I have long been fascinated with Abraham Lincoln. I first encountered him during a family vacation in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Touring the battlefields and the surrounding area we came to that place where he delivered the Gettysburg Address which has rightly gone done in history as one of the greatest English literary accomplishments. A few years…
While not everyone knows the name of John Newton, everyone knows his song and at least a bit of his story. Immortalized in the words of “Amazing Grace,” the most-recorded song in history, everyone knows that John Newton was wretched and miserable until saved by a grace that forever transformed his life. Two centuries ago,…
Over the weekend I began reading The Most Famous Man in America, Debby Applegate’s recent biography of Henry Ward Beecher. The book has been widely celebrated, winning the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. It was a finalist for The National Book Critics Circle Award Best Biography of 2006 and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize…
I have long had a bit of a fascination with John Donne. A poet and eventual clergyman who lived from 1572-1631, Donne’s poems are among my favorites. His Holy Sonnets have given me much cause to think and his early works, so often sexual and vulgar, have shown a man who underwent a clear and…
Few recent books have so wide and so deep an impact as Arnold Dallimore’s magisterial biography of George Whitefield. The first volume, stretching from Whitefield’s birth in 1714 to his section visit to American in 1740 was published in 1970 and has since been reprinted six times. The second volume, which stretches from 1740 until…
George “Bud” Day is the most decorated officer in the modern history of the U.S. military, having won (this is a chest seriously full of medals and ribbons) the Medal of Honor, Air Force Cross, Distinguished Service Medal, Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star Medal for Valor with two Oak Leaf…
That the name of William Wilberforce has largely been lost to history seems somehow unfair. Wilberforce was the driving force behind the abolition of slavery within the British Empire. A Member of Parliament for forty-five years, the results of his efforts are still seen and understood in Western society to this day. Though his impact…
At a recent conference I met a gentleman who happens to edit one of those airline magazines that always competes with your legroom in an airplane. A short time ago he sent me an email and asked if I had heard of a book called Same Kind of Different as Me and recommended that I…
It is easy to be skeptical about the faith claims of politicians. It is rare for a politician to claim to be anything other than a Christian and yet so few of them show any real evidence of the faith they profess. Of course there are undoubtedly some who rise to power that truly are…
My mother is one of several people I know who eschews all of the Christian Living type of books that dominate the Christian publishing industry. Apart from her Bible (the most beat-up, ink-covered, personalized Bible you’ll ever see) and a few commentaries, she reads only biographies. She feels that by reading about the lives of…
I never really caught on to the VeggieTales craze. I was introduced to them by friends when I was in my late teens but couldn’t bring myself to watch and enjoy a kids’ show featuring talking vegetables. I could appreciate some of the humor, but I usually opted out of the VeggieTales evenings others enjoyed.…
As I began to review Speaking the Truth in Love, a biography of Roger Nicole, I felt uncertain how to introduce the subject. Nicole is a theologian whose impact is felt widely in the church, and yet one whose name is largely unknown. It occurred that David Bailey, the author of the biography, must have…
Biography: An account of a person’s life written, composed, or produced by another. Hagiography: A worshipful or idealizing biography. I suppose it is not always easy to determine where biography ends and hagiography begins. But in the case of The Rise of Lakewood Church and Joel Osteen, I am quite certain Richard Young has crossed…
Shaun Alexander is undoubtedly one of the best football players in the game today. Though he plays for the Seattle Seahawks, a team that does not get the attention of some of the franchises in the major markets, his name is known to any football fan. Last year he set a new single season touchdown…
Depending on the perspective of the individual Christian, John Calvin may either be one of the greatest theologians or the worst charlatans who ever lived. For those who feel Calvin’s teachings accurately interpreted the Bible, he is a great teacher and one who rediscovered doctrines of grace that had lay largely dormant for centuries. For…
Though it seems amazing that it could have been so long ago, it has been 20 years since the Jim Bakker scandal made international headlines. Indicted on federal charges of fraud, tax evasion, and racketeering, Bakker was subsequently convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison. The sentence was later reduced and after spending less…
As I make my way through the biographies of famous Christians of days past, I came across David Livingstone. Interestingly, Livingstone is a man best known not for something he said but for something that was said to him. “Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” spoken to him by Henry Morton Stanley, is a phrase that has…
Rocky McElveen is the kind of man, the kind of “real man,” who puts desk jockeys like myself to shame. While I spend nearly endless hours sitting at my desk in Canada’s suburban sprawl, McElveen leads parties of bedraggled hunters through the wide open spaces of untamed Alaska. Though he was trained and educated at…
God’s Bestseller is the second biography of Tyndale I have read this year and one of only a few produced in recent decades. Written by Brian Moynahan, the subtitle provides a glimpse of the author’s emphases: “William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the English Bible–A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal.” Less-scholarly than David…
A biography is an account of a person’s life written by another person. An autobiography is an account of a person’s life written by that person. We would assume that a biography would be written in the third-person and an autobiography would be written in the first-person. Through reading hundreds of books, that has been…