Book Reviews

Facing Up, A Remarkable Journey to the Summit of Mt Everest by Bear Grylls, London: Macmillan, 2000, 289 pp. Isn’t that the guy from tv? I didn’t know he wrote books. And I heard that he was a Christian. So I bought a copy. My used copy came signed by Bear himself, but it is written

The Life-Giving Parent, Giving Your Child a life worth living for Christ by Clay & Sally Clarkson, Tyndale Momentum, 2018, 232 pp. In The Life-Giving Parent, Clay and Sally Clarkson present some beneficial and Biblical ideas for raising children in a Christian home. I liked their description of “family planning” as not “about if or when

The Truth About Christian Science, The Founder and the Faith by James H. Snowden, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1921, 313 pp. This is really a fantastic book. I came into it knowing nothing about Christian Science except that Mary Eddy Baker was its founder. The Truth About Christian Science informed me considerably about this religion/cult and

Ecclesia Lutherana: A Brief Survey of the Evangelical Lutheran Church by Joseph A. Seiss, Philadelphia: Canton Press of Sherman & Co., 1868, 276 pp. [The author Joseph A. Seiss (1823 – 1904) was an American Lutheran minister. Oddly for a Lutheran, he was a dispensationalist. Even more strangely for a Christian he wrote a book

The Presbyterian Standards: An Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms by Francis R. Beattie, Richmond, VA: The Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1896, 431 pp. [While Francis R. Beattie (1848–1906) was at the time of publishing this book an ordained minister in the PCUS (Southern) and a professor at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary,

United Presbyterianism by William J. Reid, Pittsburgh: United Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1881, 192 pages. [The copy I own was once owned by L. J. Graham of New Concord, OH who signed his name and the year 1891 in the book. He was the president of Muskingum College.] William J. Reid’s United Presbyterianism, published in 1881, comes

Presbyterians, A Popular Narrative of Their Origin, Progress, Doctrines, and Achievements by Geo. P. Hays, New York: J. A. Hill & Co, 1892, 544 pp. [The author George Pierce Hays (1838 – 1897) was the 2nd president of Washington and Jefferson College and later a minister of Presbyterian churches in Denver, Cincinnati, and Kansas City.

William Chalmers Burns, Robert Murray McCheyne, Biographical Sketches by James Alexander Stewart, Asheville, NC: Revival Literature, undated, 106 pp. This book is a combined edition of William Chalmers Burns, A Man With Passion for Souls and Robert Murray McCheyne, Scholar — Saint, Seer – Soulwinner each apparently published in 1963. In recent years I’ve read a number

The People’s History of Presbyterianism in All Ages by Robert P. Kerr, Richmond, VA: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1888, Fourth Edition 1894, 284 pp. [A short bio of the author, Robert Pollock Kerr (1850-1923) can be found in History of William Jewel College: Liberty, Clay Country, Missouri, 1893,  p. 155 – 157. From this it

Attack on Everest by Hugh Ruttledge, New York: Robert M. McBride & Company, 1935, 339 pages. Hugh Ruttledge’s Attack on Everest is an account of the 1933 British expedition to Mt. Everest, only the fourth ever expedition to the world’s tallest mountain. Those knowledgeable about the history of climbing will realize that this books precedes

The Gulag Archipelago, An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Aleksandr Solzenhenitsyn, 1973, New York: Harper Perennial, Abridged 2002, 472 pp. The Gulag Archipelago is one of those “must read” books that I fully agree must be read. As a popular book it certainly has been reviewed thousands of times before. What then can a reviewer say that