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Unseen Skies
If you have been following this column for a while, you know I love the very idea of “forthcoming books”; you may recall my account of learning, for the...

Past and Future Hopes
A year ago at this time, I devoted a column to “Hopes and Wishes for 2024”—mostly hopes, as it turned out, but with a handful of wishes. (I was...
A Year of Reading: 2024
A year ago, after a series of annual lists that grew longer and longer, I changed the format of this feature, making it much more manageable in size and...
Finding Order in the Pieces
In October of 2023, I wrote a column here about how I came to be doing jigsaw puzzles—every day!—with my wife, Wendy, something I could never have imagined. We...

Immigration Realities
If you have followed this column for a while, you will have gathered that there are a lot of books in our house. Even so, should you ever visit,...
Book Recommendations for Christmas
October is almost gone (we’ve had a lovely fall season here in Wheaton), and it’s time—if you haven’t done so already—to start thinking about Christmas gifts. If you are...
Writing Mothers
In April of this year, I wrote about Nadya Williams’s Cultural Christians in the Early Church: A Historical and Practical Introduction to Christians in the Greco-Roman World, published near...
Do Protestants Believe in Present-Day Miracles?
Recently Christianity Today published a substantial review of Carlos Eire’s fascinating book They Flew: A History of the Impossible. Eire’s book examines seemingly “impossible” accounts of miraculous events—levitation, witchcraft,...
In Search of Lost Time
You know by now, I think, that books are (almost) everywhere in our big old house. But there are a lot of magazines too: new ones, yes, and old...
The Myths of the Sixties
The Democratic National Convention will be held in Chicago this year, from August 19–24. Perhaps you are already bracing yourself, as I am, for an onslaught of pieces looking...
Notes on Walking
Time for another report on walking with my wife Wendy in the neighborhoods near our house, plus notes on a couple of new walking-related books. I’ll start with the...
Children’s Books for Adults
Early this month, I had a doctor’s appointment in Glen Ellyn, the suburb just to the east of Wheaton. The doctor I was seeing (for the first time) was...
Old Men Shall Dream Dreams
At the beginning of July in 1994, I arrived in Wheaton, Illinois. Wendy and the three of our kids who were still at home came later in the summer....
Ruminations on the Early Church
Two recent books cry out to be reviewed together: Nadya Williams’s Cultural Christians in the Early Church: A Historical and Practical Introduction to Christians in the Greco-Roman World; and...
When the Dodgers Moved to Los Angeles
If you are even a merely casual fan of Major League Baseball—if you aren’t among those we keep hearing about, who have lost interest entirely, or one of the...