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John Wilson is editor of Books & Culture, a bimonthly review that engages the contemporary world from a Christian perspective in a lively mix of essays, memoirs, interviews, excerpts from new and forthcoming books and other regular features. Wilson is also editor at large for Christianity Today magazine, editor of The Best Christian Writing 2000, and has a book on the soul forthcoming from Paraclete Press.
Book of the Week: O'Connor v. the Antichrist
A hillbilly Thomist pushes back against modernity.
Reviewed by Lucas E. Morel
posted 01/12/2004
Book of the Week: Moody, the Media, and the Birth of Modern Evangelism
A cautionary tale.
Reviewed by Dale Suderman
posted 01/05/2004
Books & Culture Corner: A Few Coming Attractions from 2004
Plus: What to buy with those gift cards, and some of the books in my to-read stacks.
By John Wilson
posted 12/29/2003
The Top Ten Books of 2003
Plus: The Worst Book of the Year, more good reading, digital books, and a little Christmas music.
By John Wilson
posted 12/22/2003
Books at Warp Speed
We continue our annual roundup of noteworthy books.
By John Wilson
posted 12/15/2003
Book of the Week: Is "Sensual Orthodoxy" a Contradiction in Terms?
Read this unconventional collection of sermons and judge for yourself.
Reviewed by Steve Thorngate
posted 12/08/2003
Books, Books, Books!
We begin our annual roundup.
By John Wilson
posted 12/08/2003
Book of the Week: Urban Eden
In City: Urbanism and Its End, a new history of New Haven, Connecticut, the city (in its late 19th-century form) is an ambiguous heaven-and the suburbs that relentlessly followed are hell. Which leaves us where, exactly?
Reviewed by Nathan Bierma
posted 12/01/2003
Book of the Week: Cool Drink of Water
A poet's voice in the evangelical wilderness.
Reviewed by D.S. Martin
posted 11/24/2003
Books of the Week: Faith, Hope, and Charity in North Carolina
New novels by Michael Morris—whose first novel, A Place Called Wiregrass, was a word-of-mouth hit—and Jan Karon, who continues her beloved Mitford saga.
Reviewed by Betty Smartt Carter
posted 11/17/2003
Books of the Week: Remember Afghanistan?
Two inside reports.
By Albert Louis Zambone
posted 11/10/2003
Dr. Z
PBS creates a Doctor Zhivago for our time-and entirely omits the (unorthodox) Christianity that informs the novel from start to finish.
By John Wilson
posted 11/03/2003
Books of the Week: From Dust to Dust
Soil and the future of creation.
Reviewed by Ragan Sutterfield
posted 11/03/2003
Book of the Week: The Troubled Conscience of a Founding Father
An Imperfect God examines George Washington and slavery.
Reviewed by Preston Jones
posted 10/27/2003
The Year of the Fish
The 2003 baseball season concludes with a bang—and 2004 is just around the corner.
By John Wilson
posted 10/27/2003
I Shop, Therefore I Am
Critics of "consumer culture" are all wet, Virginia Postrel says. The riot of choices available to us resonates with our deepest aesthetic instincts.
Reviewed by Jeremy Lott
posted 10/20/2003
Book of the Week: Back to the Future
A sprawling new novel by the author of Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon goes to the 17th century to investigate the birth of the modern world. (You won't be surprised to learn that the Puritans are among the Bad Guys.)
By Albert Louis Zambone
posted 10/13/2003
Book of the Week: Poetry, Prayer, and Parable
The playful provocations of Scott Cairns
Philokalia, reviewed by David Wright
posted 10/06/2003
Book of the Week: Terrorists on Trial
How the nation responded to an earlier attack.
Reviewed by Preston Jones
posted 09/29/2003
The Contemplative Christian
Eugene Peterson calls believers to a life lived with "wholeness, honesty, without contrivance"-against the grain of much that's currently driving the church in America.
By Nathan Bierma
posted 09/29/2003
Book of the Week: Recalling California
Want to understand what's going on in the Golden State? Toss your newsmagazines and pick up Joan Didion's new book.
Reviewed by Caroline Langston
posted 09/22/2003
The Ph.D. Octopus, 100 Years On
How Christians can make a difference in the upside-down world of graduate school
By Wilfred M. McClay
posted 09/15/2003
Book of the Week: The Difference Between Conservatives and Prolifers
William Saletan unspins, and respins, the abortion debate.
Reviewed by Jeremy Lott
posted 09/08/2003
Book of the Week: A New View of Worldview
Some critics want to retire the concept. Not so fast, says David Naugle.
Reviewed by Daniel Siedell
posted 08/18/2003
Book of the Week: 'A Golden Age' of Religious Tolerance?
The Ornament of the World analyzes how the intellectual elites of medieval Spain eschewed fundamentalism and showed surprising sensitivity in reconciling competing truths.
Reviewed by Kate Elliot van Liere
posted 08/11/2003
Books of the Week: Looking for the 'I'
What happens to the self when the brain is injured or malformed?
Reviewed by Heather Looy
posted 08/04/2003
Book of the Week: The Terror of the Therapeutic
Margaret Atwood's new novel considers the price we may pay for looking to technology to remedy our ills, personal and social.
Review by Stephen Dunning
posted 07/28/2003
Book of the Week: The Catholic Church's Regime Change
Would lay power really augur a new epoch of openness and honesty?
By Eugene McCarraher
posted 07/21/2003
Book of the Week: One-Hit Wonder
The long swansong of Madalyn Murray O'Hair.
Reviewed by Jeremy Lott
posted 07/07/2003
Book of the Week: Divinely Decreed?
Re-fighting the Battle of Gettysburg.
Reviewed by Preston Jones
posted 06/30/2003
Why There Will Be Sidewalks in Heaven
Isaiah and the New Urbanism.
By Nathan Bierma
posted 06/09/2003
True Believers
Incoming! The McSweeney's crowd launches a new monthly.
By Jeremy Lott
posted 06/02/2003
Facing the Past
Günter Grass and the debate over Germans as victims in World War II.
By Gregor Thuswaldner
posted 05/19/2003
Are Movies Fundamentally Inferior to Books?
Two responses to Ralph Wood's claim that "biblical tradition elevates word over picture."
posted 05/12/2003
Books & Culture's Book of the Week: Buffy and the Meaning of Life
Buffy the Vampire Slayer finally gets some respect. Too bad the life is slowly ebbing out of the show.
By Jeremy Lott
posted 05/05/2003
Getting Ahead in Order to Serve
Why "Christian ambition" isn't an oxymoron.
By Beth Henary
posted 04/28/2003
Bird Watching with Anne Lamott
A PBS documentary enters the unruly, grace-filled world of the author of Traveling Mercies.
By Agnieszka Tennant
posted 04/21/2003
A Story Darwin Might Love
Brian McLaren's evolutionary interpretation of the faith promises more than it delivers, but what it delivers is good enough.
By Mark Galli
posted 04/14/2003
Why We Are in Iraq
Michael Kelly, R.I.P.
By John Wilson
posted 04/07/2003
Letter from Spain
A former resident returns to find that it is still stony ground for the Gospel.
By Jeff M. Sellers in Madrid
posted 03/31/2003
Lessons in Nation-Building From a Fledgling Democracy
Shays's Rebellion describes a time when revolution was no longer cool.
By Preston Jones
posted 03/24/2003
Whose Reality TV?
Tune in this week to Frederick Wiseman's PBS documentary, Domestic Violence, to see some real survivors.
By Nathan Bierma
posted 3/17/2003
Oh, Brother
Most everyone agrees that the James ossuary is a significant find. Ask what it means, however …
By Jeremy Lott
posted 3/17/2003
Vanity Fair
A chronicler of religion plays the straight man.
By Jeremy Lott
posted 3/10/2003
Diagnosing "The Doctor"
A new assessment of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, preacher.
By Mark A. Noll
posted 3/3/2003
Taken Prisoner
Stories from the far-flung frontiers of the British Empire, 1600-1850, challenge our preconceptions.
By Preston Jones
posted 2/24/2003
Another Third Way?
The mixed record of Catholic social thought.
By Christopher Shannon
posted 2/17/2003
Divine Numbers
Can you say "Christian" and "mathematics" in the same sentence?
By Karl-Dieter Crisman
posted 2/10/2003
Getting Beyond Victimology
A provocative collection of essays for "the black silent majority."
By Preston Jones
posted 2/3/2003
Strange Bedfellows
Christopher Hitchens and Christopher Caldwell collaborate on a collection of political writing. Has the millennium arrived unnoticed?
By Jeremy Lott
posted 1/27/2003
Encounters of the Gods
Christianity and Native American religion in early America.
by Richard W. Pointer
posted 1/20/2003
Books Present, Books Past, and Books to Come
Plus: A new format for this column.
By John Wilson
posted 1/13/2003
Double Indemnity Meets Dead Souls
A conversation with novelist Richard Dooling.
By Jeremy Lott
posted 1/6/2003
Books of the Year
The top ten. (OK-make that twelve.)
By John Wilson
posted 12/30/2002
Entertain Us
Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the rapture of distress.
By David Dark
posted 12/16/2002
Boys Will Be Boys
A new book by a leading Christian feminist scholar inadvertently reveals the flawed assumptions underlying much talk about "flexibility" in gender roles.
By John W. Miller
posted 12/9/2002
Street Cred
Dave Eggers: The portrait of an artist as a … what?
by Jeremy Lott
posted 12/2/2002
Subversive Literature
A report from Toronto, where scholars of religion are holding their annual meeting.
By John Wilson
posted 11/25/2002
Epicurus'—and Darwin's—Dangerous Idea
How we became hedonists.
By Richard Weikart
posted 11/18/2002
Weird Science?
A Darwinian debate continues.
By Jonathan Wells
posted 11/11/2002
Of Moths and Men Revisited
A Darwinian debate.
By Kevin Padian and Alan Gishlick
posted 11/4/2002
Angels in Heaven
A game that's more than a game.
By John Wilson
posted 10/28/2002
Number One with a Bullet
America's foist family as a tool for evangelism.
By Jeremy Lott
posted 10/21/2002
Train Up a Child
Helping children to become intimately familiar with Scripture.
By Susan R. Garrett
posted 10/14/2002
Acting Like Those "Evangelicals"
Guilty as charged?
By John Wilson
posted 09/30/2002
Ugly Evangelicals
Is this us?
posted 09/23/2002
Herbie Goes Bananas
The rise and fall and rise and fall and rise of the VW Beetle.
By Jeremy Lott
posted 09/16/2002
So Far, So Near
A graduate of Murree Christian School in Pakistan, the site of a deadly assault by Islamic terrorists in August, reflects on his growing-up years, on what has changed in the interim, and on the beleaguered Christian community in Pakistan.
Interview by Todd Hertz
posted 09/09/2002
The New York Times Discovers Religion (Again)
Shouldn't the paper of record be able to move beyond Square One?
By John Wilson
posted 08/26/2002
After the Quake
Bedside reading for the anniversary of 9/11.
By John Wilson
posted 08/19/2002
How to Avoid the Coming Disaster
"Imitate Japan." "No, don't imitate Japan." Time out.
By John Wilson
posted 08/12/2002
"Mind Control" and the Christian Citizen
Historian Sean Wilentz's misguided attack on Justice Antonin Scalia.
By Caleb Stegall
posted 08/05/2002
Speak What We Feel
By David Stewart
posted 07/29/2002
Frederick Buechner's latest book is one of his best.
The Great Inflatable Shark Hunt
A report from the Christian Booksellers Association convention in Anaheim.
By Jeremy Lott
posted 07/22/2002
Why Evangelicals Can't Opt Out of Political Engagement
Remembering Jeremiah Evarts and Samuel Worcester.
By John Wilson
posted 07/15/2002
The Pledge Controversy
Asking the wrong questions?
By John Perry
posted 07/08/2002
Reading Danny Pearl
How would the murdered journalist want to be remembered?
By Jeremy Lott
posted 07/01/2002
A Cry for Help
Sudanese Christians gather in Houston and ask for U.S. support.
By David C. Owens
posted 06/17/2002
Agrarians of the World, Unite!
Wendell Berry's vision, and how Christians should respond to it.
By Eric Miller
posted 06/10/2002
Stop, Drop, and Cover …
Then hack your lungs out and die.
By Jeremy Lott
posted 06/03/2002
Death of an Evolutionist
RIP Stephen Jay Gould.
By John Wilson
posted 05/28/2002
Closing The X-Files …
… with the sign of the Cross.
By John Wilson
posted 05/20/2002
And the Next Thing Is …
Marxism (or not).
By Jeremy Lott
posted 05/13/2002
God Bless the Eliminator
Mother Jones magazine makes known a shocking discovery: evangelicals are sending missionaries to Muslim countries!
by Michael G. Maudlin
posted 05/06/2002
"A Peculiar People"
The uniqueness of the Jews
By John Wilson
posted 04/29/2002
A Grave in the Air, a Soul Dancing
Two remarkable collections of Holocaust testimony.
By John Wilson
posted 04/22/2002
'Nebuchadnezzar My Slave'
Was the Holocaust God's will?
By John Wilson
posted 04/15/2002
"In the Beginning Was the Holocaust"?
Blasphemy, rage, memory, and meaning of the Shoah.
By John Wilson
posted 04/08/2002
The Gospel According to Biff
A conversation with novelist Christopher Moore.
By Jeremy Lott
posted 04/01/2002
Baseball 2002 Preview
Part 2: Saving the game?
By Michael R. Stevens
posted 03/25/2002
The State of the Game
After one of the best World Series ever, baseball faces a crisis.
By Michael R. Stevens
posted 03/18/2002
America's Homegrown Islam—and Its Prophet
The strange story of Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam and onetime mentor of Malcolm X.
By Preston Jones
posted 03/11/2002
'Must Be Superstition'
Rediscovering spiritual reality.
By John Wilson
posted 03/04/2002
Science Holds a Meeting
A report from the annual convention of the AAAS.
By John Wilson
posted 02/25/2002
Saint Frodo and the Potter Demon
The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter series spring from the same source.
By Michael G. Maudlin
posted 02/18/2002
Dictionary of the Future
Trendspotter Faith Popcorn on the words that will define our tomorrow.
By John Wilson
posted 02/11/2002
Does Creationism Equal Holocaust Denial?
Yes, says Michael Shermer in Scientific American.
By John Wilson
posted 02/04/2002
Theodore Rex
Is "popular history" getting a bad rap?
By Preston Jones
posted 01/28/2002
Letter to Martin Luther King, Jr.
A progress report.
By John Wilson
posted 01/21/2002
Keeping the Dust on Your Boots
Remembering the Afghan refugees—and the church in Iran.
By John Wilson
posted 01/14/2002
Coming Attractions
Books to watch for this year.
By John Wilson
posted 01/07/2002
Books of the Year, Part 2
After the top ten, here's the best of the rest.
By John Wilson
posted 01/04/2002
Books of the Year
Part 1: The Top Ten
By John Wilson
posted 12/17/2001
"Daddy, What Is the Soul?"
Does the church have an answer?
By John Wilson
posted 12/10/2001
"We Now Know"
The boast of imperial science.
By John Wilson
posted 12/03/01
"24 Cow Clones, All Normal" …
Oh yes, and a few cloned human embryos that died.
John Wilson
posted 11/26/2001
"Discovering" Islam: The Intellectual Challenge.
There's good reason to believe that there will be staying power to the West's belated "discovery" of Islam.
John Wilson
posted 11/19/2001
Disturbing the Peace
Is art always subversive when it's doing its job?
John Wilson
posted 11/12/2001
Play Ball
Baseball, leisure, and worship.
John Wilson
posted 11/02/2001
Is God a Body-Snatcher?
The restless intelligence of philosopher Peter van Inwagen.
John Wilson
posted 10/30/2001
"Science and the Spiritual Quest"
A place at the table for Christians, but at a price.
John Wilson
posted 10/22/2001
Beyond Belief?
Nobel Prize-winner V.S. Naipaul's accounts of Islam presuppose the superiority of modern skepticism.
John Wilson
posted 10/15/2001
Covering Islam
Getting beyond the feel-good bromides.
John Wilson
posted 10/8/2001
Christian Scholarship … For What?
Academic speakers affirm the value of beholding God's creation.
John Wilson
posted 10/1/2001
Myths of the Taliban
Misinformation and disinformation abounds. What do we know?
John Wilson
posted 9/24/2001
The Imagination of Disaster
"We thought we were invulnerable." Really?
John Wilson
posted 9/17/01
More Sex, Fewer Children
Mixed messages on condoms, contraception, and fertility.
John Wilson
posted 9/10/01
The Strange Case of Napoleon Beazley
How media coverage of a young killer created death row chic.
John Wilson
posted 8/27/01
Apocalyptic City
The dream and the nightmare of megalopolis.
John Wilson
posted 8/20/01
Megalopolis Forty Years On
The ambiguous face of the city.
John Wilson
posted 8/13/01
The Future Is Now
You want the news? Read science fiction.
John Wilson
posted 8/6/01
Memorable Memoirs
Whether telling us about the Spirit in the South or the crumbling atheism of a Chinese immigrant, these books provide windows into others' lives.
John Wilson
posted 7/30/01
The Distorted Story of Memoir Inc.
There are many good autobiographies out there, but do those who write about them have to pretend they're the only books worth reading?
John Wilson
posted 7/23/01
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