The History of Christianity in the Reformation Era by Brad Gregory

Not actually a book but this is a good place to keep track of it.

This is a class from the Teaching Company, with the usual 1/2-hour lectures on CD. It covered the origins of the Reformation up through the Restoration in England. The professor took a geographic approach along with tracing the major movements (Anabaptism, Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.) He took the approach of trying to portray the nuances of the various movements vs. a black-and-white set of motivations for change (or lack thereof.) One interesting thing was the changes the Catholic church made in response to the complaints of corruption and lack of personally vital spiritual life. The response was to create an educational and catechetical approach to training the laity in the beliefs of the church.

I learned a lot about the Anabaptists and the distinctions from Protestants. Gregory also did a nice job accurately portraying the Calvinist movements and Lutheranism.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

A quick read, sci-fi with a lot of great ideas that drive the content and action.

In the not-too-distant future, immortality has been attained by serial use of clones to replace worn out or even tiresome bodies, with your "content" downloaded to the new body. If you're murdered, a clone is grown and "you" are restored from backup. Further, the economic society is now reputation-based, with credits ("Whuffie") accumulating based on good and cooperative behavior in the Bitchun Society, and antisocial behavior costing the user Whuffie, which can be seen by anyone looking at you as a readout if they look above your head, thanks to the electronic brain interface built into the clones. It could make a ponderous and pompous sort of intellectual sci-fi book, but instead Doctorow weaves an engaging first person narrative, with the protagonist a 100 year old man who has "recycled" only four times, the latest taking place at the start of the book when he is murdered.

The protagonist has taken up residence at Disney World and helps maintain Liberty Square and the Haunted Mansion. A rival group takes over the Hall of Presidents and threatens to take the Haunted Mansion as well. Underhanded deeds make it hard to maintain reputational currency, but sometimes they must be done.

Doctorow does a nice job of exploring options available in such a society. You can choose your age look: a 50-year-old can be "19 apparent" and a younger doctor could appear to be a wizened septuagenarian. You could "deadhead" by making a backup and killing yourself with a "wakeup call" set for years, decades, or centuries in the future. What are the implications for your family for this kind of decision? What does it say about whether you care for them or find them interesting to be around? You can do something evil and then kill yourself and restore from a backup and not even remember it. You can forget to backup and have an "old version" of yourself as the only restore option, one that perhaps does not know your current love--or that she has dumped you.

The story alone is a really imaginative one, and the "science" is explained only as narrative, revealing itself as it needs to.

I finished this on 3/4/13. I got it from the library. I've read good things about Doctorow before, and when Seth Godin mentioned him in his blog recently, I added this book to my library queue.

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemningway

Hemingway's first book is one of the few of his that I have not read, for some reason. I picked it up at the library to amend that situation and finished it on 2/23/2013. As usual with Hemingway, it seems to be close to a biographical account of a period or episode in his life. He explores themes of fidelity and lust, primal urges and bloodlust, bravery, antisemitism, class differences, and more. This is the book with the scenes from the Feast of San Fermin in Pamplona, more popularly known as the time when the running of the bulls and the bullfights happen.

Sadly, it seems that despite a variety of meaningful interactions, affairs, betrayals, fights, etc., at the end, the characters have changed very little. Vanitas vanitatum.

ARGO by Antonio Mendez

ARGO: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History is the story of the freeing of six Americans from Iran after the American Embassy was overrun by Iranian students in 1979. It was made into a popular movie that just won the Oscar for best film. I have not seen it as I wanted to first read the book. It was a quick read and a riveting book, but most of it would not make a very interesting movie. The conceit that the CIA uses to free the Americans is that they are Canadians scouting locations for a Hollywood movie. They have few problems exiting the country when all is said and done, while I hear that the movie makes the whole process much more dramatic.

But it was still a fun book to read. The CIA agent involved exposes some of the "tradecraft" that allows them CIA to make false passports and fool the customs agents and others. The story of expatriating the Iranian they call RAPTOR is actually more harrowing one than the freeing of the Americans, and it sets up the difficulties in physical needs (costumes, fake passports, "pocket litter," etc.) as well as psychological requirements of the person being exfiltrated.

I remember the six Americans being rescued by the Canadians and the story being that they were given Canadian passports. The whole story was not released until 1997 and I read it at the time, but this book does a nice job of combining Iranian history, interesting CIA stories, and some human drama into a hard-to-put-down book. I got it from the library and read it on 2/23-2/24, 2013.

The Cross in the New Testament by Leon Morris

The first Bible commentary that I ever read was by Leon Morris. It was on the Gospel of John, and was so clearly written and helpful that I still measure the value of commentaries based on that book. I snapped this up at Half Price Books when I saw it in a stack of new but remaindered books for a great price. I then proceeded to not read it for quite some time, which I know because I found the receipt in it dated August 2003. Anyway, I'm glad I finally did read it, because it too is a well-written, easily-understood and nontechnical book.

Morris goes through the theology of the cross as seen from the standpoint of each author in the New Testament. Of course, these (along with the OT) make up a complete theology of the cross, and not several separate and unique understandings of the work of Christ in his death. Still, each author emphasizes different aspects of that theology based on the points that they were trying to get across to their readers at the time. And so the cross is shown to have practical implications that arise from the theology. One author may emphasize the redemptive aspect, another may emphasize that through his death Jesus earned the right to give the Holy Spirit to his followers, for example. Each has his purpose for those emphases, and Morris draws them out and exposits the theology contained in each.

Morris is careful in his analysis, never force-fitting to a predefined theory. And that attitude is a good reminder for someone who teaches on occasion.

I read this over the course of late 2011 through late 2012, with lots of starts and stops as I read other things. While it is simply written, it's not one to read as you go to sleep, which is when I tend to read the lighter items on my list. I'll be hanging onto this.

GONZO: A Graphic Biography by Will Singley and Anthony Hope-Smith

Gonzo is a brief biography of the gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson told in graphic novel form.  It was a quick and interesting read. I knew a little about Thompson and had read some of his work. The graphic novel treatment was used to good effect with this biography. Savannah gave it to me for Christmas and I read it on December 26, 2012.

Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi

Reclaiming History's subtitle is "The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy," and its intent is telegraphed in the main title. Much of America has come to believe that there is more to the JFK assassination that the government has told us, and people have bought into a variety of shadowy conspiracy theories or the idea that "we'll never know what happened that day." As such, many people hold to an alternate history of the events of 11/22/63. This book seeks to reclaim the actual history of the assassination by setting forth the facts as discovered at the time. It also debunks (yea, ridicules) the various conspiracy theorists and "researchers" who have posited that the assassination was a conspiracy perpetrated by the Cuban government, Cuban exiles, the Mafia, the Russian government, LBJ, the CIA, and/or a variety of other supposed conspirators.

Bugliosi's book is extensively researched, footnoted, and careful in its factual assertions. A detailed description of the events surrounding the four days around the assassination starts the book, and that 320 pages is a thorough, minute-by-minute history of its own. Those who have casually come by an alternative theory about the assassination by watching Oliver Stone's preposterous myth "JFK" or from one of the dozens of TV specials would do well to read this section of the book if no other. It will likely lead to reading the section(s) of the book that debunk their favored theory, which comprise another major section of the book. Also included is a long and detailed biography of Lee Harvey Oswald and his family. The biography was a bit of a slog, but it is worth reading all the detail if only to realize what kind of a man Oswald was, and why he would do what he did.

Bugliosi also does a thorough, if frequently repetitive, job of laying out some facts that are often cited by what I'll call "casual" conspiracy believers. "Oswald was a terrible shot." No, he earned a Marine sharpshooter rating. "No one can fire three shots with that weapon that fast." Yes, they can, as proven by several tests done with people using that rifle who had the same training as Oswald, who in fact beat the time Oswald shot the three bullets, one by a couple of seconds. "The magic bullet had to make a right turn in midair to hit John Connally." No, Connally was in a jump seat to Kennedy's front left, and a reenactment showed it was a straight line through Kennedy's back and to the places it hit Connally. "People heard more than three shots and only three bullets were fired by Oswald." No, 95 percent of the witnesses in the plaza heard three shots, and only a few thought they heard more. "There were people who shot from the front." Not according to the eyewitness testimony that day. Most of the "grassy knoll shooter" "witnesses" came forth years after the assassination, after Mark Lane began propounding his lame conspiracy theories. Bugliosi is able to debunk each of their testimonies, many of whom could be proven to have been in other states at the time.

My only criticism of Bugliosi's massive effort is his frequent dismissals of the conspiracy theorists via well-deserved but off-putting mockery. (This after making a good case, by the way. The ad hominem is never his sole attack, though it is added as an emphasis pretty often.) Though deserved, it piles up to petulance when you read straight through. Which is hard to do, by the way. It is understandably VERY long, over 1600 oversized pages of small text, not including reference footnotes, which are included on a DVD along with the Warren Commission report and other documents. Still, it's a riveting read and a terrific doorstop.

I'm glad I read this as I know the JFK assassination by Oswald will get scrutiny again this year since it's the 50th anniversary.

I got this from the library in early October 2012. I rechecked it out for the maximum of 6 times before finally finishing it about January 15, 2013. It was too big for travel, hence I read other books over the holidays and during business trips during this window, but it's a major commitment. After I finished, I read the review the New York Times ran when it came out in 2007. They discussed how long it is, and also that they were sure it was meant as a reference book, not something that anyone would actually read through. Now they tell me.