoint article (written by John Stonestreet and Maria Baer) right here. 

And then consider as one of the important "action steps" you could take the participation in Vital Signs Ministries next Book Brunch on Saturday morning, February 19th at 10 o’clock. The book under discussion that morning will be a G.K. Chesterton classic, Eugenics and Other Evils. You can find out more at this Vital Signs Blog post. 

The Submarine Novels of Edward L. Beach Jr.

I recently finished re-reading one of my all-time favorite trilogies, the submarine novels of the highly-decorated Navy captain Edward L. Beach Jr.  Those novels, by the way, are the 1955 classic, Run Silent, Run Deep which TIME magazine called "the liveliest and most authentic account of underseas combat to come out of World War II; Dust on the Sea (1972); and a thriller set in the early age of nuclear submarines, Cold is the Sea (1978).

These riveting action novels make for exciting reading but there is plenty of history, human interest, even life-oriented philosophy to be gleaned as well. And Beach is an incredibly gifted author whose experience is uniquely rich: a Navy combat veteran; winner of the Navy Cross, the Silver Star with Gold Star in lieu of a second Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star with a combat Distinguished "V" and Gold Star in lieu of a second Bronze Star Medal; three Presidential Unit Citations, and many more awards; the naval aide to the President Dwight D. Eisenhower; and the submarine commander in the first
submerged circumnavigation of the globe.

Impressive? You better believe it. But again, I recommend Beach's submarine novels not because they were written by a genuine American patriot and hero but because they are simply the best naval stories I've ever read.

C.S. Lewis: Enlightening Reading for These "Quarantine Days"

This past week my reading has taken me back once again to C.S. Lewis’ “space trilogy” and I've found it to be the most ironic, uncanny literature for these dark days of government-imposed quarantines -- quarantines which have shut down much of our public life, ruined our economy, drastically limited our heretofore superb medical care, and pompously eliminated many of our First Amendment freedoms.

Now, I have in many previous readings over the years found these three titles quite moving and spiritually profound: Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945). But, as I said, reading them in the midst of this “Great Hunkering Down” has made for exceptional understanding and application.

I recommend them all highly.

However, if you have only time (or inclination) to read one, especially if you desire to get a clearer perspective on how the elites of government, science, and media seek to control the lives of individuals, I suggest That Hideous Strength.

And, for a teaser, I give you a portion of Lewis’ preface to that novel. (You’ll note here an interesting reference to The Lord of the Rings which had not yet been published.)

I have called this a “fairy tale” in the hope that no one who dislikes fantasy may be misled first two chapters into reading further, and then complain of his disappointment. If you ask why—intending to write about magicians, devils, pantomime animals, and planetary angels, I nevertheless begin with such humdrum scenes and persons—reply that I am following the traditional fairy-tale. We do not always notice its method because the cottages, castles, woodcutters, and petty kings with which a fairy-tale opens have become to us as remote as the witches and ogres to which it proceeds. But they were not remote at all to the men who made and first enjoyed the stories. They were indeed more realistic or common place than Bracton College is to me: for many German peasants had actually met cruel stepmothers, whereas I have never, in any university, come across a college like Bracton.

This is a “tall story” about devilry, though it has behind it a serious ‘point’ which I have tried to make in my “Abolition of Man.” In the story the outer rim of that devilry had to be shown touching the life of some ordinary and respectable profession. I selected my own profession, not, of course, because I think Fellows of Colleges more likely to be thus corrupted than anyone else, but because my own profession I know well enough to write about. A very small university is imagined because that has certain conveniences for fiction. Edgestow has no resemblance, save for its smallness, to Durham—a university with which the only connection I have ever had was entirely pleasant…

Those who would like to learn further about Numinor and the True West must (alas!) await the publication of much that still exists only in the MSS. of my friend, Professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The period of this story is vaguely “after the war.” It concludes the trilogy of which Out of the Silent Planet was the first part, and Perelandra the second, but can be read on its own.

(C.S. Lewis, Madgalen College, Oxford, Christmas Eve, 1943.)

Bonhoeffer on "Faith Alone"

"All Christian living has its origin and existence in one single happening which the Reformation called 'justification by grace alone.'...All this happens with the encounter of Christ with the human soul...But not only 'by grace alone,' also 'by faith alone.' That is what both the Scriptures and the Reformation teach. Not love nor hope, but only faith justifies a life. Faith alone, indeed, sets life upon a new foundation and it is this new foundation alone that justifies it, so that I can live before God. The foundation, however, is the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Without this foundation a life cannot be justified before God...Faith means establishing one’s life upon a foundation outside one’s own self, upon an eternal and holy foundation, which is Christ..."

"We said at the beginning that the act of justification of a sinner is an ultimate or last thing. That was meant in the strongest sense. God’s compassion with a sinner, can and must be heard as God’s last word, or it will not be heard at all. The ultimacy of this word contains a double meaning: qualitatively, by its content, it is ultimate. There is no word of God which goes beyond his word of grace. There is nothing greater than a life justified before God...It is God’s free word, not the consequence of any other than God’s own will, and therefore it is God’s last word and the ultimate reality. It excludes any method of achieving justification in one’s own way." (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 'The Last Things and the Things Before the Last,' a chapter in his unfinished work, "Ethics")

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas: The 3rd Lyric Change

Judy Garland's singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" in the 1944 film "Meet Me in St. Louis" made the song a Christmas standard. It's certainly one of the favorites we present in the Christmas version of "When Swing Was King" presented to senior care facilities. When we come to that number in the show, I sometimes explain that the lyrics of that song have actually been changed twice -- once at the insistence of Judy Garland herself and then again at the whim of Frank Sinatra.

Well, here's comes Joni Eareckson Tada in this morning's email devotional to describe yet a third change of lyrics. Trust me, you'll find this an interesting and memorable devotional.

Have Yourself a Blessed Christmas 

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” (Micah 5:2)

One of the Christmas classics you hear so often this time of year is “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” The composer of that poignant song is my friend Hugh Martin. Years ago, when Hugh came to Hollywood after leaving New York, he fell on difficult times, which led this dear man to the feet of Jesus. And sometime after his conversion, Hugh went back to the piano and composed new lyrics to his beloved classic. This time, he wanted his Lord and Savior to be honored in the music. Hugh went home to be with Jesus in 2011 at the age of ninety-six, but before he died, he was a guest on our radio program, and I sang those new lyrics for him: “Have yourself a blessed little Christmas, Christ the King is born. Let your voices ring upon this happy morn.” The old lyrics were tender and sweet; the new lyrics may go on ringing into eternity.

Thank You, Lord, for the story of Hugh Martin’s changed life. It’s a story that can be told millions upon millions of times. You change lives, King Jesus. You lift up people from darkness, heartbreak, and impossible situations and give them hope, happiness, and a new song to sing.

What Others Have Written About "The Christmas Room" (Part 1)

Are you thinking about a good Christmas read? Or perhaps a gift to pass along to the readers in your family and circle of friends? May I be so bold as to suggest you consider my novel The Christmas Room?

To help you decide I'm printing below a few of the Amazon reviews posted by persons who bought the book there.

Review 1) I recently read Denny Hartford's heartwarming novel while in the process of applying for my certification in Clinical Pastoral Education. The confluence of these two events couldn't have more timely. It's not merely that I was enlightened in regards to life in what we used to call nursing homes, but I gained insights into the kinds of people who make such institutions a success. Since I may one day soon be working in such a home, I feel better prepared for the kinds of dramas and crises that occur there.

That's reason enough for you to buy and savor this delightful story. But there's more. Hartford's book has been personally encouraging to me. It is not inconceivable that in the not distant days ahead, I may find myself a resident of such a home. To know that there are the Carolyn Kovacs and Rita Costellos all around us is immensely hopeful.

I recommend this book to pastors and lay workers who visit those in hospitals, rest homes and long-term care institutions. It might also find its way onto the training schedule of those who care for others in such places.

Review 2) Thanks to Denny Hartford for this true-to-life tale of grace and mercy.

Review 3) The Christmas Room was a delight! A very uplifting book with a cast of characters that made it hard to put down. What a joy to read a book that I could relate to and with a great message. It brought back all the wonderful memories along with some tears, after taking care of my own Mom for many years. This book is encouraging as it isn't easy to make decisions for a loved one as they are nearing the end of their life. We all need to hear that our lives matter and have meaning in this hard world we live in and this book gives readers this message.

Review 4) I loved The Christmas Room. The story is innovative and captivating, full of familial struggles and true to life stories that so many can relate to as they deal with aging parents. You'll learn and grow in your knowledge of care for the elderly and will be encouraged by the healing power of love, patience and kindness. Assisted living and nursing home employees/employers will especially enjoy how they can relate to so much in this book. Senior citizens have much to offer us!

Review 5) Great read. Denny does a great job bringing out the good as well as the bad that families face dealing with family issues while also juggling the declining health of a loved one. Going to be sending this to friends and loved ones for Christmas. Thank you!

More reviews tomorrow. And, by the way, you can purchase softcover copies of The Christmas Room for $9.99 on Amazon or at the same price from us personally. (In the latter case, copies can be autographed.) An even better deal is available for Kindle users where the book is only $2.99.

The Notting Hill Napoleons Close out Year #28

It was a delightful weekend with old friends. But there were also a few brand new stimulations as the Notting Hill Napoleons enjoyed their annual autumn retreat.  This year we were at an Air B&B kind of thing in Lincoln and though it was a house that was far below what the “innkeepers” advertised, it was a clean, quiet, and fairly comfortable place for the Napoleon activities we had planned.

Our 2019 retreat included a delicious soup supper on Friday night (the corn chowder, chicken, and hamburger soups were all terrific); the intriguing 3-stage voting process by which we decide on the books to read for the following year; and a leisurely 35-minute drive to Elmwood where we were given a personal tour of Nebraska author Bess Streeter Aldrich’s home and the nearby museum. As we had read 3 of her books over the years and had just voted in another one for 2020, this was a timely and extremely interesting time. We will definitely go back sometime in the near future.

On Saturday night, after going out for dinner at a nearby Lazlo's, we held our discussion over the year’s Charles Dickens book. For 2019 it had been one of his shorter novels, Hard Times.  Also, Quint Coppi and I were again blessed to have early mornings together for Bible reading, prayer, and serious conversation. That too is an important autumn tradition.

This autumn retreat also serves as a time for Claire and I to reflect on the unusual achievement that is this book club. You see, the Notting Hill Napoleons began as a noble experiment.  Could a group of Christian activists fit into their already busy schedules of family, work, and pro-life ministry a monthly book discussion?  Furthermore, dare they tackle quality literature (including such daunting classics as War and Peace, Brothers Karamazov, Les Miserables, and David Copperfield) with a view to keep their education going long after their “formal” schooling was behind them?  Could this kind of fellowship help provide genuine stimulation, accountability, and assistance in our desires to use our time wisely, to avoid being TV-addicted “couch potatoes,” to sharpen our reading abilities, to improve our discernment and conversational skills, and to be better equipped to be lights in a culture that was increasingly shallow, coarse, and dominated by sensual and visual thrills.

Well, after completing our 28th year, I think it's safe to say that the experiment has been a remarkable success.

But what of the future of the Notting Hill Napoleons?  The nucleus of the book club remains (9 people) but the winds of change are swirling about us. Some of those changes are related simply to aging. Our attention spans, mental focus, and levels of physical energy are not what they once were. Yet probably more telling are the changes in schedules (and priorities) caused by such things as work and ministry responsibilities, or travel plans related to grandchildren or aging parents. And there's yet a third issue. With such a huge body of English-language novels already accomplished by the club, finding a consensus on the books to be read next is getting harder and harder.  Our group is still solid and servant-oriented in our friendships with one another, yet there have evolved strong differences of opinion about authors and titles, page length and subject matter, writing style and suggestions of re-reading. The differences are so divergent that only a couple of books made the 2020 list with sweeping approval. And a few that finally made the list did so with the barest possible majority. So, can we find our way over these obstacles and keep the Notting Hill Napoleons healthy, effective, and fun for a few more years?  We certainly will give it a try.

One of the attractive possibilities for dealing with these changes was talked about late Saturday night. It is an invitation to other readers to join the Napoleons, even those who might only want to read an occasional novel from our year’s list.  So, if you are interested enough in reading and book clubs and stimulating fellowship to have read this blog post all the way down to here, 😉 you might want to prayerfully consider this invitation. Perhaps drop us a note and we could talk with you about it.  Please know that you would be warmly welcomed to be a part of the next chapter of the Notting Hill Napoleons.

And, to spark your interest a little more, here is that 2020 reading list for you to look over.

January – The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy

February – Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington

March – The King’s General by Daphne du Maurier

April – Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan

 May – The Spy by James Fenimore Cooper

June – All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

July – To Wake the Giant: A Novel of Pearl Harbor by Jeff Shaara

August – Mysterious Island by Jules Verne

September – Victory at Yorktown by Newt Gingrich, William R. Forstchen, & Albert S. Hanser

October – Three Weeks in October by Yael Dayan

November – Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens

December – Lantern in Her Hand by Bess Streeter Aldrich

Malcolm Muggeridge's Winter in Moscow is a Rare Treasure...And In More Ways Than One

Winter in Moscow is the remarkably enlightening and controversial novel written by Malcolm Muggeridge was based on his experiences in Russia during 1932 and 1933 while serving as the newspaper correspondent for the left-leaning Manchester Guardian.

Michael D. Aeschliman, in his introduction to the 1987 edition (now, like all other copies, long out of print) describes the book’s origins and impact:

“The belief in an inevitable, collective human progress grew to dominate ‘enlightened’ Western opinion more and more steadily from the time of Bacon in the 17th Century, through the propagandastic and revolutionary writing of the French philosophers and their Jacobin and socialist successors in the 18th and early 19th Centuries, as Hannah Arendt has written, it ‘became an almost universally accepted dogma.’ ‘Glory to Man in the highest!’ wrote the poet A.C. Swinburne expressing the characteristic optimism and the Utopian expectations of his era…”

As a humanist and Fabian socialist Muggeridge shared this naive idealism and, like many intellectuals of his time, looked to the Soviet Union as a key development in this movement of social progress. But his experiences in Russia tore that idealism apart and, rare among his breed, he dared to see through the irrationality, the lies, the extreme cruelty, and the utter hypocrisy of Communism. He came back telling the truth…and was quickly vilified for doing so.

But Aeschliman points out that Muggeridge didn’t just lose a philosophy, he also gained a fervent new belief. He finally believed in something real. “That ‘something’ was the reality of evil...and the willing collaboration with it by legions of adulatory liberal and socialist intellectuals was something that would never cease to astonish and appall him, and would never cease to inspire his pen to some of the sharpest, most powerful moral satire ever written in our language.”

Now I must tell you that Winter in Moscow is a very hard book to get hold of. I discovered one of only a handful of copies that are available through the interlibrary loan program and, when it came it was in really delicate condition. But I treated the book with great care and the content of the book with even greater care, respect, and appreciation. I would suggest that with all the loose talk going around about socialism nowadays, making the effort to find a copy (don’t worry about buying one -- the cheapest copy I could find through the internet was over $100 -- is still well worth the effort.

Klavan on Conservative Creativity

A few days ago, I finished (on my Kindle) Andrew Klavan’s brief but excellent and provocative book, A Crisis in the Arts: Why the Left Owns the Culture and How Conservatives can Begin to Take it Back. 

I highly recommend it. Klavan, himself a best-selling fiction writer, eloquently explains how politics and social policy is “downstream” of culture and that conservatives cannot hope for political success or social change if they continue to cede the arts to the far left as has been done for the last several decades.

 Instead Klavan writes...

We need to fight back. 

For those conservatives with artistic talent and ambition, this is a spectacular moment to take to the barricades. Big Media is tottering under the assault of new technologies. With electronic publishing and social media, books can be self-published and self-promoted. With the new video cameras, professional-looking films can be produced on the cheap and distributed online. YouTube, iTunes, smart phones, tablets, blogs -- all provide opportunities for new kinds of work and new ways for that work to be dispensed.  

To take advantage of this moment, conservatives have to come to grips with a situation that they naturally find uncomfortable: yet, to wit, we are now at the counter-culture. When it comes to the arts, radical leftists are The Man. We need to act like the rebels we now are and stop trying to win the favor of the big studios and publishers and mainstream reviewers. We need to make stuff. Good stuff. And get it out to the audience anyway we can…

The arts, even at their least, are one of humanity’s most noble enterprises. They have been hijacked by adherence of the low-end depressive ideology. They have been hijacked by the adherents of a low and oppressive. We should take them back.

A Few Links for the Literati

* “The Liberal Arts Weren’t Murdered — They Committed Suicide” (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review)

* “Solzhenitsyn: A Centennial Tribute” (Daniel J. Mahoney, City Journal)

* “How Charles Dickens redeemed the spirit of Christmas” (Richard Gunderman, Mercator)

* “Jane Austen, Identity Thief” (Dwight Lindley III, National Review)

* “Humbug to all the rest: Why the 1951 Scrooge film is considered ‘the gold standard’” (Mark Gollom, CBC News)

* “3 Great Children’s Books Written by 3 Great Men” (Michelle Malkin, Daily Signal)

A Few Literary Links You'll Find Fascinating

Okay, for all of the bibliophiles, literati, and recess readers who occasionally check in here at The Book Den, I have a few intriguing links for you to check out this Yuletide. You’re sure to find some of these of substantial interest.

* “The 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the Century” (Editors of National Review)

* “The Second World Wars” (Scott Johnson, Power Line)

* “Solzhenitsyn’s Sweeping Tale of War and Revolution” (Will Morrisey, Law & Liberty)

* “The Abolition of Mad Men” (Justin Dyer, National Review)

* “Mark Twain, Huckster” (Bill Kauffman, University Bookman)

* “How technology cheapened sex and made men less marriageable: The author of Cheap Sex talks about its provocative thesis.” (Mark Regnerus & Tracey S. O'Donnell, Mercator)

* “Steve McQueen: The Salvation of an American Icon” (Greg Laurie & Marshall Terrill)

* “Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now” (Mark Steyn)

For Readers Everywhere: Some Scintillating Links

* “Scrounging for money: how the world’s great writers made a living” (Camilla Nelson, Mercator)

* “Once upon a time: a brief history of children’s literature” (Stephanie Tarbin, Joanne McEwan, and Susan Broomhall, Mercator)

* “How to Read the Bible: Slowly, and Sport with the Words” (Nicholas Frankovich, National Review)

* “Remembering a forgotten man (John Buchan) and his forgotten book” (David M. Shribman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

* “Is Christianity Reasonable? A Review of Forensic Faith by J. Warner Wallace” (Sean McDowell, The Stream)

* “C.S. Lewis in the trenches of WWI” (Jon Dykstra, Mercator)

* “Crimes against culture: On Doctor Zhivago & the dissident faith of Boris Pasternak.” (Gary Saul Morson, The New Criterion)

* “Harry Potter and the millennial mind” (Lara Prendergast, The Spectator)

* “‘A possession for all time’: the first and greatest history book” (Julia Kindt, Mercator)

* “A Master List of 800 Free Classic eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices” (Open Culture)

Literati Alert: A Few Very Interesting Articles

Frequently over on Vital Signs Blog, I post compilation lists of articles that I believe will be interesting, equipping, even inspiring to my friends who check in there. I've decided it's a tactic I should employ here at The Book Den as well, occasionally listing for you some of the more provocative articles about books, history, and the arts that I've recently come across.

Here is the first of those posts.

* “The Master Obituarist: William F. Buckley’s glorious tributes to the dearly departed raised eulogy to the level of art.” (Herbert W. Stupp, City Journal) — Being, in part a look at A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives of the Twentieth Century, by William F. Buckley, Jr. and James Rosen, editor.

* “The Seduction of Benedict Arnold” (John Daniel Davidson, National Review) -- Being, in part, a look at Nathaniel Philbrick’s book, Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution.

* “The revolutionary vision of Jane Austen: Is Austen’s popularity starting to undermine her stature?” (Gillian Dooley, Mercator)

* “George Washington’s God” (Mark D. Tooley, Juicy Ecumenism) — Being, in part, a look at Michael and Jana Novak’s book, Washington’s God: Religion, Liberty, and the Father of Our Country.

* “Horrors of Waugh” (Violet Hudson, TLS)

* “The Very Drugged Nazis” (Antony Beevor, New York Review of Books) — Being, in part a look at Norman Ohler’s book, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich.

* “The New Unworking Class” (Mona Charen, National Review) — Being, in part, a look at Nicholas Eberstadt’s book, Men Without Work.

* “How King Arthur became one of the most pervasive legends of all time: Brave, noble, kind -- everything that is missing from our modern world?” (Raluca Radulescu, Mercator)

* “On the trail of the Man in the Iron Mask” (David Coward, TLS)

* “After the exile: poetry and the death of culture” (Anthony Esolen, Mercator)

Recommended Books for Conservatives (And Those Who Might Become Conservative After Reading Them!)

I'm printing below the text of an article written by Christopher N. Malagisi for the Conservative Book Club. It is titled “The Top 10 Conservative Books of 2016.” The link to the original is right here. However, because the article is one of those you have to click for every one of the several pages it is spread across, I’ve done you the service of printing the text below.

2016 was a huge year in conservative publishing, thanks to the wild ride of the 2016 election. From pro-Trump tomes to anti-Hillary jeremiads to the key policy debates of our time, the Right got to write about who and what was right. There were also great books of history and reflections on the state of America’s culture and social fabric, touching on the more intellectual side of the conservative movement.

Our Top 10 Conservative Books of 2016 were selected by the Conservative Book Club’s Editorial Advisory Board and were based on three primary criteria: 1.) Influence – Did the book have a large-scale influence on the national debate? 2.) Conservative – Does the book espouse conservative values of American Exceptionalism, reverence to the Constitution, etc.? and 3.) Value-Added – Did the book add value to the conversation or provide original research?

With that in mind, here are the 10 best conservative books of 2016!

10) The Fractured Republic by Yuval Levin.
The story of the 2016 election could not be told without the underlying context of American cultural and institutional decay. The social contract is fraying under the weight of individualism — this, in essence is the problem that Yuval Levin’s The Fractured Republic: Our Dissolving Social Contract In The Age of Individualism sets out to solve. Combining the communitarian ethos of Russell Kirk with the sociological focus of Charles Murray, Yuval Levin’s The Fractured Republic offers a conservative solution to America’s existential crisis.

9) A Torch Kept Lit by William F. Buckley, Jr, edited by James Rosen
For the first time ever, William F. Buckley, Jr’s greatest eulogies have been collected together in one accessible tome, edited by Fox News’ James Rosen. A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives of the Twentieth Century is, as the title says, a collection of eulogies for the greatest political, cultural and historical figures of the 20th century. A Torch Kept Lit  lets readers enjoy Buckley’s signature style and wit while also appreciating the legacies of these great men and women.

8) The War On Cops by Heather Mac Donald
The police have become an intense topic of national debate in the aftermath of protests and riots in Ferguson, Baltimore, and elsewhere. The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald makes the conservative case for law and order — and the case against anti-cop rhetoric and policy — in The War on Cops: How The New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe. Mac Donald busts liberal lies about the use of force, incarceration rates, and so-called racial bias in policing, making it a timely, essential read in light of the Black Lives Matter movement.

7) Clean House by Tom Fitton
One of the Democrat Party’s great lies is that the Obama administration has had no scandals. Unsung hero Judicial Watch, headed by Tom Fitton, has consistantly exposed the truth, from Benghazi to the IRS to Obamacare. Fitton’s book Clean House ends the Obama administration’s furtiveness, chronicling all of Obama’s scandals and the efforts of Judicial Watch to reveal them to the public. 

6) Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War by Dr. Sebastian Gorka
One of 2016’s breakout performances was counterinsurgency expert Dr. Sebastian Gorka, seen often on Fox News. His book Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War studiously details the rise of ISIS and Radical Islam, and offers a national defense strategy to win the War on Terror.  Dr. Gorka reminds us that the right leadership can win this war.

5) Killing The Rising Sun by Bill O’Reilly O'Reilly
Every year, Bill O’Reilly makes a “killing” on the Conservative Bestseller List with his bestselling Killing series of history books. For the 75th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks, O’Reilly wrote Killing The Rising Sun: How America Vanquished WWII Japan. From Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, to the atom bomb, O’Reilly recounts the victories of the Pacific theater in a fun and accessible style. 

4) Guilty As Sin by Ed Klein
No one has been as thorough and prolific in investigating the crimes of the Clintons than Ed Klein. His latest book,  Guilty as Sin: Uncovering New Evidence of Corruption and How Hillary Clinton and the Democrats Derailed the FBI Investigation, dives into the latest and perhaps most fatal of the Clintons’ many scandals — the FBI investigation into Hillary’s emails.
Klein exposes what really happened, from Bill Clinton’s airplane rendezvous with US Attorney General Loretta Lynch to Klein’s own exclusive interview with President-elect Donald Trump. Written during the heart of the campaign, Guilty As Sin may just have been the book that brought Hillary down for good.

3) Crisis of Character by Gary J. Byrne
Earlier in 2016, former Secret Service agent Gary Byrne reminded America what happened the last time the Clintons were in the White House. His stunning expose, Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience With Hillary, Bill, And How They Operate ensured that America knew everything there was to know about the Clintons — including the 90s scandals that people may have forgotten. From salaciousness to corruption, Byrne blew the door open on the Clintons’ walk-in closet of skeletons.

2) Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
The shocking victory of Donald Trump has left many in the media asking “how did this happen?” The National Review’s J.D. Vance has been rocketed into the national spotlight with his book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. He examines the forgotten rural white voters that made President Trump possible from two angles — one as sociologist and one as participant. Using his own life in Appalachia as a touch point, Vance examines what caused the cultural and social crisis in rural white America — and the moral and cultural solutions to their plight.

1) Hillary’s America by Dinesh D’Souza
More than any other anti-Hillary book, Dinesh D’Souza’s Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party did the most to prevent Hillary’s America. Accompanied by a hugely successful documentary movie, Hillary’s America gave America the truth about what a second Clinton presidency would look like and about the sordid past of the Democrat Party, from their antebellum roots to Progressivism, to their radical transformation of America in modern times. Hillary’s America took the country by storm in theaters and bookstores, and helped marshal the wave that brought Trump — and conservatism — into the White House.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
In Trump We Trust by Ann Coulter

Settle for More by Megyn Kelly

Foreign Agent by Brad Thor

The Conservative Case for Trump by Phyllis Schlafly

Clinton Cash: A Graphic Novel by Peter Schweizer

Doctor Zhivago Revisited

“This year marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of Boris Pasternak’s famous novel, Doctor Zhivago. Problems with Russian censorship meant it was first published by the Italian publisher, Feltrinelli; the English translation followed in 1958, which was the year I first encountered it, aged twelve. This was the year that Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, an event given an ominous dimension when he was forced by the Russian authorities to either renounce the prize or be exiled. Pasternak, for whom to live outside his homeland would have been unthinkable, chose the first option. Expelled from the Writers Union, he died, disgraced, in 1960...”

Read the rest of Francis Phillips' Mercator article, Doctor Zhivago at 60: A Spiritual Masterpiece right here.