The Wisdom of Solomon

More and more I am convinced that the doorway into understanding the New Testament is the Old Testament. It’s not a new idea. I think Jesus had something to do with it. But it’s one of the reasons we made this a major feature in our recently released LifeGuide in Depth series, including A Deeper Look at James, that my wife, Phyllis, and I wrote. An example can illustrate the point.
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Remembering Dallas Willard

Dallas Willard went to be with his Lord this morning. Many people will miss his strong, gentle wisdom, remembering him as someone who was soaked in the presence of Christ. He was a beloved friend and writer to many. We enjoyed publishing a number of titles by Dallas (1935-2013), especially one of his signature books, Hearing God.
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Mapping the Origins Debate

In an era of extreme, vitriolic rhetoric, when someone offers calm, straightforward fairness, it is like a cool, refreshing breeze on a hot, muggy day. That is what Gerald Rau provides in Mapping the Origins Debate on the very contentious issue of evolution and creation. He offers a model not only of clarity in thought but of civility in presentation.
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Remembering Birmingham

Fifty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. issued his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” responding to local clergy who felt King and others were moving too quickly, too disruptively in advancing civil rights. To mark the occasion, IVP has published Ed Gilbreath’s ebook short Remembering Birmingham, which puts King’s letter in historical context and offers reflections on its significance then and now.
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The Silver Lining on Doom and Gloom

Here’s a doom-and-gloom article about the publishing industry with a twist: it might not all be doom and gloom.

Despite the continual stream of stories about authors making $10,000 a month or more on self-published ebooks and in the process crushing traditional publishing out of existence, Evan Hughes in Wired magazine (April 2013) says there’s another side of the story.
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Good Prose 4: Being Edited

Once I was harassing (in a good-natured way, of course) an editor I knew well from another publisher about a book she had put out. It was a biography that was overwritten and frequently lapsed into a sentimentalized caricature of the main subject. How could she have let that go through? “Oh,” she said, smiling. “You should have seen it before we edited it!” I knew exactly what she was talking about.

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Good Prose 3: The Business of Writing

Writers and publishers have always had a love-hate relationship. Mark Twain once offered “the perfect recipe for a modern American publisher” as follows: “Take an idiot from a lunatic asylum and marry him to an idiot woman and the fourth generation of this connection should be a good publisher.”*
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Good Prose 1: Talking to Strangers

“To write is to talk to strangers.”

Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd practice what they preach by starting their book Good Prose quietly, with a sentence at once disarming and muscular. Indeed, the whole book is about this one, deceptively simple, nearly passive, seven-word sentence. Its rhythm is as beguiling as its substance is vital.
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