10 Books
A question came up in a discussion over the weekend and I thought I would post here. Other than standard answers such as the Bible, what books have influenced your thinking the most? What books do you remember, cite or refer back to. Here is my list.
Paul Johnson, Modern Times
A world history from 1920-1980. – Gave me some real insight to this period and some of its figures from a unique point of view. For example that Gandhi, while his goals were praiseworthy, his action actually caused more problems, and led to more deaths.
Paul Holland, Political Pilgrims
A history of the Left’s attraction to Communist regimes such as the USSR, China, and Cuba, and how they could visit and come back with such glowing reports of “worker paradise” when the reality was so different, while at the same time being so critical of the US. (Mona Charen’s recent book “Useful Idiots” is a more popular treatment of this subject, which documents how many of this people changed their views once the USSR fell, and with examples of similar behavior up to the beginning of the war on terror.)
Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel of Solentiname,
A record of a small Bible study group in Solentiname, Nicaragua. Such groups were an important part of the liberation theology movement. Cardenal was prominent in both Liberation theology and a member of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua during the 1980s. – It was a real eye opener on the true nature of liberation theology
Will and Ariel Durrant, The Story of Civilization Vol 1-11
A history of the world. Vol 1 covers pre history to 333 BC in Europe and the rest of the world to modern times (then 1930s) Volume 2-11 take European and later Islamic society up to 1815. Hard to summarize the value of this work as it brought clarity and insight to a whole range of areas and called into question a whole range of common believe such as the so called “Dark Ages.”
David Alan Black, Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek
A study of Linguistics that gives insights into the working of language with application well beyond the title.
Kegley and Kegley, Introduction to Logic.
This was my first textbook on logic and one I have returned to frequently over the years.
F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom,
An analysis and historical examination (written during WWII) of why centralized planning and control, as found in totalitarian states such as Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Communist states such as the USSR not only fail, but are doomed to fail and why market based solutions based on competition are better. This had been important in evaluating current political discussion where Democrats have pushed for more centralized planning and control, while Republicans have pushed for Market based solutions and increased competitions.
The following three books were very important for me in revealing the shallowness of most of the arguments advanced by skeptics and using a scholarly approach to the Bible.
David Alan Black & David S Dockery (editors) New Testament Criticism and & Interpretation.
19 essays by scholars on various aspects described by the title.
Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels
A summarized version of the 6 Volume Gospel Perspectives which was published from 1980 to 1986 and which addressed the issue of reliability from a technical and scholarly level.
Norman Geisler, Inerrancy
14 scholarly articles on Inerrancy. While the main focus was inerrancy, it as a result address much deeper issues such as the adequacy of language, and the nature of inspiration, hermeneutics.
