On books

We promised when we started this blog that there would also be some book recommendations. So far, we haven’t done so well in that department. Not that we’re not reading—we’re doing plenty of that. It has been lots of fun rediscovering the variety of books in the library, walking up and down shelves picking up books that look interesting. And what’s even better, we get to take them home.

That, combined with lots of online book reservations from all across the county, lead to us checking out more books than we are able to read. And that doesn’t even include the ones we own.

Books have also been in the news lately as well (or at least in the blogs. We have Dr. Mitchell’s thoughts on reading in homeschooling, discussions on how to read a book, a theory behind the decline of reading lists in schools, and even Osama bin Ladin’s recommended reading (although I don’t see that going as a blurb on the back of a book anytime soon).

Speaking of reading lists, a few months back I decided that I wanted to read a good biography of each of the Presidents. This project isn’t really underway yet, but it has been fascinating trying to determine what constitutes a “good” biography. Some presidents—Washington and Lincoln for example—have a huge variety of biographies to choose from. Others—William Henry Harrison or Millard Filmore come to mind (actually they didn’t, I had to look at my list again)—are much harder to find anything substantial on. Nixon is going to be especially hard. And I think it’s still too early for good biographies of Bush II or Obama.

So what have I been reading? Below is a list of some of the highlights.

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, by Joseph Ellis. Necessary reading for anyone who argues that the Founding Fathers believed _______. Some probably did. Others most certainly didn’t. They fought, they argued, and in the case of Hamilton and Burr, they shot at each other. Friendships were broken. Egos squelched. Yet through it all, they were able to found a new nation.





Inkworld trilogy, by Cornelia Funke. I’ve heard that this is in Germany what Harry Potter is in England. A truly original concept for a fantasy story, not shying away from concepts such as free will, authorship, fate, and good/evil. Each book gets slow a bit in the middle, but the plot is truly engaging.


Jefferson’s War and Jefferson’s Vendetta, by Joseph Wheelan. These are two of those books that I randomly pulled off the shelf at the library. The first is on the Barbary war, and the second is on the treason trail of Aaron Burr. It’s always fascinating to read a good analysis of some rather obscure point of history, especially when the author makes it interesting. As with Founding Brothers, we see the political and personal disagreements among the founders at play, this time in the Jefferson administration. Jefferson’s War is, in my opinion, the better of the two, but that is merely because Jefferson’s Vendetta gets bogged down at times.


Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschool Movement, by Mitchell Stevens. A history of the homeschool movement in America from an outsider. Stevens premises his book on the believer/inclusive split in homeschoolers that took place quite early in the movement, and how the two groups approach education, life, and each other (as well as how they arrange their chairs, a point he noticed early on).





Political Polytheism, by Gary North. North, the son-in-law of R.J. Rushdoony, is a postmillennial theocrat who believes that only Trinitarian Christians in good standing with their church should have citizenship privileges, that Old Testament case law should be applied in American courts, and that the American founding was a Masonic conspiracy to break covenant with God. Given his premises, many of his conclusions are logically sound. His premises, however, are in error. Further treatment of this 700+ page book would deserve its own blog post.


Shop Class as Soulcraft, by Matthew Crawford. Matthew Crawford, with a PhD in political theory, quit his job directing a Washington DC think-tank to…open his own small motorcycle repair shop. He writes about the benefits of working with your hands, community, and the importance and proper use of an education.





St. Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox by G.K. Chesterton. My new favorite book (at least for now). A biography, a social commentary, and a defense of Aquinas, all wrapped into one. Chesterton uses Aquinas to defend reason in an age of irrationality.

Write These Laws On Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling, by Robert Kunzman. A somewhat updated, although not to the same quality, version of Mitchell’s book. Kunzmen embeds himself into six conservative Christian homeschool families, and writes about his experiences. He is largely friendly to homeschoolers, but convinced that there isn’t enough regulation to ensure that it works. When his opinion doesn’t get in the way, his book is quite interesting.