Looking for something to read?

Some of you may have come across these lists elsewhere already, but I thought I'd pass them on anyway.  It's a wide range of topics, but there you go… that's why we call it a WORLD-view.  Anyway, you might find something to tickly your fancy (if you're pile of "to read" books is not already 6 feet tall).

     Maybe you have some recommendations of your own.  If so, go ahead and jump in on the "comments."

Dr. George Grant’s Favorite Books of 2008

1. Stress of Her Regard (newly restored edition) by Tim Powers
2. Practical and Pious by A.C. Cheyne
3. Truths We Confess by R.C. Sproul
4. Punic Wars and Culture Wars by Ben House
5. A Prodigal God by Tim Keller
6. The King Alfred Saxon Tales Tetrology by Bernard Cornwell
7. The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
8. Tales from the Perilous Realm by J.R.R. Tolkien
9. The Reason for God by Tim Keller
10.What’s So Great About the Doctrines of Grace by Richard Phillips
11. The Living Church by John R.W. Stott

David Bahnsen’s Favorite Books of 2008—with David’s brief commentaries

1. God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World, Walter Russell Mead
     It is not just the best book I read in 2008. It is the best book I read by far. It is one of the best books I have ever read, and I hope to read it every year for the rest of my life. No book has ever done a finer job of covering the historicity and integration of religion and economics in the Anglo world. The book is a descriptive and prescriptive masterpiece, evaluating the unique elements in England and later America that gave birth to this empire of freedom we enjoy today.

2. The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark
     Reason, science, and morality have progressed because of Christianity; not despite it.

3. Liar's Poker: Rising through the Wreckage on Wall Street, Michael Lewis
     I have to confess, rarely has a book been so hard to put down once I started reading it (and he wrote this in 1989, believe it or not)

4. Democracy's Good Name: The Rise and Risk of the World's Most Popular Form of Government, Michael Mandelbaum
     The author of the paradigm-shifting Case for Goliath and Ideas the Conquered the World returns to top shelf in this extraordinary work documenting how democracy came to be the prominent form of government on planet earth and what conditions exist today that pose a threat to it.

5. Economic Facts and Fallacies, Thomas Sowell
     Sowell, whom I wish more than anything was the first black President in American history, ruffles the feathers of those whose economic logic can always be reduced to redistributionism. The book is not as insightful as Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, but it is equally cogent and needed in today's atmosphere of economic illiteracy.

6. The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Robert Kagan
     A short but sweet piece from one of the most important foreign policy minds alive today. Kagan's Dangerous Nation convinced me several years ago that I have been fed a load of bull about the founding fathers being isolationists; his newest piece convinced me that China and Russia remain as great of a threat as the Islamic terrorists do.

7. Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity, Michael Lewis (ed.)
     I reviewed this a week or so ago, and remain blown away that the things I read were written as commentary of the 1987 crash, the 1998 meltdown, and the dotcom crash, as it sure felt like I was reading current events.

8. King of the Club, Charlie Gasparino
     The story of the rise and fall of Richard Grasso, the head of the New York Stock Exchange over the last couple of decades, and the ultimate victim in Eliot Spitzer's despicable and self-serving series of crusades from 2002-2006. Grasso, of course, did not resign in the midst of a massive hooker scandal while serving as the moral watchdog on Wall Street (that would be Spitzer). Grasso resigned for taking the paycheck that the compensation committee gave him.

9. Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy, Natan Sharansky
     The man whose Case for Democracy finalized my conversion out of paleo-conservatism outdid himself with this delightful repudiation of multi-culturalism

10. Blue Blood and Mutiny: The Fight for the Soul of Morgan Stanley, Patricia Beard
     Not all of you would find it interesting. I read it cover to cover, barely stopping to eat. But I am a Sr VP at the company ... =)

Dr. P. Andrew Sandlin’s Best Books Read in 2008 with Andrew's comments

1. Modernism: The Lure of Heresy, by Peter Gay. Perhaps Gay’s swan song, but a sweeping work revealing the godlessness, egomania and hatred for the past on the part of every leading modernist from Charles Baudelaire to Andy Warhol. Lushly illustrated with color photos. Discloses (albeit unintentionally) why were are in the mess we’re in today.

2. God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World, by Walter Russell Mead. Shows the national roots of the global free market in Holland and traces how the Protestant Faith alone furnishes the rationale and ambiance for burgeoning global wealth.

3. The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World, by David Wells. Potent distillation of his major works of the last 15 years or so. A searing indictment of the man-centered, market-driven, compromising, theologically impoverished evangelicalism, seeker-sensitive and Emergent Movement of our day.

4. Modern Uncertainty and Christian Faith, by G. C. Berkouwer. A prophetic work from the early 50s, when the author was less enamored with Barth and Rome. Blisters liberalism and neo-orthodoxy and opposes “the new Christianity in the old church.”

5. The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, by Thomas Sowell. Copiously documented application of author’s instant classic A Conflict of Visions: The Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. Shows how the prevailing socio-political vision of our time (liberalism) is commandeered by arrogant intellectuals whose lofty, Utopian vision, impervious to empirical falsification, wreaks havoc on every society in which it’s tried.

6. The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia, by Tim Tzouliadis. Remarkable, page-turning account of all the Americans who immigrated to the Soviet Union in the 30s in search of respite from the Great Depression only to suffer and die miserably in Stalin’s Hellish gulags — and, perhaps more searingly, an account of how the U. S government did almost nothing to help them, consistently turning a blind eye and deaf ear. Not a book for the faint-hearted. A blood-boiling book. Thanks to Elizabeth Miller for the recommendation.

7. The New Science of Politics, by Eric Voegelin. An understated précis of the author’s main political thesis — that political tyranny, from Puritanism to Stalinism, derives from Utopian Gnosticism. Thanks to Jason Escalante for the recommendation.

8. The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom, by Slavomir Rawicz. Controversial but absorbing autobiographical tale of a Pole incarcerated in Siberia during WWII but who, along with a handful of others, escaped and walked to freedom in northern India. One of the most bracing survival tales of modern times.

9. Tortured for His Faith, by Haralan Popov. This is a serendipitous re-read.

10. Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith. Arguably the best English-speaking thriller in 2008. Follows the trail of a child serial killer in the Soviet Union in the early 50s through the eyes of the detective investigating the gruesome crimes amid a statist machinery committed to the proposition that “murder doesn’t exist in the Soviet Union.”