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Young Mussolini and the Intellectual Origins of Fascism   by A James Gregor, 260 pages James Donahue   14 September 2002 An excellent monograph which describes Mussolini's transformation from the leading Socialist intellectual in Italy to the founder of the Fascist party in about six years. Gregor always does a great job of showing the logic and rationality behind Fascist thought rather than just reducing Fascism to meglomania, blind hatred, insanity, and venerial disease.

The War Lords (1976)   by A. J. P. Taylor, 186 pages James Donahue   21 November 2006 Taylor rambles on the BBC; someone writes it down for a bestseller. Oh, to be that famous historian at the end of a long run. Reading it for snappy stories for my class.

Mussolini's Intellectuals (2005)   by A. James Gregor, 262 pages James Donahue   27 August 2006 The ever-kranky Gregor has spent forty years making one statement: that Fascism had an intellectual foundation and was not the product of brainwashing/psycho-sexual repression/ irrationalist amour-propre/etc. This is his final statement of that case. I've assigned this for my class and I'm hoping they'll understand it.

Meiji Protestantism in History and Historiography   by Aaluv Sande, 141 pages James Donahue   14 April 2004

X-Wing: Wraith Squadron (1998)   by Aaron Allston, 403 pages James Donahue   01 June 2007 Sludging onward in the series. After the last book bottomed out, a new author decided to blow up the character list and start over. Here Wedge Antilles assembles a group of no-goodnik pilots on their last chance into the most formidible fighting sqaud in the galaxy. Think of the Dirty Dozen in space. . .except without credibiility or sustained plot.

X-Wing: Iron Fist (1998)   by Aaron Allston, 310 pages James Donahue   02 August 2007 The series gets back on track. . . .but is it too late???

X-Wing: Solo Command (1999)   by Aaron Allston, 341 pages James Donahue   06 August 2007 Another solid (though not spectacular) installment to this series, which seems to have righted itself after jettisoning its first author.

Paris to the Moon   by Adam Gopnik, 338 pages James Donahue   19 September 2002 A really delightful series of essays by an American writer who moves to Paris with wife and kid in order to live the un-American life. (At one point, he cites his strone desire to raise a child without Barney around.) Each sentence is a gem, written with an eye to the same detail that makes all the difference. The essays cover a span of about four years, and it wonderful to see his development into an emigree. Having spent some time in Paris, the best damn city on earth, I loved the way he focuses on the small epicurean delights of the city: the views, the food, the joie de vivre, the cheese, the small hidden agoras. Gopnik also does an excellent job of making the French seem rational to Americans; he explains the French love of strikes, hatred of sports, and history of culinary pursuits. A great book that at least Gareth must read. (Seeing as how he's only read 'two' books this year; what's up with that Garf-man?)

God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible (2003)   by Adam Nicolson, 243 pages James Donahue   16 July 2008 Nicolson pays tribute to the forgotten centerpiece of the English language, using the royal committee's fractured production of the KJV as a window into Jacobean England: "If you think of the King James Bible as the greatest creation of seventeenth-century England, a culture drenched in the word rather than the image, it is easy to see it as England's equivalent of the great baroque cathedral it never built, an enormous and magnificent verbal artifice, its huge structures embracing all 4 million Englishmen, its orderliness and richness a kind of national shrine built only of words."

Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna (2007)   by Adam Zamoyski, 569 pages James Donahue   27 October 2007 "Perhaps the most striking aspect of the great charade known as the Congress of Vienna is the continuous interplay between the serious and the frivolous, an almost parasitical co-existence of activities which might appear to be mutually exclusive. The rattling of sabres and talk of blood mingled with the strains of the waltz and court gossip, and the most ridiculously trivial pursuits went hand in hand with impressive work."

I Remember Nothing More   by Adina Blady Szwajger, 181 pages James Donahue   27 March 2003 The most haunting Holocaust memoir I have ever read. Period. Szwajger was a Jewish pediatrician in Warsaw and saw the worst of the worst. Her account is unforgettable.

The Construction of Nationhood (1997)   by Adrian Hastings, 209 pages James Donahue   30 January 2008 Finally I found a book about nationalism that is able to speak about Christian nationalism with insight!

Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil   by Alain Badiou, 184 pages James Donahue   11 March 2003 Badiou is a contemporary French philosopher with intriguing, original, and provocative stances. In this essay he stands opposed to rights-ethics and alterity-ethics, claiming that both are innately conservative programmes of abstraction that refuse to situate ethics in concrete human relationships. Certainly his arguments -- written in 1994 -- are compelling in such troubled times when we bomb people out of 'humanitarian' concerns. Badiou ends up arguing for an ethics based upon universal (though not transcendent) truth, fidelity to our relationship to truth, and our humility before the truth. Evil is posited as perversions of the Good. (Did I mention he is profoundly influenced by Pauline Marxism?) Evil is thus the opposite of ethical action: being content with opinions and simulcrums, betrayal of what animates us, and the imposition of truth through terror and absolutizing.

Saint Paul: The Foundations of Universalism   by Alain Badiou, 111 pages James Donahue   12 July 2003 Badiou is ever-dense and ever-provocative. Here he argues that any absolute truth must be founded in event, not reason. As a springbroad, he utilizes Paul and his belief in the resurrection of Christ. Considering Badiou's allegiance to atheism and Maoism, this makes for a schizophrenic and delightful read.

Metapolitics (2006)   by Alain Badiou, 152 pages James Donahue   08 February 2006 Badiou continues to perplex and challenge me.

The Art of Travel (2002)   by Alain de Botton, 249 pages James Donahue   21 February 2007 A great collection of essays on travel to places (Barbados, Madrid, Holland, home) with past thinkers (de Maistre, van Gogh, Flaubert, von Humboldt). De Bottom describes the traveler's mindset as one of "receptivity": "We pproach new places with humility. We carry with us no ridig ideas about what is or is not interesting. . . .We are alive to the layers of history beneath the present and take notes and photographs." That is to say, travel lets us be the opposite of our stay-at-home, staid, unreceptive daily selves. Which is what makes travel to tempting and still so DAUNTING! (Read over a series of dog walks in deep snow, almost up to my waist, through the neighborhood here in South Bend.)

Dark Star (1991)   by Alan Furst, 418 pages James Donahue   02 September 2006 Dark spy story about a Jewish Soviet agent working his sources in Nazi Germany leading up to the war. I especially liked how Furst resists giving us the omniscient-narrator-revelations so common in spy mysteries. Here the intelligence is messy, confusing, yet still penetrable.

Shaming the Devil   by Alan Jacobs, 218 pages James Donahue   22 December 2005 This collection of essays is delightful. Most are literary criticism (Jacobs is a professor of English at Wheaton College), dealing with his teacher's pets: Camus, Auden, Rebecca West, Wole Soynika, Iris Murdoch. Some deal with writers he finds uncomfortable: bioethicist Leon Kass, the lesbian poet Anne Carson, sci-fi prodigy Philip Pullman. But what these essays really sing is not just Jacobs' eyes, but rather his hand. Jacobs can really write, and this is best seen when he abandons criticism to write some original essays on Rousseau (vs Voltaire), his struggles to escape the control of the MAN by learning Linux, and the crucial importance of centering our aesthetic lives around the reality of grace.

The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis (2005)   by Alan Jacobs, 314 pages James Donahue   29 May 2007 Jacobs - who is the best evangelical critic out there right now - takes on the evangelical Maestro. His book is a rare combination of a critic who is religiously literate but still not prone to the obsequious hagiography that follows Lewis around, the Christian equivalent to groupie-ism. Jacobs is much more interested in the religious possibilities of story and myth than in Lewis (who was after all a distastefully stuffy don with a taste for sadism before his conversion and a Christian jack-of-all-trades after his birth, churning out books faster than Irish 'virgins' can churn our children). And that is just I would prefer: the stories matter more than the man.

A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love (2001)   by Alan Jacobs, 172 pages James Donahue   18 November 2008

Slave Religion: The 'Invisible Institution' in the Antebellum South   by Albert Raboteau, 373 pages James Donahue   11 September 2002

Unruhige Nacht (Restless Night)   by Albrecht Goes, 67 pages James Donahue   30 June 2003 A military chaplain visits a condemned man during WWII. The boy, simple and poor, is sentenced to death for miscegenational acts. Through presenting him the Word in verbal and physical form the chaplain begins to question his service. (First novel for me read all the way through auf Deutsch! Yeah!)

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich   by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 181 pages James Donahue   15 February 2004 Preparing to teach this on Weds to a group of Notre Dame students. We've been going over the purges and the gulag in class for a few weeks, and I am stunned at their unwillingness to accept the suffering as real. They believe it exaggerated or propaganidistic. (This while they accept economic and diplomatic reports by the Soviet government at face value.) Hopefully this will knock the spoon out of their mouth, or at least dislodge it enough so that they can start eating some real food.

Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: The Fascist Style of Rule   by Alexander De Grand, 94 pages James Donahue   13 November 2002

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (1998)   by Alexander McCall Smith, 235 pages James Donahue   10 March 2006 What can I say? Charming. And a welcome break from my self-inflicted regimen of biography.

Tears of a Giraffe (2000)   by Alexander McCall Smith, 215 pages James Donahue   19 September 2006 Mma Ramotswe again solves mysteries with her easy-going, sagacious, folksy wisdom. Smith again paints a portrait of Botswana that makes it look better than Camelot.

Morality for Beautiful Girls (2001)   by Alexander McCall Smith, 227 pages James Donahue   01 October 2006 Another beautiful, pastoral tale from Botswana. Really weak on the mystery side of things; these books are misshelved at Borders, in my opinion. But these are still really charming and elegant stories.

The Future of the Past   by Alexander Stille, 339 pages James Donahue   12 January 2003 In a truly fascinating book, Stille examines the future fate of things from the past. Chapters are grouped around one vestige and can be read separately; topics include spoken Latin, Chinese artifacts, the library of Alexandria (or at least its concept), the Vatican library, the forests of Madagascar, and the disintegrating Sphinx. Stille ends with a profound essay on the challenges posed to historicity in a postmodern and digital age.

Stolypin, Nationalism, and the Politics of the Russian Imperial State   by Alexandra Korros, 243 pages James Donahue   17 September 2004

Faust's Metropolis: A History of Berlin (1998)   by Alexandra Richie, 891 pages James Donahue   03 February 2007 Background trip for a trip to one of my least favorite cities next week. This book is riveting, despite its length. Richie is a great storyteller. The book focuses on Berlin's many manifestations (medieval stomping ground for invaders, enlightened showpiece of Frederick the Great, Hohzenzollern training ground, centerpiece of Imperial pomposity before its utter collapse in 1918, capital of beleagured Weimar and early center of cabaret and film, bureaucratic hub of the Holocaust, site of Hiter's last stand, ground zero of the Cold War, and, finally, uncertain capital of united Germany. A zigzag path, to say the least, with more than its share of devastations. What other city can claim Hitler, Marlene Dietrich, Isherwood, Bismarck, and U2 among its brief citizens? Achtung Baby!

Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights   by Allen Hertzke, 347 pages James Donahue   31 December 2005 Hertzke traces the recent surge within American evangelicalism and Judaism to support human rights, focusing on the recent Religious Rights Bill, the lobbying of the (ever-reluctant) Bush administration to negotiate a ceasefire in the Sudanese genocide, and the efforts to curb human traffic. Hertzke is not only a political scientist, but a committed activist, lobbying evangelicals toward greater participation in the movement. Fascinating reading that shows the difficult relationship between a religious community just coming into political adolescence and a Republican party focused on politics.

Flanders: A Cultural History (2007)   by André de Vries, 278 pages James Donahue   26 July 2007

Lucia: A Venetian Life in the Age of Napoleon (2008)   by Andrea di Robilant, 341 pages James Donahue   24 April 2008

State and Intellectual in Modern Japan   by Andrew Barshay, 250 pages James Donahue   24 April 2004

Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom   by Andrzej Walicki, 635 pages James Donahue   24 October 2002 A real masterpiece of intellectual history tracing the roots of totalitarianism from Marx to Kruschchev. Especially excellent analysis of the early Soviet period.

Hotel Du Lac   by Anita Brookner, 184 pages James Donahue   06 September 2005 A sleepy, beautiful prose style kept my attention sharp even if the plot -- middle-aged single woman stranded on Lac Leman, forced to meet a crossroads in her life between respectability and authenticity -- was somewhat staid. Best line: "[Switzerland] was a land of prudently harvested plenty, a land which had conquered human accidents, leaving only the weather distressingly beyond control."

The Feminization of American Culture   by Ann Douglas, 403 pages James Donahue   16 April 2002 This book relates how both literature and religion became captive to female sensibilities, attributes, and control during the antebellum period. Specific topics include disestablishment, the birth of rural cemetaries and undertakers, ladies' magazines overpowering theological journals, the rise of hymns, and the absence of any sort of American Romantic movement. Provocative and enlightening; a must for anyone wondering why American Christianity is so unique in the world.

Gulag: A History   by Anne Applebaum, 586 pages James Donahue   08 October 2004 I can see why this book won a Pulitzer. No other historian has done so much to put in inside of the famed gulags (except for Solzhenitsyn). A remarkable (lack of) achievement given the literary profligency that surrounds its genocidal cousins. Applebaum begins and ends the book with a history of the camps' developments, but the real meat is in the middle: chapters that walk one through the Gulag process step by painful step

Diana Mosley: Mitford Beauty, British Fascist, Hitler's Angel   by Anne De Courcy, 353 pages James Donahue   15 December 2005 At age 23, Diana divorced the heir to the Guiness empire to marry the young, dashing, older leader of the British Fascist Party. Her path led her through public revilement, imprisonment, and eventual exile. Although she never regretted it. Its an odd choice for a bio, as she is most interesting because of those whom she knew and whom she entertained - Churchill, Lord Halifax, Hitler et al, Mosley, her novelist sister Nancy Mitford - not for herself. (Compare with Mme de Stael or Rachel Varnhagen, other hostesses who also managed to be personalities.) This seems to be a biography of a mirror, enlightening only via reflection.

Peasant Uprisings in Japan   by Anne Walthall, 257 pages James Donahue   01 March 2004

War and Faith: The Religious Imagination in France, 1914 - 1930   by Annette Becker, 182 pages James Donahue   14 November 2002 A brief look at how republicanism and Catholicism unexpectedly merged under the banner of nationalism during WWI. Becker attempts to portray the images and practices of the common soldier or mourner and displays a wide breadth of sources. Particularly troubling given our current fusions of nationalism and religion.

14-18: Understanding the Great War (2000)   by Annette Becker and Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, 237 pages James Donahue   05 March 2007 A reflection on the stereotypes and traditional blinders that people have about the Great War (e.g., trenches filled with with new pacifists and atheists, trenches everywhere, soldiers as victims: "always killed, never killing"), and the supposed nihilism and meaningless of the combat. As if millions died in an accident that noone supported. Good essays on war memorials, civilian atrocities, mourning, wartime Judeo-Christianity, the relationship between WWI and totalitarianism, and the conceptual reinterpretations of the Great War in the 1920s and 1930s. Becker is one my favorite historians and this short book is a crystallization of her best reflections over the past few decades.

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-3   by Anthony Beevor, 431 pages James Donahue   16 November 2004 This book pulls out the day-to-day details of the most important battle of WWII between the Soviets and the Nazis. Grisly conditions and brutal defeat for Hitler, after which he never recovered. Beevor does a good job making military history accessible to the general reader.

Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity (2004)   by Anthony D. Smith, 325 pages James Donahue   20 February 2008

The Gorbachev Factor   by Archie Brown, 318 pages James Donahue   20 December 2004 Not a spinoff of the O'Reilly Factor. Rather the first historical work on Gorby's central role in the collapse of the USSR. Very sympathetic and thorough treatment.

Carl Peters: A Political Biography (2004)   by Arne Perris, 259 pages James Donahue   04 March 2006 Peters was the main German colonizer, running somewhat ahead of the government in his murderous annexing marches, much of which were done drunk while indiscriminatory flexing his martial muscles. Brought down in 1896 when he hung a series of Africans for violating his captured harem. I wish I were joking about this.

Wilson: The Road to the White House (1947)   by Arthur Link, 528 pages James Donahue   05 March 2007 First part of a looong biography of Woodrow Wilson. Well written, but I now know more about New Jersey politics than I ever really wanted to know.

Wilson: The New Freedom (1956)   by Arthur Link, 471 pages James Donahue   11 March 2007 Link's epic covers the first two years of Wilson's presidency. Here we see WW face off against Mexican revolutionaries, be pushed into progressive legislation, create the Federal Reserve, resegregate the federal government, and fight the big, bad tariff. Remember when presidents used to do things like this?

Wilson: The Struggle for Neutrality, 1915-1916 (1960)   by Arthur Link, 693 pages James Donahue   20 March 2007 This was the least interesting of the books to me. Link was able to go to British archives, which transformed his book into an excellent study of diplomatic history - but somewhere Wilson as a person got lost.

Wilson: Confusions and Crises, 1915 - 1916 (1964)   by Arthur Link, 362 pages James Donahue   23 March 2007

Wilson: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 1916-1917 (1965)   by Arthur Link, 431 pages James Donahue   26 March 2007 Not as good as its predecessors. Too wrapped up in foreign affairs. Wilson and his entourage are lost in the melee, not really even there. It is as if Link was in a hurry to finish the grand project he set out for himself fifteen years ago.

Apocalypse Then: Prophecy and the Making of the Modern World (2008)   by Arthur Williamson, 534 pages James Donahue   12 September 2008

Captain Alatriste (1996, trans. 2006)   by Arturo Perez-Reverte, 248 pages James Donahue   17 May 2006 Swashbuckling tale about a hard-up Spanish soldier hired to kill two British gentlemen by the Grand Inquisitor. I found it quite a page-turner, but I'm still not entirely sure what happened.

Purity of Blood (2006)   by Arturo Perez-Reverte, 267 pages James Donahue   11 May 2007 One of the best pageturner authors out there. And this one comes with a moral: Never trust anyone who only reads one book! (Read at nights in Glen's apartment in Wannsee)

Reading Lolita in Tehran   by Azar Nafisi, 343 pages James Donahue   23 December 2004 This book is one of the few memoirs worthy of being read. Nafisi taught English in Iran as a woman from before the Revolution through 1997. What brings the book together -- through revolution, Islamism, brutality, donning the veil, suffering armed bands, losing the Iraqi war, fleeing the country -- is her ability to show us the regime through the eyes of her students, mostly women, as they read novels and reflect on their lives. Sections of the book are devoted to her students' devotion to James, Fitzgerald, Austin, and Nabakov. Nafisi writes with such precision and emotion that it is impossible not to get swept up into her world. One finds oneself absorbing knowledge about Iran without even being aware of it. Highly recommended.

The Peace Ship: Henry Ford's Pacifist Adventure in the First World War (1978)   by Barbara S. Kraft, 297 pages James Donahue   24 November 2008 In 1915 Henry Ford becomes instantly converted to pacifism and hires a ship to convey a delegation of pacifists to go to Europe and stop the war by appealing to everyone's humanity. Hijinks ensue.

Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West (2008)   by Benazir Bhutto, 247 pages James Donahue   20 March 2008 Can one wholeheartedly agree with a book that one finds somewhat unconvincing?

The Church in Africa   by Bengt Sundkler, 1040 pages James Donahue   03 August 2005 A very impressive capstone to a career devoted to the subject.

Calvin: A Biography   by Bernard Cottret, 296 pages James Donahue   26 August 2005 Still gearing up for Geneva.

The Gentleman From Indiana (1899)   by Booth Tarkington, 384 pages James Donahue   20 June 2008 I picked up a Tarkington novel because of my sojourn here in Indiana. I began with his first publication - from 1899. I can only assume he got better before his Pulitzers. This book is cheesy, with little depth of character, overly-florid pastoral descriptions (of Indiana, no less!!), and an insipid resolution in which the good peasantry adore their gentlemanly protector. This is Progressivism at its worst: elitist, idealistic, and looking to the völkische Hinterland for political and moral regeneration.

God's Man for the Gilded Age   by Bruce Evensen, 227 pages James Donahue   03 February 2004 What seems to be a biography of D.L. Moody is really a one-dimensional account of how Moody massaged the muckracking press into a symbiotic account in order to become the first "celebrity evangelist." An interesting account of the birth of the glam faith that haunts our current landscape. (Not that I have an opinion on the matter.)

John Mott: A Biography   by C Howard Hopkins, 772 pages James Donahue   23 January 2004 This fascinating figure deserves a better biography, one that is not so hagiographic and prone to lists.

The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 (2003)   by C. E. Bayly, 536 pages James Donahue   12 February 2008 A very thought-provoking global history of the "long" nineteenth century, even perhaps worthy of toppling Hobsbawm's masterpiece. Two of the best aspects for me: making causal connections between Asia and North America, often with Europe moving back and forth between them; and his theory of "empires of religion" has sparked new lines of thought about the my own investigations into the internationalist and ecumenical movement. I need to think through this some more.

The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-1956)   by C. S. Lewis, 1583 pages James Donahue   05 April 2007 This is the end result of five months' worth of bedtime stories. I've never read the Chronicles before. In fact, growing up, I never even heard of them or knew anyone who read them. (Probably one of the top ten signs that you were not raised evangelical.) They were better than I thought, even if overly-allegorical and downright racist at times. The kids loved them - really touched their imaginations and made bedtime reading of "grown-up books" a must for all of us.

To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife (2006)   by Caitlin Flanagan, 239 pages James Donahue   04 July 2006 Although Flanagan catches a lot of hate for her anti-feminism, these people miss the point. Flanagan is not a political columnist, but a satirist and confessionalist. Her hero is Erma Bombeck, not Betty Friedan or Phyllis Schafley. I love Flanagan. Jen and I read this book to one another while driving out to Montana, wondering how Flanagan writes what we so often feel but have not yet reflected on. (Even if Jen thinks she was too hard with her critical reading of 'Real Simple.')

Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy   by Carl Friedrich, 421 pages James Donahue   16 September 2002 Attempts to define totalitarianism by the methods of political science. Very influenced by Arendt. Pretty outdated in its evidentary claims.

Nellie Taft: The Unconventional First Lady of the Ragtime Era (2005)   by Carl Sferrazza Anthony, 418 pages James Donahue   03 December 2007 Nellie Taft drove her husband into the presidency (he fancied the Supreme Court) and then became the first political First Lady of the modern era. Among her achievements: handling the Phillipino occupation with her husband; creating the Potomac Basin park in DC and planting all those cherry trees; and promoting women's education and suffrage. Unfortunately she was struck down halfway through the term by a stroke, unable to deal with TR's ambitious betrayal in 1912, and forced to watch her husband happily ascend to the Chief Justiceship in 1921.

Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in Meiji Japan   by Carol Gluck, 387 pages James Donahue   25 April 2004

Dunant's Dream: War, Switzerland and the History of the Red Cross   by Caroline Moorehead, 716 pages James Donahue   15 October 2005 Very worthwhile, solid history.

Strangers & Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740 - 1845   by Catherine Brekus, 423 pages James Donahue   02 September 2002 Yes, there were women preachers that long ago in evangelicalism, and the debates and issues surrounding them eerily remind me of today. Written for those with no background in religious history which I much appreciated. Fascinating read.

Colonising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination   by Catherine Hall, 513 pages James Donahue   15 August 2004 An intriguing look at Baptists, power politics, emancipation, racism, and empire all swirled together in the founding of Jamaica. Hall is one of the best living historians of empire, and her take on conservative Baptistry is quite insightful.

John Stueart Curry's "Hoover and the Flood" (2007)   by Charles Eldridge, 74 pages James Donahue   17 January 2008 Eldridge uses a 1940 painting of the 1927 Mississippi flood, an event that was, if possible, even worse than Katrina, as a centerpiece to reflect on the iconography of the Deluge in Western art, the failure of Reconstruction to improve the condition of African-American life in the South, the attempt in the 1930s and 1940s to create an "American" art movement, and the depiction of Hoover, who in 1927 was the humanitarian saviour on the scene but by 1940 had turned into a nation's bête noire over the Depression.

The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity   by Charles Maier, 226 pages James Donahue   03 August 2002 A blow-by-blow account of the Historikerstreit ('historians' debate') in late-1980s Germany between Habermas and Nolte. At issue: is it time to 'normalize' the history of the Holocaust, making it less than metahistory? Can we compare the Holocaust to other mass murders? Can this be a purely historical topic, or must it be also a polticial and moral issue? Will unification mean the 'forgetting' of didacticism of the Holocaust and a return to a 19th-century German geist?

God's Long Summer   by Charles Marsh, 258 pages James Donahue   09 November 2002 An excellent examination of Christians and theological stances on both sides of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. How much repentence the American church needs for this time period. The book is very readable for a history, and is in many ways a continuing reflection on the author's original bboks on Bonhoeffer.

Petain: How the Hero of France Became a Convicted Traitor and Changed the Course of History (2005)   by Charles Williams, 289 pages James Donahue   24 September 2006 The latest biography of Petain defends him at every turn. Petain was the French general who won the bloody Battle of Verdun, stood loyally by the government in the 1920s, then stepped up to the plate to form the pro-fascist Vichy France after defeat to the Germans in WWII. Most see Petain as an opportunist, a Catholic monarchist, a sell-out of French honor. Williams sees instead an old man out of his political depth, fooled by younger ambitious scoundrels, and a womanizing secular uninterested in political and religious restoration.

The Quest for Christa T.   by Christa Wolf, 185 pages James Donahue   26 March 2003 Published in 1968 in East Germany, Wolf's swirling novel of memory and subjectivity broke decisively away from the mandated socialist realism of the Communist Bloc. It signified the shift in Wolf from critically acclaimed writer to disgruntled critic. The book moves in and out of the third person as Wolf seeks herself through a long-lost friend.

Irwin Scheiner   by Christian Converts and Social Protest in Meiji Jap, 243 pages James Donahue   14 April 2004 Scheiner shows how Japanese samurai, recently declassed and set adrift after the Restoration, transmogrified their samurai culture into Christian belief and Christian social commitments.

American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving   by Christian Smith, 287 pages James Donahue   31 October 2002 A sociological survey of Christians to determine the relative strength, perceptions of, common worldviews, and weaknesses of evangelicalism. The book has some very serious flaws: a poor definition of the categories, weighted questions in Chapter 2 and 3, and ignoring the margin of error while making some strong claims. Yet the book provides some interesting numbers, and the analysis in the last two chapters is quite good. Smith claims that evangelicalism thrives off of modernity and pluralism, creating an effective subculture dependent on individualism that is its greatest weakness and greatest strength. Good, in that it keeps a coherent religious view; bad, in that it renders them impotent within the larger culture.

The Kingdom is Always but Coming: A Life of Walter Rauschenbusch (2008)   by Christopher H. Evans, 347 pages James Donahue   20 June 2008

Dr. Livingstone, I Presume? (2007)   by Clare Pettitt, 210 pages James Donahue   18 December 2007 Everyone knows the punch line. Here Pettitt uncovers the story behind the line, the meeting between the Scottish missionary Livingstone and the Welsh-born, American journalist Stanley. The strength of the book however lies in the webs surrounding the story that Pettitt unravels: the connection between the story and the Anglo-Saxonism surrounding the Alabama arbitration; the African workers that accompanied Livingstone's body back to England, "faithful until the end"; Stanley's later involvement in romanticized boy scouting and the Belgian genocide in the Congo; the competing African and English, Christian and imperialist, appropriations of Livingstone, a diehard Scot and hapless, difficult missionary who rode his wife to an early grave, failed to convert even his trusted valet, and lived in an uneasy truce with the home missions societies.

Mothers in the Fatherland   by Claudia Koonz, 554 pages James Donahue   21 July 2002 An excellent introduction to all things Nazi. Koonz focuses her attention on women and the Church, which gives her a brilliant window into the Nazi world of terror, domesticity, and guilt-by-silence-and-collusion.

The New Faithful: Why Young Adults are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy   by Colleen Carroll, 320 pages James Donahue   26 December 2002 The book is a bit sloppy and meandering; some of her language-use is imprecise (especially about postmodernism) and some of the chapters repeat information previously said. All that being said, this is a wonderfully provocative book. I never have considered myself to be a member of a movement or of my generation, yet I clearly saw myself reflected in the people documented in this book. Carroll explores the recent phenomenon of people our age converting to more liturgical, more conservative, and more traditional faith, and by so doing rediscovering the classical themes and emotions of historical Christianity. I recommend this read to anyone interested in this phenomenon and to anyone who's always been intrigued by the possibility of converting to a more orthodox (by which I mean: traditional)faith.

Memoirs (1935)   by Count Bernstorff, 365 pages James Donahue   28 September 2006 Bernstorff was the German ambassador to DC before WWI; ambassador to the League of Nations after WWI. Here would be a refreshing change: a German politician willing to put some of the blame on himself.

Community of the Cross: Moravian Piety in Colonial Bethlehem   by Craig Atwood, 227 pages James Donahue   05 July 2004 The Moravians were German emigrants who founded utopian communities (such as New Harmony, Indiana) centered around a graphic adoration of the wounds that rivalled Mel Gibson. Atwood does a good job of explaining a tradition that -- like the Australian gene pool -- morphed quickly in insular New World communities into unique phenomena.

The Space Trilogy   by CS Lewis, 762 pages James Donahue   09 December 2002

To Begin Where I Am   by Czeslaw Milosz, 454 pages James Donahue   18 June 2003 This book is a collection of essays throughout Milosz's career separated into three categories: criticism, biographical, and reflective. His prose is as good as ever (Milosz is, to my mind, a master of the English language despite his Polish roots) The subject material is also fascinating, although any future readers should be forewarned that Milosz expects the reader to be conversant in Polish and European literary history. But then these essays were primarily written with one reader in mind: Milosz himself.

The Captive Mind   by Czeslaw Milosz, 251 pages James Donahue   03 July 2003 Searing book which examines why some collaborated with the criminal regimes of the Eastern Bloc while Milosz fell into exile status. Sympathetic and challenging given my own flaws in this area.

Religion and Politics in Enlightenment Europe   by Dale Van Kley, 389 pages James Donahue   14 August 2003 Its a commonplace in my profession to always put religion on the side of the counter-Revolution, on the side of reactionaries against the Enlightenment. This book represents a collective of scholars devoted to showing the complexities of the Enlightenment, its religious advocates, its religious origins, and its religious effects.

Cleopatra's Nose: Essays on the Unexpected   by Daniel Boorstin, 202 pages James Donahue   29 April 2002

Measuring the World (2006)   by Daniel Kehlmann, 259 pages James Donahue   03 May 2008 Historical fiction that covers the Enlightenment projects of Alexander von Humboldt (world explorer and geographical legend) and Carl Friedrich Gauss (mathematician and astronomer). One spends his life bringing German science to bear on the world, the other explores the "inner world" without ever leaving Prussia and Hanover. The plot sounds gimmicky. Yet Kehlmann's prose makes it work. It breathes life into these difficult characters, these Wissenshaftsmenschen, while reflecting on modernity's semi-pathological compulsion to discover the mathematical precision of the world. (It occurs to me when reading back through this review that it will not entice anyone to read this book. Damn my writing! Read the book anyway!!!)

The Political Culture of the American Whigs   by Daniel Walker Howe, 381 pages James Donahue   12 February 2004 Do you really want to know?

The Courtship of Princess Leia (1994)   by Dave Wolverton, 403 pages James Donahue   30 October 2007 Did you know that Leia almost married Prince Isolder instead of Han Solo? (Read with Duncan during a long ride on the Empire Builder.)

William Ewart Gladstone (1993)   by David Bebbington, 221 pages James Donahue   14 September 2008

Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 19th-century Germany   by David Blackbourn, 470 pages James Donahue   03 October 2003 Blackbourn has written a fascinating book about a small town with child visionaries that gets caught up in the ecclesiastical and political struggles of the period. I highly recommend it.

H. G. Wells: Desperately Mortal (1986)   by David C. Smith, 485 pages James Donahue   14 April 2007

French Literary Fascism   by David Campbell, 293 pages James Donahue   29 November 2002 Excellent analysis of the aesthetic commitments that were tied to fascism in the 1930s. Particularly good analysis of the recent de Man controversary.

Planets in Peril   by David Downing, 168 pages James Donahue   12 December 2002 Didn't entirely understand The Space Trilogy. Hence, this book which helped answer some of my questions and reference the work against the background of Lewis' scholastic works.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius   by David Eggers, 478 pages James Donahue   12 June 2002 A twentysomething combines Catholic guilt, the dual death of his parents, and anchorless postmodern wit to bleed himself onto too many pages. Advertized to me as an anti-memoir, I found it anything but. Eco once commented that sarcasm is the only way of expressing ourselves in a postmodern society inundated with narrative. We sih to say to the girl "I love you," but cannot because we've seen too many romantic movies; so we say "I love you" with sarcasm, to show our emotion and our contimitant knowledge that this emotion is hackneyed. We express, but without sacrificing our critical selves. This observation by Eco sums up Eggers: he hides behind sarcasm and postmodern self-awareness to defend to himself (and the reader) his obsessive need to talk of himself and write a memoir, to be known and analyzed by strangers. Lest one think I'm kidding, just read the second-to-last chapter of the book. He says it himself. Still to me, this is not an excuse for having written, or having read, this book.

Champlain's Dream: The European Founding of North America (2008)   by David Hackett Fischer, 531 pages James Donahue   28 December 2008 Fischer ties together many things I had often wondered about: the comparative Native American policies of Spain, Britain and France; the connection between the French Wars of Religion and French settlements in the New World; and, finally, why the French appeared so lackadaisical about the New World. Fischer's writing is a good combination of scholarly and popular history, with good attention paid to archeology as well as the written sources. Only warning: Fischer is perhaps a bit too enamored with his subject. Did Champlain really represent a more moral road-not-taken for the European population of North America?

Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire   by David Remnick, 542 pages James Donahue   24 March 2004 This wonderful account is written from the first-hand experience and incredible access of the Post reporter in Moscow from 1988-1992. Remnick, who is now editor of the New Yorker and was once the flirtatous boy in my advisor's college class, writes with an enviable touch for flair and poetic significance. Highly enjoyable

Runaway America   by David Waldstreicher, 134 pages James Donahue   30 January 2004 Waldstreicher examines slavery and (un)free labor in the colonies through Benjamin Franklin's unique life, which in turn involved being bound as an apprentice to his elder brother, a time as a refugee from his family, a trader and owner of African slaves, and eventual, though begruding, elderly abolitionist. Fascinating detail.

What Now, Little Man?   by Denis Showalter, 286 pages James Donahue   01 March 2003 A good thematic history of Der Sturmer during the Weimar years.

Life Together   by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 122 pages James Donahue   14 November 2002 Third time through the book, and each time it gets even more life-changing. How few books there are which can distill the gospel so clearly.

Nicholas II: Twilight of the Empire   by Dominic Lieven, 269 pages James Donahue   22 September 2004

Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma   by Dominick LaCapra, 230 pages James Donahue   10 August 2002 With a heavy emphasis on critical theory and deconstruction, LaCapra promotes a self-reflexive Holocaust historiography that goes beyond political polemic and posturing.

King Henry (2007)   by Douglas Galbraith, 409 pages James Donahue   25 May 2009 A fictional reenactment of an event too crazy to have really happened. In 1915 Henry Ford decided he could stop the war, hooked up with a zealous Hungarian suffragette, hired a cruise ship, packed it full of wide-eyed students and cynical journalists, and sailed off to Europe to stop the war on Christmas day. Oh, the things that wealth can and cannot buy.

Bishop Stephen Neill: From Edinburgh to South India (2007)   by Dyron B. Daughrity, 287 pages James Donahue   01 May 2008 Neill was the Anglican bishop in southern India in the 1930s and 1940s, the declining years of the Raj. Daughrity's academic biography unveils this "life in the middle," uncovering some salacious details along the way, but without really questioning the inherent "middle" position of all Western missionaries.

Ragtime (1974)   by E. L. Doctorow, 334 pages James Donahue   14 May 2009

The Selected Writings of E.H. Norman   by E.H. Norman, 464 pages James Donahue   20 March 2004 Norman was the first professional scholar of Japan in the West, crucial to the success of the 1945 Occupation, and hounded into suicide by Joseph MacCarthy. This edition celebrates the 50th anniversary of his most noted book.

Karl Barth   by Eberhard Busch, 500 pages James Donahue   17 July 2005 The standard bibliography for over thirty years, written by Barth's last secretary and based upon Barth's notes for his autobiography, but also written from inside a theological, European community whose references and names may only mean something to the historian.

Freud on Women   by ed. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, 375 pages James Donahue   15 February 2003 A helpful compilation and assessment of Freud's writings on women.

Cambridge History of Japan: Nineteenth-Century   by ed. Marius Jansen, 841 pages James Donahue   12 April 2004 Boning up for comps

The Age of Innocence   by Edith Wharton, 364 pages James Donahue   06 May 2002

Philip Dru: Administrator (1920)   by Edward House, 299 pages James Donahue   15 March 2007 Lying feverishly, recovering from a bout of appendicitus, Raully reads an old utopian novel about a settlement house worker who learns of a big-business conspiracy to seize the government by stacking the elections and the Supreme Court, and who then rallies the virile youth of the West and the South to rebel against the government, then installs himself as Administrator and painstakingly rewrites the laws to create a just republic, before marrying his gal Gloria and sailing around the world. This book would just be a bad novel, a combination of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the Jesus Film, and Braveheart, if not for its historical interest. Shortly after writing this expose of his fantasies, the author, Colonel House, met Woodrow Wilson and became his right hand through the most turbulent, centralizing, and aggressive presidency in U.S. history.

Red Tape and the Gospel: A Biography of William Paton   by Eleanor Jackson, 346 pages James Donahue   01 June 2005 Paton was a major British church figure during the two world wars. Background for my dissertation research.

Blockade Diaries   by Elena Kochina, 109 pages James Donahue   14 January 2004 Couldn't put it down. A woman's daily grind during the siege of Leningrad. Interesting stuff in here on ethics as she devises a new morality in the midst of desolation.

The Historian (2005)   by Elizabeth Kostova, 642 pages James Donahue   17 January 2006 Page-turning thriller, as a family of historians track Dracula through Ottoman manuscripts, Balkan monasteries, and Orthodox folk rituals.

Emile Zola (1966)   by Elliott Grant, 181 pages James Donahue   25 October 2006 Old-time lit-crit, from the times when the middle-class tried to keep up with their European literature to maintain their class status. Remember those days?

Germinal (1885)   by Emile Zola, 532 pages James Donahue   02 August 2006 If you ever thought your life was bad. . . .Preparing to teach Western Civ this fall.

The Geography of Bliss (2008)   by Eric Weiner, 352 pages James Donahue   10 March 2008 After surveying the current state of the science of happiness (blissology, if you must know), Weiner (sounds like Whiner) sets off on a tour of the world's happiest nations: Switz, Iceland, Thailand, Ashville NC, Bhutan (which measures its Gross Domestic Happiness, not its GDP). With some oddballs thrown in: India (to study with a guru), Qatar (does sudden wealth create happiness), and Moldova (one of the unhappiest places on earth). Entertaining, thought-provoking: travel-lit meets critical treatment of self-help world. Now why wasn't South Bend, Indiana on that list? Oh yeah - we suck!

The Devil in the White City   by Erik Larson, 390 pages James Donahue   08 June 2005 Read this gem while on vacation in the Smokies. Larson tells two stories: one about the gleaming success of the Columbian Exposition of 1893, and another about a mass murderer who lived on its borders and preyed on newly-deracinated girls in the big city. I preferred the former, but Jen preferred the latter. Worthwhile read.

Decline and Fall (1928)   by Evelyn Waugh, 293 pages James Donahue   09 July 2007 Fresh off his conversion, Waugh wrote his first novel to savage the literate 'chatocracy' among whom he had spent his 20s. Brilliant satire: See Pennyfeather mix and mingle with Lady Circumference (and her son Lord Tangent), the underworld of Capt. Grimes and Philbrick, and finally meet his end in a reformed penitentiary after he runs afoul of the League of Nations.

Vile Bodies (1930)   by Evelyn Waugh, 321 pages James Donahue   22 July 2007 "Adam and Nina were suffering from being sophisticated about sex before they were at all widely experienced."

Black Mischief (1932)   by Evelyn Waugh, 240 pages James Donahue   30 July 2007

A Handful of Dust (1934)   by Evelyn Waugh, 308 pages James Donahue   07 August 2007 Waugh's first non-satirical book is enough to make me despair of modern civilization. There is depressing, and then there is Waugh. Here Brenda Last leaves her traditional husband for no conceivable reason (boredom? silliness? callousness?), beginning a process that leads a country squire family into extinction.

Scoop (1938)   by Evelyn Waugh, 254 pages James Donahue   21 August 2007 Whenever career-driven journalists descend on a rumor-filled Third World nation and have to justify their extravagent expense reports even while they have no real grasp of the country they are in, news will be made. Or at least: "news" will be reported. Here Waugh mocks a group of journalists in the fictional African nation of "Ishmaelia" as they generate the news that they need for the folks back home. Waugh again uses the journey of a straight man (here: Mr. Boot, someone who goes only so he can keep his comfy job writing the "Rural Life" column for the Megalopolitan) to wickedly satire everyone around him. Loosely based on Waugh's experience in 1935 as a foreign correspondent covering the Italo-Abyssian War.

Put Out More Flags (1942)   by Evelyn Waugh, 254 pages James Donahue   23 August 2007 After two years of slugging it out in the Mediterrean with the British Army, Waugh sat down to write a satiric update of his comic characters from previous books. The book is interesting, but seems to fall pretty flat for several reasons. First, the antics of the Bright Young Things are more sinister than comic in a time of war. But more importantly Waugh just cannot write lite anymore. A moral edge is there in the satire that wasn't before. The stories mean something now. Which means: I hope Waugh's next book is something different. Waugh has changed, and his narrative voice needs to change: from satire of the glitterati to ???

Brideshead Revisited (1945)   by Evelyn Waugh, 351 pages James Donahue   26 August 2007 Waugh's new tone and newfound seriousness create this amazing read! This book was published on the eve of WWI (my own first edition was bought by a Lt. Col in the U.S. Army from nearby Goshen) and tells the story of a WWII officer struggling with the memories of the lost prewar Britain: pastoral, aristocratic, slightly superfluous, lamented. Waugh laments a Victorian world that "were the aborgines, vermin by right of law, to be shot off at leisure so that things might be safe for the travelling salesman, with his polygonal pince-nez, his fat wet hand-shake, his grinning dentures." Here Waugh also deals with his own Catholicism for the first time, though not head on like his contmporaries Greene or Chesterton, but as part of that lost world that Britain turned its back on. Waugh's Catholicism is alien, foreign, unmodern, something that Waugh seems compelled towards but not necessarily in favour of. (Read mostly in one long day waiting for the birth of Calvin Thomas Donahue.)

The Loved One (1948)   by Evelyn Waugh, 164 pages James Donahue   30 August 2007 Waugh returns to satire again, after his brief foray into "lit-era-toor," but moves his aim from the British upper class to their cross-Atlantic successors after WWII. In this short novel a British vagabond falls in love with an embalmer in southern California named Aimée Thanatogenos (named after the evangelist) and gets to see the bizarre American world of death.

Helena (1950)   by Evelyn Waugh, 247 pages James Donahue   07 September 2007 Waugh abandons his previous styles and writes a fictional account of the life of St. Helena, mother of Constantine and discoverer of the True Cross. Waugh manages to write as one of the Faithful without devolving into melodrama or hagiography. I admire the effort, but somehow I did not quite enjoy it. (And I'm sure that Waugh caught much grief for his newfound open faith, perhaps like Anne Rice or Orson Scott Card is catching right now.) This inability to enjoy this book puzzles me. Did Waugh fail when he left his satiric side? Did writing "Brideshead" or living through WWII or just getting older and more religious ruin his edge? Or: Perhaps I am too Protestant, although I'm not sure what that has to do with it. Hmmmm.

Sword of Honour (1952-61)   by Evelyn Waugh, 796 pages James Donahue   12 October 2007 Evelyn Waugh's last novel, released slowly over a decade, is loosely based on his own WWI experiences as a forty(ish)-year old volunteer. It portrays the slow maturation of a wealthy dilenttante faced for the first time with life - and death. It begins with a romantic vow to crusade against fascism at the grave of Sir Roger Casement and ends with a desperate quest to save the life of one Jew in Yugoslavia.

German Pietism During the 18th Century   by F Ernst Stoeffler, 265 pages James Donahue   10 June 2004 Very capable summary

The Post-American World (2008)   by Fareed Zakaria, 260 pages James Donahue   17 August 2008 An excellent survey of the U.S. options since the recent "rise of the West." Best points: good on multipolarity of power politics. Worst points: Zakaria (who is from India) focuses on Asia to the total exclusion of South America and Africa.

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh (1933)   by Franz Werfel, 817 pages James Donahue   06 July 2007 In 1915 seven towns of Armenians took to the mountain of Musa Dagh to resist the Ottoman genocide. They were rescued by a French cruiser after months of resistance. This books novelizes their experience while encrusting it in Biblical allusions: Musa Dagh is akin Ararat, Armenians to Israel, the holdout lasts forty days, etc. It is an original take on genocide, devoid of the by-now-cliche liberal musings on the Holocaust that populate bookshelves. Because the author is a conservative Catholic Austrian from before the age of Hitler. Thus, he musings on how genocide makes one feel one's blood, one roots; his refreshing postshots at the modernizing Arab leadership, and his theological/literary convictions on what it means to serves the "God of the nationS." Highly recommended.

The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State   by Frederick Engels, 267 pages James Donahue   16 January 2003

Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future   by Friedrich Nietzsche, 179 pages James Donahue   16 April 2003 A bit obtuse for Nietzsche. So heavy-handed and intentionally abusive to the reader.

Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (1863 - originally)   by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 74 pages James Donahue   01 May 2007

The Brothers Karamazov (1880)   by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 940 pages James Donahue   31 December 2006 Thanks to Steve for reviving my interest in an old Christmas habit from college!

The Barbarism of Berlin (1914)   by G. K. Chesterton, 94 pages James Donahue   22 March 2006 which is more surprising? That G. K. was one of the first British intellects to write a jingoistic, one-sided blast against Germany to support the war effort, or that in this book (as always with G. K.) there is a touch of truth in his bombastic acerbity.

Heretics (1905)   by G. K. Chesterton, 305 pages James Donahue   16 November 2006 My usual reaction to Chesterton: I cannot agree with his populist-pandering, meanspirited, paradox-loving substance, but I cannot dislike his style of pugnacious satire.

Grey of Falloden (1937)   by G. M. Trevelyan, 415 pages James Donahue   29 July 2006

The Ball and the Cross   by G.K. Chesterton, 178 pages James Donahue   25 January 2003 The placid indifference of modern England towards religion is threatened when a Catholic Scotsman and an atheist journalist decide to fight a duel over the honor of the Virgin Mary. Wonderful writing; each sentence is a jewel. Yet the overly allegorical subtitlies were over my head, despite a helpful introduction by Gardner.

The Complete Father Brown   by G.K. Chesterton, 704 pages James Donahue   19 March 2003 Many mysteries all solved by the clever parson. Vivre la spring break.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill   by G.K. Chesterton, 179 pages James Donahue   21 May 2003 A wonderful farce about the mysticism of nationalism in a futuristic civilized world. Chesterton is at his best when he is satirical, one of the highest of Christian trait..

The Man Who Was Thursday   by G.K. Chesterton, 120 pages James Donahue   26 May 2003 A policeman finally inflitrates the notorious Anarchist Council only to find out that each of the council members is an undercover policeman. Again, brilliant satire, yet the flowery theological ending confused me. (Might add that these Chesterton books are very remniscent to me of Lewis.)

The Flying Inn   by G.K. Chesterton, 320 pages James Donahue   02 June 2003 In a novel antithetical to Rushdie's novels of identity-melange, Chesterton protests against the encrouchment of Islamic ideas and culture on Christendom. The plot revolves around an act of Prohibition passed by Parliament that first confiscates tavern signs and then makes it illegal to serve drink without such a sign. Our two heroes steal a sign and travel through the countryside serving rum and cheese, singing songs and satirizing aristocrats; hence "the flying inn." Part of the humor of the book, for me, stems from the denunciation of temperate Evangelicalism as "Chrislam." And the book certainly is relevant once again in the current, to copy a buzzphrase, "clash of cultures." Yet the book left me wondering: am I too PC to truly enjoy such goodhearted and boistrous defence of Western culture?

The Phenomenology of Spirit   by G.W.F. Hegel, 592 pages James Donahue   16 December 2002 Been working all semester on this one. An entire class devoted to one book, and we didn't get all the way through it. Finished it up over Finals week.

Philosophy of Right   by G.W.F. Hegel, 380 pages James Donahue   28 January 2003

Christa Wolf   by Gail Finney, 133 pages James Donahue   26 March 2003 Should be subtitled The Quest for Christa Wolf. Biographical background. Better than Drees.

From Stalinism to Pluralism   by Gale Stokes, 294 pages James Donahue   20 November 2003 How sad is it that this is the date that I finish reading a textbook for my own class?

Homegrown Democrat   by Garrison Keiller, 238 pages James Donahue   07 August 2004 Finally a political book that can speak to my viewpoint. Keiller states passionately and humorously the commitment to the public that is at the bedrock of the Democratic Party (hopefully still the case) and the American Dream. Well worth reading.

The Genesis of Perfection: Adam and Eve in Jewish and Christian Imagination   by Gary Anderson, 231 pages James Donahue   08 June 2003 I highly recommend this. Anderson traces through theological and iconographic history the significance of Adam and Eve for out forebears. Chapters deal specfically with: sex in Eden, Eve's culpability, the foreshadowing of Christ and Mary, the penance of Gen 3, etc. Anderson writes simply for the amateur, which I admire and need. In the back he includes copys of several Christian aprochryphal works from the first five centuries on Adam and Eve, including the Gospel of Nicodemus; helpful and interesting to have some original text laid out in full.

God's Glory, Neighbor's Good   by Gary Sattler, 109 pages James Donahue   08 June 2004 Sketchy biography of August Hermann Francke.

Fantasies of Witnessing:   by Gary Weissmann, 266 pages James Donahue   25 January 2005 Weissmann tracks the curious phenomenon of contemporary Americans seeking to experience the Holocaust for themselves through film, museums, made-up memoirs, connections to survivors, etc. Weissmann is a clever literary critic who sometimes dwells more on big names (like Wiesal) than pop culture; I would have enjoyed more of the latter. But the phenomenon he addresses is real - and bizarre, and his treatment is very illuminating.

Mirrors of Downing Street (1921)   by Gentleman with a Duster, 171 pages James Donahue   02 March 2006 Brief, biting sketches of leading British politicians, from Churchill to Cecil to Lloyd-George.

Painted Windows (1922)   by Gentlemen with a Duster, 137 pages James Donahue   13 March 2006 A behind-the-scenes caricaturist of the British church scene takes them all on -- with jacket blurb by Chesterton.

Middlemarch   by George Eliot, 791 pages James Donahue   01 August 2003 What a beautifully written book. Everything in its place, without seeming predictable. Her writing portrays, seemingly without effort, an entire social universe that crosses religious, class, and economic lines. Like looking at an ant farm.

Adam Bede   by George Eliot, 592 pages James Donahue   15 August 2003 I am continually amazed at Eliot's talent, evident here even in her first novel, for conjuring up pastoral 19th-c England across class lines. In this work her theological acuity also shines through with her depiction the interactions between Dinah, a Methodist preacher. and Irwine, the Anglican vicar. A bit melodramatic, but I was into it.

The Mill on the Floss   by George Eliot, 657 pages James Donahue   01 June 2004 After a couple of insomnial nights camping, I cleaned through Eliot by flashlight. Before this year I bore a deep antipathy for all things Victorian, but Eliot has bent me in this regard. Her prose -- so satirical, formal, intentionally composed, metaphorically rich -- keeps me hooked even as the stories dabble overmuch in romance.

Daniel Deronda   by George Eliot, 903 pages James Donahue   28 June 2004 Eliot's last work is a paeon to religious tradition and religious identity while examining Jewish life in Britain, an odd endpoint for the well-known evangelical-cum-liberal. Daniel, Ezra, etc. all fulfill their nomic and Semitics destinies while the WASPish Gwendolyn (Valley girl) and Grandcourt (Cheny-esque Republican) pursue decadence and self-absorption. Guess which wins out in the end?

Romola   by George Eliot, 736 pages James Donahue   05 September 2004 Eliot was most proud of this work, her only historical novel, her tribute to both Scott and her (ever-so-Victorian) passion for Italy. The novel tracks the moral declension of Tito Melema amid the backdrop of corrupt popes, scheming Medicis, moral zealots, and the personalities of Machaevelli, Mirandola, and Savonarola. Very personal book with reflections on leaving a spouse and grappling with disillusionment with evangelicalism. The beginning is a bit staid (by which I mean, too allegorical), and Eliot obviously struggles depicting the lower classes of Italy, but the book picks up steam at the end when fleshing out of the fruits of her character's actions.

Silas Marner   by George Eliot, 197 pages James Donahue   14 September 2004 Eliot's shortest book was also a bridge between her early pastoral studies and her later interest in myth and religious liberalism. Short, evocative, and scaled-back; the most accessible Eliot. (But then that also makes it uncharacteristic)

Felix Holt, the Radical   by George Eliot, 398 pages James Donahue   07 December 2004 Oh, those tricky radicals. Not only do they stand up for justice and suffer the pangs of this world gladly and manly, but they also woo the woman away from those damned aristocrats. The final book in my George Eliot fascination.

Fundmentalism and America Culture: 1870 - 1925   by George Marsden, 292 pages James Donahue   21 September 2002 The standard work which explains historically how the fundamentalists became the funny-mentalists. An essential read for anyone that wants to understand the history of their evangelical heritage. Also helps explain some of the superannuated shibboleths I experienced at Cedarville.

Jonathan Edwards: A Life   by George Marsden, 600 pages James Donahue   01 September 2003 What a book! George continually impresses me as a scholar who is at once thorough, thoughtful, and readable. The research here is impeccable and built mainly on a decade of recent dissertations and whatnot. This figure, so central to American political and religious life, is portrayed warts and all, but there's still a lot to admire here.

The Image of Man   by George Mosse, 226 pages James Donahue   16 January 2003 An excellent and brief history of modern masculinity. Mosse traces it back to Winckelmann's rediscovery of the Greeks, and does a nice job of distinguishing this new form of male-hood from its chivalric, aristocratic predecessor. He traces this ideal through the 1960s when it began to dissolve. Throughout Mosse also pays attention to the male counterparts: the female and the homosexual (or unmanly man). As a sidenote I appreciate that Mosse includes fascism's quest for a 'new man' within a broader history of European culture.

Redeemers and Patriots in Meiji Japan   by George Wilson, 155 pages James Donahue   15 October 2003 In contrast to most histories of Japan which focus on economic concerns and the upper class, Wilson provides a highly readable and highly engaging account of the peasantry and their millenarian aspirations. As a sidenote: so many striking parallels to evangelicalism.

Medievalism   by GeorgeTyrrell, 184 pages James Donahue   08 May 2002 Written in 1908 to protest both Vatican I and the papal encyclical condemning Catholic-modernism. What sets this impassioned essay apart however is the author's use of prescholastic theology and the Church Fathers to argue against Vatican I.

The Moral Imagination (2006)   by Gertrude Himmelfarb, 253 pages James Donahue   29 December 2006 An interesting set of essays on moral thought in the Victorian era.

The Feminine Face of the People of God   by Giberto Baril, 247 pages James Donahue   31 July 2002 This books examines the foundational feminine analogies of God's chosen in both the OT and NT. Things focused upon include: Israel in Hosea, the barrenness and fertility of the patriach-wives, the daughter of Zion figure, Mary, and the Church as the bride of Christ. Fascinating survey that really recaptures the feminine as a constituent of the Christian life, corporative and individual.

Violence Unveiled (1999)   by Gil Bailie, 276 pages James Donahue   11 December 2007 Rene Girard's work on sacrificial culture, Christian theology, and modern theory remains for me the most compelling work of the past decades. Apparently the same can be said of Gil Bailie, a Christian theologian who heads his own California institute. This book is an extended reflection (and restatement) of Girard's importance for modern evangelicals. Worth reading, but perhaps the casual reader would do better to go straight to Girard himself. (Read on the train ride back home.)

Mimi & Toutou's Big Adventure   by Giles Foden, 241 pages James Donahue   12 June 2005 True story of the bizarre portage of two war-speedboats across Africa into Lake Tanganyika to battle a German warboat in the Great War. The British captain was insane, the Scots dour, the Germans just plain unlucky. Like a combination of Gilligan's Island and the Heart of Darkness. Foden is a smooth writer (i.e., not a professional historian) with a writer's eye for the unnecessary connection and a good yarn.

Doctrines and Origin of Fascism   by Giovanni Gentile, 103 pages James Donahue   05 September 2002 He ought to know being the official philosopher of Mussolini.

The Comedians (1966)   by Graham Greene, 287 pages James Donahue   18 May 2007 A disturbing novel about a group of whites in Haiti during Papa Doc;s revolution. (Think a Carribbean "The Quiet American.") Despite the hardened cyncism of the author, others on the island have more heroic, less detached reactions to the island;s fate. But which is in the end better? Because Greene himself cannot decide, its hard to tell.

The Tenth Man (1985)   by Graham Greene, 144 pages James Donahue   10 June 2007 When the Germans condemn three random French POWs to die in WWII, chosen by lots, the wealthy lawyer Chavel gives everything he has to a fellow prisoner to accept his short straw. After the war Chavel cannot help but wander back, broke and ashamed, to his former manor, now inhabited by the dead man's mother and sister, fully regretting his trade.

The Ministry of Fear (1943)   by Graham Greene, 221 pages James Donahue   10 June 2007 While bombs fall on London, someone is murdering people in a convulated spying scheme. The main hero accidently buys the wrong cake at a church fair (with real eggs in it!) and enters a tragicomic world that he does not understand.

England Made Me (1935)   by Graham Greene, 207 pages James Donahue   13 June 2007 I had never read an early Greene novel before, nor realized how much he borrowed from other interwar Catholic pessimists, such as Waugh or Belloc. In this book nihilism prevails among the devolving British upper crust while Depression ravages the working man. (Read in Invermere, my ideal town.)

Travels With My Aunt (1969)   by Graham Greene, 265 pages James Donahue   17 June 2007 Plot: A retired bank manager, regular and boring in every respect, meets his swinging, smuggling aunt who exposes him to a 'walk on the wild side.' Her advice is at turns salacious ("His fun had been in the secret, and he left us both only so that somewhere he could find a new secret. Not love. Just a secret"), quirky ("Switzerland is only bearable covered in snow"), and practical ("People who love quotations love meaningless generalizations"). A few years I would have regarded this book as a satirical, semi-serious take on the 60s by a member of the most radical generation of them all (the 1920s crowd), but since my time in Switzerland I can only see as the truest realism of all. (Read on the train back from Montana).

Brighton Rock (1938)   by Graham Greene, 247 pages James Donahue   14 August 2007 One of the most compelling examinations of depravity (and its mirror image: grace) I have ever read. "'I mean - a Catholic is more capable of evil than anyone. I think perhaps - because we believe in Him - we are more in touch with other people.'" For even He believes. . .and shudders.

Victor Hugo   by Graham Robb, 541 pages James Donahue   19 May 2005 Robb's biography of Hugo made me realize just what a central political and cultural figure Hugo truly was. Beyond writing the Romantic stories that have recently been canabalized by Disney and Andrew Lloyd Weber, Hugo was a dominant figure in the 1830, 1848, and 1870 revolutions, a major religious figure who founded his own Vietnamese cult, the greatest French Romantic poet and the first French modernist poet, and the impregnator of much of the Parisian jet-set. Robb always writes great literary biographies, with a sharp eye for detail and a refusal to get bogged down in recapsulating plots and literary mumbo-jumbo.

Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture   by Grant Wacker, 357 pages James Donahue   25 September 2002 An excellent and comprehensive description of early Pentecostalism. The phenomenon really amazes. Absorbing read. Written by someone who grew up within the (anti)tradition.

The Soul of a Bishop (1917)   by H. G. Wells, 341 pages James Donahue   17 July 2006 You've heard of sci-fi. This is reli-fi. Wells takes time out from the war to describe a bishop's mystical transcending of stuffy church-religion to embrace the spiritual Kingdom-of-God-of-the-future.

Mr. Britling Sees It Through (1916)   by H. G. Wells, 423 pages James Donahue   26 July 2006 I never knew that Wells could write like this: touching, pastoral, significant. Written in the midst of WWI, Wells tracks the impact of the conflict on a typical British, middle-class family.

Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain since 1866 (1934)   by H. G. Wells, 707 pages James Donahue   02 April 2007 Amusing. Ostensibly about the evolution of Wells' "brain" in the midst of the evolution of the world-state. But not worth it for the philosophy. Better for its self-absorbed musings on the Fabian circle, the rise of standardized testing in education (Wells pioneered a Princeton-Review-esque method of beating the standards), and the wide-open nature of publishing during the publishing period to absorb the first mass audiences being turned out by the first mass educational systems. Could Wells have ridden to prevelance in any other setting?

The New Machiavelli (1911)   by H. G. Wells, 378 pages James Donahue   10 March 2008 An autobiographical novel, the Bildungsroman as self-defense. Wells defends his politics - rational world state run by a new elite capable of steering human evolution towards happiness - and his new mistress - stupid old Victorians left us no sexual education capable of preparing us for real life. My offhand comment: Its nice to see the roots of fascism in our own culture.

Consciousness and Society   by H. Stuart Hughes, 431 pages James Donahue   12 May 2003 An excellent intellectual history of the generation of 1890s-1910s. Hughes organizes the book around the theme of intellectuals extending Enlightenment rationality into the irrational arenas, thereby undercutting modernity. Main figures: Freud, Weber, Pareto, Croce, Bergson, Mann, and Sorel.

TR: The Last Romantic (1997)   by H. W. Brands, 817 pages James Donahue   19 July 2007 Brands sees TR as a romantic figure living in an imaginary world, out of touch with reality, constantly pushing (and, even more tragically) those around him to live the 'streneous life.' All well and good for an academic who pushed the book out in a few years, has never hunted, and has safely modern political views? But, if TR was so caught up in unreality, then why did he resonate with so many people? I suppose I am over-tough here. The book is thoroughly enjoyable - but I suspect this is more because of its enjoyable protagonist, and not its (pseudo)smug author.

James Bryce (1927)   by H.A.L. Fisher, 682 pages James Donahue   29 April 2006 Bryce was a mountain-climber, British Lord, and TR's favorite ambassador. I read this since I have always loved Mount Bryce in BC, and was always curious about its name. Interesting life, but written in that pedantic, old-Oxford style.

A Comprehensive Interpretation of the Life and Work of Christa Wolf   by Hajo Drees, 156 pages James Donahue   20 March 2003 The work is as dry as the title, but provides a maximum amount of information in a minimum amount of time about the famed East German writer.

Eichmann in Jersualem: A Report on the Banality of Evil   by Hannah Arendt, 264 pages James Donahue   21 July 2002 Arendt's controversial thesis that the true horror of the Holocaust was not in its mendacity but in its banality. Worse: its happening again in Israel in the 1960s. Thought-provoking, fascinating

The Origins of Totalitarianism   by Hannah Arendt, 507 pages James Donahue   07 September 2002 A masterpiece which put the very word into our vocabulary.

Eichmann In Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963)   by Hannah Arendt, 298 pages James Donahue   29 November 2006

Ernst Troeltsch: His Life and Work (1993)   by Hans-Georg Drescher, 311 pages James Donahue   10 July 2007

Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business   by Harold Livesay, 202 pages James Donahue   03 September 2004 From this gilded age to another.

The Great War: Walk In Hell (1999)   by Harry Turtledove, 606 pages James Donahue   21 January 2007 In this alt-history sequel, WWI still plays out between the Confederates and the North. I love Turtledove's use of real history to flesh out his alternative universe. This episode we get to see southern slaves reading Marx, primitive tanks moving on the Roanoke, French Canadians with double reason to resist the Yankee Hun, Pres. Wilson (from Virginia) debating about whether to conscript African-Americans, and Mormons using the war to seize more local control over Utah.

The Great War: Breakthroughs (2000)   by Harry Turtledove, 584 pages James Donahue   18 February 2007 Turtledove's trilogy grinds down to a halt.

Blood & Iron (2001)   by Harry Turtledove, 630 pages James Donahue   24 May 2007 Turtledove continues his alternative history of the United States. In the defeated South, the KKK get political, blaming the defeat on the blacks and going after Whig politicians. In the North, Socialists finally manage to oust Teddy Roosevelt from the Powell House in Philadelphia while trying to digest the recently-swallowed parts of Canada.

American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold (2002)   by Harry Turtledove, 619 pages James Donahue   28 June 2007 Turtledove continues his alternative history through 1933, with the re-ascension of the Confederate Fascist party and the partially successful attempts of the U.S. to pacify the captured parts of Canada and the ever-simmering Mormons out West.

American Empire: The Victorious Opposition (2003)   by Harry Turtledove, 618 pages James Donahue   01 December 2007 Turtledove's alternative history of North America reaches the second world war, when a a defeated Confederacy is determined to win back lands from the North while ensuring that their African slaves will not stab them in the back again.

The Best American Comics (2006)   by Harvey Pekar (ed), 273 pages James Donahue   11 December 2006 No superheroes, no 1950s humor. Think satire, firmly rooted in anti-Bushism and mall-ternative culture. I enjoyed much of this collection, but in the end would have appreciated a bit more diversity. Pekar seems a bit too interested in making comics a "real art form" to give the topic the lack of seriousness that it needed.

Schlomo Avineri   by Hegel's Theory of the Modern State, 241 pages James Donahue   29 January 2003 Avineri provides an excellent historical study of Hegel's politics and philosophy, defending him against reductionistic arguments that contend banally that Hegel absolutized the state, was an ardent nationalist, and the forefather of totalitarianism.

Rahel Levin Varnhagen   by Heidi Tewarson, 253 pages James Donahue   03 March 2003 Varnhagen was a gifted salonaire and letter-writer during Prussia's golden years at the beginning of the nineteenth-century. Tewarson lovingly reconstructs her life and concerns here, even if she is somewhat hampered by her feminist lenses.

The Great War: American Front (1998)   by Henry Turtledove, 562 pages James Donahue   18 December 2006 Turtledove remains my favorite paperback writer. This book contemplates what WWI would look like for a U.S. that had lost the Civil War. The South sides with France and Britain (who helped the CSA in the 1860s); the North sides with Germany. Trenches are dug in Virginia; poison gas is unveiled at Cincinnati; Canada can't afford to send troops to the Queen overseas. I never realized how rooted Wilson's thought was in the South until reading this book. As always, nicely done.

Clausewitz's On War (2007)   by Hew Strachan, 190 pages James Donahue   18 August 2007 A survey of the book and its origins. Unfortunately its a bit difficult to understand without some background knowledge of Prussian military life. The part I found the most interesting was his discussion of how Colin Powell and the neocons have taken to Clausewitz's book, especially a new translation which words the text a little differently from the editions beloved by Hitler and Ludendorff.

The Life and Thought of Kanzo Uchimura   by Hiyoshi Miuro, 131 pages James Donahue   03 April 2004 Uchimura was one of the first Christian converts in Japan after its legalization in 1873. Led to Christ by an American agricultural advisor, he quickly turned against American missionaires and their ethnocentrism. He founded his own church 'gone native, and propagated a gospel uniquely suited to Japanese culture and their Confucian values.

Pere Goriot   by Honore Balzac, 244 pages James Donahue   11 September 2002 Two parvenu daughters take advantage of their bourgeois father while a law student attempts to make the Parisian scene. Fairly melodramatic, but worth it just to be able to say 'I'm reading Balzac.'

Hegel: An Intellectual Biography   by Horst Althaus, 292 pages James Donahue   15 August 2002 The book focuses mainly on the development of his writings and interactions with other thinkers of his time. Little is said or know of the man behind the philosopher. An editorial choice, or a concession to Hegel''s enigmatic personality?

The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Japan and Germany   by Ian Buruma, 309 pages James Donahue   27 May 2004

Occidentalism   by Ian Buruma, 148 pages James Donahue   08 June 2004 Buruma finds the roots of current Islamic anti-Westernism in European Romanticism. As always ,Buruma is morally and literarily inspiring, but without any actual links or "smoking guns" he is forced to rely on arguments from resemblence. Like another of my favorites, Buruma misses the point when he deals with the cynics of the Enlightenment, engaging in some crude reductionism himself.

Murder in Amsterdam: The Murder of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance (2006)   by Ian Buruma, 264 pages James Donahue   24 December 2006 On 2 November, a young Morroccan immigrant, juiced up on Islamism, tracked down Theo Van Gogh, great-grandnephew of the artist and the artistic version of a 'shock jock', and shot him at midday on his bike in downtown Amsterdam. Buruma is from this neighborhood. In this book he goes home and interviews people associated with the event: the youth's friends and iman, a Somali politician and friend of Van Gogh who despises her 'backward' upbringing, Dutch people who feel trapped between their resentment at the browning of their capital city and their Dutch pride in their progressivism. Buruma is even-handed in this exploration of Europe's most pressing problem. In this country Islamism is a foreign threat and a foreign war; in Europe Islamism is a quarter of the country, wrapped up in guilty feelings about the Holocaust and imperialism, more political because so much of European society is based upon nationality.

Voltaire in Exile: The Last Years, 1753-78 (2004)   by Ian Davidson, 308 pages James Donahue   02 January 2006 In 1753, Voltaire learned during his return from hobnobbing with Frederick the Great that he was exiled from Paris. So he used his fortune (gained not from selling books, but from winning the lottery) to buy an estate just outside Geneva, settling down to a life as factory-owner, agriculturalist replete with peasants, critic of the Church, earthquakes, and Genevan-native Rousseau and, above all else, tourist attraction. In Geneva I lived a few blocks from Voltaire's house (now a museum containing his archives), no longer an estate and swallowed up by apartment buildings.

The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives on Interpretation   by Ian Kershaw, 225 pages James Donahue   15 October 2002 Kershaw examines the often rancorous historiographic debates surronding Nazism. Specific issue include: the relative responsibility of non-Nazis for the Holocaust, Hitler's personal role and power over the regime, the restrictions that overt moralism places on historical research, and the conflicting accounts between Germans and Jews. The book is meant for the non-specialist and is a good introduction to the historiography; Kershaw also presents sound and fair evaluations of the issues.

Amsterdam   by Ian McEwan, 193 pages James Donahue   30 June 2005 This is my first McEwan novel, chosen because it won the Booker Prize in 1998. About halfway through the book, however, I began to suspect that this particular Booker was awarded more for the author's ouerve and reputation than for the merits of these pages. McEwan writes about 'weighty' subjects with the graceful, page-turning prose of a Tom Clancy. That's an achievement, but given the wonderful things I hear about McEwan, I hope that I'll find a bit more when I pick him up next time.

Atonement   by Ian McEwan, 351 pages James Donahue   06 September 2005 While at colonial Williamsburg for four days, and obeying the advertisements to discover the "colonial me" (who turned out to be quite a slaveholding bastard, forced to remain sober in the presence of his in-laws), I kept my nose intermittantly buried in a book that hooked. Even though this forum seems to bear an a priori antipathy to multiple-persective books, especially self-aware ones, I very much recommend this book. Its style and theme -- narrative as sympathy/atonement -- can overcome its trendiness.

On Chesil Beach (2007)   by Ian McEwan, 203 pages James Donahue   10 September 2007 MeEwan relates a honeymoon gone extremely wrong (think: premature excitement, bride running and screaming from the room) in the prelapsarian early 1960s when people (gasp!) waited for marriage and lacked any fundamental sex education. The tone is nostalgic for such lost innocence, yet plainly those days could only have failed. The bride and groom here are remnants of a lost culture, fit for novelistic elegy but not for the real modern world.

Liberal Government and Politics, 1905-1915 (2006)   by Ian Packer, 180 pages James Donahue   30 October 2006 To quote Pink Floyd: "Is there anybody out there? Just nod if you can hear me."

Bushido: The Soul of Japan   by Inazo Nitobe, 154 pages James Donahue   16 March 2004 The classic essay on the ethic of the samurai

Sexuality, Civil Society, and the State:   by Isabel Hull, 411 pages James Donahue   02 February 2003 Through extensive archical work Hull examines marriage and sex laws in Germany from 1500 through 1830 (Reformation through Code Napoleon). She concludes that Christian absolutism was much more inclined to gender equality and sexual tolerance than bourgeois republicanism which relied upon the patriarch and the family unit to ground society. Various themes covered include: the evolution of conceptionilization of sex from animal urge to fundamental right of personhood, the invention of anti-homosexual legislation, the gendered conceptions of citizenry in the 19th-cent.

Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (2006)   by Isabell Hull, 333 pages James Donahue   05 November 2006 Hull is simply one of the best historians still writing today. In this book she questions why and how the German army committed wartime atrocities in Africa (1907-8) and in Belgium (1914-18). Her thesis is that atrocities were not the result of barbarism or of top-down orders, but rather were the product of overwhelmed troops on the ground, underfunded and underprepared, yet expected to secure absolute order and cooperation from a (naturally) hostile civilian population.

Roots of Romanticism   by Isaiah Berlin, 247 pages James Donahue   13 May 2002 A brief series of lectures on the roots of the international movement in a handful of German thinkers. Berlin always really knows his stuff, but his conservative bias always seems at odds with his interest with "anti-Enlightenment" figures. (And this time I spelled "Isaiah" correctly).

Vico & Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas   by Isaiah Berlin, 216 pages James Donahue   25 April 2003 I'm sure we are all tired of my name on the post board, especially myself. Thus I skip usual comments and simply report that this the last book for my semester. In the words of the immortial Homer: WHOO-HOO!

The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoi's View of History   by Isiah Berlin, 81 pages James Donahue   06 May 2002 Explians that confusing postscript from War and Peace; long comparison of Tolstoi and de Maistre.

Karl Marx: His Life and Environment   by Isiah Berlin, 267 pages James Donahue   04 February 2003 The always readable Berlin presents an engaging biography of Marx which focuses on his rise to power within the socialist movement.

The World of the Shining Prince   by Ivan Morris, 289 pages James Donahue   02 March 2004 A history of the unique, effete, and creative imperial court of 10th-century Japan which produced two of the first novels in history.

Youth   by J. Coetzee, 188 pages James Donahue   01 April 2005 Suffering mightily through my comps, stuck skimming books and memorizing half-formed thoughts, Donahue reaches over during irregular bouts of insomnia to read about someone who is worse off than him, a boyish Afrikaaner in love with poetry but enslaved to the London business world, in love with Woman but hapless with women, a believer in the Sublime yet only because he has never truly tasted the banal. Think: the be-colleged Misirian-meets-Bridget-Jones-meets-Camus.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1997)   by J. K. Rowling, 309 pages James Donahue   16 August 2007 Does anyone else detect a nostalgia for the aristocratic age of Edwardian England? Harry Potter discovers he is no petit bourgouis flunky, but instead a wizard, a secret class that can combat the Continental aristocracies, secretly influence world power, and thrive amongst their own inner jokes. Immediately Harry discovers hidden shopping avenues in London ("Can we find these things in London?" asks Harry. Answer: "Only if you know where to look."), is sent to a boarding school complete with all the rituals and (in)dignities the Victorian 'public school' life (now dismantled in democratic England), and discovers his true athletic gifts in aristocratic sport (Quidditch, which is compared often to soccer in the book, but sounds much more to me like polo.) Surely English kids read this and wonder if they too can ever mount a charge into the wizard class, just as kids used to dream about discovering they were the lost children of a prince or duchess, just as Jane Eyre could come to terms with the responsibilities and privileges of her blood calling.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998)   by J. K. Rowling, 341 pages James Donahue   28 August 2007 (Read during sleepless nights with a new baby and flu-ridden kids)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999)   by J. K. Rowling, 435 pages James Donahue   12 September 2007 Desperately trying to keep up with his seven-year-old and his wife, Raully reads Rowling late into the night holding a crying baby. That way I can be included in the breakfast conversation once again!

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000)   by J. K. Rowling, 734 pages James Donahue   28 November 2007

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003)   by J. K. Rowling, 870 pages James Donahue   15 December 2007 It is wonderful to be able to read interesting, well-written books that Duncan likes too. A foreshadow of being able to talk about deep things and quality books with all of my sons!

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005)   by J. K. Rowling, 652 pages James Donahue   30 January 2008 I stayed up way too late at night because I had to finish this book. Its a lucky thing today was a snow day or my students would have had to endure a drowsy afternoon lecture.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007)   by J. K. Rowling, 945 pages James Donahue   22 March 2008

Inner Workings (2007)   by J. M. Coetzee, 291 pages James Donahue   16 August 2007 A collection of Coetzee's book reviews over the past eight years, including short insightful essays for the NYTimes Book Review on Greene, Naipaul, Bellow, Musil, Roth, etc. Given his bent for biographical survey, its excellent crib notes for authors I haven't read. But for those authors I have read, the analysis falls flat. (I always end up saying: "Well any reader already knows that.") But then again, the purpose of the NYTimes Book Review is not to give insight to readers of books, but to the socialites who like to cite books they haven't read. Coetzee fulfills this aim perfectly.

Elizabeth Costello   by J.M. Coetzee, 246 pages James Donahue   22 June 2004 An astounding novel centered around an aging novelist and eight public lectures. The embeddedness of Coetzee's thought within a body of language makes this book about more than ideas.

Disgrace   by J.M. Coetzee, 220 pages James Donahue   01 February 2005 I was really enwrapped in this story of South Africa. Coetzee writes so well of morally-laden issues without being moralist. Well deserving of the Booker.

The Authentic Adam Smith (2006)   by James Buchan, 145 pages James Donahue   22 January 2007 Annoyed at the ahistorical historiography that too often surrounds the patron saint of capitalism, Buchan reconstructs the original Smith within his Scottish milieu and as an Enlightenment figure more concerned with liberalism and moral philosophy, and not economics or industrialization. (Buchan himself comes from a distinguished Scottish literary family.) Trivia Point: Smith only uses the 'invisible hand' only twice in his entire ouerve.

The Authentic Adam Smith (2007)   by James Buchan, 160 pages James Donahue   18 March 2008 Short, informative, too the point. He didn't even take the diversions I was hoping for.

Shogun   by James Clavell, 1100 pages James Donahue   04 May 2004 Summer is finally here, and while I have to keep reading for my class next year, I finally have some time to indulge in those glossy mega-reads I love so much. Clavell is always good for some swashbuckling, macho orientalism. Like Hemingway meets Grisham. One question: why do the pretty women always have to die in the end?

Taipan   by James Clavell, 789 pages James Donahue   17 June 2004 Set in 1848 Hong Kong (i.e., before there was a Hong Kong), Clavell presents us here with another East-meets-West-both-culturally-and-sexually- where-one-culture-transcending-white-male-falls- in-love-only-to-see-his-metaphorical-and-literal- love-lie-shattered-in-a-dead-asian-women's-body- spellbinder. I always enjoy these escapes into historical fiction even if the postcolonialist lit-critic makes me feel a tad guilty about it

Gai-jin   by James Clavell, 1043 pages James Donahue   22 August 2004 The third in Clavell's historical series on Asia. Like his peer Clancy, Clavell writes novels like movies, and borrows from personal experience to make compelling mega-reads. Unfortunately he can also fall into Clancey's habit of predictable 'adventure'-plots and manly/womanly characters. This, one of the latest of his books, is the first to truly surprise me, and the first to really foreground legitimate woman characters.

My Four Years in Germany (1917)   by James Gerard, 402 pages James Donahue   12 January 2007 Upon being expelled from his ambassadorship in Berlin in 1917, Gerard wrote this book partly as a memoir/travelogue about Berlin society (a popular genre for ex-servicemen in an America ready to move onto the world stage) and partly to inform the American public why they were fighting and what they were up against. As a personal sidelight, let me mention that Gerard married local nobility, the daughter of Marcus Daly whose copper-mining built the towns I grew up in; such glimpses into their life are fascinating.

A Yankee in Meiji Japan   by James Huffman, 278 pages James Donahue   31 March 2004 Biography of Ned House: first American journalist in Tokyo, intimate of Mark Twain, Nippophile, and all-around scamp.

The Future of Christian Learning: An Evangelical and Catholic Dialogue (2008)   by James Turner and Mark Noll , 137 pages James Donahue   03 August 2008

Revivalism in Ireland and Britain, 1857-1910   by Janice Holmes, 234 pages James Donahue   28 July 2004

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies   by Jared Diamond, 480 pages James Donahue   23 March 2002 Interesting read. Posits that all of human history can be scientifically reduced to the initial availability of food and animal resources. (We historians are always so pleased when scientists can set us straight in our own fields; why did I bother learning about Napoleon when I should have been learning the five domesticable animals.) Some fascinating excursions from the main point, like why zebras cannot be ridden. Essential for better understanding Civilization III.

Ravel: A Novel (2007)   by Jean Echenoz (trans. Linda Coverdale), 117 pages James Donahue   10 December 2007 I picked up this short novel, composed of short sketches from the end of Ravel's life, more for my interest in Ravel than in the author. But I ended the book more impressed by Echenoz than by Ravel. Wonderful prose, that reminded me of Kundera at his best. Like a Modernist painter, Echenoz emphasizes the historical currents around Ravel to explain Ravel in luminous portraits of the 1920s and 1930s

Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography (2003)   by Jean Grondin, 338 pages James Donahue   11 June 2008

Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanies   by Jeffery Herf, 527 pages James Donahue   21 July 2002 Herf compares the development of divergent paths of public memory and policy in East and West Germany from 1945-1990. He ably uses newly opened files from the Soviet Bloc to do so. Good analysis, but heavily biased toward the SPD party.

Victoria's Daughters   by Jerrold M. Packard, 340 pages James Donahue   23 May 2008 Moral of the book: Queen Victoria had too many children for anyone to keep clear.

Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830-1930   by Jerrold Seigel, 440 pages James Donahue   30 October 2002 An excellent cultural history of one my favorite periods and styles of art. Wonderful background info for appreciating the movie Moulin Rouge.

History of Polish Christianity   by Jerzy Kloczowski, 344 pages James Donahue   10 July 2004

A Very Civil War   by Joachim Remak, 185 pages James Donahue   22 August 2005 Remak portrays, with great illustrations and narrative punch, the Swiss civil of 1847. He compares it with the 1848 revolutions and the American Civil War, but his greatest skill is in portraying the individuals who made this conflict one of the least bloody in modern history.

The Year of Magical Thinking (2005)   by Joan Didion, 227 pages James Donahue   23 January 2006 Jen and I have read this at nights since my father has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Tough to get through, because it is so beautifully on the mark about grief.

Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life   by Joan Hendrick, 473 pages James Donahue   06 March 2004 Good detailed biography of the woman who thirved under the glare of being in America's premier evangelical family to become America's first celebrated novelist. But what she did to Byron was really inexcusible.

Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism   by Joel Carpenter, 317 pages James Donahue   09 October 2002 The book is meant to the continuation of Marsden's "Fundamentalism and American Culture." Carpenter examines how fundamentalism went underground after the Scopes trial to create a viable subculture only to re-emerge in the 1950s and even more so in the 1980s under Jerry Falwell. The book is esquisite, written by an ex-fundamentalist who is now the provost at Calvin College. I really recommend this book to those interested in a historical sense to the Cedarville experience.

Here Is Where We Meet (2005)   by John Berger, 237 pages James Donahue   12 June 2006 Berger, having passed eighty, writes of visiting various European cities where the dead come out to meet him. A chapter on Geneva is the reason I picked up this book, but I remained entranced since this is how I often feel about European cities, that they are so crowded with the dead.

Christianity in the West, 1400-1700   by John Bossy, 172 pages James Donahue   12 August 2003 A really excellent history of the Reformation from a historian with both Catholic and sociological sensibilities. Broadening for this Prot mind.

Thirty-Nine Steps (1915)   by John Buchan, 113 pages James Donahue   15 November 2007

War Without Mercy: Race Power in the Pacific War   by John Dower, 365 pages James Donahue   13 May 2004 A compelling read of the intense racial hatred in the 'clash of civilizations' during WWII. Dower has the unusual ability to discuss the Japanese and the American cases equally well. Chilling reading given our current international situation.

Embracing Defeat   by John Dower, 650 pages James Donahue   22 May 2004 Dower has written a remarkably comprehensive and readable (two traits not often paired) history of the American occupation of Japan. Great insight, and interesting to read while our current occupational efforts wallow in the mud.

Isaiah Berlin   by John Gray, 168 pages James Donahue   22 April 2003 An interesting examination of Berlin's combination of Romantic particularism and Enlightenment liberalism. Helpful background to Berlin's ever-so-readable intellectual histories.

Apologia Pro Vita Sua   by John Henry Newman, 437 pages James Donahue   12 April 2003 Newman's defense and account of his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism. Newman was one of the main leaders of the Oxford Movement in 19th century Britain, a movement devoted to combatting liberalism by returning the church to its orthodox roots. The book is very insightful and in many ways has mirrored some of my own thoughts. It is always amazing to me how one can reach across the centuries and touch a kindred spirit in another time and another place. The more things change. . . .

A Confederacy of Dunces (1980)   by John Kennedy Toole, 462 pages James Donahue   12 November 2007 One of the funniest satires I have ever read. An overweight, maladjusted, half-insane medieval studies MA terrorizes New Orleans and a cast of locals, putzing from job to job, mixing a passion for the lost wisdom of Boethius with his addiction to moral disapproval of teen-bop movies. A satire full of warning for anyone (like me) who cannot seem to get out of school!

The Landscape of History (2002)   by John Lewis Gaddis, 151 pages James Donahue   12 August 2008

Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason   by John Milbank, 443 pages James Donahue   03 April 2002 THE theological book of the last decade. Milbank shows the erudition, attention to theological tradition, awareness of contemporary philosophy and critical thought (particularly postmodernism), detailed argumentation, and a fresh practicality that I wish other contemporary theolgians possessed. A must-read.

The Third Rumpole Omnibus (1997)   by John Mortimer, 739 pages James Donahue   04 July 2006 Ah. . . .Rumpole.

Max Weber: Politics and the Spirit of Tragedy (1997)   by John Patrick Diggins, 268 pages James Donahue   15 February 2008 Diggins knows a lot about Weber and sociology, but unfortunately he knows less about German intellectual history (except for the highlights) and extremely little (perhaps nothing) about Protestantism (or its supposed "ethic"). Because Diggins places Weber solely in a left-of-center intellectual canon, I think he misses quite a bit of Weber. Its a good book, but perhaps better for sociologists than for historians.

Considerations on Representative Government   by John Stuart Mill, 270 pages James Donahue   19 February 2003

The Church and the Secular Order in Reformation Thought   by John Tonkin, 219 pages James Donahue   17 August 2002 An excellent summary on Reformation ecclesiology. Tonkin is especially interested in questions of corporativity/individualism and formalism/anti-institutionalism. The bulk of the analysis centers on Luther, Calvin, and Simons.

The Enlightenment Bible   by Jonathan Sheehan, 260 pages James Donahue   14 July 2005 An excellent history of the Bible as a translation project, a object of reverance, a weapon against theology, and a builder of moral virtue. Sheehan is primarily interested in how the Bible came to be seen as a fount of Western culture, and roots his analysis in both the English and the German traditions. Excellent read; very interesting.

Why Switzerland?   by Jonathan Steinberg, 192 pages James Donahue   22 August 2005 Excellent introduction to Swiss peculiarites. Historian wonders why Switzerland ended up so differently from the other European states -- no uniform national culture, no 20th-c wars, no centralized state, specialized economy. Very readable, even if the 1970s pessimism makes it seem a little bit dated.

Death with Interruptions (2008)   by José Saramago, 238 pages James Donahue   02 January 2009 A beautiful novel that I cannot recommend highly enough.

Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt, 1821-1849 (1976)   by Joseph Frank, 392 pages James Donahue   10 January 2007 After a decade of reading Dostoevsky, it occurred to me that I know little to nothing of his life. Frank’s series of biographies are said to be the best, and there’s nothing here to prove ‘them’ wrong. Frank is reacting against tendencies of critics to read Dostoevsky as a prophet, as an anti-bolshevik, or as a existentialist. In other words, Frank presents F-Dos as a 19th-century figure, not a 20th-century anachronism. This is a great history which situates Dostoevsky in the middle of the Russian liberals and literati up until his arrest and mock execution in 1849. (Read at John's apartment in Providence)

Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859 (1983)   by Joseph Frank, 304 pages James Donahue   15 January 2007 After his faked execution, Dostoevsky spent four years in the Siberian gulag and five years as a conscript. During this time Tolstoi, Goncharov, and Turgenev rose to the to of Russian culture while Dostoevsky traded in his romanticized view of the people for real-life, gritty experience with the Russian lower classes. F-Dos refers to this time as the "regeneration of my convictions." He emerged from his exile convinced of the importance of moral personality, the redeeming role for Russian culture in the future of the West, and the centrality of Christ for both of the above. In other words, he became the ‘Johnny Cash’ of the the Russian intelligentsia: cool, experienced, rebellious, and yet oddly old-fashioned. Special kudos to Frank who takes F-Dos' conversion and convictions seriously (no Freud or leftist conspiracy theories here), even though he does not share his subject's sensibilities.

Dostoevsky: The Stir of Liberation, 1860-1865 (1986)   by Joseph Frank, 375 pages James Donahue   26 January 2007 During these years Dostoevsky reestablished in Russian letters as an editor and critic of one of the premier journals of his time. He also lost his wife (after travelling to Europe to pursue a mistress who had run off with a Spaniard) and his brother (after travelling to Europe to gamble and write leaving his brother with the sole burden of running the journal.) Most of his works from this time are satires against the other literary journals that espoused the antihumanist socialism that he came to despise. Frank's reading of his most famous work from this time -- Notes of an Underground Man -- as a satire of his socialist rivals (rather than as the birth of existentialism or modernist interiority) brings out aspects of the book I had never considered before.

Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865 - 1871 (1995)   by Joseph Frank, 501 pages James Donahue   22 May 2007 The 'miracle' for Frank here is that F-Dos actually manages to get his life on track. He finally founds a stable wife (half-Russian, half-Swedish), rediscovers his faith in the Russian Christ (after an encounter with Holbein's portrait of a dessicated Christ), stops gambling (after blowing lots of money in Baden-Baden), and manages to produce three masterpieces in a reltively short time (Crime and Punishment, Idiot, Devils) that finally turn his literary potential into a literary career. The downside of this to me, the reader, was reading a much less interesting biography, half of which was literary analysis of his major works.

The Diaries of Joseph Goebbels (1939-1945)   by Joseph Goebbels, 1489 pages James Donahue   28 July 2003 Goebbels was third in command of the Third Reich, and in control of all media and film. (Also the subject of my next research paper for school.) These diaries are exquisitely detailed, giving one an excellent window into Hitler's regime. Three bizarre facts: 1) Goebbels had a severely clubbed foot, yet never mentions it even once in his diaries, although he does discount several other people as "genetically inferior" for being handicapped; 2) He loved and admired the movie "Gone With the Wind"; 3) This quote: "The greatest propaganda of any state is the news; this is always the case no matter what state."

Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam (2006)   by Joseph Ratzinger and Marcello Pera, 135 pages James Donahue   30 January 2007

Job (1930)   by Joseph Roth, 192 pages James Donahue   29 October 2008 A beautifully written book about a Russian Jew in the early twentieth century who becomes a plaything of the Lord.

TR: Preacher of Righteousness (2008)   by Joshua David Hadley, 320 pages James Donahue   22 August 2008 Hawley's justification for writing yet another biography of TR is that he intends to look behind his celebrity-style persona and his rough rider image and examine the intellectual foundations of his life. He treats TR more as a political philosopher (sometimes exposing rather painful conceptions and placing them in the context of Edwardian America) than as a political actor. When Hawley does do this, his biography is second to none. When he laspes instead into TR's political slugfests and the socio-economic characteristics of the Gilded Age, the biography loses its zip and becomes a bit more rote. Still, I think it is the most useful biography of TR for the scholar, or for anyone interested in religious ideas translated into political action, but at times it may not be the most interesting one.

Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex   by Judith Butler, 284 pages James Donahue   19 April 2003 Its the day before Easter, a beautiful day, and I am sitting here in my office reading about the politics of drag, the limits of the Lacanian real, and the subversiveness inherent in the (re)iterability of performative gender-naming. How did it come to this? Thank God my semester is almost over and that vacation is almost here. Perhaps then I will not be cluttering up this board so much.

In Praise of Shadows   by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, 48 pages James Donahue   29 March 2004 A cranky old Japanese nationalist writes a beautiful and moving paean to the darkness, the simplicity of silence, and the mysteriousness of the hidden alcove. All to counter the garishness of the electric light bulb, the wastefulness of trying to alter one's environment, and the inanity of enlightenment.

Philipp Jakob Spener: Pietist Patriarch   by K James Stein, 334 pages James Donahue   11 June 2004 Very good biography of the populizer of the Pietist movement (the movement that put the evangelical in the German Evangelical Church). As a sidenote, church history may be the only remaining field that uses the word "patriarch" in titles in a non-condemnatory way

The Mandalorian Armor (1998)   by K. W. Jeter, 387 pages James Donahue   08 January 2007 Did you know Boba Fett survived the Sarlaac Pit?

Slave Ship (1998)   by K. W. Jeter, 324 pages James Donahue   10 January 2007 Oh, silly Bossk, when will you learn that you cannot compete with Boba Fett?

Hard Merchandise (1998)   by K. W. Jeter, 338 pages James Donahue   17 January 2007 Who knew that Boba Fett was such a kick-ass?

Kant and the Fate of Autonomy   by Karl Americks, 351 pages James Donahue   22 August 2002 Americks aptly relates the misreadings and outright disagreements that Kant's successors had with Kant himself. Focuses on Fichte, Reinhold, and Hegel. Dense but worth it.

Terrorism and Communism   by Karl Kautsky, 234 pages James Donahue   24 February 2003 The famous Marxist-humanist takes on Lenin and the Bolsheviks in 1921. Kautsky scorns the impatience and dictatorial pretensions of the Soviets, arguing that proletariat revolution can only can about through popular and democratic means and not back-door tribunals and coup d'etats.

The Poverty of Philosophy   by Karl Marx, 209 pages James Donahue   04 February 2003 Marx's quarrel with Proudhon over the (im)mutability of economic categories.

Catherine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity   by Kathryn Sklar, 330 pages James Donahue   09 March 2004 A biography of Harriet' sister. Keeping it within the family. Beecher was America's first Martha Stewart as well as the one who singlehandedly made teaching and nursing womens' first occupations. Good scholarship here, but more concerned with Catherine's womanhood than her personality.

The Truce At Bakura (1994)   by Kathy Tyers, 311 pages James Donahue   29 January 2007 After the destruction of the Death Star, the Alliance and Empire team to battle invading aliens. Not the best book I've ever read.

An Unquiet Mind   by Kay Redfield Jamison, 195 pages James Donahue   20 June 2005 An excellent primer on bipolar disorder. To paraphrase those cheesy commercials: Jamison is not just a Johns Hopkins professor specializing in bipolar, she's a client. Seems like this is hitting a lot of people close to us - to name two just in D.C.: Susan Philips and Jabes Schuppe. Powerful stuff.

The Worst Person in the World and 202 Strong Contenders (2006)   by Keith Olbermann, 267 pages James Donahue   02 January 2007 My favorite: Neil Cavuto's ridiculous headlines during his news show, which have always angered me (and, yes, gotten my attention in airports, etc.): Examples: "Civil War in Iraq: Made up by the media?", followed by "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could it be a good thing?"

Sir Edward Grey (1971)   by Keith Robbins, 372 pages James Donahue   07 July 2006 Grey was Foreign Secretary of Great Britain from 1905 to 1916, and the author of several fly-fishing books that were "too bookish for the fisher and too fisherly for the bookish."

Restoring the Reformation: British Evangelicalism and the Francophone Réveil, 1816-1849 (2006)   by Kenneth J. Stewart, 254 pages James Donahue   29 December 2007 Very impressive church history on an understudied topic. Too many Protestants are unaware of the Continental roots of their faith. But I should caution that this is a former dissertation that has the blocky composition required by the profession. (The title alone is a good example of this.) Still: Its worth the effort to wade through the academic style, especially if you (like me) hail from a Pietistic and European-Reformed background.

The German Education of Philip Schaff (2002)   by Klaus Penzel, 157 pages James Donahue   16 June 2007

Male Fantasies (Vol 1)   by Klaus Thiewelt, 435 pages James Donahue   10 February 2003 Examines the phantasmal world of Nazi youth. Attempts to get at their world view by examining their attitudes towards sex, chaos, and women (who were equated all too often.) Disturbing but profound.

Pietism as a Factor in the Rise of German Nationalism   by Koppel Pinson, 207 pages James Donahue   27 June 2004

Wilhelm II: Prince and Emperor, 1859-1900 (1989)   by Lamar Cecil, 339 pages James Donahue   10 May 2006 Thorough, very thorough

Wilhelm II: Emperor and Exile, 1900-1941 (1996)   by Lamar Cecil, 356 pages James Donahue   13 May 2006 In bed for four days with a fever, I read and read and then experience odd dreams about myself, the Kaiser, and a labrythine house in downtown Columbus.

War and Peace   by Leo Tolstoi, 1192 pages James Donahue   27 March 2002 So many great things, but here are only three of them: 1) Tolstoi has the ability to use completely fresh metaphors and allegories to describe events and feelings that nevertheless make perfect sense; 2) he has the uncanny ability to have different and unique characters (counts, thirteen-year-old girls, French officers, religious spinsters); he perfectly enters the head of each; and 3) he really gets into the mindset of what it is like to live through "historical" times

Resurrection   by Leo Tolstoi, 568 pages James Donahue   12 June 2002 A juror discovers that the defendant is a women he seduced years earlier, an act which led to a life of prostitution and crime. He repents for the next five hundred pages, seeing the true nature of the penal system, the hypocritical Church, and his own depths of depravity. Tolstoi's last work, written to finance his religious group's emigration to America. Gone however is Tolstoi's ability to portray all views and all types, gone his wonderful metaphors and descriptions…

The Sebastopol Sketches; The Kreutzer Sonata, and other stories   by Leo Tolstoi, 459 pages James Donahue   29 July 2002 Contains Tolstoi's shorter works. Such an eye for detail. Incredibly 'fundamentalist' in his older days.

How Much Land Does A Man Need; and other stories   by Leo Tolstoi, 242 pages James Donahue   04 January 2003 An odd collection of stories which groups together some of his earlier stories of swashbuckling in the Crimean War with some of his later religious parables.

Dulles   by Leonard Mosley, 497 pages James Donahue   15 November 2005 A composite biography of John Foster - FCCCA bigshot and Ike's S-of-State -, Allen - chief of European intelligence during WWII and main figure of the early CIA -, and Eleonor - influential economist and key diplomat to postwar Austria and Germany. Two brothers and a sister at the heart of it all. Tone is colloquial and readable, personality and story-driven. (Mosley was the "Bob Woodward" of his generation.)

Missionary of Moderation: Henry Melchior Muhlenberg and the Lutheran Church in English America   by Leonard Riforgiato, 237 pages James Donahue   03 October 2002 A biography of an amazing man. Muhlenberg came to the colonies in 1742 and by the force of his pastoral leadership organized the disparate Lutheran churches into a synod, all the while staying clear of evangelical revivalism and staid seventeenth-century orthodoxy. A remarkable testimony.

Lafayette in Two Worlds   by Lloyd Kramer, 352 pages James Donahue   31 August 2002 A biographical account of the adult Lafayette, with particular attention to his symbolic/political role in the two 18th-century revolutions.

German Women For Empire, 1885-1945   by Lore Wildenthal, 202 pages James Donahue   07 February 2003 Examines the various women's groups and their activities -- nursing, bride matching, independent farming -- in the colonies. Concludes that German women used race as a concept more frequently than German men as a means to justify their inclusion in a male space.

The Master Butchers Singing Club (2003)   by Louise Erdrich, 389 pages James Donahue   10 June 2006 Erdrich captures the lonely but interdependent world of North Dakota between the wars by focusing on the German and Native American families living side by side (and sometimes in the same bed.) A good read, but languidly written. Example: "It was a song he'd sung with Johannes, drunk, in forgetfulness which he could not now forget, as the wheels turned them forward and forward, far from Germany, onto the wideness of plains of America where the wars were not between the same old enemies he was used to, but were over before he'd got there, the great dying finished, and the blood already soaked into the ground."

The Thaw Generation   by Ludmilla Alexeyeva, 321 pages James Donahue   08 March 2004 An engaging memoir of one of the primary dissidents in 1960s-1970s Soviet Union. Reading this memoir gives me a good sense of both the strengths and real weaknesses in a freedom movement that bizarrely fell one of the greatest empires in history. (But now what?)

The Family Romance of the French Revolution   by Lynn Hunt, 204 pages James Donahue   24 January 2003 Hunt examines the French Revolution through the prints, plays, and paintings of the time which obsess over the death or absence of fathers. Hunt makes the point that the French comprehended the political revolution in very familial terms. Provocative historiography.

Beijing Coma (2008)   by Ma Jian, 586 pages James Donahue   29 October 2008 Dai Wei lies in a coma after the student protests of 1989 have been brutally shut down. The narrative combines what he observes now with his memories of his former life, allowing us to contrast the romantic dreams of his youthful friends with the compromised actualities of modern-day China. Highly recommended.

Short Rations (1917)   by Madeleine Zabriskie Doty, 274 pages James Donahue   25 August 2008 A book of Doty's firsthand experiences while traveling back and forth between Britain and Germany from 1914 - 1916 as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Remember when memoirs didn't have to be made up to become a bestseller?

Revolutionary France   by Malcolm Crook, ed., 237 pages James Donahue   06 October 2002 Standard textbook on 19th-century France that includes separate chapters on often-overlooked subjects, such as religion, nationalism, the pays, and gender. A bit scattered if not accompanying a class.

Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque   by Marc Forster, 244 pages James Donahue   23 July 2004

Oryx and Crake   by Margaret Atwood, 349 pages James Donahue   30 December 2004 When I was a kid I always fantasized about being the last man on earth. Leave it to Atwood to turn those dreams into nightmares. Here the ever-outspoken Atwood opines her way through a Mad Max landscape of genetic horror, pollution, and class wars gone horribly awry.

Fundamentalism and Gender: 1875 to the Present   by Margaret Bendroth, 156 pages James Donahue   08 October 2002

Lugard: The Years of Adventure, 1858-1898 (1956)   by Margery Perham, 713 pages James Donahue   31 January 2006 Disgruntled evangelical suffers through British school system, joins the army only to serve in Afghanistan, then goes renegade warrior in Africa, teaming up with abolitionist missionaries to force British power into the center of Africa in a race against the Germans. To say his biography is Kipling-esque is to confuse cause and effect.

Lugard: The Years of Authority, 1898-1945 (1960)   by Margery Perham, 711 pages James Donahue   14 February 2006 Second half from below. From disillusioned adventurer, Lugard becomes a signature British governor of Nigeria and Hong Kong. Fascinating personal portrait of the ambivalencies of the 'white man's burden.'

Margot Asquith: An Autobiography (1906)   by Margot Asquith, 541 pages James Donahue   20 March 2006 Margot, wife of the PM Asquith, socialite of socialites in fin-de-siecle Britain, sums up her life thusly: "A Lot of love-making, a little fame, and even more abuse."

Madame de Stael   by Maria Fairweather, 474 pages James Donahue   28 July 2005 An excellent biography of the famous litteratrix, arch nemesis of Napoleon, matriach of French Romanticism, and general-all-around gender-bender. De Stael, whose homestead lay just outside Geneva, intrigued me because of my upcoming trip to her hometown, but the biography is so well-written and de Stael herself such a hoot, that I cannot but recommend this book to others with a general interest in the period.

GIs and Frauleins   by Maria Hohn, 295 pages James Donahue   31 March 2003 Good discussion of the Americanization of West Germany in the 1950s through examining the relations between American soldiers and German girls.

Housekeeping (1980)   by Marilynne Robinson, 219 pages James Donahue   17 June 2007 Simply one of the most beautiful books I have ever read with that most rare of all quality in modern lit: completely original prose. "And here again a foreshadowing - the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. Whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again."

Christianity Made In Japan   by Mark Mullins, 323 pages James Donahue   06 April 2004 A survey of indigeneous church movements in Japan that have deliberately cast themselves off from the West. Covers from Uchimura on. Mullins, a sociologist by training, writes and thinks wonderfully well. Some bizarre and intriguing melanges out there.

America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln   by Mark Noll, 568 pages James Donahue   17 October 2002 Noll's latest is a masterpiece. The book details how American Christianity became so unique, tracing its synthesis with republicanism and common-sense philosophy. His argumentation is solid, and his source base incredible. A vital book for anyone wishing to understand the cultural conditionings of their American church.

Catholic Politics in Europe, 1914-1945   by Martin Conway, 105 pages James Donahue   02 December 2003 This book is good but not all that remarkable. So let me take this chance to say thanks for another year of comments and books. Its always a blast to see what people are reading and what they think of it. Have a merry X-mas. (I'm not a heathen, just a comic book fan.)

The Mystery of the Child (2007)   by Martin Marty, 246 pages James Donahue   12 May 2008 Marty has been the premier Lutheran historian in the U.S. for decades. Now that he's emeritus, he can about whatever he wants. Hence this intelligent, unscientific, and extraordinarily helpful book on the Christian approach to parenthood. Avoid control, he advises, stop worrying about his future or what the books tell you is the perfect recipe for a 'good child.' Instead sit back and wonder. Let the child unveil himself, and then let the child expose the playful, trusting, awe-ful person in you. Learn from children how to wonder. (Part of me is sad that the modern academic rat race penalizes those of us with children - so much so, that Marty's welcome combination of theological reflection and grandfatherly joy reads to me like something from an age that is no more.)

Evelyn Waugh: The Early Years, 1903-1939 (1986)   by Martin Stannard, 504 pages James Donahue   30 December 2007

The Gentle Civilizer of Nations (2001)   by Martti Koskenniemi, 517 pages James Donahue   24 October 2007 An excellent history of international law.

The Oxford Conspirators: A History of the Oxford Movement   by Marvin O'Connell, 456 pages James Donahue   24 April 2003 Whenever you ask a professor for a book recommendation he will inevitably recommend his own book on the subject. Having learnt this lesson I picked up Prof O'Connell's book on the subject which is magisterial in scope (read: too much detail.) Still an interesting subject for me. In 1833 a group of Oxford Anglicans centered around John Henry Newman hoped to revive the church through returning to first-century Christianity. Unfortunately they had little idea that the first-century was so darn Catholic and completely unlike their Protestant fantasies. Two decades most had converted to Catholicism and re-established the Church in England. I too often identify with these men, for I also have a passion for historical theology and am also too often stuck with Protestants who believe they are living an ancient faith that is entirely invented. Like Newman I feel the pull.

German National Identity after the Holocaust   by Mary Fulbrook, 248 pages James Donahue   31 July 2002 A magisterial survey of how public and collective memories diverged in the Eastern and Western halves of Germany. An excellent book for people interested in how the Holocaust has been dealt with in its cradle-land, or how national identities are formed and developed through public discourse.

Piety and Politics   by Mary Fulbrook, 189 pages James Donahue   08 September 2003 Fulbrook contends that pietistic religions (Baptist, Puritan, Brethren, Lutheran Pietist) participated in 19th-century revolutions not because of their theology or class, but because certain governments opposed them. Don't read if you're a Elizabeth I fan. (Yes, this is how I spend my time.)

Studies in the Intellectual History of Japan   by Maseo Maruyama, 376 pages James Donahue   30 September 2003 In contrast to Bellah, MM provides a nuanced account of the thought of late medieval Japan. Thesis: that as medieval society dissolved, thinkers became aware that society was not natural, rather that it was something to invent, manipulate, and ground in personal authority. Written against the background of WWII, it serves as a lament for the inherently religio-authoritarian aspects of Japanese society. Readable by those with no background in Japanese philosophy (although knowledge of German helps).

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism   by Max Weber, 292 pages James Donahue   13 April 2002 The classic account that traces the origin of modern deracinated capitalism to the Calvinist need to prove one's election and calling. Thanks for reminding me of this one Gareth.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-1905)   by Max Weber, 234 pages James Donahue   17 February 2008 I like this book not because it is correct (I don't think it, but is is fecund in being wrong), but because every time I come back to it (this is my what? eighth? twelfth? time) I discover something new. It is an incredibly ambitious and subtle work: a tough combination to pull off. (Don't you love the blissfully unnecessary and rambling things people put into their parenthesis, as if the rules of grammar, logic, and/or taste do not apply within the sanctuary of these blessed half-circles, he said rhapsodically.)

Representing Belief: Religion, Art, and Society in 19th-century France   by Michael Driskel, 279 pages James Donahue   22 September 2002 Examines the religious art of the period. Argues that avant-gardist art of the 1910s was not unique, but predicated upon the previous art of Catholicism. Themes: Byzantine influence, anti-Romanticism, tensions between Catholicism and Republicanism in France. Could have used some color photos, but too damn expensive.

A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (2006)   by Michael Kazan, 306 pages James Donahue   05 May 2006 Good terse biography that purports to put Bryan's faith at the center of the story. Yet, to me, Kazan seems religiously tone-deaf, unable to do much with Bryan's faith other than repeatedly point to it. I get the feeling that Kazan is not nostalgic for a time when religion still mattered in presidential debates so much as nostalgic for a time when heartland evangelicals still voted Democratic. Very readable, informative, engaging, but still a bit disappointing to me.

Foch (2003)   by Michael Neiburg, 117 pages James Donahue   29 January 2006 Its pretty sad when your pleasure reading is so related to your research. Right now I'm reading through the minutes of the Paris Peace Conference (1919), and I kept wondering who this petulant, overbearing, shunted aside world hero was as a person. Winner of the fields of France, not allowed near the peace tables since he kept single-mindedly pushing for an invasion of Bolshevik Russia.

X-Wing: Rogue Squadron   by Michael Stackpole, 388 pages James Donahue   26 March 2007

X-Wing: Wedge's Gamble (1996)   by Michael Stackpole, 357 pages James Donahue   09 April 2007 Did you know that when the Rebel Alliance retook Coruscant, the Empire released a virus into the planet as they left town? Those dastardly bastards!

X-Wing: The Krytos Trap (1996)   by Michael Stackpole, 355 pages James Donahue   15 April 2007 Did you know that Emperor Palpatine kept trophies from Jedi Knights that fell into Rebel hands when they liberated Coruscant?

X-Wing: The Bacta War (1997)   by Michael Stackpole, 349 pages James Donahue   27 April 2007 If it is possible for a sci-fi paperback series to jump the shark, this is it. This book is horrid, abominable. Life oozes out of the reader when he submits to this book. Its like the third season of Alias. I had such low expectations - just a diverting rag to ease my mind after dissertating all day - and yet still. . . My only consolation is that another writer was hired to continue the series on.

History of Sexuality   by Michel Foucault, 684 pages James Donahue   14 April 2003

American Protestants and TV in the 1950s (2007)   by Michele Rosenthal, 120 pages James Donahue   21 January 2008 Rosenthal argues that the late twentieth century advancement of evangelicalism over mainline Protestantism is attributable to its relative embrace of TV. She does a great job of showing the National Council of Churches disdain for such a lowbrow art form and suspicion of the effect of TV on a culture - but is that representative of "mainline Protestantism" by the 1960s? She does a good job demonstrating that the nascent NAE did not consider TV as a unique medium, somehow different in its substance from books, but rather as a morally neutral and uncomplicated purveyor of messages. What mattered was the morality and intent of the broadcaster, not the medium itself. Thus evangelicals dove into the redemption of the TV as a tool for influencing culture. But how can we jump from the NAE to the evangelicals who really control the airwaves: Falwell, Roberts, Robertson, etc? Its a dissertation that's long on solid, thought-provoking argument, but a bit short on primary research. (Now why didn't I think of that?)

1848: Year of Revolution (2009)   by Mike Rapport, 459 pages James Donahue   14 May 2009

After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity   by Miroslav Volf, 306 pages James Donahue   31 December 2002 Volf contends for an ecclesiology modelled after trinitarian relationality, perichoretical personhood, and social constructionism. By doing so, Volf is able to affirm a Free-Church ecclesiastical reality with Catholic and Orthodox sensibilities. Throughout Volf is in excellent dialogue with Catholic, Orthodox, and Baptist theologians; one could read the book only for the comparative ecclesiologies of these traditions and be well satisfied. Definite influence of Barth and Moltmann on his theology.

The Rites of Spring   by Modris Eksteins, 362 pages James Donahue   03 June 2003 Simply the best general history of WWI that I've read. Eksteins examines the cultural and intellectual impact of the mass, mechanized devastation of the Great War, seamlessly weaving together pre- and post-war events such as the Russian Ballet, Lindburgh, the Nazi phenomenon, and the Charleston craze.

Marxism and Revolution: Kautsky and the Russian Marxists   by Moira Donald, 289 pages James Donahue   25 February 2003 Details Kautsky's relations with both the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, providing critical background to Kautsky's fallout with Lenin and the dissolution of the Second International infavor of the Third. Extensive archival work but a bit tedious.

The Democratization of American Christianity   by Nathan Hatch, 304 pages James Donahue   28 August 2002 A classic text in its field. Explores how revolutionary politics changed American Protestantism into something quite unique on the world stage. Specific topics: how love for the common man spurred anti-intellectualism, anti-clericalism, and anti-denominationalism; how revivalism and the disestablishment of religion led to endless fracturing and cults of personality; the ties between Jeffersonian politics and Baptist policies. Shows that fundamentalism, charismaticism, and non-denominationalism are not new in America, but have centuries-old roots. I was surprised that many voices from the 18th century could have spoken in Cedarville last weekend.

Kokoro and other essays   by Natsume Soseki, 322 pages James Donahue   06 February 2004 A very impressive and impressionistic story about the relationship between a student without focus and his "sensai" without hope. Couldn't put it down.

Virtual History   by Niall Ferguson, 440 pages James Donahue   19 December 2005 Ferguson gets eminent Oxbridge historians to chip in their counterfactual speculations on key moments in British history - What if Hitler had invaded England? What if James II had succeeded against the Scots in the 17th-century? What if America had remained British? But, since these are after all serious academics, these contributions are not so much Turtle-esque alternative worlds, instead more of an examination of how contingent these key world-events actually were. Interesting material, excellent writing. (You can just tell these historians enjoyed letting their imaginations run outside the academic vein.)

The Pity of War (1999)   by Niall Ferguson, 462 pages James Donahue   23 April 2007 Polished Oxford Don examines the myths surrounding the Great War, exposing a reluctant peace-loving population, a preventable tragedy if Germany had only had been more militarist, and wartime trends that could have resulted in a Central victory and a Kaiser-dominated European Union.

Dostoievsky (1924)   by Nicholas Berdyaev, 227 pages James Donahue   19 December 2006 Berdyaev was a Christian philsopher censured by the Orthodox church for his anti-erastianism and then caught up on the fringes of the Bolshevik Revolution. In 1917 he became head of philosophy at University of Moscow under the new regime, but was exiled in 1922 for his religious commitment. From Paris he became one of the most influential Christian thinkers in Europe for the 1920s and 1930s. This book contains some of his earliest lectures in the West on his favorite writer. He muses on the Russian Muse but in reality he is thinking about the revolution, for he sees in Dost's thought on freedom, faith, and evil/sensuality/power the keys to understanding why the Bolshevik regime fails the humanity it claims to serve. Dost was, to Berdyaev, a true revolutionary of the spirit, and, "in general, revolution of the spirirt opposes the spirit of revolution as revolution." An excerpt: "Christianity has always been reproved by atheistic socialis for not having made men happy and given them rest and fed them, and by preaching the religion of earthly bread socialism has attracted millions and millions of followers. But, if Christianity has not made men happy or given them rest or fed them, it is because it has not wished to violate the freedom of the human spirit, because it appeals to human freedom and awaits therefrom the fulfilling of the word of Christ. The terrible problem of liberty simply does not exist for socialis; it expects to solve and achieve the liberation of man through a materialist and planned-out organization of life; its object is to overthrow freedom and get rid of the irrational element of life in the name of happiness, sufficiency, and leisure. Men [quoting Grand Inquisitor here] 'will become free when they renounce freedom'. . . .Christianity is not to blame that namkind has not willed the accomplishment of God's Word and has betrayed it; the fault lies with man, not with the God-man."

A History of German and Scandinavian Protestantism   by Nicholas Hope, 603 pages James Donahue   01 July 2004

Christianity and Revolutionary Europe (1750-1830)   by Nigel Aston, 348 pages James Donahue   12 August 2003 This volume is one of a series entitled "New Approaches to European History." I'm not sure why an approach which takes the overwhelming influence of Christian thought, practice, and conviction seriously is "new." Yet the book does just that for the French Revolutionary period. An excellent study, even if a bit dry and text-bookish.

After All (1951)   by Norman Angell, 355 pages James Donahue   05 September 2006 Angell was an original and combative thinker about international relations and peace between the wars. Quite a life, written with a colorful eye: cowboying in California as a youth, running the largest English-language paper in Paris, advocacy for the League of Nations, buying a farm/island in the English Channel. But the tone of the book ruins much of it -- it is too much of a temptation for an idiosyncratic liberal who has never held power to spend too much time flaunting an "I told you so."

Bonds of Imperfection: Christian Politics Past and Present (2004)   by Oliver and Joan Lockwood O'Donovan, 320 pages James Donahue   10 January 2008 A group of essays, some better than others, on all sorts of digressions. On the whole however they are not as interesting to me as their monographs. Perhaps they would interest a specialist more.

The Desire of the Nations (1996)   by Oliver O'Donovan, 288 pages James Donahue   15 November 2007 The best theology book I've read in years. O'Donovan re-presents here the grand tradition of Protestant political thought in coherent and persuasive form. Highly recommended.

Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation   by Omer Bartov, 251 pages James Donahue   07 August 2002 Bartov discusses the ultimate meaninglessness of mass killing, its relation to modernity, and postwar attempts to both suffuse the Holocaust with purpose and make an ineffable, foundational event. Excellent analysis.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution   by Orlando Figes, 862 pages James Donahue   02 November 2002

Under Four Administrations (1922)   by Oscar Straus, 430 pages James Donahue   07 August 2006 Memoir: German-Jewish emigre rises to top of class at Columbia, becomes foreign minister to Turkey in 1890s, part of TR's administrations (second Labour Secretary), then served under Wilson. Good memoir, excellent eye for detail, especially of the final days of the Ottoman Empire, even if it reads as, more or less, a series of political vignettes.

Hensley Henson (1983)   by Owen Chadwick, 331 pages James Donahue   25 June 2007 Henson was a turn-of-the-century bishop who somehow combined the role of church crank, heretical modernist, and Victorian hangover for over forty years. The biography is a bit watery, I never got a feel for Henson as a person. But I did enjoy Chadwick, who was the leading historian of secularization, revealing his own thoughts (which favor modernization and sees the evangelical reargard as an embarassment for Britain) in this biography.

The Presidency of William Howard Taft (1973)   by Paolo E. Coletta, 266 pages James Donahue   05 December 2008

The Anglican Understanding of the Church   by Paul Avis, 90 pages James Donahue   19 August 2002 Brief and solid.

The Blue Flower   by Penelope Fitzgerald, 226 pages James Donahue   13 March 2003 Historical fiction which covers the youth of the Romantic poet Novalis (whose "Hymns to the Night" rank among my favorite poems). The drama centers upon his devotion to a young girl who dies of tb at sixteen. Novalis is an intriguing enough figure to hold my interest, yet unfortunately the book wanders away from him to the diseased affianced. With that wandering went my attention span.

Yankees in the Land of the Gods   by Peter Booth Wiley, 542 pages James Donahue   26 February 2004 Really well-written history of the Oerry expedition that forcibly opened Japan to international trade. Wiley goes blow by blow with exquisite (and sometimes excruciating) detail through the story. Best part though is use of Jpse and Am sources so that you see both sides to every event. (First book read for comps; get ready for some Nippon-omania!)

Augustine of Hippo   by Peter Brown, 520 pages James Donahue   31 December 2003 This is the standard biography of Augie despite its age of over thirty years. Brown nicely goes through all the evidence in a masterpiece of biography, even if he's bit Anglican towards Augie's gruffer sides.

Slouching Towards Kalamazoo (1983)   by Peter De Vries, 246 pages James Donahue   05 January 2009

Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles   by Peter Grose, 566 pages James Donahue   24 June 2005 Dulles, brother of the more famous John Foster, ran U.S. intelligence in occupied Europe during the second world war, and then launched the C.I.A. on its path towards meddling coups, high-tech spy planes, LSD experiments, and the infamous Bay of Pigs during the 1950s. The life is fascinating and the biography well-written, if you have the interest, but can too often dwell in the bureaucracy of ‘intelligence’ (always in quotes) for others. Not many social occasions or family giving a veneer of human interest for this lone soul.

Lloyd George (1975)   by Peter Rowland, 804 pages James Donahue   16 October 2006 L-G brought Conservatives and Liberals together in Britain to win the first World War. Then he permanently scuttled the party by abandoning all the distinctiveness of Liberalism while waging war on 'unpatriotic' Liberals after the war. Lessons from history: Never elect a rabblerouser or a Welshman.

Forest Rites: The War of the Demoiselles in Nineteenth-Century France   by Peter Sahlins, 157 pages James Donahue   09 September 2002 In 1827 in southern France, peasants dressed like women and harassed forest guards trying to enact the Forest Civil Code of 1826. This bizarre tale is the the window through which the author pursues an investigation of peasant life after the Revolution.

A History of Germany (2005)   by Peter Wende, 185 pages James Donahue   08 January 2006

England's Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia (2005)   by Philip Hoare, 468 pages James Donahue   24 April 2006 Picture this: semi-pretentious British author digs into the religious past of his rural city to find Shakers, would-be Messiahs, a brooding John Ruskin, spiritualists and seances, and one large tower built as a 'modern church.' If this sort of thing catches your interest, its a fascinating read. If not, then this book won't retain you for a reader.

The Plot Against America   by Philip Roth, 391 pages James Donahue   26 December 2005 Of course I'm really into this subject - international fascism - and was quite excited to read Roth's counterfactual story that has the fascists Lindburgh and Henry Ford winning the 1940 election over FDR. Yet I ended up being nothing but disappointed with this book, which does seem - as Misirian suggests - more about Bush than 1940s America. Given the prevalence of anti-Semitism, isolationism, and socialistic-conservatism in reality (e.g., Burton Wheeler from my home state is a much more complicated Progressive figure than displayed here), why make up things that don't make sense (especially in the final sections that wrap everything up in a manner that would seem incredible even in a Tom Clancy novel?) Roth's fantasies speak more to his paranoia about "brutal American Christian conservatives" (actual phrase!) than to any prewar reality!! Let's keep in mind that back then American Christian conservatives - such as John Foster Dulles and Cordell Hull - spearheaded the bipartisan American push for a United Nations beginning in 1938; and that American church leaders such as Carl Henry, Samuel McCrea Cavert, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and the Rockefeller family led the charge against the persecution of the Jews, and the Christian Right hav ever since championed Jewish rights, as seen most visibly when Reagan and Bush I unilaterally pushed the Soviet Union to cease their anti-Semitic campaigns in the 1980s. True, Jews in 1940s America didn't get to join the country clubs and had to watch out for drunken bands of Italian and Irish youths, but its hard to picture concentration camps for Jewish-Americans. True racist brutality in this country, which did indeed peak in the 1930s, has not been directed towards Jewish-Americans, but instead to Native Americans, African-Americans, and Japanese-Americans -- none of whom, strikingly, make a single appearance in Roth's narrative.

Jonathan Sperber   by Popular Catholicism in the Nineteenth-Century, 267 pages James Donahue   22 September 2003 Sperber paints a portrait of how Catholicism underwent a huge revival in the 1840s-50s and then consolidated that support into a counter-cultural political and religious enclave in the midst of the new German state. Good analysis, but so many statistics.

Goebbels   by Ralf Georg Reuth, 434 pages James Donahue   10 July 2003 A good solid biography that incorporates much of the post-Iron Curtain evidence on the Third Reich. However Goebbels' political activities overshadow the person in this work, in part, I suspect, because they did so in real life.

Lack of the Irish   by Ralph McInerey, 210 pages James Donahue   24 July 2002 A murder occurs right before Notre Dame's big game against Baylor on Reformation Day. The suspects include a anti-Catholic woman preacher ('still protesting'), the Baptist quarterback of the Irish, and an obsessive husband. Only the philosophy professor Phillip Knight can solve this one. Satirically written with a love for ND.

Emerald Aisle   by Ralph McInery, 226 pages James Donahue   05 August 2002 More murder at Notre Dame. A sophmore couple in love books a reservation at Sacred Heart six years in advance, and soon break up. When the boy finds love again years later, he attempts to cash in on his previous reservation only to find that his previous girlfriend has preempted his deviousness. When he tracks her down to Minnesota to try and win back the reservation, mischief arises involving some missing Cardinal Newman documents and a estranged wive's murder. Sounds like a case fo Roger Knight philosophy professor.

Irish Tenure   by Ralph McInery, 246 pages James Donahue   20 August 2002 Nothing is bloodier than tenure at Notre Dame. Thus, given the controversial style of philosophy candidate Amanda Pick, it is no surprise when she turns up dead. Throw in a missing GK Chesterton story and all hell breaks loose. Thank goodness that Professor Roger Knight continues to solve crimes in his spare time.

The Book of Kills   by Ralph McInery, 275 pages James Donahue   29 August 2002 I'm not sure if I liked this latest installment in the series, as a ND history student is killed.

Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical's Lament (2006)   by Randall Balmer, 206 pages James Donahue   09 December 2006 An excellent primer for thinking through some the bizarre alliances between the Republican Party and evangelicalism. Less good when it comes to any helpful suggestions; Balmer, like most evangelicals, finds he is most right when he is a prophet cursing both houses, unallied with any institutions, ready for a good fight more than anything else. The book is pugnacious and takes no quarter. Its hits its target and then takes a few more swings (even against some evangelicals who don't deserve to be targeted in a polemic on Republicanism, such as George Marsden or Wheaton College). I've given the book to some of my Republican friends and it has challenged them (which is good), but it has also infuriated them with its occassionally-over-the-top spin. Balmer will never be blamed for not having said something about the coercion of the Religious Right in some immoral politics. He has saved his own soul; the question is: will he take anyone with him??

Julius Streicher   by Randall Bytwerk, 196 pages James Donahue   03 February 2003 Standard bio of the infamous anti-Semite, with an eye out for the effectivesness of propaganda. Last chapter provocative.

The Irony of American History (1952)   by Reinhold Niebuhr, 174 pages James Donahue   15 November 2008 "Our moral perils are not those of conscious malice or the explicit lust for power. They are the perils which can be understood only if we realize the ironic tendency of virtues to turn into vices when too complacently relied upon; and of power to become vexatious if the wisdom which directs it is trusted too confidently. The ironic element in American history can be overcome, in short, only if American idealism comes to terms with the limits of all human striving, the fragmentatiness of all human wisdom, the precariousness of all historic configurations of power, and the mixture of good and evil in all human virtue. America's moral and spiritual success in relating itself creatively to a world community requires, not so much a guard against the gross vices, about which the idealists warn us, as a reorientation of the whole structure of our idealism. . . .[That idealism] is too certain that there is a straight path to power toward the goal of human happiness; too confident of the wisdom and idealism which prompt men and nations toward that goal; and too blind to the curious compounds of good and evil in which the actions of the best men and nations abound." (133)

Citizen More and his Utopia   by Richard Ames, 218 pages James Donahue   21 January 2003 Good historical exegsis of More.

Pietism and the Making of Prussia   by Richard Gawthorp, 284 pages James Donahue   06 June 2004

The World's Parliament of Religions: The East/West Encounter in Chicago, 1893   by Richard Hughes Seager, 198 pages James Donahue   21 August 2004

Seducing the French   by Richard Kuisel, 285 pages James Donahue   22 October 2002 A brief history of French ambivalency towards America. Some great snippets in here that both amuse and illuminate.

Thomas More   by Richard Marius, 543 pages James Donahue   20 January 2003 A biography of a saint which aims to steer clear of hagiography and anti-hagiography. Well done. Highly readable.

A Concise History of the Russian Revolution   by Richard Pipes, 432 pages James Donahue   02 October 2004 I have to confess that I wish I were not studying for Comps, so that I could read the books that Jaqi is reading. Nevertheless I am stuck skimming through umpteen books on the Russian Revolution, mostly based not on archival sources (Soviet archives were and are closed), but on emigre memoirs and polemics written by non-Stalnist socialists like Trotsky. Because of the limited source base, most of the histories simply repeat themselves. Pipes is however the best of this class. His analysis is very conservative and very cynical of the regime, which gives his work a honed edge and intellectual value too often lacking in other, more sympathetic accounts of the most brutal government in modern history

The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919 - 1945   by Richard Steigmann-Gall, 267 pages James Donahue   27 June 2003

The Whole Gospel for the Whole World   by Rick Nutt, 351 pages James Donahue   08 February 2004 Sherwood Eddy (this is his biography) was a YMCA head and Asian missionary from the 1890s to the 1950s. Fascinating travel and life that became increasingly radical and disillusioned with "American fascism" (his word to describe the racism and McCarthyism of 1950s America) as he got older. The book is defensive about Eddy's religious liberalism and attempts to defend him from charges from fundamentalists. Hence the grandiose title. Nutt is only partially sucessful here. Eddy was one of the most radical, but he was also one of the most successful missionaries of all time and deserves a larger place in the religious consciousness of America, even if as a conundrum.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory   by Roald Dahl, 155 pages James Donahue   13 August 2005 Simply with pictures. And a delight!

Tokugawa Religion   by Robert Bellah, 197 pages James Donahue   30 September 2003 Bellah has found the functional equivalent of the Protestant work ethic in medieval Japan. So this explains why Japan is so advanced as a society and as an economy -- due to a religion of collectivism, duty, and selflessness. (Obviously this book is a little dated.)

Stalin   by Robert Conquest, 312 pages James Donahue   03 November 2004 Decent biography heavy on the (just) condemnation.

Observing America (2007)   by Robert Frankel, 324 pages James Donahue   07 June 2007 A history of books by Brits on the U.S. from 1900 to 1945. Frankel focuses on four very different writers: H. G. Wells, W. T. Stead (one of the more prominent Moody allies in Chicago), Harold Laski, and G. K. Chesterton (who spent a few semesters teaching at Notre Dame). Very good, though what intrigues is more the comment of the Brits than Frankel's analysis. (Read in Calgary and Banff on family vacation)

The Return of History and the End of Dreams (2008)   by Robert Kagan, 105 pages James Donahue   28 May 2008 Everything you wanted to know about geopolitics in forty-five minutes. (ahem)

Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor, Prophet (1985)   by Robert Moats Miller, 570 pages James Donahue   26 February 2006 Fosdick was the most popular Baptist preacher of his age, and the lightening rod that sparked off the GARBC walk-out of the Northern Baptist Conference. Miller is a wonderful biographer, absorbed by his subject to the point of obsession, but as a result a questionable historian, all too often pulling miscellaneous (undocumented) quotes out of his ass to prove a point, focusing more on (undocumented) oral histories over the written word, and losing the bigger religious picture.

From Liberalism to Fascism   by Robert Passmore, 314 pages James Donahue   05 December 2002 Another book on French fascism. Sense a term paper coming up?

French Peasant Fascism   by Robert Paxton, 239 pages James Donahue   29 November 2002 Militant peasants don green shirts and wage militant strikes to protest an uncaring Republic during the Depression.

The Anatomy of Fascism (2004)   by Robert Paxton, 249 pages James Donahue   06 June 2006 Paxton is at the end of a long career as the primary American expert on French fascism. This is his take on the general phenomenon, with an incredible amount of wisdom on the subject, but also perhaps forgetting how to talk to people outside of the field. More historiographical than historical, but still maintains that difficult balance between provocative and considered.

The Life of David (2005)   by Robert Pinsky, 209 pages James Donahue   26 March 2006 Pinsky, one of my favorite poets, has written an eye-opening, wonderful literary analysis of the life of the David. Never has the most fallible of the patriarchs seemed more human.

The Dominion of the Dead   by Robert Pogue Harrison, 159 pages James Donahue   15 July 2004 Harrison is a fascinating writer interested in the cultural archeology of words and concepts. In this book he examines the way in which the dead shape us, have claims on us (both psychologically and culturally) and how culture drifts awry when it has no room for its dead, when it separates the living from the dead, and when the dead can no longer speak through us. Highly recommended.

A History of Twentieth-Century Russia   by Robert Service, 589 pages James Donahue   07 January 2004 Despite the mundanest of titles, Service writes a fairly readable textbook that tells the facts and provides some anecdotes. Lack of pictures is somewhat damning however (as it would be for any history book). Boning up for my class this Spring.

Russia: Experiment with a People   by Robert Service, 351 pages James Donahue   26 February 2004 Excellent history of Russia from 1991 onwards. Could be read by someone with no background. Only problem: too optimistic. (And he's not even all that optimistic).

Keeping the Republic: Ideology and Early American Diplomacy   by Robert W. Smith, 142 pages James Donahue   08 December 2005 A published dissertation, this book succintly describes the foreign policies of Washington/Hamiliton, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison against the backdrop of their differing views of republicanism, revolution, civil society, and virtue. Suprisingly relevant to our current foreign policy dilemmas.

Rebellion and Democracy in Meiji Japan   by Roger Bowen, 313 pages James Donahue   27 April 2004

Imperial Germany and the Great War (2002)   by Roger Chickering, 211 pages James Donahue   14 November 2006

Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography   by Rudiger Safranski, 371 pages James Donahue   17 April 2003 An excellent biography that concentrates on his ideas and not on his moral worth, sexual issues, or creeping insanity. Safranski places Nietzsche within his historical and social world while explaining what made him unique. The final chapter, which assesses his influence on twentieth-century scholarship, is alone worth the read.

Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil   by Rudiger Safranski, 452 pages James Donahue   07 June 2003 Another wonderful biography by Safranksi. This book is recent enough to include the recent connections to Nazism that have surfaced while level-headed enough to make coherent sense of such findings. In this book Safranksi actually makes Heidegger understandable and human, two nearly impossible tasks.

Lourdes: Body and Mind in the Secular Age   by Ruth Harris, 431 pages James Donahue   01 October 2002 A compelling account of the miraculous grotto in southern France. As a historian Harris does an excellent job combining respect for the site with a critical eye. She traces the story of the grotte from Mary''s appearance to Ste. Bernadette through the current pilgrimages and healing. Compelling reading that requires no background knowledge of French or Church history.

Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War on War in Europe, 1815-1914 (1991)   by Sandi. E. Cooper, 210 pages James Donahue   30 July 2008 The best general survey of the nineteenth-century Continental peace movement available. For those who've heard of the Interparliamentary Union, Alfred Nobel, the women's peace movement, international arbitration, or the Hague Conferences but have not yet found a good synthetic work on these subjects, this is the best alternative for you.

Sidney Gulick and the Search for Peace with Japan   by Sandra Taylor, 254 pages James Donahue   10 April 2004 Rough book that winds and repeats itself. Biography of one of the main opponents of the treatment of Japanese-Americans from 1900-1945. Missionary. Confusing figure.

The Partly Cloudy Patriot (2002)   by Sarah Vowell, 196 pages James Donahue   04 October 2006 Hilarious outtakes from an historically-obsessed ex-Montana nerd - - - who is not moi!

The Wordy Shipmates (2008)   by Sarah Vowell, 272 pages James Donahue   01 December 2008

Memory, History, and the Extermination of the Jews   by Saul Friedlander, 142 pages James Donahue   05 August 2002 Seven essays by a Jewish historian on the impossibility of writing a coherent history on an irreducibly incoherent genocide.

Reflections of Nazism: An Essay on Kitsch and Death   by Saul Friedlander, 141 pages James Donahue   10 August 2002 Examines why in spite of ourselves contemporary culture is fascinated with Hitler and Nazism. Friedlander identifies our fascination on the Nazi combination of kitsch and death, familial normality and genocide, order and chaos. Very provocative; a quick-read.

The Spirit Level (2001)   by Seamus Heaney, 80 pages James Donahue   23 June 2007

The Russian Revolution   by Sheila Fitzpatrick, 181 pages James Donahue   04 September 2002 A standard in the field that explodes a lot of popular (ie propaganda from Cold War) misconceptions.

The Russian Revolution   by Sheila Fitzpatrick, 211 pages James Donahue   18 October 2004

Maude Royden: A Life (1989)   by Sheila Fletcher, 289 pages James Donahue   19 February 2006 Royden was England's first woman preacher of note. This biography sheds light primarily on her suffragist and pacifist activism. But Fletcher also does a good job revealing the chaotic ecclesial debates that followed her throughout the Anglo-American world.

Molding Japanese Minds   by Sheldon Garon, 243 pages James Donahue   24 May 2004

Resident Aliens   by Stanley Hauerwas, 172 pages James Donahue   18 December 2002 Hauerwas always delivers a prophetic punch that convicts and inspires me. Here he argues that the church needs to move from a conception of itself as trustee of American culture' to 'colonial counterculture.' He demands much of the church, but having experienced such a church in Columbus, I can say that this type of church truly works and impacts people for Christ. A hearty read, even if, as usual, Hauerwas cannot keep from making some offensive statements along the way.

Kofi Annan (2007)   by Stanley Meisler, 319 pages James Donahue   01 July 2007 Meisler's biography of the U.N. sec-gen is partly a defense of Annan against his American neo-con critics and the general, uninformed public view of the UN over the past few years. But book is best when it rests on Meisler's personal anecdotes as a reporter at the UN over the past decade.

The World of Yesterday (1941)   by Stefan Zweig, 440 pages James Donahue   01 October 2007 Zweig was one of the most praised writers and critics of his time with eyes always turned towards the next great writer and a nose primed for the center of the art scenes of the 1910s and 1920s. Zweig was Viennese, but the Nazi government forced him to be a Jew - and a refugee at that. He wrote this memoir in the States and Brazil during the Holocaust. Yet this book is not really a memoir. Zweig is barely in it at all (much less his wife!). It is a loving remembrance about the friends he loved and the Austria he loved even more. After completing the book and sending it to the publishers, he and his wife took their own life in the forests of Brazil.

The Charterhouse of Parma   by Stendhal, 488 pages James Donahue   24 June 2003 Stendhal writes a novel in which the hero is passive to the intriguings and politics of a counter-revolutionary age; never has a hero done so little and been less responsible for his fate. Stendhal writes a novel that bitterly satrizies the Holy Alliance with all of the fervor of his liberalist heart. Stendhal writes a novel which sets the standard for 'realism' in the novel. Stendhal writes a ponderous, plodding novel.

American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon   by Stephen Prothero, 337 pages James Donahue   07 January 2004 Prothero outlines how Jesus slipped the bonds of theology to become everybody's best friend in America. The book is divided into two parts: the first one is Protestantism going from solus fide to solus Jesus; the second, on how outsiders have utilized Jesus to their own purposes. Focus is paid to Jesus Freaks, CCM, megachurches, liberalism, Thomas Jefferson, pop culture, Reformed Jews, and DL Moody, among other. Very informative but written with a great sense of humor.

Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations   by Stephen Schlesinger, 287 pages James Donahue   19 May 2005 Despite the jacket's promise of a story about 'superpowers' and 'secret agents,' Schlesinger's book is still a pretty convential story about the diplomatic negotiations of the 1945 San Francisco Conference that produced the final version of the U.N. Charter. A good read by a current UN insider, but falls too often into a narrow focus on the American delegation.

The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics   by Susan Harding, 312 pages James Donahue   06 November 2002

Feminism, Film, Fascism   by Susan Linville, 170 pages James Donahue   08 August 2002 Linville explores the way in which feminist and deconstructive films have challenged common notions of the Holocaust in postwar Germany. Specifically: how they challenge the notion that Nazism is definitively over when partriachal and reactionary structures still remain intact and operative after 1945.

Girl In Hyacinth Blue   by Susan Vreeland, 257 pages James Donahue   10 April 2002 Good historical fiction. It really gives one a feel for early modern Holland, particularly with such lush descriptions of the landscape. The plot traces the history of a Vermeer painting of a girl in blue from now back to it conception through its succession of owners, paying particular attention to what each owner cherished about the painting.

Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth   by Suzanne Selinger, 206 pages James Donahue   08 April 2002 An interesting study of the famous theologian and his secretary/soulmate. Paints a vivid picture of an unusual and often scandelous relationship. Best when it points out how their love influenced Barth's theology, particularly on the topics of women pastors, the I-Thou calling, and the imago Dei.

Unveiling   by Suzanne Wolfe, 188 pages James Donahue   19 January 2005 Wolfe writes of a recently-divorced woman in Rome working at unveiling a 16th-c triptych. While doing so she finds herself among the rituals and lived Catholicism of her environs even as she herself remains immune to religious belief. Well-written, but the short and stubby chapters never allowed me to truly immerse myself.

Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan   by Takashi Fujitani, 282 pages James Donahue   21 April 2004 Wonderful analysis of the nationalistic invention of Japanese court ritual in the late nineteenth-century, Very illustrative on the symbolic aspects of rule.

On Suicide Bombing (2007)   by Talal Asad, 96 pages James Donahue   24 July 2007 Asad, a Muslim scholar at NYU, fails to see much difference between suicide bombing and the state-sanctioned violence of the West. (He condemns both equally.) So in this series of lectures he roots out the Western/Christian sources of the horror held especially for the suicide bomber, a path that leads through the modern need to secular redemption, the just war theory, the story of Sampson, and the "suicide that defined the term": Christ's Passion.

J. Clifford Nelson   by The Lutherans in North America, 541 pages James Donahue   03 October 2002 Exactly what it sounds like, and as exactly as dry as it sounds like.

The Eve of 1914 (1936)   by Theodor Wolff, 636 pages James Donahue   02 December 2008 Wolff was the longtime editor of the Berliner Tageblatt. Here he reconstructs the events leading up to WWI, relying not only on research but from his personal interaction with the German elite. If you can suffer through his long-winded, Wilhelmine style, the book reveals lots of quirkly tidbits about a fascinating range of personalities.

Protestant Theology and the Making of the Modern German University (2006)   by Thomas Albert Howard, 448 pages James Donahue   04 May 2007

Death and the Afterlife in Modern France   by Thomas Kselman, 302 pages James Donahue   02 August 2004

Utopia   by Thomas More, 197 pages James Donahue   21 January 2003 A traveller from the newfound Americas relates an alternative society to 16th century Englanders. More's vision is an odd amalgamation of socialism (before there was such a thing) and Christianity. Reading this book is like finding a missing link.

Mason and Dixon   by Thomas Pynchon, 773 pages James Donahue   27 December 2003 A satirical look at two men who helped conquer the world for orthongonality. Wickedly funny at times, but sometimes devolved into quixotic goofiness. Written in the style of Enlightenment prose: this was its best and worst feature. Often made my brain sparkle but sometimes overworked it for little reward. All in all, an eccentric and good read.

The Natures of John and William Bartram   by Thomas Slaughter, 292 pages James Donahue   28 January 2004 The best biography I've ever read. Hands down. The Bartrams were a father-son botanist team in colonial America with vastly different personalities and stories. The book tells their lives through their troubled relationship and expertly makes one see the forest and untrammeled nature of 18th-century America. But what the makes the book really soar is Slaughter's sympathetic and probing narrative style, written on the heels of his own father's death.

Native Sources of Japanese Industrialization   by Thomas Smith, 270 pages James Donahue   05 November 2003

Karl Barth: Against Hegemony   by Timothy Gorringe, 289 pages James Donahue   03 July 2003 A new and brief summary of Barth's life and work placed within his historical and intellectual context. Decent summary, but devolves too easily into scholastic quarrels that only those within the field can understand.

Contested Christianity   by Timothy Larsen, 193 pages James Donahue   29 December 2005 First off - CONGRATULATIONS ALICIA!!!!This book is a compendium of essays covering the cultural history of Victorian Dissenters, ranging from scandels in Jamaica, the first Bible-tourist agencies offering trips to the Holy Land for the bourgeoisie, what happens when Baptist churches lose all their male members, and the reception of German biblical criticism. Larsen is very readable, an admirable historian and a fresh thinker - but, given his extensive use of a Dissenting vocabulary - I often missed enough of the (unexplained) references to feel like an outsider looking in.

Christabel Pankhurst: Fundamentalism and Feminism in Coalition (2004)   by Timothy Larsen, 142 pages James Donahue   31 March 2006

Living in the Shadow   by Timothy Weber, 210 pages James Donahue   04 December 2002 A helpful exposition of dispensationalism from its genesis in the 1840s through WWII.

Dark Force Rising (1992)   by Timothy Zahn, 439 pages James Donahue   07 January 2008 Did you know that Leia (who drops the "Princess") eventually gets trained the Force?

The Last Command (1999)   by Timothy Zahn, 340 pages James Donahue   15 February 2008 Did you know that Leia has credence on some worlds because she is "spawn of Vader"?

Red Rabbit   by Tom Clancy, 618 pages James Donahue   26 October 2003 What happened to Tom? I haven't picked up a book of his in some time (maybe eight years). I always admired his sense of pacing and movie-ready episodic prose. However in this book the suspense was gone, the prose was limp, and the characters sounded like unthinking call-ins on Rush Limbaugh. I've read an awful lot of memoirs and accounts by Soviet defectors for my studies (see Wolfgang Leonhard last year for a particularly good one), and none of them sound like his Reaganite defector hero. So disappointing.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses (2005)   by Tom Standage, 274 pages James Donahue   20 December 2006 The six glasses: Beer (Fertile Crescent), Wine (Greece and Rome), Rum/Brandy/Whiskey (American Colonies), Coffee (Enlightenment), Tea (China in 19th-century), and Coca-Cola (20th-century America). Very Anglophoniccentric, but very entertaining with great trivia on our favorite beverages.

A Grand Illusion? An Essay on Europe   by Tony Judt, 141 pages James Donahue   02 December 2003 This is one of the best and the most compact book on European unification out there. Judt is wise to be a "Euro-skeptic" and points out many substanitive issues standing in the path of total unification.

The Lady and the Unicorn   by Tracy Chevalier, 248 pages James Donahue   15 June 2005 Chevalier's book is a fictional reconstruction of the creation of the tapestries of the same name hanging at the Musee de Cluny on the Left Bank. My wife recommened me the book, although I suspect it was solely out of love for the tapestries which fascinated her since she first saw them. I thus began this book in skepticism. The first few chapters almost fulfilled my expectations, especially the salacious devolutions that read more like Playboy letters than literature. (My objection is not one of prudishness, but one that prefers at least a two-dimensional woman in casual sex scenes.) But, to my surprise, the novel really picked up steam. In the end I could not put it down. It turns out that Chevalier can develop characters once they are slightly stained with love.

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2006)   by Umberto Eco, 449 pages James Donahue   26 May 2007 Eco continues his musing on popular culture and semiotics in this story where a man loses all his individual memory after an accident, but retains his public memory (i.e., anything he ever read in a book.) In other words, he can recite poems and discourse on Napoleon, but has no idea about who his daughter is. So he spends most of the book launching a historical investigation into himself, going through old notes and books, schooltime essays written during the Fascist era, and trying to unravel who he really is. Good, but somehow the books loses itself along the way. Perhaps a better idea than an actual book. (Read overnight in one long evening sitting outside on a warm spring's night on the curb outside the Berlin airport, locked out, waiting for them to let me board my early morning flight.)

Germans Jews in Germany   by Uriel Tal , 321 pages James Donahue   30 October 2003 Tal provdes an excellent backdrop to the Holocaust by examining German-Jewish relations in the Second Reich. Tal's unique strength in this all-too-commonly-poorly-done field is to treat ideas and people simultaneously instead of relying upon such bodiless abstractions as "Judaism," "anti-Semitism," or "Christian."

Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales   by Valerie Paradiñ, 195 pages James Donahue   27 June 2005 Paradiñ relates well the biographies of the Grimm brothers and the women who helped them collect the folk tales and old women’s stories. The Grimms undertook this scholarly activity in order to preserve German Volkkultur from the Napoleonic hordes threatening to overwash the Rhineland in the wake of the dissolution of the First Reich. Even after reading the book, I’m unsure of the motivations of their feminine counterparts. Which is a shame, since Paradiñ’s intent is to write a feminist re-reading of the tales’ birth. Yet all she can point to is the fact they were ‘robbed’ (even though she relies on modern standards of scholarship and citation to do so). In the end, the women come across as victims, not historical agents, to me, and Paradiñ comes off as someone who missed a great story by returning to a preachy point.

Notre Dame of Paris   by Victor Hugo, 491 pages James Donahue   12 May 2003 Certainly not like the Disney movie! A wonderful read that contains Hugo's usual mixture of Christian themes of reconciliation, liberal-political allusions (written in 1830), and gripping plot. This book accomplished a difficult task: it made me love Paris all the more. Sidenote: The Penguin translation that I read was not very good.

Les Miserables   by Victor Hugo, 1232 pages James Donahue   02 May 2005 While cramming at the last minute and taking my final exams, I slipped away for brief escapes into Hugo's attempt to capture the entire 19th-c in one Parisian book. Perfect because its so bombastic; who doesn't love the mega-read? Three comments: 1) I don't get why this is one of Eric Phillips' favorite book - on moral or stylistic grounds; 2) the definition of Hugo-esque = to not delete any thought, any sentence (the antonym of Kundera-esque); 3) not that I've seen it, but how in hell did this become transfored into an Andrew Lloyd Weber 'opera'?

Three Guineas   by Virginia Woolf, 188 pages James Donahue   19 February 2003 Woolf's rich and ironic response to a request for support for a pacifist cause in 1938.

Theology, Sociology and Politics: The German Protestant Social Conscience 1890-1933 (1979)   by W. R. Ward, 243 pages James Donahue   19 August 2006 An excellent survey of Christian engagement with socialism from one of my favorite historians.

The Painted Veil   by W. Somerset Maugham, 238 pages James Donahue   01 November 2005

On Human Bondage   by W. Somerset Maugham, 607 pages James Donahue   20 November 2005 A old-fashioned Bildungsroman, for the WWI generation. An orphan raised in the bourgeouis, public-school circles of his British uncle, a vicar, Philip Carey studies philosophy in Heidelberg, art in Paris, love in Soho, and medicine at the Royal College before discovering that no abstract system can make you life meaningful and that simple (British) pleasures are the most satisfying. (This latter lesson also applies to marriages.)

Up At The Villa   by W. Somerset Maugham, 95 pages James Donahue   29 November 2005 Maugham continues to probe the deepest mystery of the universe yet again, namely: why do women always prefer the lying charmer to the decent man? I must say that one of the reasons I like Maugham is because he is, especially for writers from the 1920s, so desperately uncool.

The Razor's Edge (1944)   by W. Somerset Maugham, 331 pages James Donahue   16 April 2006 Maugham, the missing link between Balzac and Hemingway, writes in this, his last novel, of an American obsessed with finding wisdom in mysticism after the Great War. He leaves his friends in Chicago, busy making money and babies in the roaring twenties, to travel and experience life. The book is good overall, but not for Maugham. There is too much distance between the writer and the Americans, yet Maugham's own opinions, viewpoints, and experiences are the Americans', not the narrator. Which makes the strongest characters the most detached.

Politics, Society, and Christianity in Vichy France   by W.D. Halls, 391 pages James Donahue   08 September 2004 Only interesting if you're already interested.

The Protestant Evangelical Awakening   by W.R. Ward, 355 pages James Donahue   09 June 2004

The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent (2007)   by Walter Lacquer, 226 pages James Donahue   01 September 2007 As pessimistic a forecast as one can get. As Europe's economy sags, it role as "moral superpower" goes unheeded, and its populations becomes Islamized, Lacquer foresees a future for Europe as "a museum of world history snd civilization preaching the importance of morality in world affairs to a nonexistent audience." At least tourist dollars are way up!

A Short Life of Soren Kierkegaard   by Walter Lowrie, 260 pages James Donahue   27 March 2004 If you love Kierkegaard, you'll love this biography. Its written in the same meandering, maddening, charming fashion that relys on parables to make its point. Some have questioned, as they should, Lowrie's intense desire to reduce Kierkegaard's works to his life -- a roman a clef of one, so to speak. Yet if one uses Lowries analysis in reverse -- to see how Kierkegaard's life affected his work -- one will not be disappointed. (More 'serious' lovers of Kierkegaard should stick to Hanney's bio.)

Women at the Gates: Gender and Industry in Stalin's Russia   by Wendy Goldman, 286 pages James Donahue   04 March 2003

Napoleon's Pyramids (2007)   by William Dietrich, 284 pages James Donahue   30 July 2008 Ethan Gage is a lazy ex-protege of Benjamin Franklin, bouncing around Revolutionary Paris until he wins an Egyptian medallion in a poker game, gets framed for murder, and runs away with Napoleon's army on its quest to invade Egypt, cut the British off from India, and harness the ancient's world's secrets. The adventure story of this novel is excellent, though little more than a well-honed rendition of the Indiana Jones-type exotic-orientalist adventures, except this time with Masons instead of Turkish secret societies and Napoleon instead of Nazis. The real enjoyment of this book for me lay in the historical fiction aspect of the book. The bizarre invasion of Egypt in 1798 opened up the Ottoman world to Westerners for the first time since the Crusades. The author liberally laces his novel with real characters that seem so far-fetched they could only be from the French Revolution. Great vacation read for those us who hate the insipidity of most vacation reads.

Essays in Pragmatism   by William James, 189 pages James Donahue   22 May 2003

Deference and Defiance in Nineteenth-Century Japan   by William Kelly, 291 pages James Donahue   13 March 2004 Dry social history of three peasant revolts in a small Japanese province from 1841-1873.

The Atomic Bazaar (2007)   by William Langewiesche, 179 pages James Donahue   13 July 2007 Langewiesche continues to be the best writer on contemporary politics with this book about nuclear proliferation after the Cold War. Not only can he write sentences like these: "Diplomacy may help to slow the spread, but it can no more stop the process than it can reverse the progression of time. The nuclearization of the world has become the human condition, and it cannot be changed. Fear of it becomes dangerous when it detracts from realisitic assessments of the terrain." But I believe him. The usual excellent combination here of travelogue/first-hand-anecdote, grasp of the relevant history, layman's science, and political acuity.

Freud’s Discovery of Psychoanalysis: The Politics of Hysteria   by William McGrath, 278 pages James Donahue   07 April 2003 Examines Freud's early years as a scholar and examines his formulation of psychoanalysis amidst his political and religious commitments. Informative but dry.

Arnold J. Toynbee: A Life   by William McNeill, 288 pages James Donahue   08 February 2007

Europe Central (2005)   by William Vollmann, 752 pages James Donahue   01 June 2006 Wow! This is the first book in a long time that I have re-read chapters simply for the pleasure of feeling the words on my tongue.

Child of the Revolution   by Wolfgang Leonhard, 432 pages James Donahue   12 June 2002 In counterpoint to Eggers, a fascinating memoir of a life worthy of reading about. Leonhard fled at thirteen to the USSR to flee Hitler, after which his mother was 'purged', he was drafted into the Comintern educational system, and then trained to reenter Germany after the war to institute a Soviet satellite state in Berlin. In the end, his love for Marxism led him to reject Stalinism, and flee to Yugoslavia in 1949 in order to participate in Tito's anti-Soviet state. A fascinating and rare look into Stalin's Russia and the workings of totalitarian education.

The Tiger of France: Conversations with Clemenceau (1949)   by Wythe Williams, 303 pages James Donahue   04 December 2006 Williams was the Times journalist in Paris from 1911-1935. This is part-biography, part-love-affair with Clemenceau, aka the Tiger, the dodgy and fiery premier of France during WWI. Colorful; but accurate??

The Life of Pi   by Yann Martel, 326 pages James Donahue   22 December 2004 Just when you thought every plot had been done, along comes a book about a shipwrecked religious wunderkind and his pet tiger. An amazing read; literally could not put the book down, but am very unsure of its meaning. Suggestions?

A History of Japanese Theology   by Yasuo Furuya, 146 pages James Donahue   19 April 2004

Neither Right Nor Left   by Zeev Sternhill, 379 pages James Donahue   27 November 2002 Traces the French roots of fascism to demostrate the popular support for Vichy.