Author: Andy Le Peau

I've been an editor and writer for over forty years. I am passionate about ideas and how we can express them clearly, beautifully, and persuasively. I love reading good books, talking about them, and recommending them. I thoroughly enjoy my family who help me continue on the path of a lifelong learner.

Farewell, Jim Hoover

Jim Hoover has given us the sad news (for us) but the good news (for him) that December 31, 2013, will officially be his last day at IVP.

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I could try to measure the contribution Jim has made in number of books edited or pages published in his more than thirty-five years with IVP, but that would be wholly inadequate. He has been a work horse, but much more. He has been our sheet anchor of wisdom as we have faced innumerable decisions and quandaries over the years.
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The Most Misused Verse in the Bible

We read it in devotional books. We sing it in church. We meditate on it in our quiet times. God’s command in Psalm 46:10–“Be still, and know that I am God.”

Unfortunately, the verse has nothing to do with what we usually think it does–being quiet before God, not being frantic and busy, or maybe getting ourselves ready to hear a sermon. No, it’s not about any of these things. This is a verse which has been violently ripped out of context time and time again. What does it really mean?
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The First Thanksgiving 3: How the Story Was Misremembered

How did we come to think that the Pilgrims

  • were rugged individualists when they were strongly bound to community?
  • were patriots first and committed Christians second?
  • would support Thanksgiving Day football even though “the 1650s the Plymouth General Court prescribed fines for individuals who engaged in sports on days of thanksgiving” (p. 145)?

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The First Thanksgiving 2: What We Don’t Know Is Inspiring

The First Thanksgiving by Robert Tracy McKenzie corrects a lot of the errors and myths that surround that original celebration by the Pilgrims in 1620.

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In telling us the real story, McKenzie points us to more fruitful lessons we might learn than the warm feeling we get when we think about those independent-minded Pilgrims seeking new lands and freedom, and thanking God for helping them on the way. For example:
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The First Thanksgiving 1: What We Know Ain’t So

What you thought you knew about the first Thanksgiving is wrong. But what you didn’t know can be even more valuable. That’s the message of Robert Tracy McKenzie’s fresh and fascinating book The First Thanksgiving.

Squanto did indeed teach the Pilgrims to fertilize their cornfields with fish, but what else did you learn in school that isn’t true?
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Fifty Years Ago Three Great Men Died

One of the most dramatic events of the twentieth century was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. What is less well known is that two other great men died the same day — Christian scholar and author C. S. Lewis, and novelist and pantheist Aldous Huxley.
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How to Kill Off Writing

What’s the best way to hurt the local agriculture market in a country full of starving people? Indiscriminantly give away tons of free food. Relief organizations have learned the hard way that if they want to create a self-sustaining market of locally grown produce, they can’t always bring in truckloads of rice from other countries.
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