Lift Up Your Hearts!

Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds by Brandon Sanderson (Tor Books, 2018), containing

Legion (2012)
Legion: Skin Deep (2014)
Lies of the Beholder (2018)

My grandson, with some assistance from my brother, has been pushing me to read Brandon Sanderson. I've been intimidated. Me, intimidated by books? I read voraciously, averaging five and a half books each month since I began keeping score in 2010. I read fiction and non-fiction, short books and long books, books for all ages—though not of all genres: you'll find little or no Romance or Horror on my lists, and I loathe Coming of Age novels. But Sanderson doesn't appear to fall into any of the hated genres; why am I intimidated?

It's probably the commitment involved. They want me to read the Mistborn series: six books, running between five and six hundred pages each. Really, I could do it. It's less than two months' worth of reading; the issue is what books would I not be reading in that time? (That's two months' worth of reading for me; my grandsons seem to be able to polish off these books in a day or two.)

So I started small, with The Rithmatist. Fewer pages, and just one book. By the time I was finished, I was anxious to read the sequel, but since that hasn't yet been written, I'm safe for a while. I won't go through the reasons getting Mistborn has eluded me at the library, but its time will come. Instead, the last time I was browsing the library shelves I found Legion. It's actually three books, but all together only 352 pages, so not intimidating at all.

Not intimidating, but gripping. The premise—a man of unparalleled genius whose mind keeps him from descending into madness through the creation of hallucinatory people who contain and control his knowledge—is unique as far as I know. I see an opportunity here for a very interesting TV detective series.

Sanderson calls these his "most personal" stories. I think he would be a fascinating person to know.

An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis (Cambridge University Press, 1961)

This book was not written for me; the author himself said so: I am writing about literary practice and experience from within, for I claim to be a literary person myself and I address other literary people. (p. 130)

I am a literate person. I read, and what's more I write, but any of my English teachers could assure you that I've never been a literary person. I've always loved reading books, but loathed analyzing them—at least in the way English teachers require. And most of the examples Lewis discusses here go 'way over my head.

Nonetheless, I found this to be a valuable book, largely because I don't think Lewis could discuss buttered toast without touching on interesting subjects.

The first time I read An Experiment in Criticism (unfathomable years ago), I marked interesting passages with blue highlighting. (That's how I know it was a very long time ago; it has been decades since I gave up desecrating the pages of a book with anything but light pencil.) This time I used my now-traditional sticky notes. They are far fewer, not because the highlighted passages are no longer interesting to me, but because I didn't want to type them up for the review. But I present a few:

The first demand any work of any art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. (There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out.) (p. 19)

Without some degree of realism in content—a degree proportional to the reader's intelligence—no deception will occur at all. No one can deceive you unless he makes you think he is telling the truth. The unblushingly romantic has far less power to deceive than the apparently realistic. Admitted fantasy is precisely the kind of literature which never deceives at all. Children are not deceived by fairy-tales; they are often and gravely deceived by school-stories. Adults are not deceived by science-fiction; they can be deceived by the stories in the women's magazines. None of us are deceived by the Odyssey, the Kalevala, Beowulf, or Malory. The real danger lurks in sober-faced novels where all appears to be very probable but all is in fact contrived to put across some social or ethical or religious or anti-religious "comment on life." For some at least of such comments must be false. To be sure, no novel will deceive the best type of reader. He never mistakes art either for life or for philosophy. He can enter, while he reads, into each author's point of view without either accepting or rejecting it, suspending when necessary his disbelief and (which is harder) his belief. (pp. 67-68)

The danger of realistic fiction deserves a post of its own; I believe it has profound implications for our mass-media-drenched society. Let's just say I'm feeling better about female cops who manage to run down bad guys while wearing heels, and computer specialists who can hack into the Pentagon faster than my computer can boot.

We must not be deceived by the contemporary practice of sorting books out according to the "age-groups" for which they are supposed to be appropriate. That work is done by people who are not very curious about the real nature of literature nor very well acquainted with its history. It is a rough rule of thumb for the convenience of schoolteachers, librarians, and the publicity departments in publishers' offices. Even as such it is very fallible. Instances that contradict it (in both directions) occur daily. (p. 71)

When my pupils have talked to me about Tragedy (they have talked much less often uncompelled, about tragedies), I have sometimes discovered a belief that it is valuable, is worth witnessing or reading, chiefly because it communicates something called the tragic "view" or "sense" or "philosophy" of "life." This content is variously described, but in the most widely diffused version it seems to consist of two propositions: (1) That great miseries result from a flaw in the principle sufferer. (2) That these miseries, pushed to the extreme, reveal to us a certain splendour in man, or even in the universe. Though the anguish is great, it is at least not sordid, meaningless, or merely depressing.

No one denies that miseries with such a cause and such a close can occur in real life. But if tragedy is taken as a comment on life in the sense that we are meant to conclude from it "This is the typical or usual, or ultimate, form of human misery," then tragedy becomes wishful moonshine. Flaws in character do cause suffering; but bombs and bayonets, cancer and polio, dictators and roadhogs, fluctuations in the value of money or in employment, and mere meaningless coincidence, cause a great deal more. Tribulation falls on the integrated and well adjusted and prudent as readily as on anyone else. Nor do real miseries often end with a curtain and a roll of drums "in calm of mind, all passion spent." The dying seldom make magnificent last speeches. And we who watch them die do not, I think, behave very like the minor characters in a tragic death-scene. For unfortunately the play is not over. We have no exeunt omnes. The real story does not end: it proceeds to ringing up undertakers, paying bills, getting death certificates, finding and proving a will, answering letters of condolence. There is no grandeur and no finality. Real sorrow ends neither with a bang nor a whimper. Sometimes, after a spiritual journey like Dante’s, down to the centre and then, terrace by terrace, up the mountain of accepted pain, it may rise into peace—but a peace hardly less severe than itself. Sometimes it remains for life, a puddle in the mind which grows always wider, shallower, and more unwholesome. Sometimes it just peters out, as other moods do. One of these alternatives has grandeur, but not tragic grandeur. The other two—ugly, slow, bathetic, unimpressive—would be of no use at all to a dramatist. The tragedian dare not present the totality of suffering as it usually is in its uncouth mixture of agony with littleness, all the indignities and (save for pity) the uninterestingness, of grief. It would ruin his play. It would be merely dull and depressing. He selects from the reality just what his art needs; and what it needs is the exceptional. Conversely, to approach anyone in real sorrow with these ideas about tragic grandeur ... would be worse than imbecile: it would be odious. (pp 77-79)

As I have said, more than once:  Romantic tragedy makes great opera, but a lousy life. And the point about the artist extracting only the exceptional from reality because that's what his art needs? C. S. Lewis, prophet of the evening news!

In good reading there ought to be no "problem of belief." I read Lucretius and Dante at a time when (by and large) I agreed with Lucretius. I have read them since I came (by and large) to agree with Dante. I cannot find that this has much altered my experience, or at all altered my evaluation, of either. A true lover of literature should be in one way like an honest examiner, who is prepared to give the highest marks to the telling, felicitous and well-documented exposition of views he dissents from or even abominates. (p. 86)

No poem will give up its secret to a reader who enters it regarding the poet as a potential deceiver, and determined not to be taken in. We must risk being taken in, if we are to get anything. The best safeguard against bad literature is a full experience of good; just as a real and affectionate acquaintance with honest people gives a better protection against rogues than a habitual distrust of everyone. (p. 94, emphasis mine)

At some schools children are taught to write out poetry they have learned for repetition not according to the lines but in "speech-groups." The purpose is to cure them of what is called "sing-song." This seems a very short-sighted policy. If these children are going to be lovers of poetry when they grow up, sing-song will cure itself in due time, and if they are not it doesn't matter. In childhood sing-song is not a defect. It is simply the first form of rhythmical sensibility; crude itself, but a good symptom not a bad one. This metronomic regularity, this sway of the whole body to the metre simply as metre, is the basis which makes possible all later variations and subtleties. For there are no variations except for those who know a norm, and no subtleties for those who have not grasped the obvious. Again, it is possible that those who are now young have met vers libre too early in life. When this is real poetry, its aural effects are of extreme delicacy and demand for their appreciation an ear long trained on metrical poetry. Those who think they can receive vers libre without a metrical training are, I submit, deceiving themselves; trying to run before they can walk. (p. 103)

If we have to choose, it is always better to read Chaucer again than to read a new criticism of him. (p. 124)

To take a man up very sharp, to demand sternly that he shall explain himself, to dodge to and fro with your questions, to pounce on every apparent inconsistency, may be a good way of exposing a false witness or a malingerer. Unfortunately, it is also the way of making sure that if a shy or tongue-tied man has a true and difficult tale to tell you will never learn it. (p. 128, emphasis mine)

None of these quotations gives you a proper feel for the book, which is about good and bad ways of reading, and judging a book by the kind of reading it invites. Lewis's ideas are interesting and often compelling, but what I really wish is that somebody better than I would take these ideas and apply them to recent generations, who have by and large given up reading of any sort in favor of other media.

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger (Atria, 2013)

My son-in-law has had remarkable success in recommending fiction books for me. This was one of his few failures. Despite its New York Times bestseller status, its awards, and the glowing reviews, it's not my kind of book. Yes, it's a mystery, and that is its best quality. I don't hold anything against it just because I figured out whodunit before it was revealed. I rather enjoy feeling clever.

However, it is a coming-of-age story, and that genre sits on the bottom of my rankings, along with Horror and Romance. It's much to the credit of The Silent Swan that I esteem that book so highly, given that it could also be called a coming-of-age story. A line from my review of that book is just as applicable here: If this story provides an accurate description of what goes on in a teenage boy's mind whenever he sees a woman ... let's just say I'm feeling a lot better about burqas. And a lot worse about teenage boys.

But my dislike of the genre is not particularly about sex; it's more the self-centered focus of what's going on in the protagonist's mind and heart. It's not just teenage boys whose thoughts are such cesspools of selfishness, envy, anger, pettiness, greed, and lust. God knows (and I use that phrase in all reverence) I don't need to look any further than my own heart to find all that. But I don't enjoy seeing it all spread out before me as on an autopsy table—and more often than not presented as something normal and therefore nothing to be ashamed of. More to the point, I don't think it's good for me to see it like that.

Plus, having grown up in a family where we never, ever used bad language, and in a time where women did not swear and men did not swear in front of women—and those conventions kept a tight rein on the media—I just can't get used to it. It is physically painful to me to hear such language, and reading it isn't much better. (There are some exceptions.) I do not usually seek out books that hurt.

Ordinary Grace is far from the worst of offenders in either subject or language. In fact, it's quite mild, and somewhat redeemed by the mystery. The only reason I'm bothering with this negative review is to figure out (and help gift-givers to figure out) what works for me in a book, and what does not. Even at my age I'm still a mystery to myself!

In fact, I rather suspect that my book-loving sister-in-law would enjoy Ordinary Grace very much. I think I can find it a good home. (Update: I was right, and I was wrong. I must find another good home, because she has already read Ordinary Grace, and yes, she did enjoy it.)

Reflections on the Psalms by C. S. Lewis (Harcourt Brace & Company, first published 1958)

C. S. Lewis fan though I am, I was not prepared for how much I would enjoy this book. Not only does Lewis have wise advice for understanding and getting the most out of even the problematic psalms, but the book is filled as well with general wisdom.

Lewis's take on the Psalms has inspired me to read through them again before starting over from Genesis. It is very helpful to learn more about the culture in which they were written, and about poetry as well. He deals with not only what they might have meant to the writers of these poems, but also with why it's legitimate to view them as prophecy and with a Christian interpretation. A Christian can hardly insist that the Psalms only mean what the writers means, since Jesus freely interpreted them his own way. Nor does Lewis shy away from the parts that are shockingly offensive, such as the last verse of Psalm 137 ("Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!"), which Don McLean wisely left out of his simple, beautiful, and haunting Babylon.

I think it is important to make a distinction: between the conviction that one is in the right and the conviction that one is “righteous,” is a good man. Since none of us is righteous, the second conviction is always a delusion. But any of us may be, probably all of us at one time or another are, in the right about some particular issue. What is more, the worse man may be in the right against the better man. Their general characters have nothing to do with it. The question whether the disputed pencil belongs to Tommy or Charles is quite distinct from the question which is the nicer little boy, and the parents who allowed the one to influence their decision about the other would be very unfair. (It would be still worse if they said Tommy ought to let Charles have the pencil whether it belonged to him or not, because this would show he had a nice disposition. That may be true, but it is an untimely truth. An exhortation to charity should not come as rider to a refusal of justice. It is likely to give Tommy a lifelong conviction that charity is a sanctimonious dodge for condoning theft and whitewashing favouritism.) We need therefore by no means assume that the Psalmists are deceived or lying when they assert that, as against their particular enemies at some particular moment, they are completely in the right. Their voices while they say so may grate harshly on our ear and suggest to us that they are unamiable people. But that is another matter. And to be wronged does not commonly make people amiable. (pp 17-18)

I made a similar point in A Debt Is a Debt Is a Debt.

It seems that there is a general rule in the moral universe which may be formulated “The higher, the more in danger”. The “average sensual man” who is sometimes unfaithful to his wife, sometimes tipsy, always a little selfish, now and then (within the law) a trifle sharp in his deals, is certainly, by ordinary standards, a “lower” type than the man whose soul is filled with some great Cause, to which he will subordinate his appetites, his fortune, and even his safety. But it is out of the second man that something really fiendish can be made; an Inquisitor, a Member of the Committee of Public Safety. It is great men, potential saints, not little men, who become merciless fanatics. Those who are readiest to die for a cause may easily become those who are readiest to kill for it. (p 28)

If I am never tempted, and cannot even imagine myself being tempted, to gamble, this does not mean that I am better than those who are. The timidity and pessimism which exempt me from that temptation themselves tempt me to draw back from those risks and adventures which every man ought to take. (p 29)

There is a stage in a child’s life at which it cannot separate the religious from the merely festal character of Christmas or Easter. I have been told of a very small and very devout boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning a poem of his own composition which began “Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen”. This seems to me, for his age, both admirable poetry and admirable piety. But of course the time will soon come when such a child can no longer effortlessly and spontaneously enjoy that unity. He will become able to distinguish the spiritual from the ritual and festal aspect of Easter; chocolate eggs will no longer be sacramental. And once he has distinguished he must put one or the other first. If he puts the spiritual first he can still taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs; if he puts the eggs first they will soon be no more than any other sweetmeat. They have taken on an independent, and therefore a soon withering, life. (pp 48-49)

I am inclined to think a Christian would be wise to avoid, where he decently can, any meeting with people who are bullies, lascivious, cruel, dishonest, spiteful and so forth. Not because we are “too good” for them. In a sense because we are not good enough. We are not good enough to cope with all the temptations, nor clever enough to cope with all the problems, which an evening spent in such society produces. The temptation is to condone, to connive at; by our words, looks and laughter, to “consent”. The temptation was never greater than now when we are all (and very rightly) so afraid of priggery or “smugness”. And of course, even if we do not seek them out, we shall constantly be in such company whether we wish it or not. This is the real and unavoidable difficulty. We shall hear vile stories told as funny; not merely licentious stories but (to me far more serious and less noticed) stories which the teller could not be telling unless he was betraying someone’s confidence. We shall hear infamous detraction of the absent, often disguised as pity or humour. Things we hold sacred will be mocked. Cruelty will be slyly advocated by the assumption that its only opposite is “sentimentality”. The very presuppositions of any possible good life—all disinterested motives, all heroism, all genuine forgiveness—will be, not explicitly denied (for then the matter could be discussed), but assumed to be phantasmal, idiotic, believed in only by children. What is one to do? For on the one hand, quite certainly, there is a degree of unprotesting participation in such talk which is very bad. We are strengthening the hands of the enemy. We are encouraging him to believe that “those Christians”, once you get them off their guard and round a dinner table, really think and feel exactly as he does. By implication we are denying our Master; behaving as if we “knew not the Man”. On the other hand is one to show that, like Queen Victoria, one is “not amused”? Is one to be contentious, interrupting the flow of conversation at every moment with “I don’t agree, I don’t agree”? Or rise and go away? But by these courses we may also confirm some of their worst suspicions of “those Christians”. We are just the sort of ill-mannered prigs they always said. Silence is a good refuge. People will not notice it nearly so easily as we tend to suppose. And (better still) few of us enjoy it as we might be in danger of enjoying more forcible methods. Disagreement can, I think, sometimes be expressed without the appearance of priggery, if it is done argumentatively not dictatorially; support will often come from some most unlikely member of the party, or from more than one, till we discover that those who were silently dissentient were actually a majority. A discussion of real interest may follow. Of course the right side may be defeated in it. That matters very much less than I used to think. The very man who has argued you down will sometimes be found, years later, to have been influenced by what you said. There comes of course a degree of evil against which a protest will have to be made, however little chance it has of success. There are cheery agreements in cynicism or brutality which one must contract out of unambiguously. If it can’t be done without seeming priggish, then priggish we must seem. For what really matters is not seeming but being a prig. If we sufficiently dislike making the protest, if we are strongly tempted not to, we are unlikely to be priggish in reality. Those who positively enjoy, as they call it, “testifying” are in a different and more dangerous position. As for the mere seeming—well, though it is very bad to be a prig, there are social atmospheres so foul that in them it is almost an alarming symptom if a man has never been called one. Just in the same way, though pedantry is a folly and snobbery a vice, yet there are circles in which only a man indifferent to all accuracy will escape being called a pedant, and others where manners are so coarse, flashy and shameless that a man (whatever his social position) of any natural good taste will be called a snob. What makes this contact with wicked people so difficult is that to handle the situation successfully requires not merely good intentions, even with humility and courage thrown in; it may call for social and even intellectual talents which God has not given us. It is therefore not self-righteousness but mere prudence to avoid it when we can. (pp 71-74) [emphasis mine]

Of course this appreciation of, almost this sympathy with, creatures useless or hurtful or wholly irrelevant to man, is not our modern “kindness to animals”. That is a virtue most easily practised by those who have never, tired and hungry, had to work with animals for a bare living, and who inhabit a country where all dangerous wild beasts have been exterminated. The Jewish feeling, however, is vivid, fresh, and impartial. In Norse stories a pestilent creature such as a dragon tends to be conceived as the enemy not only of men but of gods. In classical stories, more disquietingly, it tends to be sent by a god for the destruction of men whom he has a grudge against. The Psalmist’s clear objective view—noting the lions and whales side by side with men and men’s cattle—is unusual. And I think it is certainly reached through the idea of God as Creator and sustainer of all. (pp 84-85)

The next several quotations are from the very helpful chapter entitled simply "Scripture."

The human qualities of the raw materials [of Scripture] show through. Naïvety, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing Psalms) wickedness are not removed. The total result is not “the Word of God” in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its overall message. (pp 109-110)

We might have expected, we may think we should have preferred, an unrefracted light giving us ultimate truth in systematic form—something we could have tabulated and memorised and relied on like the multiplication table. One can respect, and at moments envy, both the Fundamentalist’s view of the Bible and the Roman Catholic’s view of the Church. (p 112)

We may observe that the teaching of Our Lord Himself, in which there is no imperfection, is not given us in that cut-and-dried, fool-proof, systematic fashion we might have expected or desired. He wrote no book. We have only reported sayings, most of them uttered in answer to questions, shaped in some degree by their context. And when we have collected them all we cannot reduce them to a system. He preaches but He does not lecture. He uses paradox, proverb, exaggeration, parable, irony; even (I mean no irreverence) the “wisecrack”. He utters maxims which, like popular proverbs, if rigorously taken, may seem to contradict one another. His teaching therefore cannot be grasped by the intellect alone, cannot be “got up” as if it were a “subject”. If we try to do that with it, we shall find Him the most elusive of teachers. He hardly ever gave a straight answer to a straight question. He will not be, in the way we want, “pinned down”. The attempt is (again, I mean no irreverence) like trying to bottle a sunbeam. (pp 112-113)

Descending lower, we find a somewhat similar difficulty with St. Paul. I cannot be the only reader who has wondered why God, having given him so many gifts, withheld from him (what would to us seem so necessary for the first Christian theologian) that of lucidity and orderly exposition. (p 113)

It may be that what we should have liked would have been fatal to us if granted. It may be indispensable that Our Lord’s teaching, by that elusiveness ... should demand a response from the whole man, should make it so clear that there is no question of learning a subject but of steeping ourselves in a Personality, acquiring a new outlook and temper, breathing a new atmosphere, suffering Him, in His own way, to rebuild in us the defaced image of Himself. So in St. Paul. Perhaps the sort of works I should wish him to have written would have been useless. The crabbedness, the appearance of inconsequence and even of sophistry, the turbulent mixture of petty detail, personal complaint, practical advice, and lyrical rapture, finally let through what matters more than ideas ... Christ Himself operating in a man’s life. And in the same way, the value of the Old Testament may be dependent on what seems its imperfection. It may repel one use in order that we may be forced to use it in another way—to find the Word in it, not without repeated and leisurely reading nor withoutdiscriminations made by our conscience and our critical faculties, to re-live, while we read, the whole Jewish experience of God’s gradual and graded self-revelation, to feel the very contentions between the Word and the human material through which it works. For here again, it is our total response that has to be elicited. (pp 113-114)

Yet it is, perhaps, idle to speak here of spirit and letter. There is almost no “letter” in the words of Jesus. Taken by a literalist, He will always prove the most elusive of teachers. Systems cannot keep up with that darting illumination. No net less wide than a man’s whole heart, nor less fine of mesh than love, will hold the sacred Fish. (p 119)

Between different ages there is no impartial judge on earth, for no one stands outside the historical process; and of course no one is so completely enslaved to it as those who take our own age to be, not one more period, but a final and permanent platform from which we can see all other ages objectively. (p 121)

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C. S. Lewis (Harcourt Brace, 1956)

Of his re-telling of the Cupid and Psyche myth, C. S. Lewis said, "That book, which I consider far and away the best I have written, has been my one big failure both with the critics and with the public." The first time I read Till We Have Faces, I will admit, my sympathies were with those who did not appreciate it.

My ignorance of mythological history was a problem of course. Cupid I knew, but that was about it; how much less could I have told anything about their story as written in Apuleius's Metamorphoses, which was Lewis's inspiration. More than that, however, this novel is written in a different style from Lewis's other works; it is much like George MacDonald's Phantastes and Lilith. Lewis considered those two books among MacDonalds's best writing. I did not care much for either on first reading, but I love them now. 

What he does best is fantasy—fantasy that hovers between the allegorical and the mythopoeic. And this, in my opinion, he does better than any man. (From the preface to Lewis's George MacDonald: An Anthology.)

Till We Have Faces is just such a book, and Lewis crafted it very, very well. It's no wonder he was pleased with his efforts. My second reading found me loving it for what it is, instead of being frustrated that it is not at all like Lewis's other fiction. That this is not a genre everyone likes is evident from its initial reception, though Walter Hooper, in his mammoth compendium, C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide, reports that later years have been kinder.

The main charge against the novel when it first appeared was obscurity. "What is he trying to say?" However, in recent years there has been a serious re-assessment of the book, almost an about-face in criticism, and it is generally regarded, not only as Lewis's best book, but as a very great book.

I found Hooper's analysis to be helpful in understanding both the Cupid and Psyche myth and what Lewis made of it in Till We Have Faces.  It's also useful to have read the Biblical Book of Job. However, I think I would have enjoyed it nearly as much this time around simply because of having been schooled in the style by George MacDonald. Some people—our daughter for one—were blessed to love the book on first reading, but if you aren't, you may find it worthwhile to give it a second chance.

The Story of Christianity, Volume 2: The Reformation to the Present Day by Justo L. Gonzalez (HarperOne, 2010)

The second half of my Church History class, naturally, is using the second book in Gonzalez's series. Gonzalez is a liberal Cuban Methodist who favors Liberation Theology, and as I suspected from the end of the first volume (my review is here), his biases are frustratingly clear. That's okay though—it's an unavoidable failing of those who write books, especially history books—but it means I especially appreciate the class format that allows for questions, explanations, clarifications, and corrections by someone I trust. I take the fact that these books are recommended by someone whose biases must be radically different (Keith Mathison on the Ligonier Ministries site) as confirmation of Fr. Trey's opinion that these are among the best available, and most accessible, for the topic. I'm sure I could get a different perspective from the author who has Mathison's top recommendation, but Nick Needham's 2000 Years of Christ’s Power is four huge volumes and growing (at $20 each for Kindle), and I'm not sure I know I couldn't stomach that much of a Reformed Theology bias at the moment, so let's be realistic. I'll stick with Gonzalez and trust Fr. Trey to provide the necessary balance.

The trouble comes when the book tackles material that I actually know something about. It reminds me of my problem with media coverage: There have been many times in my life when I've seen reported (in mainstream, reputable media) stories of which I have known directly the intimate details, and every one of them has contained significant errors. Why I continue to believe news stories of which I otherwise know nothing is both amazing and shaming to me. Out of charity (and, to be honest, laziness/busy-ness) I won't say that what Gonzalez says is out-and-out wrong, but I will say that his words do not seem to be those of a historian who understands the times and the people of Colonial America, neither of the time and place in which I grew up. It makes me wonder about the accuracy of the other parts of his books.

Take just for one small example Gonzalez's statement, "At first, colonials were not even allowed to own land." The implication is that this is something unusual and shocking, as if those who came over had all been landowners back home. Plus, anyone who has done even minor genealogical research in early New England finds maps indicating the allocation of property among various families. Possibly this was not "ownership" as we understand it today, but very soon in history the people were subdividing, selling, trading, and willing it to their children—which sounds a lot like ownership to me. It's clear that Gonzalez has a particular story to tell, and is picking and choosing his facts accordingly.

Here are a few other random things that struck me, some important, some trivial. Italics indicates quotations from the book.

• Gonzalez's take on Salem in 1692 seems bizarre, and I'm not happy with the mocking tone in which he discusses people who believe that witches might be real. I speak as one whose innocent ancestors really suffered on the wrong end of the New England witch hunt—but who also believes that modern-day America takes the idea of witchcraft much too lightly.
• I know one must condense and condense to cover so many years in two volumes, but how on earth can you talk about Jonathan Edwards without mentioning "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"?
• By the 1950s, television had become a common household feature in most of the industrialized world. Really? My family, solidly middle class North Americans living in a prosperous New York town, did not own a television set until 1959. Gonzalez was born in Cuba, and stayed there at least long enough to graduate from seminary, so perhaps that's what life in the United States looked like to him as a child. But it does not square with what I know of the times.
• The very idea of liberalism implied freedom to think as one saw fit—as long as one did not fall into what liberals called superstition. I won't go into the shifting definitions of "liberal" and "conservative" that Gonzalez uses; it's complex, because the definitions have been as fluid in real life as they are in the book. But this statement struck me because it is my complaint about many who call themselves Liberals today: They insist that you can believe, say, and do anything you want—but that's only true as long as it conforms to their own standards.
• For [John Wesley], as for most of the church through the centuries, the center of worship was communion. This he took and expected his followers to take as frequently as possible, in the official services of the Church of England. Would any modern Methodist recognize this stance?
• Western Christians—particularly Protestants—may have underestimated the power of liturgy and tradition, that allowed [Orthodox] churches to continue their life, and even to flourish, in the most adverse of circumstances.
• Hegel demolishes mathematics: "What is rational exists, and what exists is rational." Take that, pi and the square root of 2!
• Gonzalez insists on framing everything in terms of white vs. non-white slavery and racism; at first it's annoying, then it's almost funny to see how far he can stretch it.
• He labels as "Fundamentalist" nearly everyone and everything not in line with liberal theology, especially anyone in the much-broader category known as Evangelical. Both Fundamentalists and Evangelicals should be insulted. :)
• Some ... even declared that Christians ought to be thankful for Adolf Hitler because he was halting the advance of socialism in Europe. Huh? What part of "National Socialism" don't they (or Gonzalez?) understand?
• Gonzalez manages to distort his coverage of the Vietnam War to imply that Richard Nixon was responsible for the Gulf of Tonkin misinformation, instead of Lyndon Johnson. He doesn't say that directly, but since Nixon is the only president mentioned in connection with the war, what other impression would a casual reader, ignorant of history, receive?
• Cool story from China that I didn't know: While many Chinese Christians capitulated before pressure and persecution, many did not. In some major cities where churches were closed and worship gatherings were prohibited, believers would make it a point to walk in front of the church at the times formerly appointed for worship, nod at one another, and keep on walking. 
• How can you write a book about the Church in the 20th and 21st centuries and leave out important factors like these?
  • Denominations such as the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and others that formed in reaction to what they viewed as heresy on the part of the "mainline" Presbyterian churches
  • The various Anglican churches formed in reaction to the same problem in the American Episcopal Church. I especially expected Gonzalez to mention this in his section on how the center of gravity of Christianity is shifting from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern, since many of the new Anglican churches are under the leadership of bishops in Africa. But he doesn't.
  • Abortion. One of the biggest issues dividing the modern Church, and the sole mention is in this statement: Under [Pope John Paul II's] leadership, Roman Catholicism throughout the world reaffirmed its condemnation of abortion, at a time when several traditionally Catholic nations were legalizing it—as if the massive opposition to abortion among Protestants didn't even exist.
  • Widespread campus Christian movements such as Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru), Intervarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF), and Asian Christian Fellowship; Wycliffe Bible Translators; international aid organizations such as World Vision, Compassion, and the International Justice Mission; and the many other Christian groups (the Gideons, Youth With A Mission, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Prison Fellowship—to name just a few) that do the work of the Church across denominational boundaries. A history of modern Christianity without them makes no sense.
• Gonzalez keeps talking about cultural and theological creativity, and that makes me nervous. Creativity is great in certain problem-solving situations, such as figuring out how best to express an idea in terms someone from a different cultural background can understand. But in theology? No thanks. It is the standard Bible translation task: fit the words to the truth, not the truth to the words.

That last point sums up the overall impression I have gained from these two books. For all the flaws of the pre-modern Church, its institutions, and its leaders, they were seeking to determine the truth about God and mankind's relationship with Him—to fit society to the truth. But as we neared modern times—perhaps around the time of the French Revolution, certainly by the 19th century—that changed, and efforts shifted to defining truth to fit society. The result? To my mind, a dust-and-ashes faith, with churches barely discernible from social clubs or secular service organizations. Chaotic and ugly philosophies that remind me of the chaos and ugliness that pass for "serious" art and music in our time. A faith hardly worth living for, unrecognizable by the martyrs who thought theirs worth dying for.

The Story of Christianity is a good introduction to church history, as long as one is aware that it is in large measure the truth, but it is not the whole truth, nor is it nothing but the truth. That accepted, I can recommend it highly. The last chapters were certainly depressing, but Gonzalez has hope for the future, and so do I—though perhaps not for the same reasons. Even though the Church abandons God with distressing frequency, God will never abandon His Church. There are always pockets of beauty in the ashes.

There's a passage in the book God's Smuggler where Brother Andrew, who smuggled Bibles into Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, describes his astonishment at the revival that took place in an old, dead, state-sponsored church in Bulgaria during one of his visits. Night after night the priest encouraged Andrew to preach the clearest, most vibrant Gospel-centered sermons anyone could want. They carried on that way for many days before the government finally stopped them—the priest had been such a reliable puppet they couldn't believe he didn't have some "good" motive for what he was doing. Andrew learned through that experience never to call a church dead. It is God's church, called by his name, and at any moment his Spirit may blow through and ignite fires of faith that will never be extinguished.

Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray by Sabine Hossenfelder (Basic Books, 2018)

This is my son-in-law's book, which I started perusing during our recent visit, to see if I might be interested. I found it both more interesting and slower to read than I had expected, so I'm borrowing it.

Sabine Hossenfelder, a German theoretical physicist, is worried about the state of her field. I'm not even going to try to summarize the book, which is an entertaining, if worrisome and frequently confusing, series of interviews with her colleagues. Let's just say that it is getting more and more difficult to test theories in particle physics by the time-honored means of experimentation in the real world; CERN's Large Hadron Collider has not provided the results many people were expecting and indeed counting on; and physicists are beginning to sound more like philosophers than scientists. 

I can't believe what this once-venerable profession has become. Theoretical physicists used to explain what was observed. Now they try to explain why they can't explain what was not observed. And they're not even good at that. (p 108)

In case I left you with the impression that [physicists] understand the theories we work with, I am sorry, we don't. (p 193)

Physics professor and popular science author Chad Orzel^* explains to her,

"As I understand it, there's a divide between the epistemological and the ontological camps. In the ontological camp the wave function is a real thing that exists and changes, and in the epistemological camp the wave function really just describes what we know—it's just quantifying our ignorance about the world. And you can put everybody on a continuum between these two interpretations." (p 135)

That sounds more like theologians than scientists.

Interviewed by the author, cosmologist and mathematician George Ellis looks at the big picture and doesn't like what he sees.

"There are physicists now saying we don't have to test their ideas because they are such good ideas ... They're saying—explicitly or implicitly—that they want to weaken the requirement that theories have to be tested. ... To my mind that's a step backwards by a thousand years. ... Science is having a difficult time out there, with all the talk about vaccination, climate change, GMO crops, nuclear energy, and all of that demonstrating skepticism about science. Theoretical physics is supposed to be the bedrock, the hardest rock, of the sciences, showing how it can be completely trusted. And if we start loosening the requirements over here, I think the implications are very serious for the others." (p 213)

Ellis continues:

"[A lot] of the reasons people are rejecting science is that scientists like Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss and others say that science proves God doesn't exist, and so on—which science cannot prove, but it results in a hostility against science, particularly in the United States. If you're in the Middle West USA, and your whole life and your community is built around the church, and a scientist comes along and says 'Get rid of this,' then they better have a very solidly based argument for what they say. But David Hume already said 250 years ago that science cannot either prove or disprove the existence of God. He was a very careful philosopher, and nothing has changed since then in this regard. These scientists are sloppy philosophers." (p 214)

What's wrong with physics research today? Here are a few problems: universities no longer provide an atmosphere conducive to creative thinking; research decisions—and possibly results—are driven by funding; and peer pressure is a major unholy influence.

Division of labor hasn't yet arrived in academia. While scientists specialize in research topics, they are expected to be all-rounders in terms of tasks: they have to teach, mentor, head labs, lead groups, sit on countless committees, speak at conferences, organize conferences, and—most important—bring in grants to keep the wheels turning. And all the while doing research and producing papers. (p 155)

The fraction of academics holding tenured faculty positions is on the decline, while an increasing percentage of researchers are employed on non-tenured and part-time contracts. From 1974 to 2014 the fraction of full-time tenured faculty in the United States decreased from 29 percent to 21.5 percent. At the same time, the share of part-time faculty increased from 24 percent to more than 40 percent. Surveys by the American Association of University Professors reveal that the lack of continuous support discourages long-term commitment and risk-taking when choosing research topics. (p 155)

Another consequence of the attempt to measure research impact is that it washes out national, regional, and institutional differences because measures for scientific success are largely the same everywhere. This means that academics all over the globe now march to the same drum. (p 156)

You have to get over the idea that all science can be done by postdocs on two-year fellowships. Tenure was institutionalized for a reason, and that reason is still valid. If that means fewer people, then so be it. You can either produce loads of papers that nobody will care about ten years from now, or you can be the seed of ideas that will still be talked about in a thousand years. Take your pick. Short-term funding means short-term thinking. (p 247)

It's well known that such short-term thinking has already been disastrous for American businesses, as the leaders of corporations focus their efforts on the next quarter's results at the expense of long-term success and the health of the company. Politicians focus on winning the next election instead of building relationships and working together to serve the needs of the country. It's hardly surprising that academic research is suffering a similar problem.

In 2010, [theoretical physicist Garret Lisi] wrote an article for Scientific American about his E8 theory. He calls it "an interesting experience" and remembers: "When it came out that the article would appear, Jaques Distler, this string theorist, got a bunch of people together, saying that they would boycott SciAm if they published my article. The editors considered this threat, and asked them to point out what in the article was incorrect. There is nothing incorrect in it. I spent a lot of time on it—there was absolutely nothing incorrect in it. Still, they held on to their threat. In the end, Scientific American decided to publish my article anyway. As far as I know, there weren't any repercussions." (p 166)

Science is sometimes called the "marketplace of ideas," but it differs from a market economy most importantly in the customers we cater to. In science, experts only cater to other experts and we judge each other's products. The final call is based on our success at explaining observation. But absent observational tests, the most important property a theory must have is to find approval by our peers.

For us theoreticians, peer approval more often than not decides whether our theories will ever be put to a test. Leaving aside a lucky few showered with prize money, in modern academia the fate of an idea depends on anonymous reviewers picked from among our colleagues. Without their approval, research funding is hard to come by. An unpopular theory whose development requires a greater commitment of time than a financially unsupported researcher can afford is likely to die quickly. (pp 195-196, emphasis mine)

You'd think that scientists, with the professional task of being objective, would protect their creative freedom and rebel against the need to please colleagues in order to secure continued funding. They don't. (p 197)

You're used to asking about conflicts of interest due to funding from industry. But you should also ask about conflicts of interest due to short-term grants or employment. Does the scientists' future funding depend on producing the results they just told you about? Likewise, you should ask if the scientists' chance of continuing their research depends on their work being popular among their colleagues. ... And finally ... you should also ask whether the scientists have taken steps to address their cognitive biases. Have they provided a balanced account of pros and cons or have they just advertised their own research? (p 248)

If you believe smart people work best when freely following their interests, then you should make sure they can freely follow their interests. (p 197)

That last quote is hardly limited in its application to academia. Teachers, writers, musicians, mothers ... anyone in a creative field knows the frustration of being required by their jobs to do unrelated work that hinders the creative process. We need to recognize that and free them to do what they do best...

...but maybe not completely. Sometimes the interruptions that keep us from our "proper work" can be the key that pushes our work forward. We all want unlimited time to be immersed in our own narrow interests, but that may not be for the best. Still, I think we can all agree that researchers and missionaries are spending too much time fundraising, teachers are spending too much time on cafeteria duty, and church musicians are spending too much time in meetings.

How patently absurd it must appear to someone who last had contact with physics in eleventh grade that people get paid for ideas like that. But then, I think, people also get paid for throwing balls through hoops. (p 192)

Finally, this quote about the problems of peer pressure and insular communities has much broader implications and needs to be emphasized:

Research shows we consider a statement more likely to be true the more often we hear of it. It's called "attention bias" or "mere exposure effect." ... This is the case even if a statement is repeated by the same person. (p 157)

Oh, one more thing: What does beauty, the subject of the subtitle, have to do with all this, since I've left out all references to it?  Just that, absent sufficient experimental data, theories are being promoted for their aesthetic properties.  Hossenfelder has nothing against aesthetics, but fears that physics is losing its grounding in physical reality in favor of philosophical speculations.

Studies in Words by C. S. Lewis (Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, first published 1960)

As I said previously, this is not a book aimed at the hoi polloi—those of us without a strong background in classical literature, Latin, Greek, French, and whatever else scholars were supposed to know in Lewis's day. It is a scholarly, not a popular book. I don't pretend I understood half of what he says, although I could have done better if I'd been more patient. No matter. I still learned a lot. I knew that ignorance of history causes us to misunderstand and falsely judge those who have gone before us; I know now that ignorance of the history of language does the same for the written word. Writing freezes an author's words at a moment in time, while the meaning of those words continues to evolve. Without knowing what a word meant to the author, we may get an entirely false picture of what he is saying.

So what should we do? I think, for ordinary readers, the best we can manage is to be aware that there might be a significant difference between what the author meant and what we think he has said. Simple awareness of the problem should give us the humilty to know that we might not know. And if the word, or phrase, or idea is something we think significant, we—unlike Lewis's original audience—have Google to assist us with a little philological research.

Here are just a few quotes, which ought to be clear enough despite lack of context. Bolded emphasis is mine.

Where the duller reader simply does not understand [a strange phrase], [the highly intelligent and sensitive reader] misunderstands—triumphantly, brilliantly. But it is not enough to make sense. We want to find the sense the author intended. "Brilliant" explanations of a passage often show that a clever, insufficiently informed man has found one more mare’s nest. The wise reader, far from boasting an ingenuity which will find sense in what looks like nonsense, will not accept even the most slightly strained meaning until he is quite sure that the history of the word does not permit something far simpler. (p. 3)

All my life the epithet bourgeois has been, in many contexts, a term of contempt, but not for the same reason. When I was a boy—a bourgeois boy—it was applied to my social class by the class above it; bourgeois meant "not aristocratic, therefore vulgar." When I was in my twenties this changed. My class was now vilified by the class below it; bourgeois began to mean "not proletarian, therefore parasitic, reactionary." Thus it has always been a reproach to assign a man to that class which has provided the world with nearly all its divines, poets, philosophers, scientists, musicians, painters, doctors, architects, and administrators. (p. 21)

When we deplore the human interferences, then the nature which they have altered is of course the unspoiled, the uncorrupted; when we approve them, it is the raw, the unimproved, the savage. (p. 46)

We have learned also from Aristotle, that we must "study what is natural from specimens which are in their natural condition, not from damaged ones." (p. 56)

It's interesting how often we don't follow Aristotle's advice, how often we try to improve situations by concentrating on that which is broken, instead of studying what is working right—from medicine to education, from business to family life.

Unless followed by the word "education," liberal has now lost this meaning [seeking knowledge for its own sake]. For that loss, so damaging to the whole of our cultural outlook, we must thank those who made it the name, first of a political, and then of a theological, party. The same irresponsible rapacity, the desire to appropriate a word for its "selling-power," has often done linguistic mischief. It is not easy now to say at all in English what the word conservative would have said if it had not been "cornered" by politicians. Evangelical, intellectual, rationalist, and temperance have been destroyed in the same way. Sometimes the arrogation is so outrageous that it fails; the Quakers have not killed the word friends. (p. 131)

That English and Protestant authors ... should depend for a scriptural phrase either on Vulgate or Rheims will seem strange to many. Very ill-grounded ideas about the exclusive importance of the Authorized Version in the English biblical tradition are still widely held. (p. 144)

Communis (open, unbarred, to be shared) can mean friendly, affable, sympathetic. Hence communis sensus is the quality of the "good mixer," courtesy, clubbableness, even fellow-feeling. Quintilian says it is better to send a boy to school than to have a private tutor for him at home; for if he is kept away from the herd (congressus) how will he ever learn that sensus which we call Communis? (p. 146)

Et Tu, Quintilian?

Innocent, simple, silly, ingenuous ... all illustrate the same thing—the remarkable tendency of adjectives which originally imputed great goodness, to become terms of disparagement. Give a good quality a name and that name will soon be the name of a defect. Pious and respectable are among the comparatively modern casualties, and sanctimonious was once a term of praise. (p. 173)

One of the first things we have to say to a beginner who has brought us his [manuscript] is, "Avoid all epithets which are merely emotional. It is no use telling us that something was 'mysterious' or 'loathsome' or 'awe-inspiring' or 'voluptuous.' Do you think your readers will believe you just because you say so? You must go quite a different way to work. By direct description, by metaphor and simile, by secretly evoking powerful associations, by offering the right stimuli to our nerves (in the right degree and the right order), and by the very beat and vowel-melody and length and brevity of your sentences, you must bring it about that we, we readers, not you, exclaim 'how mysterious!' or 'loathsome' or whatever it is. Let me taste for myself, and you’ll have no need to tell me how I should react to the flavour." (pp 317-318)

And I thought the insistence on "show, don't tell" among current authors was a recent phenomenon. But C. S. Lewis agreed.

The "swear-words"—damn for complaint and damn you for abuse—are a good example. Historically the whole Christian eschatology lies behind them. If no one had ever consigned his enemy to the eternal fires and believed that there were eternal fires to receive him, these ejaculations would never have existed. But inflation, the spontaneous hyperboles of ill temper, and the decay of religion, have long since emptied them of that lurid content. Those who have no belief in damnation—and some who have—now damn inanimate objects which would on any view be ineligible for it. The word is no longer an imprecation. It is hardly, in the full sense, a word at all when so used. Its popularity probably owes as much to its resounding phonetic virtues as to any, even fanciful, association with hell. It has ceased to be profane. It has also become very much less forceful. (pp. 321-322)

I have noticed this effect with profanity today. No matter how much it bothers me, I have to admit that the monumental overuse of words that in my youth weren't even allowed in the dictionary has pulled some of their teeth. On the other hand, it appears that the human creature has a need for forbidden words, because at the same time as we have liberated the old theological, scatological, and sexual epithets, old words have been repurposed into new obscenities. Oddly enough, those who are most free in the ubiquitous overuse of the old swear words, even—or especially—in the presence of those who still find them offensive, are often the least tolerant of those who fail to acknowlege the new prohibitions.

It's funny how often when we react against something we nearly always throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Having had my cultural-formation years, and well as my Christian-formation years, steeped in Protestantism of the more Reformed sort, there were two things it never occurred to me to do: (1) show any particular respect for Mary, the mother of Jesus (except briefly, at Christmastime), and (2) read the Apocrypha—those writings from "between the Testaments" that are considered to be part of Holy Scripture by Catholics but not by Protestants. (I'm simplifying the situation somewhat.)

I think the greatest reason for the first was that Catholics make so much of Mary, often—or so it appears to Protestants—making her seem more important, and more venerated, than Jesus. To avoid that error, it was safest to ignore her. Plus there's no denying a certain historical bias against women. In more than one church of my experience, certain (male) saints are highly venerated, especially St. Paul. Also St. Peter, though he's a bit tainted because he's so important to Catholics. But Mary? Almost no mention at all, and very little honor paid. In fact, we once were called on the carpet over an instrumental-only version of the beautiful and famous Bach/Gounod Ave Maria played during the service. Did I mention that it was instrumental only, i.e. no words, offensive or otherwise?

It's not surprising that I never heard anything from the Apocrypha during a church service. Church readings tend (rightly) to be from Scripture, and if you don't think a book is part of the Biblical canon, better skip it. But these books (more or less) were included in the Bibles used throughout most of Christian history, including by Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, and John and Charles Wesley. Luther called them "useful and good to read," though not equal in value to the canonical books. The Anglican "39 Articles" accepts the Apocrypha "for instruction in life and manners, but not for the establishment of doctrine." What's more, they were part of the world in which Jesus lived, and one can see their echoes in the New Testament.

But none of these reasons are why I decided to—finally!—read through the Apocrypha. I was tired of being culturally illiterate. In the world of art, music, and literature, many important works reference stories from the Apocrypha. Even if we consider them completely fictitious, why do we not learn their stories the same way we learn the ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Norse myths? We know about Apollo and Daphne; why not about Judith and Holofernes?

 
Apollo and Daphne by Bernini, Judith Beheading Holofernes by Caravaggio

Cultural literacy aside, what did I think of the Books of the Apocrypha? Mixed. Here's the list, as they appear in my Revised Standard Version Bible (Catholic edition), followed by my reactions. (I deliberately read these books without learning anything about them, wanting to collect my own first reactions, unprejudiced.)

Tobit, Judith, The Additions to Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah, Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, and The Prayer of Manassah.

The reading started out well. It was exciting to read the stories, such as those in Tobit, Judith, and Susanna. Several of the others seem to fit in with Old Testament books, but apparently are not considered authentic enough to be included.

The Wisdom of Solomon reads very much like Solomon's writings in Proverbs. Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus) is a collection of similar proverbs, but feels as if written at a later time than Solomon's. Proverbs is one of my favorite Bible books to read, but I found Sirach, on the whole, boring—sometimes even offensive.  Many of the proverbs show wisdom, but others are strange. For instance:

Better is the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good, and it is a woman who brings shame and disgrace.

This one's better (emphasis mine):

Speak, you who are older, for it is fitting that you should, but with acccurate knowledge, and do not interrupt the music.

Speaking of music, how about this one?

Do not associate with a woman singer, lest you be caught in her intrigues.

On the other hand, this is an interesting anticipation of the language of the Eucharist, which if you first encounter it in Jesus' words seems more shocking than it probably was for his disciples.

[Wisdom speaking] Those who eat me will hunger for more, and those who drink me will thirst for more.

Sirach is also the source of the familiar line, Let us now praise famous men. Many such revelations pop up in the Apocrypha: "Oh, so that's where that came from!"

The biggest disappointment was the Maccabee books, not only because they are much like my least favorite parts of the Old Testament—war and more war—but mostly because the story of the miraculous eight-day supply of oil, which is the event celebrated at Hanukkah, is not there, where I expected it to be. Apparently that event, though it occurs in the time of the Maccabees, was not written down until much later, in the Talmud.

I very much enjoyed the between-testaments "feel" of the books, particularly in the ones that are not just additions to Old Testament books. You can see how Jewish thought is evolving, in particular to include belief in resurrection and life after death, and in the Messiah whose coming was fully anticipated to bring military triumph to the Jewish people.

1 Esdras reads like normal Old Testament history, but 2 Esdras is just plain weird. If you enjoy Revelation, you'll love 2 Esdras.

My verdict on the Apocrypha? I'd say Luther was right. It is "good to read," though not as infallible Scripture. It is at least as interesting, helpful, and important as the history, wisdom, and stories we read from other sources without thinking twice about it.

I see no reason why the books of Apocrypha, honored in religion and culture for most of their history, should in modern times be in such disfavor. I won't be reading them annually the way I do the Old and New Testaments, but I'm glad I finally made their acquaintance.

What's next?  I'll begin my yearly cycle again when Advent comes, but in the meantime, since I just finished reading C. S. Lewis's book, Reflections on the Psalms, I think I'll run through the Psalter. For this purpose I'll step briefly away from the Revised Standard Version and pick up my 1928 Book of Common Prayer, which retains the Coverdale translation of the Psalms. I think I'm still reacting to my two years with The Message. After this, I'll revert to the more middle-of-the-road RSV. Lewis says,

Even of the old translators he [Coverdale] is by no means the most accurate; and of course a sound modern scholar has more Hebrew in his little finger than poor Coverdale had in his whole body. But in beauty, in poetry, he, and St. Jerome, the great Latin translator, are beyond all whom I know.

What a pity we can't get both modern scholarship and beauty!

The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson (Tor Books, 2013)

I was hoping to have another Brother Cadfael book for my Sabbath reading, but #8 is currently unavailable at our library in any form.

Enter, at the precise moment of need, the hearty recommendation of my daughter for Brandon Sanderson's The Rithmatist. Sanderson's works were previously recommended to me by my brother, and then by our grandson, but both of them have a predilection for very thick books in very long series. Knowing that Heather read The Rithmatist in a day—albeit one that cost her more sleep than it should have—and enjoyed it thoroughly was enough push to overcome my inertia.

My only disappointment is that the final words of the book are "To be continued." Never trust an author who prefers to write in series form. Worse, the sequel isn't due out for some time yet. Nonetheless, the book is complete enough in itself and was nearly impossible to put down. Apparently a New York Times review included the complaint, "there is almost no action until the climax." Were we reading the same book? Is the reviewer using the term "action" merely as a synonym for "battle scenes"? The Rithmatist is bursting with action and excitement from beginning to end.

Sanderson has created a very clever "alternative world" and I look forward to reading more about it. Since that time seems to be well into the future, perhaps I should venture into his Mistborn series, though his own blurb for that promises "romance" among other things—and that's often enough to kill my interest. Still, that part can't be too bad, or my grandsons wouldn't be recommending it.

The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language by Eugene H. Peterson (Navpress, 2002)

It's my habit to read through the Bible at a rate of approximately once per year. My last cycle, however, took twice that long, thanks to the version I chose to read. I like to switch up versions, both for the variety and for the slightly different perspectives each brings. This time I chose the very popular The Message, which, as its Wikipedia article notes, "is a highly idiomatic translation, using contemporary slang from the US rather than a more neutral International English, and it falls on the extreme dynamic end of the dynamic and formal equivalence spectrum." In other words, more a paraphrase than a translation.

I'm glad I read it, and I'm sure The Message has been helpful to many, but for me the effort was like slogging through mud. This is the Bible with all the poetry, beauty, and life sucked out of it—not to mention that "contemporary slang" sounds dated the moment it hits print. In the Wikipedia article you can see how Peterson's interpretation of a couple of popular passages stands up against both the King James and the New International translations.

Did I say The Message is a paraphrase rather than a translation? More than that, it's a sermon from beginning to end. Not that I should have been surprised, since Eugene Peterson was a pastor, and the book arose from a lifetime of crafting Bibilical texts into sermons.

Let's just say that I'm glad I have a pastor who occasionally speaks over my head and expects me to rise to the challenge. Peterson's efforts feel condescending and often made me wince.

Dorothy L. Sayers wrote,

The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man. ... We may call that doctrine exhilarating or we may call it devastating; we may call it revelation or we may call it rubbish; but if we call it dull, then words have no meaning at all.

The greatest crime of The Message is that it makes the whole Biblical epic sound dull—and like a made-up sermon illustration rather than the messy record of real, historical people that it is.

My apologies to those who find The Message inspiring and exciting. From all I've heard of Eugene Peterson, he was an amazing person, pastor, and scholar. I'm sure his books, including The Message, have been helpful to many. Tastes differ, and I'm thankful we have such a variety of resources available to us.

But for my next cycle, I'm going with the good ol' Revised Standard Version (RSV). Not the new one (NRSV), which also makes me wince, but the version of the book presented to me by "the Church School of the First Reformed Church of Scotia, New York, June 4, 1961." Well, technically, not that book, since most of my reading is done through YouVersion's Bible App. But that version. It's clean, it's poetic, and it should be a good palate cleanser. We'll see if I still feel that way after a year.

Recasting the Past: The Middle Ages in Young Adult Literature by Rebecca Barnhouse (Boynton/Cook, 2000)

This was another book from my son-in-law's wish list that I found intriguing. It turned out to be both disappointing and enlightening.

The disappointment was my own fault: The stated purpose of the book is "to provide teachers, librarians, and scholars of adolescent literature with a discussion of fiction set in the Middle Ages," so I should not have been surprised that the author talks like an educationist. Neither should I have been surprised (though I was) that the books she analyzes are all very modern. It reminds me of the fifth grade teacher who required that during their "free reading time," her students read only books from the Sunshine State Young Readers Awards list. This, she assured me, was because she wanted to make sure the children were reading quality books. Once I discovered that even to be nominated for that list a book had to be fiction and published withing the last three years, I knew why I was far less than impressed with the selection. I suppose modern authors need some support, but inflicting their works—to the exclusion of all others—on helpless students is even more unfair than forcing the students to eat school lunches.

This teacher-orientation and modern-author bias of Recasting the Past got my reading off on the wrong foot, but I was able to get over it because there really is some good information here. I've long known that much historical fiction, particularly for some reason that favored by schools (and popular movies), plays fast and loose with the facts. I figured the blame mainly fell on lazy authors, who had a story to tell and liked the idea of fitting it into an historical time period, but preferred to make the time fit the story rather than the other way around. Barnhouse opened my eyes to an entirely different source for the problem.

Although the author does not acknowledge this, I'm convinced that the base culprit is that there is such as thing as "young adult fiction." Why there should be is beyond my ken. Anyone who is mature enough to handle the subjects dealt with in these books—which include torture, religious doubts, and sexual activity—should be offended by dumbed-down reading levels and the assumption that everyone of a certain age must be interested in the same things.

Be that as it may, these are aimed at a young adult audience, and it shows. First and worst, the authors are apparently viewing their stories primarily as vehicles for teaching, and teaching 21st century values more than teaching history.

One such value is literacy. Barnhouse notes that much historical fiction aimed at schoolchildren is anachronistic in its attitude towards reading, writing, and book learning. No doubt they want to encourage the same in their modern readers, but it is wrong to give the impression that back then books were considered the key to knowledge, ignoring the practical ways knowledge was passed on in those times.

Modern authors also seem uncomfortable with allowing their young readers to experience attitudes not in line with 21st century standards. The young protagonists must be models of tolerance and diversity as defined by modern educationists; if anything negative is said about Jews, for example, it must come from the mouth of a character that the readers are not likely to like or respect. In a similarly unrealistic approach, Jews, Muslims, and generally anyone-but-Christians are treated by authors of much young adult fiction as paragons of virtue, instead of as human beings.

Barnhouse touches on other subjects, including stories that appear to be set in medieval times but actually belong in the Fantasy genre.

The primary use of his short book is for developing some tools for recognizing anachronism in so-called young adult fiction. Perhaps the most important of these tools is simply being aware of the problem.

Just two short quotes this time, emphasis mine:

The words "Middle Ages" imply a time between two eras, the Roman Empire and the rebirth of Roman culture in the Italian Renaissance. However, tell a twelfth-century Parisian scholar like Peter Abelard that Roman learning is dead and you'll get a surprised look—that is, if you can pry him away from his study of Greek and Roman historians and philosophers. Abelard and his contemporaries used the word modern to describe themselves. The big lie perpetrated by the Renaissance Italians, who said everything was dark and barbaric until they reinvented Rome, shows how little they knew about the transmission of thought, culture, and learning in the medieval period. While it's true that the vast majority of people didn't participate in all of this learning, neither did the majority of Romans. (Introduction, p xiii)

Well-told modern tales of the Middle Ages abound. ... The writers who research carefully enough to understand the differences between medieval and modern attitudes, between different medieval settings, and between fantasy and history, can help their readers understand a strange and distant culture: the Middle Ages. Writers who create memorable, sympathetic characters who retain authentically medieval values teach their audience more than those who condescend to readers by sanitizing the past. Trusting readers to comprehend cultural differences, presenting the Middle Ages accurately, and telling a good story results in compelling historical fiction, fiction that, like medieval literature in its ideal form, teaches as it delights. (p 86)

UPDATE 11/5/19 Here's a table from Stephan, summarizing the book's evaluations.  Click to enlarge.

Stephan says, What might be confusing about the table is the multiple use of the comments column. The first books with a fidelity rating > 0 come with comments that summarize very briefly Mrs Barnhouse‘s critique; those with a rating = 0 with a „fantasy level“ comment; and the rest with a summary.

On a whim—or more accurately, a teaser from my sister-in-law—I put the show Rizzoli & Isles on our Netflix list. It's another crime/mystery series, which, if you consider our Netflix history, you might think is 90% of what interests us. (Including, but not limited to, Rumpole of the Bailey, Poirot, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence, The Bletchley Circle, Death in Paradise, NCIS (multiple versions), Monk, Foyle's War, Castle, Inspector Morse, Inspector Lewis, Endeavour, Grantchester, Murdoch Mysteries, Father Brown, Maigret, Nero Wolfe, Numb3rs, Lord Peter Wimsey....)

The teaser was that one of the Rizzoli & Isles shows—I don't know which one—involves a genealogical investigation. We've been through the first season plus a bit, and haven't yet spotted it, although there is one cringe-worthy episode in which two perfectly-matched DNA samples are proclaimed to be, not identical twins, but half-siblings: one male, one female, no less. I felt as Porter must when he watches movies that play fast and loose with historical facts.

Be that as it may, I plan to keep watching, at least until I get to the genealogy episode, because the characters and the stories are interesting. The usual problems associated with television series apply, at least based on what I've seen so far.

• It is a truth universally acknowledged that a story written by committees of writers, constrained by never knowing how long the series will run and which actors will unexpectedly die or quit along the way, cannot have a story arc that knows its end from its beginning. I know that novelists are often surprised at the directions their stories take as they are being written, but by the time a book gets into the hands of its readers the story is fixed. Not so with long-running TV series. I find this annoying.
• Hollywood producers, directors, writers, and actors are nearly universally liberal (in the sense of the label as it is used these days) in their political, social, and religious views, and this is as evident in Rizzoli & Isles as in most other popular television shows. One does not need to posit ill intent, or a conspiracy to corrupt the population, to acknowledge that these stories are drenched with, steeped in, and pervaded by a world view antithetical to most Christians, most conservatives, and most Americans who live outside of the West Coast, the Northeast, or large cities. It is what it is, and one has a choice: ignore most television and movies altogether, or be alert and aware, noting the sea in which the shows' characters and events swim. The latter is possibly the more rewarding path, but definitely the more dangerous. It's hard to stand in the water without getting wet, and if the frog-and-kettle story isn't actually true to nature, as a metaphor it's spot on.
• The level of graphic violence varies widely from one TV series to another. Rumpole, for example, is only secondarily about the actual crimes, and not at all graphic; NCIS Los Angeles is about some exceedingly violent and gruesome stories, and makes no attempt to hide the visceral realities from viewers. Rizzoli & Isles, so far, is somewhere between the midpoint and the graphic extreme.

So why am I finding the shows worth watching?

• I'm anticipating the genealogy episode.
• The characters and mysteries are interesting, especially the friendship between the title characters. It reminds me a little of the relationship between the two brothers on Numb3rs: one tough and street-smart, one polymath—but with some twists as well. I'm a sucker for quirky, misunderstood—if nonetheless respected—geniuses, hence my attraction to Numb3rs, Monk, Inspector Lewis, and The Bletchley Circle.
• I like the music (Irish-ish)

The show is set in Boston, and I always enjoy recognizing places and people I'm familiar with. In just the first season (2010) there have been some interesting events.

• References to Whitey Bolger when he was still at large (he wasn't recaptured till 2011)
• A show about killings during the Boston Marathon, three years before the famous bombing in 2013. Interestingly, although the event is clearly the Boston Marathon—e.g. a famous marathon set in Boston, mention of "Heartbreak Hill"—in the show it is called the Massachusetts Marathon, which leads to speculation. Probably the name "Boston Marathon" is copyrighted, and perhaps the organization decided they didn't want their race associated in people's minds with violent death. Oops.

Speaking of television series, don't talk to me about the final episodes of NCIS last season. Not only did we miss them when they aired, but we also missed the opportunity to see them free on the CBS site. Season 16 won't be released to DVD till September 3—and who knows when after that they will be available on Netflix. So—someday, maybe.

Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments by Joy Davidman (The Westminster Press, 1953)

I recently re-read Joy Davidman's book because it seemed logical to include in my C. S. Lewis retrospective. How long ago was my previous reading I can only guess, but it's likely two decades or more.

The first time around, I remember being quite impressed by Davidman's take on the Ten Commandments; this time, less so. It's still a book worth reading, but perhaps two decades further on has made her examples and emphasis seem more dated. Her analysis is still pretty good, however. Basic human nature doesn't change—and neither do the Commandments.

The one thing that bothers me most is certainly very minor in the scheme of the book, but it comes up over and over again. Not in anything directly related to her arguments, but in her assumptions about society: that is, that one of the biggest problems of this world, and a concern of all intelligent people, is overpopulation. I think my children don't understand quite how intense the pressure was in my generation to have no more than two children. I'm very glad that has now eased—but the attitude still rankles when I run into it.

Maugre all that, there were plenty of quotes worth extracting. Remember that Davidman was writing in the early 1950's, and reflect how à propos they still are.

The articulate, the leaders of opinion, the policy makers, all those who set the tone of our society, seem for the most part to be frightened men. (p 18)

Despite her fears of overpopulation, Davidman has a pretty good take on much of what's wrong with family life today.

Everybody today ... will agree that that family life is indispensable to human health and happiness. Yet we find ourselves accepting conditions that make war on the family. The lands behind the Iron Curtain deliberately weaken family ties in their schools, lest loyalty to parents should conflict with devotion to the sacred State. Our own country tries to keep the home fires burning with verbal sentiment about Mom, but meanwhile forces Mom to leave the hearth fire untended while she tends the factory machine. A century ago, American houses were twelve-room affairs designed to hold grandparents, and maiden aunts, and uncles, as well as parents and children; today they are usually cramped little flats and cottages, and we feel lucky to get those. We can hardly do much about honoring Father and Mother if there's no room for them in the inn. (pp 63-64)

I will add that the Iron Curtain may have fallen, but schools are doing no less to weaken family ties, and today they've been joined by a host of other assailants, from governmental policies to music, movies, and television.

Every age has its professional apologists, and ours are working hard to convince us that our worst sins are virtues. A mother forced to take a job needs a crèche [daycare] for her baby, admitted—but that does not justify the false comforters who tell us a crèche is better than a mother. An overcrowded school must pick up its pupils in large handfuls all of an age, and pass them along without paying attention to their individual abilities—yet this hardly warrants the current theory that children ought to be herded in age groups, as if we gave birth to them in litters! The cooped-up small families of cities are likely to develop unhealthy tensions, as we all know—need we, therefore, swallow the fashionable psychological doctrine that it's natural for all sons to hate their fathers? Were it really true that sons and fathers are natural enemies, how could mankind ever have dreamed of such a thing as the Fatherhood of God? (p 65, emphasis mine)

Through such apologies, and our own mental laziness, we are in danger of accepting without question some very queer distortions of human life. Already our generations are being walled off from each other: teenagers flock together deaf to all language but their own, young couples automatically drop their unmarried friends, whole magazines address themselves to age groups such as the seventeens or the young matrons or the "older executive type." Vast numbers of people think it is "natural" to hate your in-laws, "immature" to ask your parents for advice after your marriage, "abnormal" to value the companionship of anyone much older or younger than yourself. (pp 65-66)

Our modern cities have created a society in which children are in the way. They are physically in the way, and therefore we find them in the way emotionally too. There are many who do not want them at all, like the girl who recently told this writer that a civilized woman can "realize her creative impulses through self-expression" without needing anything so dirty as a baby! Even those who do want them are sometimes rather shame-faced about it; pregnancy, once something in which a woman gloried, is now treated as a disfigurement to be concealed as long as possible; and giving suck, the greatest joy and greatest need of both mother and child, is quite out of fashion among us. "I'm not a cow!" some American women will remark scornfully, as if it were preferable to be a fish. (pp 66-67)

Worse yet, perhaps, is the taming process we are forced to put our children through in order to keep them alive at all in city streets and city flats. In their infancy we must curb their play, and force adult cautions and restraints on them too soon; in their adolescence, on the other hand, we must bend all our efforts to keep them children at an age when our ancestors would have recognized them as grown men and women ready to found families. Our objection to child labor is admirable when it prevents the exploitation of babies in sweatshops, but not when it keeps vigorous young men and women frittering away their energies on meaningless school courses and still more meaningless amusements. (p 67)

It is gratifying to know that in our time pregnancy, nursing, and rearing independent children have been enjoying a comeback, but the gains are yet small and the opposition still great.

Let us remind the innumerable Americans who don't seem to know it that begetting and rearing a family are far more real and rewarding than making and spending money. (p 69, emphasis mine)

"Honor thy father and thy mother" is not the only Commandment on which Davidman expounds—it's just the one for which I found the most interesting excerpts. Here's one for "Thou shalt not steal," followed by one each for "Thou shalt not bear false witness," and "Thou shalt not covet."

Our society, in some respects, is a vast confidence game. Even our money sometimes becomes a swindle; no crueler form of theft was ever devised than an inflation, and since the value of paper money depends on that doubtful commodity, faith in the Government, it is hard to see how all present currencies can help inflating. Those who remember the German inflation of the 1920's know what happens, in such cases, to trusting old people living on pensions and savings. (p 105, emphasis mine)

Sadly, even our professional economists seem to have forgotten the horrors of inflation. I only need to look back as far as the 1970's to fear inflation—and we were in a good position then, with salaries that inflated along with the dollar. Inflation is very attractive to governments and other debtors; it rewards spending beyond our means, promotes consumerism, and punishes thrift and contentment. Unfortunately, for governments and those crippled by debt, inflation looks like a promising get-rich-quick scheme. We all know where those lead.

Perhaps what unsettles the modern mind most is its despair of ever knowing truth and the conflicting and untrustworthy and very dusty answers we get in our daily life. There are people who believe that not only are there no truths, but there are not even facts—all is a matter of "subjective values." Whatever the merits of this as a philosophy, its practical use is often as a method of evasion and rationalization. ... The denial that truth exists is a good beginning for habitual lying. And if we start confessing our habitual lies, shall we ever be done? There are the lies of gossip, public and private, which make haters out of us; the lies of advertising and salesmanship, which make money out of us; the lies of politicians, who make power out of us. And the lies of the sort of journalist who manufactures a daily omniscience out of the teletype machine and the Encyclopaedia Britannica! And the lies of a professional patriot who assures us that our cause is so just that it doesn't matter what injustice we commit in its name! Two hundred years ago Dr. Johnson wrote:

"Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages. A peace will equally leave the warrior and the relater of wars destitute of employment; and I know not whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lie."

The observation still holds good, except that the scribblers no longer live in garrets. The pay is bigger nowadays—but then, so are the lies. (p 111, emphasis mine)

Seeing God face to face is our goal; the pleasures of life, and even life itself, are the means to it. Therefore the milk and honey and corn and wine and soft chairs and fine houses and swift automobiles—all those pleasant things!—exist primarily as a kind of currency of love; a means whereby men can exchange love with one another and thus become capable of the love of God. ... We value such things not only for their pleasantness, but also because we can give them away and give our love with them; or else because, in receiving them, we receive others' love for us as a baby at the breast sucks his mother's love with her milk. (p 122, emphasis mine)

What a delightful view of the giving and receiving of gifts!

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (Crown Business, 2013)

This book was on my son-in-law's Amazon wish list. Since in my own life I have chronic difficulties with decision-making, I thought I'd read it myself. Often I can do this while the book is in my hands awaiting a trip to Switzerland, but that doesn't work for Kindle books. However, our local library came through.

It was not quite what I had hoped. Having read other books by the Heath Brothers, I was prepared for this book to be primarily about business.  But even when they deal with personal issues they are more weighty ("Should I break up with my boyfriend?") than help for someone who has trouble deciding what to order at a restaurant.

And yet the book was still very interesting, especially the real-life examples, and it has given me ideas to ponder. Decisive is not long (253 pages, plus some notes at the end) and not hard going. The quotations below are almost random, chosen for the interest they piqued, not as any kind of meaningful summary of the ideas presented. Emphasis in bold is my own.

David Lee Roth was the lead singer for the Van Halen band. Their concerts were massive productions involving complex set-ups. Roth knew that even a small mess-up could put the safety of the band at risk. They could control their own technicians, but what about all the work done by local stagehands at the venues before they arrived?

Rumors circulated wildly about Van Halen's backstage antics. ... Van Halen seemed committed to a level of decadence that was almost artistic. ... Sometimes, though, the band's actions seemed less like playful mayhem and more like egomania. The most egregious rumor about the band was that its contract rider demanded a bowl of M&Ms backstage—with all the brown ones removed. There were tales of Roth walking backstage, spotting a single brown M&M, and freaking out, trashing the dressing room.

This rumor was true. The brown-free bowl of M&Ms became the perfect, appalling symbol of rock-star diva behavior. Here was a band making absurd demands simply because it could.

Get ready to reverse your perception.

The band's "M&M clause" was written into its contract to serve a very specific purpose. It was called Article 126, and it read as follows: "There will be no brown M&M's in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation,." The article was buried in the middle of countless technical specifications.

When Roth would arrive at a new venue, he'd immediately walk backstage and glance at the M&M bowl. If he saw a brown M&M, he'd demand a line check of the entire production. "Guaranteed you're going to arrive at a technical error," he said. "They didn't read the contract.... Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show."

In other words, David Lee Roth was no diva; he was an operations master. He needed a way to assess quickly whether the stagehands at each venue were paying attention—whether they'd read every word of the contract and taken it seriously. (pp 26-28)

Or maybe he was still an obnoxious diva—but a very savvy one.

The question a college-bound senior should be asking ... is not "What's the highest-ranking college I can convince to take me?" Rather, it should be "What do I want out of life, and what are the best options to get me there?" Those two questions are in no way synonymous, and once families start thinking about the latter one, they often find that they have many more good options than they ever thought possible. (p 40)

Ay, there's the rub. How many people don't have a clue what they want out of life until the approaching end of college forces them to think about it?

A study of graphic designers demonstrates the value of multitracking. The designers, tasked with making a banner ad for a Web magazine, were randomly assigned to use one of two creative processes. Half of them were instructed to design one ad at a time, receiving feedback after each new design. Each designer started with a single ad and revised it five times based on rounds of feedback, yielding a total of six ads. The other half of the designers were instructed to use a "simultaneous" process, so that each one started with three ads and received feedback on all three. Then, in successive rounds, the set was whittled down with further feedback to two ads and then one final ad.

All of the designers ultimately created the same number of ads (six) and received the same quantity of feedback (five ad critiques). The only difference was the process: simultaneous versus one at a time.

As it turned out, process mattered a great deal: The simultaneous designers' ads were judged superior by the magazine's editors and by independent ad execs, and they earned higher click-through rates on a real-world test of the banners on the Web site. Why?

The study's authors, trying to explain the better performance of the simultaneous designers, said, "Since [simultaneous] participants received feedback on multiple ideas simultaneously, they were more likely to read and analyze critique statements side-by-side. Direct comparison perhaps helped them better understand key design principles and led to more principles choices for subsequent prototypes."

In other words, the simultaneous designers, by multitraking, were learning something useful about the shape of the problem. They were able to triangulate among the features of their three initial ads—combining their good elements and omitting the bad. (pp 53-54)

Plus, as it turned out, the simultaneous designers were happier about the feedback they received, and felt more confident in their abilities as a result of the experience. Not being 100% invested in a single design made them more likely to see criticism as a useful informative tool rather than as a personal attack.

When life offers us a "this or that" choice, we should have the gall to ask whether the right answer might be "both." (p 65)

Or neither. Binary decisions (either/or, "Should I quit my job?" "Should I marry Oliver?") rarely lead to the best decisions. Adding just one or two more options to the list forces you to widen your view and get better insight.

Imagine a new restaurant has just opened near you. It serves your favorite kind of food, so you're excited and hopeful. you search the restaurant's reviews online, and the results show a handful of good reviews (four out of five stars) and a handful of poor ones (two stars). Which reviews would you read?

Almost certainly, you'd read more of the positive reviews. You really want this restaurant to be great. A recent meta-analysis of the psychology literature illustrated how dramatic this effect is. ... The researchers concluded that we are more than twice as likely to favor confirming information than disconfirming information. (So, scientifically speaking, you'd probably read twice as many four-star reviews as two-star reviews.) (p 95)

I admit to struggling with what they call "confirmation bias," but this is totally different from my own approach to online reviews. I do start off with a product that has mostly positive reviews, as if the sample size is large enough, that's probably a good indicator of general quality. But what I concentrate on reading are the negative reviews, because I want to know why people didn't like a product. Often it's irrelevant to the product itself (late arrival, damage in transit, reviewer's ex-wife liked it therefore it must be bad). Sometimes the negative is about something that doesn't apply to me ("not enough romance in this book"). Sometimes they're genuinely helpful. Then I read the middle-of-the-road reviews, as I figure they're more likely to see both the positives and the negatives. Finally, I'll check out a few of the five-star reviews, just to be sure someone else thinks the item is what I hope it is.

Rather than jump headfirst ... dip a toe in.

Think about a student, Steve, who has decided to go to pharmacy school. What makes him think that's a good option? Well, he spent months toying with other possibilities—medical school and even law school—and he eventually decided pharmacy was the best fit. He's always enjoyed chemistry, after all, and he likes the idea of working in health care. He feels like the lifestyle of a pharmacist, with its semireasonable hours and good pay, would suit him well.

But this is pretty thin evidence for such an important decision! Steve is contemplating a minimum time commitment of two years for graduate school, not to mention tens of thousands of dollars in tuition and forgone income. He's placing a huge bet on paltry information. [An obvious move] would be to work in a pharmacy for a few weeks. He'd be smart to work for free, if need be, to get the job.

Surely this concept—testing a profession before entering it—sounds obvious. Yet every year hordes of students enroll in graduate schools without ever having run an experiment like that: law students who've never spent a day in a law office and med students who've never spent time in a hospital or clinic. Imagine going to school for three or four years so you can start a career that never suited you! This is a truly terrible decision process, in the same league as an impromptu drunken marriage in Vegas. (pp 137-138)

Phil Tetlock, a professor of psychology and management at the University of Pennsylvania ... resolved to design a study that would, for the first time, hold experts' feet to the fire. He recruited 284 experts, people who made their living by "commenting or offering advice on political or economic trends." Almost all of them had a graduate degree and over half had a PhD. Their opinions were eagerly sought: 61% of them had been interviewed by the media.

They were asked to make predictions in their area of expertise. ... As predictions go, these were pretty basic—nothing more strenuous than multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions. Tetlock was trying to create such clear questions that experts would have nowhere to hide if they were wrong. ...

How'd the experts do? They underperformed, to say the least. Even the best forecasters did worse than what Tetlock calls a "crude extrapolation algorithm," a simple computation that takes the base rates and assumes that the trends from the past few years will continue (e.g., predicting that an economy that has grown at an average of 2.8% over the past three years will continue to grow at 2.8%). ...

Surveying these scores across regions, time periods, and outcome variables ... it is impossible to find any domain in which humans clearly outperformed crude extrapolation algorithms. ...

Sadly, pundits aren't the only experts who have prognostication problems. Previous research has shown that psychologists, doctors, engineers, lawyers, and car mechanics are also poor at making predictions. ...

Does this mean that expertise is worthless? No. ... [In another experiment], when students proclaimed themselves 100% certain that something would happen, they were wrong 45% of the time. When the experts were completely certain, they were wrong "only" 23% of the time. ... What the data shows is the base rates are better than expert predictions, which are better than novice predictions. (pp 140-143)

The strange words appeared anew every day, printed in capital letters in the corner of the blackboard, right underneath a warning to the cleaning crew to "Please save." The university students who attended the class were mystified by the words, which appeared to be in a foreign language: SARICIK. RAJECKI. KADIRGA. NANSOMA. ZAJONC.

On some days, only one of the words appeared; on other days, there would be two or three. “Zajonc,” in particular, seemed to appear a lot more than the others. The professor never acknowledged the words. Students were mystified; one later said of the words, "They haunt my dreams."

After the words had been appearing on the blackboard for nine straight weeks, the students received a survey with a list of 14 foreign words on it, and 5 of the 14 words were the ones from the blackboard. They were asked to assess how much they liked each word. ... The most-liked words were the ones the students had seen the most. Familiarity doesn't breed contempt, then, but more like contentment.

For decades, psychologists have been studying this phenomenon, called the "mere exposure" principle, which says that people develop a preference for things that are more familiar (i.e., merely being exposed to something makes us view it more positively). ...

What's more troubling is that the mere-exposure principle also extends to our perception of truth. ... When the participants [in another study] were exposed to a particular statement three times during the experiment, rather than once, they rated it as more truthful. Repetition sparked trust. This is a sobering thought about our decisions in society and in organizations. All of us ... will naturally absorb a lot of institutional "truth," and chances are that much of it is well proven and trustworthy, but some of it will only feel true because it is familiar. As a result, when we make decisions, we might think we're choosing based on evidence, but sometimes that evidence may be ZAJONC—nonsense ideas we've come to like because we've seen them so much. (pp 163-165)

It's possible that the Mere Exposure Principle may be the most important take-away from this book. Certainly it deserves its own blog post. Or two. Two that have been floating around in my brain for years; perhaps seeing this succinct statement in print will spur me to bring one or both to birth.

Short-term emotion [sometimes makes us] erratic and too quick to act. ... More commonly [it] has the opposite effect, making us slow and timid, reluctant to take action. We see too much complexity and it stymies us. We worry about what we must sacrifice to try something new. We distrust the unfamiliar. Together, these feelings make individuals and organizations biased toward the status quo. (pp 172-173)

Yep, that's my gift, and my curse. Some people jump at any new idea with full enthusiasm, and only later discover the drawbacks. My mind immediately goes to what could go wrong, and I disappoint people by my slow, sober response—even if I become excited after careful consideration, the damage has been done. But both approaches are important.

Perhaps the most powerful question for resolving personal decisions is "What would I tell my best friend to do in this situation?" (p 174)

Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great, suggests that we create a "stop-doing list." What sparked the idea was a challenge from one of his advisers to consider what he would do if he received two life-changing phone calls. In the first call, he'd learn that he'd inherited $20 million, no strings attached. The second call would inform him that, due to a rare and incurable disease, he had only 10 years left to live. The adviser asked Collins, "What would you do differently, and, in particular, what would you stop doing?" (pp 187-188)

That, too, deserves its own blog post.

There's [a] technique that is useful in guarding against the unknown. It's surprisingly simple, in fact: Just assume that you're being overconfident and give yourself a healthy margin of error. (p 208)

Simple, sure, but we're surprisingly poor at taking that advice. Richard Killmer, Janet's oboe professor in college, is famous for his playing, his teaching, and who knows what else—but what I remember most is his habit of always being early. When driving from Rochester, New York, to New York City, for example, he'd plan to arrive two hours early for his performance. Usually, that's what would happen, but the time wasn't wasted—there was always something productive to do with that time. But if an accident on the Thruway snarled traffic—no stress.

Contrast this with my own habit of tailoring my activities precisely so that I will be ready to leave for church at the exact right time. That may sound clever, but let Porter say—as he does with disconcerting frequency and little-to-no notice—"Let's stop at X on the way to church," and I'm undone. How much more reasonable just to plan to be ready to get in the car a half hour early, and then use any extra time to my advantage. It may sound easy, but....

By bookending—anticipating and preparing for both adversity and success—we stack the deck in favor of our decisions. (p 217)

Of course, time is only one of many factors that benefit from a healthy margin of error. Because we are so notoriously poor at prediction—how much time, how much money, how much profit—a technique called "bookending" can help mitigate problems on both ends of the event spectrum. Some of us are accustomed to considering the worst-case scenario, and trying to build in mitigation, but unexpected success can be nearly as great a problem. What if your new product takes off beyond your wildest dreams, and you have no way to handle the sudden onslaught of orders?

With the right tripwire, we can ensure that we don't throw good money (or time) after bad. (p 231)

I found the section on tripwires especially interesting, particularly because of the story of Kodak's failure to recognize the importance of digital photography. That's a story I lived through, being in Rochester and having several friends who worked for Kodak and saw that failure up close. Van Halen's obsession with brown M&Ms was a tripwire, warning of potentially dangerous carelessness. Kodak might have not gone under if their confidence that digital photos would never be acceptible to the public had been hedged by a tripwire such as, "We will reconsider when more than 10% of the public finds digital images satisfactory." Parents might tell a recent graduate, "You're welcome to move back home and work full-time on your art, Vincent, but if after six months you haven't sold a painting, you'll need to find another source of income."

Our first instinct, when challenged, is usually to dig in further and passionately defend our position. Surprisingly, though, sometimes the opposite can be more effective.

Dave Hitz, the founder of NetApp, says he learned that "sometimes the best way to defend a decision is to point out its flaws."

"Let's say you have decided to pursue Plan A. As a manager, it is part of your job to defend and explain that decision to folks who work for you. So when someone marches into your office to explain that Plan A sucks, and that Plan Z would be much better, what do you do? ... My old instinct was to listen to Plan Z, say what I didn't like about it, and to describe as best as I could why Plan A was better. Of course, the person has already seen these same arguments in the e-mail I sent announcing the decision, but since they didn't agree, they must not have heard me clearly, so I'd better repeat my argument again, right? I can report that this seldom worked very well.

It works much better if I start out by agreeing: "Yep. Plan Z is a reasonable plan. Not only for the reasons you mentioned, but here are two more advantages. And Plan A—the plan that we chose—not only has the flaws that you mentioned, but here hare three more flaws." The effect of this technique is amazing. It seems completely counterintuitive, but even if you don't convince people that your plan is better, hearing you explain your plan's flaws—and their plan's advantages—makes them much more comfortable. (pp 244-245)