books
Mike Abendroth
While I don’t agree completely with the list, I do agree that reading is important and I want to encourage reading!
For fun, I just went out and bought a few of these that I have never of and will read them!
By Gene Edward Veith
and Marvin Olasky
Henry Adams
The Education of Henry Adams(1918)
This book offered a fine contrast between the pre-modern mind (symbolized by
the "Virgin" of the great cathedrals) and the just-emerging modern
century (symbolized by the industrial "dynamo").
Hannah Arendt
The Origins of Totalitarianism
(1951)
What she describes about the dynamics of fascism and communism needs to be
heeded today.
Edward C.
Banfield
The Unheavenly City (1950)
Father of the books critiquing dire public policy consequences of utopian
liberalism.
P. T. Bauer
Equality, the Third
World, and Economic Delusion (1983)
Presented an important new way of looking at Third World
economic development.
Michael Behe
Darwin's Black Box (1996)
Biochemist proves, with hard science, that on the smallest, most irreducible
scale, life is not random.
William
Bennett, editor
The Book of Virtues (1993)
Good reading for children and adults about values underemphasized in schools.
Louis Berkhof
Systematic Theology (1941)
Tightly-woven account of Reformed understanding.
Allan Bloom
The Closing of the American Mind
(1988)
A devastating account of how today's moral and intellectual relativism is
stifling American education.
James M.
Boice
Romans: An Expositional Commentary
(1995)
One of the best expository preachers opens up Paul's great epistle.
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer
The Cost of Discipleship (1937)
Grace may be free, but it isn't cheap, as this young theologian showed both in
his words and in his martyr's death at the hands of the Nazis.
Jorge Borges
Labyrinths (1984)
Curious, mind-teasing short stories from the blind Argentinean librarian who
was one of the century's most intriguing writers.
Robert Bork
Slouching Towards Gomorrah (1996)
A thundering moral critique of contemporary culture.
William F.
Buckley Jr.
God & Man at Yale (1951)
Detailed how a once conservative college had headed left theologically and
politically.
Oswald
Chambers
My Utmost for His Highest (1937)
A devotional classic.
Whittaker
Chambers
Witness (1952)
The moving autobiography and reflective meditation of a communist spy who
became a Christian and, to the scorn of the intellectual establishment,
witnessed to God's grace.
G. K.
Chesterton
Orthodoxy (1908)
This exuberant, joyous, humorous journalist defended the faith with a razor
logic and a razor wit.
Winston
Churchill
The Second World War (1948-1953)
An eloquently written six-volume history, by the man who made it.
Charles
Colson
Born Again (1977)
The testimony of a Watergate
politician who was turned to Christ and to Christian activism in the world.
Robert
Conquest
The Great Terror (1968)
Thoroughly researched account of the horrors of Stalinism in the Soviet Union.
Richard
Crossman, editor
The God That Failed (1949)
A collection of essays by ex-communists who woke up to the true nature of their
false religion.
William
Dembski
The Design Inference (1998)
This book does the hard-core mathematical, philosophical, and scientific
spade-work for proving that the universe did not "just evolve" but
was designed.
Hernando De Soto
The Other Path (1989)
Shows how Third World countries can achieve
economic progress by embracing free enterprise.
Annie Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974)
Sharply observed and luminously expressed meditations on nature, from a writer
at home in both science and theology.
T. S. Eliot
The Collected Poems (1963)
The poet who charted the spiritual wasteland of the 20th century, in the
process becoming a conservative Christian.
Ralph Ellison
Invisible Man (1952)
A powerful psychological novel about race and alienation, from the century's
greatest black American author.
Jacques Ellul
The Humiliation of the Word (1981)
He defended language and the Word of God against the image-worshippers of
modern technological culture.
Shusako Endo
Silence (1969)
A disturbing, evocative novel about the persecutions of Christians in old Japan, from a talented Christian novelist from Japan.
Stanton Evans
The Theme Is Freedom (1994)
For many on the left, history is the progressive liberation of human beings
from the chains of tradition. But this book documents how it has been humanism
that has bred tyranny, while Christianity, from the very beginning, has
promoted freedom.
William
Faulkner
The Collected Stories (1950)
With his long, convoluted sentences mirroring the convolutions of the mind, and
his Southern gothic characters, Faulkner has to be considered America's greatest fiction writer
of the century.
Sinclair
Ferguson
Christian Life (1996)
A well-written introduction for new believers.
F. Scott
Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby (1922)
A great American novel on the emptiness of wealth and status.
Shelby Foote
The Civil War (1958, 1963, 1974)
The American Iliad, in three volumes.
Anne Frank
The Diary of A Young Girl (1953)
The magnitude of human sin expends itself against ordinary, sympathetic human
beings, as this diary of a child hiding from the Nazis shows.
Milton
Friedman
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
A free-market economist when capitalism wasn't cool, Friedman did the
Nobel-prize-winning scholarship, the governmental consulting in Third World nations, and the mass popular education that
helped to lay socialism and Keynesian liberal economics to rest.
Robert Frost
The Collected Poems (1930)
For all of the century's poetic experimentalism, Frost's poetry, with its
thoughtful meditations and traditional forms, stands up the best.
The Fundamentals
(1909-1915)
Those who consider "fundamentalism" a synonym for narrow
anti-intellectualism have never read this series of monographs by various
authors who battled liberal theological modernism.
George Gilder
Wealth and Poverty (1981)
Readable economics book promoting the idea that capitalism is based on serving
others, not greed.
Jose
Gironella
The Cypresses Believe in God
(1958)
Moving account of one family in the years preceding the Spanish civil war.
William
Golding
Lord of the Flies (1955)
This tale of schoolboys shipwrecked on a desert island, and how, without adult
supervision, they revert to primitive violence is a good answer to those who do
not believe in original sin.
Graham Greene
The Power and the Glory (1940)
The melancholy Catholic novelist wrote a masterpiece about a priest hunted down
by anti-Christian socialists during the Mexican revolution.
F. A. Hayek
The Road to Serfdom (1944)
Hayek showed how personal and political freedom is tied up with economic
freedom.
Carl F. H.
Henry
God, Revelation, and Authority
(1976-1983)
A magisterial systematic theology for evangelicals.
Michael
Horton
In The Face of God (1997)
Unveiling the gnosticism--the heresy that objectivity doesn't matter, that
religion is just a matter of what is inside my head, and that we can have a
direct relationship with God without a mediator-that is implicit in much of
American religion and religiosity.
Aldous Huxley
Brave New World
(1932)
This novel predicted virtual reality, hallucinogenic drugs, entertainment-mad
hedonism, and genetic engineering.
Paul Johnson
Modern Times (1983)
Those who have taken conventional survey courses should read this history of
the 20th century that punctures many of the standard myths.
Phillip
Johnson
Darwin on Trial (1991)
A Berkeley law
professor demonstrates the weakness of the evolutionists' case.
William Kirk
Kilpatrick
Psychological Seduction (1983)
A Christian educational psychologist skewers the way pop psychology has
insinuated itself into nearly every other field, including Christianity.
Russell Kirk
The Conservative Mind (1953)
The godfather of cultural conservatism, Kirk inspired the revival of
conservative thought in America.
Adolf
Koeberle
The Quest for Holiness (1936)
He explored how sanctification and good works grow out of a rigorous
understanding of justification by faith.
Arthur
Koestler
Darkness at Noon (1940)
A novel about the Stalinist show trials that exposed the lies of Communism to
many who once accepted them as gospel truth.
Thomas Kuhn
The Structure of Scientific Revolution
(1962)
Kuhn showed why Christians do not have to fear science anymore: It keeps
changing.
Primo Levi
Survival in Auschwitz
(1959)
Gripping account of concentration camp life.
C. S. Lewis
Mere Christianity (1943)
Modernists did not realize that Christianity made so much sense or was so
exhilarating until they read Lewis, the century's foremost defender of the
faith.
Harold
Lindsell
Battle for the Bible (1976)
This book arrested the slide of evangelicals toward a liberal view of the
Bible, establishing instead the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture.
D. Martyn
Lloyd-Jones
Spiritual Depression (1965)
A master preacher and evangelist, Lloyd-Jones here writes about why there are
so many joyless Christians. Answer: We do not fully understand the grace of
God.
John Gresham
Machen
Christianity and Liberalism (1923)
This Princeton professor and Westminster
Seminary founder showed that liberal theology actually constitutes a new,
non-Christian religion.
Naguib
Mahfouz
Palace Walk (1956)
Evocative and provocative novel about a Muslim family in Cairo during the early 1900s.
Thomas Mann
Doctor Faustus (1948)
This difficult but profound German novelist wrestled with the cultural and
philosophical demons that led to the ascension of Hitler.
Josh McDowell
Evidence that Demands a Verdict
(1979)
This compilation of arguments for the truth of Christianity has played a role
in thousands of conversions.
Gilbert
Meilander
Bioethics: A Primer for Christians
(1996)
A useful pro-life manual for dealing with the new ethical questions raised by
reproductive technology and genetic engineering.
J. T. Mueller
Christian Dogmatics (1955)
A summation of systematic theology, from a Lutheran perspective, drawn straight
from the Bible.
Malcolm
Muggeridge
Jesus Rediscovered (1969)
A witty but cynical journalist becomes a Christian.
NIV Bible (1978)
The New International Version is a readable and non-ideological translation of
Scripture that became an evangelical favorite.
Flannery
O'Connor
The Violent Bear It Away (1960)
She pushed to shocking extremes the conflict between sin and grace.
Thomas Oden
After Modernity, What? (1990)
Go back to pre-modernity, that's what. A once-liberal theologian outlines his
pilgrimage back to the historical faith, analyzing the collapse of "modern
thought" and giving his own way of being postmodern.
George Orwell
1984 (1944)
The novel that alerted our imaginations to the encroachment of totalitarianism.
J. I. Packer
Knowing God (1973)
A wise book that has helped thousands to understand what it means to know God,
through the revelation of His Word.
Walker Percy
Lost in the Cosmos (1983)
This combination of short stories, theoretical essays, and a mock self-help
quiz is both an offbeat Christian apologetic and a devastating satire of America's real
religion, pop psychology.
John Piper
The Pleasures of God (1992)
One of many excellent books by one of today's accessible but profound theological
writers.
Richard Pipes
The Russian Revolution (1995)
Scholarly but readable account of Lenin's takeover.
Irina
Ratushinskaya
Grey Is the Color of Hope (1988)
Wrenching and inspiring poetry from a Christian woman imprisoned for her faith
in a Communist gulag.
Hans
Rookmaaker
Modern Art and the Death of a Culture
(1970)
This friend of Francis Schaeffer showed evangelicals how to read art as a
manifestation of the worldview of the artist and his times.
Dorothy
Sayers
The Mind of the Maker (1941)
Dorothy Sayers was an imaginative writer and a scholar who showed how human
creativity has its origins in nothing less than the Triune God.
Edith
Schaeffer
The Art of Life (1987)
The wife of Francis Schaeffer offers wisdom for living ordinary life--in the home,
the family, and the day-to-day routine-in a beautiful, God-honoring way.
Francis
Schaeffer
The God Who Is There (1968)
Schaeffer taught evangelicals to become engaged with culture, art, and the
world of ideas.
Herbert
Schlossberg
Idols for Destruction (1983)
Overarching critique of American life that touched all the bases.
Michael
Shaara
Killer Angels (1974)
A pioneering historical novel, taking us inside the contestants at the Battle
of Gettysburg.
William
Shirer
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
(1960)
A history of the major cultural cataclysm of the century, to be studied lest it
happen again.
James W. Sire
The Universe Next Door (1976)
A classic explanation of the Christian worldview and its competitors.
Alexander
Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago (1974)
Solzhenitsyn documented and described the evils of communism in a powerful and
evocative style.
Thomas Sowell
Race and Culture (1994)
A black conservative takes on liberal assumptions.
R. C. Sproul
The Holiness of God (1985)
An unforgettable treatment of a quality of God that has been in the 20th
century too often ignored.
John
Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
Yes, it comes out of Depression-era socialism, but its portrayal of poor but
noble Okies is remarkable, and the way it uses biblical symbolism in a
realistic narrative stands the test of time.
Shelby Steele
A Dream Deferred (1998)
A black intellectual on how affirmative action impedes racial progress.
John R. W.
Stott
Basic Christianity (1971)
Many new converts got their first introduction to theology from this succinct
but profound overview of Christian doctrine.
William
Strunk & E. B. White
The Elements of Style (1959)
Succinctly states the moral excellence of not wasting or misusing words.
Corrie ten
Boom
The Hiding
Place (1983)
The autobiographical account of a woman whose Christian faith led her to
imprisonment in a concentration camp for helping Jews.
J. R. R.
Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings (1954-1956)
This Oxford
professor wrote the century's grandest fantasy epic, a staggering work of
self-contained imagination.
Arnold J. Toynbee
A Study of History (1945-1961)
He examined the world's major civilizations through history, traced how they
rise, and showed that the Aztecs and the Romans look a lot like us.
A. W. Tozer
The Pursuit of God (1949)
Evangelicals do have a legacy of spiritual depth.
Barbara
Tuchman
The Guns of August (1962)
Account of World War I's beginning that is a lesson to professors on how to
write readable history.
Cornelius Van
Til
The Defense of the Faith (1955)
Although his attention to "presuppositions" rather than
"evidence" in Christian apologetics continues to spark debates, Van
Til remains the father of worldview criticism.
Walter
Wangerin Jr.
The Book of the Dun Cow (1978)
A beast fable, an allegory, a Christian fantasy, written in poetic prose.
Evelyn Waugh
Brideshead Revisited (1945)
Life at Cambridge
and in the upper classes, from an acerbic satirist of modern life who happened
to be a Christian.
Booker T.
Washington
Up From Slavery (1901)
A freed slave laid out a strategy for fighting poverty based on faith, hard
work, and character.
Richard M.
Weaver
Ideas Have Consequences (1947)
This catalyst of the conservative revival provided a still-relevant critique of
modernist thinking and its catastrophic results.
David Wells
No
Place
for Truth (1993)
An evangelical scholar's indictment of the theological shallowness of much of
American Christianity.
Laura Ingalls
Wilder
Little House on the Prairie (1935)
Her vivid recollections of life on the frontier have become children's classics
that are just as mesmerizing for adults.
Charles
Williams
The Descent into Hell (1937)
C. S. Lewis's friend was an odd, original, yet in the final analysis, orthodox
theologian, who worked out his ideas in supernatural thrillers.
Tom Wolfe
Radical Chic and Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers
(1970)
This pioneer of the "new journalism"-writing about facts with
fictional techniques-here answers the questions of why rich people give so much
money to anti-capitalists and why the left is fashionable.
Thanks.
„Und das Wort wurde Fleisch und wohnte unter
uns; und wir sahen seine Herrlichkeit, eine
Herrlichkeit als des Eingeborenen vom Vater,
voller Gnade und Wahrheit.“ Johannes 1:1, 14
Wir wünschen euch ein gesegnete
Weihnachtsfest!
Mike Abendroth