Of Books I Got for Christmas

Just began reading the first two of 2009. I wish I could say how many I read last year, but I don't really read for records. I love books. So I'll read pretty much anything that might interest me along with books that might help me grow.

The first is this book about someone I was raised to hate with a passion - and not just about him, but about what he did to my native state that still had people growling when I was a little boy. I once preached in a church where the people were still upset that Sherman's men quartered their horses in the sanctuary and fed their horses from their pews.



The second book, The Blue Parakeet, is by Scot McKnight. I really enjoyed his earlier book "The Jesus Creed" and so I am expecting great things from this one as well. Scot's a fine scholar with a badly needed irenic outlook on things that divide the Church.

This Kind of War

"The function of soldiers is to fight, and if need be, to die" - this is the lesson, beautifully and humanly described here, of Korea, the American Army's heart-breaking introduction to the brush-fire war.

I was casting about for something to read after I finished "Lee, the Last Years", and found this book sitting on Sean's shelf. If there is a better military history writer from the point of view of a layman and casual history buff, I don't know him.

This really is a very special book with all the insight as well as the pathos of war. There are so many lessons unlearned, or should I say - learned at the beginning of every war - that are shown here. The humanity of the American solider is front and center as well, and the futility that so often marks his use.

Highly, highly recommended.