Category: Book review

Reading Camus in Time of Covid

Reading Camus in time of Covid with my fifteen-year-old grandson has been one of the many unexpected twists of this past year. Somehow he became interested in the existentialists. I thought Camus’s book The Plague might be the easiest way in since it is a novel (rather than dense philosophy) and because of its timeliness.

Much in the story resonates with our times: the denial, uncertainty, and fear when the plague begins; the fixation on daily death tolls; the frustration and anger with the constraints of the quarantine; the “feeling of exile—the sensation of a void within which never left us, that irrational longing to hark back to the past” (65*); the relief when after a year the plague finally begins to abate.

Ultimately, the book remains a parable for all human existence. “What does that mean—‘plague’?” asks one character. “Just life, no more than that” (277). We are locked down in this life with the random threat of death hanging over us. How do we make sense of it all when death takes so many young and old, rich and poor, good and evildoers—yet arbitrarily allows so many in each group to remain?

Early on a priest says he can make sense of it (as God’s judgment) though at the end his theology fails when he sees a small child die after prolonged suffering. A conman makes sense of it by taking advantage of the hardships of others only to revert to depression when the plague lifts. A writer plows ahead with his novel, day by day and month by month, yet never gets beyond the first sentence. A doctor seeks meaning by doggedly helping others even when his efforts often have little effect.

In this doctor, Rieux, we find Camus’s best model for “becoming a saint without God” (230). He makes courageous choices that assert the meaning and value of human life in the face of crushing absurdity. He lives as if he has hope without evidence to support it.

Camus has done us a great service by focusing our attention on the most basic and profound questions we can face. Where do we find meaning when life can seem pointless? If God exists, what kind of God is he? What is doing good? How should we live when the plague of death has infected us all?

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*Page numbers refer to the Modern Library Edition, 1947. 1948.

Image: Conmongt Pixabay

The Vaccine Hero

This week I am scheduled to receive my Covid-19 vaccine. To mark the occasion I am republishing here my blog from June 23, 2016.

My sister died because of a vaccine . . . a vaccine she never received. On a September morning in 1952, at the age of seven, Lucy Rae Le Peau contracted polio and died that afternoon. The vaccine that would have saved her life would not be developed for another year.

It was a vaccine my grieving mother prayed for desperately, especially because her three other children, including me, were still vulnerable to the terrifying disease. Every year thousands of children across the United States were struck with it, peaking the year my sister died with over 57,000 cases, of whom 3,145 died.

Jeffrey Kluger’s Splendid Solution tells the captivating story of how a determined Jonas Salk, despite his junior status in the field and controversial approach, skillfully pushed through his inactive or killed virus vaccine. His rivalry with the intimidating Albert Sabin, who opposed Salk at nearly every turn, provides even more drama to a tale that has plenty of its own.

Another important subplot interwoven with the main narrative is how Franklin Roosevelt, himself a polio survivor, established the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation in 1927 with his friend Basil O’Connor. In 1938 this fundraising juggernaut was transformed into the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP) still under O’Connor’s direction. Later it became the well-known March of Dimes. The foundation was instrumental in funding Salk’s team and others. O’Connor also facilitated collaboration in a somewhat competitive and secretive field, bringing leading scientists together to share results and provide overall guidance.

As a side note, the wife of IVP author Kenneth Bailey, Ethel (née Milligan), was a microbiologist working under Salk in Pittsburgh. She and the rest of the research team were among the first to receive the vaccine before it was tested on others to assure its safety. Then followed carefully monitored tests on several hundred children in the area.

With those positive results in hand, in 1954 the NFIP set up perhaps the most extensive field tests in medical history involving almost two million school-aged children. On April 12, 1955, exactly ten years after Roosevelt died, the announcement was made public. It worked. The press conference, one of the most extensively covered media events of the decade, was held at the University of Michigan which was tasked with analyzing the field results. President Eisenhower announced the formula would be given away free to countries around the world.

Within ten years less than a hundred cases were reported in the United States. By 2015 there were less than a hundred worldwide. Salk didn’t think of himself as a hero, but this vaccine pioneer was a hero nonetheless, saving tens of thousands of lives and preventing disability for over ten times that many.

Still Amusing Ourselves to Death

After re-reading Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, I thought about taking a 24-hour fast from media. No TV, no radio, no smart phone, no laptop–for a whole day. Then I remembered it’s winter here in Chicago and weather forecasts are nearly a prerequisite for citizenship. And I’m expecting important emails soon. And what about those text messages I’d miss? And . . .

And I realized that though I think I control my technology, maybe it controls me as much as the next guy.

When Postman wrote his book in 1985, Pac-Man was five years old. USA Today was three. The Mac computer was one. Cable TV was in its infancy. Google was twelve years into the future. Netflix wouldn’t open for business for fourteen years. We’d have to wait twenty-two years for the iPhone and Kindle. Despite this or perhaps because of this Amusing Ourselves to Death is a classic that remains as important as ever.

The problem is that such media have created an entertainment culture, and all the new technologies have only reinforced that. What have we lost? The substance of public discourse that a print culture offered us in the previous centuries. Thousands heard Lincoln and Douglas debate in three- and four-hour-long sessions. But it was the dominance of print that made it possible for listeners to be able to follow and to be interested in these events.

Our civic life has been consumed by sound bites and Twitter feeds, reducing millions to passive consumers of media instead of active citizens. Even those outlets that are supposed to provide substance are mostly focused on capturing audiences. MSNBC and FOX have more in common than we think for neither are in the news business. Rather both are trying to make as much money as possible in the entertainment business.

In the introduction for the twentieth-anniversary edition of book, Postman’s son points out that though we are not dominated by network television anymore, the underlying issues of our entertainment-saturated culture remain the same. Has media improved our democracy? Has it made our leaders more accountable? Are we better citizens or are we better consumers? Have our schools improved as a result?

Solutions? Postman admits he has few. Certainly recognizing our disease is a necessary step. Asking questions about media is also needed to break the spell technology has over us. So are periodic fasts such as technology-free family nights once a week or even once a month. We must start somewhere. And reading Postman’s book can be just the place to begin.

Two Visions of the Future

Two novels written decades ago have shaped the genre of dystopias–grim tales of the near future. From these have come The Hunger Games, the Divergent series, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Matrix, even Pixar’s WALL-E, and many more. What are the two landmark books?

George Orwell’s 1984 (published in 1949) imagines a future dictatorship in which Big Brother knows everything that everyone does and thinks. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (published in 1932) imagines a highly technological society in which humans are genetically bred, indoctrinated, and drugged into passive obedience.

I’ve been rereading Neil Postman’s classic Amusing Ourselves to Death, published in 1985, and was once again struck by his opening comparison of these two. He writes:

Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, or there would be no one who wanted to read one.

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distraction.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.

In short Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

What do you think? Was Postman right? Is our world closer to Brave New World than to 1984?

The Current Events Entertainment Industry

I stopped reading, watching, and listening to the news twelve years ago. Although I believe in the importance of an educated and informed electorate, the news just made me mad and agitated me. It was simply not good for my soul. In Stop Reading the News, Rolf Dobelli adds a myriad of other compelling reasons in a series of short chapters. Here are a few.

News is irrelevant. Since news operations are out to make money by capturing eyeballs and eardrums, they do not focus on what’s important but on what gets attention. Crashes, explosions, murders, earthquakes, however, matter little to our individual lives or even national life.

News distorts reality. What’s a bigger problem—terrorism or suicide? We are about 800 times more likely to die by our own hand than by terrorism. Yet what do we hear about more? Likewise we hear lots about shark attacks, politicians, banking collapses, the Kardashians. We hear little about nurses, teachers, diplomats, ocean acidification. And which of those two groups is more important?

News encourages terrorism. Before Gutenberg, before mass media, there was no terrorism. There were attacks, sabotage, and murder, but the intent was to inflict strategic damage, not manipulate public opinion.

Dobelli offers more including how it disrupts our peace of mind, leads us to wrong conclusions, and wastes our time when we could be doing something more productive.

Before giving his reasons, he provides practical suggestions for cutting out the news, including a “soft option” and one for going cold turkey. He also deals with objections: How will I find out when something important does happen? Won’t I feel embarrassed when people ask me what I think about a new event? Isn’t being informed important for democracy?

Are there alternatives? Yes, he says. Read long-form journalism and books. If we do we’ll be much better informed citizens. Another constructive suggestion is to start “news lunches”—meeting one to one or in larger groups where one or two people take 15 minutes to focus on one thing they are working on or thinking about. Then discuss.

The news enterprise (shouldn’t we really call it “the current events entertainment industry”?) is broken–exacerbated by social media, fake news, foreign subversion, the politics of outrage, the lost art of compromise, talk radio entertainment, and the loss of the fabric of community locally and nationally. Dobelli’s analysis does not have the depth or insight of Neil Postman’s prophetic book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. But surely he is right when he says, “News is to the mind what sugar is to the body: appetizing, easily digestible and extremely damaging” (p. 16).

It’s time to change our diet.

Why Do We Hate Each Other?

Tomorrow, January 20, the United States will inaugurate its 46th president, Joe Biden. Given the contentious political year it has been, I thought it appropriate to repost my blog from February 8, 2019, about an important book by Republican Senator Ben Sasse (Nebraska) regarding the non-political reasons for our divides.

Why are Americans so at odds with each other? Why have so many people entrenched themselves in opposing camps, viciously vilifying each other? What has turned us into a nation of Us vs. Them?

Is cable news responsible? Did the Russians do it? Does it go back to Newt Gingrich or the Robert Bork confirmation?

In his book, Them, Senator Ben Sasse has a very unpolitical answer. It’s because, he says, we are lonely. We have fewer friends. We are more disconnected from our communities. So we grasp for a group to feel part of, to identify with. More and more that manifests itself in our political and social identities.

Since World War II single-person households have tripled to 26 percent. Technology has also pushed us into self-reinforcing corners where we just don’t encounter people as people who might have differing views. Other significant factors are at work as well.

Yes, cable news and radio talk showmen and show women have taken advantage of our situation. And yes, the Russians have fanned the flames too with more than 50,000 Russian-linked Twitter accounts fueling outrage by sending automated messages on both sides of issues. But these only feed on a pre-existing condition.

What’s the cure for our illness? The last half of the book offers several worthwhile remedies, from setting tech limits in our personal lives to building into a neighborhood or community to re-educating ourselves on how democracy works and what it stands for.

Sasse regularly says the book is not political in the sense of party politics or hot-button issues. He is right. The book is social and personal. When he does touch on political examples, he is to be commended for being very evenhanded–criticizing and praising as appropriate both right and left, both politicians and journalists, both Republicans and Democrats. Sasse models how we can treat each other as human beings, as fellow Americans who deserve our listening ear and our respect.

Writer at Work

Robert Caro’s book on Robert Moses and four books on Lyndon Johnson are legendary for their length (a total of almost 5,000 pages) and the length between volumes (about a decade). In Working, a collection of interviews and articles, we learn something of the method in his madness.

His passion is not just to inform readers but to help them see the force of these men and feel their impact. To do so he goes to tremendous, time-consuming lengths to track down and interview incredibly hard to find people and page through tens of thousands of pages of documents.

Caro was, for example, intent on finding out how Johnson’s ambition showed itself even in college. Everyone told him, however, that one key fellow student, Vernon Whiteside, was dead. Then one person said Vernon was alive and planning to live in a mobile home north of Miami in a town with “Beach” in the name. Caro and his wife tracked down every mobile home court in those towns (using phone books!) and finally found him–but didn’t call. He flew there to talk in person.

Multiply that by hundreds and we get some idea of why his books are so long and took so long.

Caro’s other passion is explaining how political power works because it has a tremendous effect on our lives. Robert Moses was determined to reshape New York City with bridges, highways, parks, and other public works. To do so, during his forty years in power, Moses displaced a half million of New York’s fourteen million people—forcing them out of their homes, destroying communities. In a democracy, Caro wants us to know how that kind of power (of an unelected official) works.

His powerful interviewing techniques range from the common (use silence to get people to fill in the quiet) to the persistent (asking over and over, “What did you see?”) to the obsessive (moving to the Hill Country of Texas for three years) to knowing the importance of place (taking Johnson’s brother to the Johnson Boyhood Home after visiting hours to trigger hidden memories of difficult dinner conversations between his brother and their father).

The book is disjointed and a bit repetitive because of its nature as a collection. But the dozens of fascinating anecdotes and tidbits give us a window into the work a writer with keen instincts and tenacity.

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image: flyleaf of Working by Robert Caro (edited manuscript page by the author)

Hope Seasoned with Humility

In a day when so many of us think we are RIGHT while so many others are WRONG, Reinhold Niebuhr’s neglected classic, The Irony of American History, deserves wide reading. Published the year I was born (1952), in the context of a world dominated by the sharply defined conflict between democracy and communism, its clear message is still important today.

As much as we would like to change the world (regardless of our ideals from the right or left), we inevitably bump into both our finiteness and our selfishness (or guilt, as Niebuhr calls it). When we ignore these limitations, trouble inevitably follows, sometimes tragically on a massive scale.

The problem is that in our idealism we are “too blind to the curious compounds of good and evil in which the actions of the best men and nations abound” (p. 133). Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn echoed Niebuhr when he famously said, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart.”

The world is just immensely more complicated than we can imagine or give credit for. We forget, as Niebuhr says, that we are not just a creator of history but also its creature. Therefore, our overly energetic attempts to control it are sure to be met with disappointment or worse.

Throughout the book Niebuhr is a penetrating critic of communism’s flaws and failings, saying, for example, “Communism is a vivid object lesson in the monstrous consequences of moral complacency about the relation of dubious means to supposedly good ends” (p. 5). Yet he is also clear-eyed about how the American experiment can go haywire.

Free market thinking, for example, is very aware of the dangers of political and military power (especially seeking to limit the former) but downplays the reality of economic power, and sees little need to limit that. Part of the pragmatic virtue (and irony) of the American system is that we were able to recognize this and act on it at least somewhat. The labor movement and the New Deal of the last century created more financial equity and justice while still allowing capitalism to continue to dominate our theories.

Writing about the early 20th century he said, “The significant point in the American development is that here, no less than in Europe, a democratic political community has had enough virtue and honesty to disprove the Marxist indictment that government is merely the instrument of privileged classes” (p. 100).

America’s potential problems extend into other realms as well. “The American situation is such a vivid symbol of the spiritual perplexities of modern man, because the degree of American power tends to generate illusions to which a technocratic culture is already too prone. This technocratic approach to problems of history . . . accentuates a very old failing in human nature: the inclination of the wise, or the powerful, or the virtuous, to obscure and deny the human limitations in all human achievements and pretensions” (p. 147).

Niebuhr’s final chapter lays out what he means by irony—how two contrasting elements come together in a person or a nation with one arising from the other. A strength also contains a hidden weakness, for example. He goes on to highlight the foundation for this view of history, which comes from the biblical perspective of a “divine judge who laughs at human pretensions without being hostile to human aspirations” (p. 155).

Humility in spirit and modesty in ambition is not a message corporate kingpins, political powerbrokers, or even many humanitarian heroes want to hear. Such restraint does not suit them. Nor does pragmatism seem to rally a constituency as fervently as zealous idealism.

Yet his message is essential. That doesn’t mean we have no hope. Rather our hope and ideals are to be seasoned with realism about the world and with humility about ourselves.

The Good News About Daniel

Daniel is one of the most popular and yet challenging books in the Bible. In plain language yet without oversimplifying, Tremper Longman guides us with a steady hand through its sometimes wild passages. While not a commentary, How to Read Daniel insightfully walks us through the main aspects of each chapter.

Daniel is divided into two seemingly distinct parts. The first half consists of six stirring stories (court tales) of Daniel and his three friends. These include the famous scenes of the fiery furnace, the lion’s den, and the writing on the wall. The second half consists of four visions of the future that are full of strange images and figurative language. What binds them all together, as Longman regularly reminds us, is to assure readers that whether we have difficulties in the present or in the future, God is in control of history and he will have the final victory.

Daniel’s point is not to give a timetable (a point many readers miss) but to tell his readers (and us) that God will make all things right and that our role is to live faithfully in the meantime.

Longman believes Daniel was written earlier rather than in the second century BC (after the prophesied events took place), as many recent scholars contend. But he does not much argue either his case nor the case of those who hold to the later date.

His final two chapters are especially valuable on how to read Daniel as 21st-century Christians in hostile cultures. He notes there is no “one-size-fits-all formula for how . . . to interact with powerful forces that are not friendly to our religious values.” Sometimes Daniel and his friends respond only in private and sometimes in public. Sometimes they seek to persuade rather than confront. “The one thing that is clear and consistent is that they do not go out of their way to offend the authorities” (148). Instead they use wisdom and civility while remaining faithful in difficult circumstances.

He also shows balance and commitment to the text this way: “While there is nothing wrong with trying to persuade the broader culture toward Christian values, there is everything wrong with trying to use the power of the state to make non-Christians act like Christians” (166). The important truth Longman leaves with us is this: In the face of much uncertainty and many difficulties, Christians can live without fear because we know the end of the story.

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I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. My opinions are my own.

Reading While Black

We all read the Bible from our own viewpoint, from within our own culture and background. Our circumstances make us ask certain questions we wouldn’t ask otherwise. We could consider this a disadvantage. How could we know what the Bible really said when we are inevitably limited? But what if this were a blessing? What if this drawback allowed God to speak with truth and power to our particular situations?

Consider Martin Luther. His context of an often legalistic and corrupt church made him ask certain questions of the Bible about salvation. Or Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His experiences with the black church in Harlem and Hitler’s regime in Germany drove him to ask certain questions about how Christians and the church should relate to the government. Their answers did not encompass all the Bible said, but they were true.

This is what Esau McCaulley offers in Reading While Black. He found himself both feeling at home and not feeling at home with black and white progressives as well as with black and white evangelicals. Could he forge a new path that was unapologetically black and unapologetically orthodox? With pain and hope he points the way to true answers.

Several years ago, when I heard Esau McCaulley offer initial thoughts on a theology of policing, I thought, “What an amazing, creative question to ask, and what an intriguing, substantive proposal he makes!” In this book McCaulley also asks: How should the church offer a political witness? What is a full-orbed view of justice? How can Blacks gain identity from Scripture? What should Blacks do with the rage they feel from the injustices they’ve experienced? Does the Bible justify slavery as some contended for centuries?

The insights he offers to these are many and stirring. For example, he reminds us that Romans 13 is not the only passage about attitudes toward government in the Bible. In Luke 13:32-33 Jesus shows no deference toward a particular ruler. In Luke 1:51-53 Mary looks forward to governments which are not run by prideful men but which help the poor (echoing Isaiah).

He also highlights the beginning of the fulfillment of God’s promise that all nations would be blessed through Abraham when Jacob adopts Joseph’s two sons (his two biracial, half-African sons!) as his own in Genesis 48:3-5. Can those of African descent especially find their place in God’s promises? Indeed!

Then there is the question of black rage. I found his thoughts on the psalms of lament and imprecatory psalms to be some of the most powerful reflections he has to offer in the book.

The answers that Luther and Bonhoeffer found in the Bible are true—but they aren’t exactly the same. McCaulley simply asks for the same privilege that was accorded these gentlemen to struggling with difficult texts and difficult contexts.

Yet if everyone comes to the Bible from a different place, how can we know what it really says? Should we stop asking what the central message of the Bible is? McCaulley says no. We should instead ask (as he does) which understanding “does justice to as much of the biblical witness as possible. There are uses of Scripture that utter a false testimony about God.” (p. 91).

Esau McCaulley wrote this important book for himself. As a result he has also written a necessary book for all of us.

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I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. My opinions are my own.