Charles Martin. Unwritten. Center Street, 2013.

Unwritten is a terrific book. I would recommend it to anyone above the middle school (i.e., young adult) level. I will be thinking about it for a while, I am sure.

Like Tigers in Red Weather, one should not judge this book by its cover. The cover has a couple walking on a tropical beach. All I could think of are those stereotyped personal advertisements: “Likes quiet walks on the beach.” It is not like that at all. To call it a romance is to do it a real injustice.

Our narrator calls himself Sunday. He is a complete recluse. It is clearly deliberate. He lives most of the time on an island in the Everglades. To a great degree he lives off the land. Before he was a recluse, he worked with charter fishermen, so he knows when and where to fish. His island provides him with a variety of tropical fruits.

We know, though, there is more to his story. Once in a while he drives north to Jacksonville to visit a hospital. There he secretly gives gifts to children who are in the hospital for a long term. He signs his gifts “Pirate Pete.”

The one human being he keeps in touch with, at least somewhat, is Father Steady, a priest at a Miami church. Father Steady has his own troubled backstory. He is a veteran of World War II and was a medic after the Allies had begun to re-take France. Tending the wounded and dead during the Battle of the Bulge affected him greatly. One is reminded of some of the trauma witnessed by Hemingway as an ambulance driver in World War I.

Father Steady enlists Sunday’s help one evening. He says a parishioner of his may need some help. We know she has recently gone to the father for confession. (Father Steady keeps his confessional confidential.)

This parishioner is not an ordinary person. She lives on the top floor of one of the most exclusive condos in Miami Beach. The security guards, all former military, let the father in, but Sunday has to sneak in. Father Steady has keys to her apartment. He lets himself in, and they arrive just in time to rescue the woman from a suicide attempt.

This woman is Katie Quinn, the Ice Queen, the unparalleled star of stage and screen at the time. Her recent film contracts were in the seven figure range.

Father Steady is not trying to be a matchmaker. He just knows that Sunday has lived off the grid for ten years and knows how to do it. If Katie wants or needs to do something similar, Sunday can show her.

Katie manages to stage her death and cause a Princess Diana style mourning. Sunday does not generally pay attention to the news and has never heard of Katie Quinn, but even he is struck by the media attention her death attracts. This reviewer delivered newspapers back in 1962, and I recall that for two weeks there was virtually nothing on the front page but news about the death of Marilyn Monroe. Katie was like that.

Sunday is our storyteller. Gradually we learn a little about his backstory. Why did he go off the grid? We get some hints from the name of his two boats: Gone Fiction and Jodie.

And we learn a little more about Katie, too, as her escape takes the two of them to a remote village in France where she owns some property. Sunday—like most who read his story—begins to see that Katie is out of his class, not that there is much of a hint of romance in the story. There really is not. Unwritten would probably make a great film, but no doubt the Hollywood treatment would turn it into a love story.

Instead, it is a story of redemption, and one of effective literary quality. It is told well. There is a subtle but significant use of symbols—rope is one recurring image. Another are the caves in France. The underground labyrinth, some of which is used for storing wine, suggests that both of our protagonists have to dig deep in order to get real.

And the psychology is real.

When Sunday sees the near-dead Katie and is told who she is, he realizes that, as Kipling tells us, fame is an impostor.

Man, or woman, is not made to be worshipped. We are not physically cut out for it. Life in the spotlight, or on the pedestal, at the top of the world, was a lonely, singular, desolate, soul-killing place. (42)

Since the story is told by Sunday, if anything romantic develops between Sunday and Katie, he is not telling. He is also not telling much of his story, but the reader begins to realize that he has to do so as much as Katie does.

I give credit to the author, if not to his creation Mr. Sunday, that he exercises some self-control. Self-control is such a necessity these days, and it seems so few want to use it. “Be yourself”; “Be free,” people say. But to really be free, we have to handle our impulses. It is good for us. It is better for others. We hear the broken, exploited actress tell us:

“I’m on display for all the world to see and show them this perfect image, so what…so a bunch of people can make money off their wanting to be like me. But those girls…they shouldn’t want to be me. I want to tell them all that the guys…once they’ve had you, all they want to do is brag that they did. They want to know they conquered me. But so what? What have they gained? Certainly not my heart. And more importantly, what, or what else, have they lost? Have I lost? Is there a limit? I mean, to how much we can lose?” (213, ellipses in the original)

Where are the real men who can control themselves?

We learn at some point that Sunday was an orphan and shuttled among foster homes and orphanages. Here is his metaphor for what that was like:

Being an orphan is illogical. The brain never makes sense of it. Ever. It shelves it in the “miscellaneous” file. It’s like a book with no place on the shelf, forever relegated to the cart that circles the library, never stopping to slide between two worn covers. (235)

Unwritten also tells us a little about writing and how to write, and not only by demonstrating what good writing should be like. This reminded me of the novel The Family Corleone. The edition of that Godfather prequel that I read had a great essay by Mario Puzo titled “The Making of The Godfather.” In that essay, Puzo tells us what it was like not only to write a best-selling novel, but what it was like working for publishing companies and working in Hollywood. Like Martin, Puzo expressed sympathy for actors and actresses like Miss Quinn most of whom “are badly exploited by their producers, studios, and agents and assorted hustlers.”

Unwritten does not go into as much detail about the writing experience, but it includes a brief afterword titled “Doc Snakeoil.” It reminds us of what it takes to make good writing and how important truly constructive criticism can be. The afterword itself can make reading the book worth it. Don’t skip it.

Leonard A. Cole. Chasing the Ghost. World Scientific, 2021.

Chasing the Ghost has nothing to do with Ghostbusters. It is a biography of Nobel Prize winner Fred Reines (Ray-ness) who helped discover the neutrino. The book is the man’s life story, so the actual neutrino work which made him famous happens about a third of the way through the book.

The author is a cousin of Dr. Reines. He has some personal memories plus access to much family material. Dr. Reines’ parents came from Eastern Europe at the turn of the twentieth century to avoid pogroms. Dr. Reines was enamored of science from an early age. The existence of the neutrino was hypothesized in the 1930s, but there was no way to prove its existence. When he heard about this hypothetical subatomic particle, he decided that he would be the one to discover it.

Before making that discovery in 1954, he worked on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos and witnessed the first detonation of the Atomic Bomb in 1945. One interesting detail the author notes is that contrary to popular legend, J. Robert Oppenheimer did not quote from the Bhagavad-Gita. He simply said, “It worked.” Most of the witnesses were simply in awe of the power of the bomb.

Dr. Reines would join Clyde Cowan at the Savannah River nuclear reactor in South Carolina where they devised a project that would detect the neutrino from atomic fission. Eventually, the experiment worked. The challenge was to screen out other particles that had a similar signature.

Dr. Reines would then go on to do greater experiments with neutrinos. Neutrinos are particles that travel at the speed of light and pass through matter. They appear throughout space, and some estimate that millions pass through our bodies every second. They can pass through the earth without stopping unless they strike another subatomic particle. So to detect neutrinos in nature, the challenge is to find a place where neutrinos would still be passing by but the various cosmic rays would have been stopped. So Dr. Reines would do a lot of work underground in deep mines where only neutrinos would still be on the loose.

The cover of the book shows one such deep detector created in Japan. It has thousands of electronic tubes for detection surrounded by pure water. The picture looks like a tiny rubber raft floating in a strange hall of mirrors.

One concept I had not heard of before reading this book was that of pathological technology. By that was meant a belief or plan that would be proven to be based on false information or a false premise. The example the book used was a plan by some people who worked on the Manhattan project to create a space ship that instead of being propelled by rocket fuel gases would be propelled by a series of small, controlled atomic blasts.

I have elsewhere expressed some skepticism about the existence of dark matter and of macroevolution. Are those pathological theories? Cole notes that if neutrinos can be shown to have mass, that could account for much of the mathematical variations which made astrophysicists hypothesize dark matter. If there are countless quadrillions of these all over the universe and they do have some mass, that could help solve the problem. We shall see. For the moment, a former science teacher friend tells me, “Dark matter is simply a fudge factor to make the math work.”

Dr. Reines eventually received the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the neutrino (literally, “tiny neutral thing”) in 1995. Alas, his partner Dr. Cowan had already died and Nobels only go to living people. No doubt, if he were still alive, he would have been named as well.

Chasing the Ghost provides character sketches of many famous physicists. It shows how so many of the nuclear physicists cooperated and worked together. We meet, mostly through Reines, many of them from Enrico Fermi and Wolfgang Pauli to Richard Feynman and Douglas Hofstader (author of Gödel, Escher, Bach). We meet many larger than life figures working on larger than life experiments. Still, they come across as real people.

One interesting aside was that in the 1970s there was a movement to transport Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Ethiopia had been taken over by Communists and there was a famine. Ethiopian Jews were threatened by both, but the Israeli government was unsure if it should get involved, having just gotten over a couple of recent wars. About 50,000 American Jews signed a petition to encourage Israel to take action. The organizers deliberately put Reines’ name at the top.

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin did not know who Fred Reines was, but he recognized the family name. Isaac Jacob Reines was a famous rabbi who back in 1906 had co-written a tract supporting the Ethiopian Jews. The rabbi was Dr. Reines’ great uncle.

There might be one minor problem with the book. Because there is so much science and because so many different scientists and laboratories and schools are named, an index could have helped. I understand that biographies are usually simple stories, but there is so much to this one that readers (like me anyhow) might actually use an index.

Chasing the Ghost contributes to the layman’s understanding of subatomic particles and nuclear physics, and how people who study those things work. For that alone, the book is worth reading.

Daniel A. Kinderlehrer. Recovery from Lyme Disease. Skyhorse, 2021.

Dr. Kinderlehrer has specialized in treating Lyme Disease for most of his career. This book goes into great detail about this tick-borne illness and related diseases. Readers can learn a lot from this book. It appears the author’s hope is that physicians will read this book, but most of the presentation is accessible to any reader. The doctor’s family name means “teacher” in German. He is following the family tradition with this book.

Perhaps the strongest part of the book is the number of anecdotes from Dr. Kinderlehrer’s own patients. There are two recurring themes. The first is that most tests for Lyme Disease have numerous false negatives. If there are potential Lyme symptoms, the patient should probably take several different kinds of tests if there is a negative on the first test. The second is that Lyme Disease is often misdiagnosed. It can have a variety of symptoms and the bite of the tiny deer tick is easy to miss. He has had patients diagnosed with everything from ADHD to ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) when the real pathology had to with Lyme Disease.

Dr. Kinderlehrer also notes that ticks that carry the Lyme bacteria often carry other infectious microbes as well. He presents Lyme Disease as an array of symptoms often caused by more than one malady. Possible co-irritants include Babesia, Rickettsia, and Mycoplasma. He enumerates many potential cures depending on the severity and symptoms. One example is hydroxychloroquine, which has made the news in the past year for lessening the symptoms of Covid-19.

I have two close friends who had or probably had Lyme Disease. One was working outdoors, saw he had a tick bite, and soon had the target-shaped rash. He went to his doctor, had a positive test, was given an antibiotic, and recovered quickly with hardly any symptoms beyond the rash.

My other friend was hospitalized for a while and was quite weak for about six months. Eventually her strength returned. Later, she read about Lyme Disease and saw a picture of the typical rash. She remembered having that rash around the time she got sick. She was never diagnosed, but she is pretty sure she had Lyme Disease. She lived two towns away from Lyme, Connecticut, the town that gave the disease its name.

Dr. Kinderlehrer notes that the target-shaped rash only appears about half the time a person is infected. This illustrates the problem with diagnosis. There can be a variety of symptoms because Lyme Disease and some of the related infections work on the endocrine system. It is not that the microbe attacks joints to give them symptoms of arthritis. Instead, the microbe affects the endocrine system which can create a hormonal imbalance that can affect any number of organs from the nerves to the kidneys, even the eyes.

The book affirms that “it’s all connected.” According to the author, probably the biggest problem in modern medicine is that specialists in certain body parts or functions have little to do with one another.

But the very idea that we are not an interconnected whole is misguided.

The endocrine system discharges hormones that regulate specific cellular functions. The immune system releases cytokines that talk to immune cells and engineer inflammation. And the nervous system dispatches neuropeptides that talk to other nerve cells. But all these systems are in continuous dialogue. There are receptors for each of the neuropeptides on every cell in our bodies. Cytokines talk to nerve cells and endocrine glands. Neuropeptides talk to immune cells. Hormones regulate all of the above.…

[T]he GI tract makes its own hormones that not only regulate digestion but also talk to the brain, giving a whole new meaning to “gut emotions.”

In fact, the GI tract not only makes hormones, it also has more nerve cells than the spinal cord and more immune cells than the rest of the body combined. Meanwhile, other organs like the heart also send out messenger molecules. You get the point. The fact it—we are a vast informational network in which our cells are in continuous dialogue. And the reductionist attitude we have used to understand human function has limited our appreciation of the human condition. (143)

As the Psalmist said three thousand years ago: “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139:14)

The author begins his book describing what he calls the Lyme Wars. He and a number of other doctors who have been focusing on Lyme patients advocate multiple tests when warranted and multiple treatments. Others have taken what he sees as a much more simplistic view—Lyme test followed by antibiotic. Yes, that works for some like my friend. What about those who have Chronic Fatigue, ADHD, or even depression, but those things were brought on by Lyme Disease?

While Lyme Disease is most common in the Northeast United States and around the Great Lakes, it has appeared in all fifty states. Dr. Kinderlehrer currently practices in Colorado, though he began in Massachusetts. He still gets many cases from the Rocky Mountains.

It seems to this lay reader that general practitioners and neurologists should take a look at this book. Chances are you may have some patients who have come down with Lyme Disease even though the symptoms may indicate something else. People who have the illness or who have friends or family with it may discover some treatments worth trying out.

The book has helpful charts and lists. These appear to meant more for doctors, but readers can certainly understand them. These include symptoms, treatments, tests, and many resources. I am including a link to the one he recommends the most: Advanced Topics in Lyme Disease by Joseph Burrascano in case a reader happened on this review looking for help with Lyme Disease.

Recovery from Lyme Disease, as the title suggests, gives the reader a lot of hope. Even severe cases can turn around. It may take time. It may often include treating more than one disease. It may include a diet change It may include a few unpleasant tests. However, with a reliable diagnosis, there can be life after Lyme.

Becky Cooper. We Keep the Dead Close. Grand Central, 2020.

We Keep the Dead Close tells about a nearly fifty-year-old crime that was finally solved and how the author got wrapped up in the story. Whatever else, Cooper is a story teller. She keeps the suspense. She has commentaries from time to time, but they never seem like mere asides. She also does a very good job of getting a sense of the zeitgeist, especially in academia.

The crime was the rape and murder of a twenty-four-year-old graduate student at Harvard in her apartment near Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in January of 1969. She had graduated from Radcliffe in 1967 and was accepted into the graduate program in archaeology. Lest it sound confusing, at the time archaeology was part of of the anthropology department.

The movement to make most colleges co-ed was beginning to take off. By 1975 Harvard would absorb Radcliffe as many single-sex colleges went co-educational at this time. This can be seen as an offshoot of either the sexual revolution or the women’s movement or both. Cooper notes a tension, though. As the popular song went, “something’s lost and something’s gained.”

Interviewing Radcliffe alumnae from the time period, there was a sense that they had failed: “We cared more about money than about art and history and human rights” (129). She notes that “…the merger of Radcliffe into Harvard was as much a submersion of a vital institution as it was a landmark of women’s equality” (129).

With our murder victim, Jane Britton, this was combined with the sexual revolution. She was an early adopter of that, and that had its own problems. Cooper would have no problem understanding them as she shares some of her own ups and downs in relationships:

In Jane’s version of empowerment, she did not need a man to feel complete, but she could still long to be loved. It was a fragile stance that put independence at odds with itself. (117)

We get a sense of the somewhat misapplied initial investigation into Jane’s murder. There were a few bruises but no sign of struggle in her apartment where she was murdered. Did she know her killer? On the other hand, her windows were open. That means someone could enter through the fire escape. Speaking from experience, opening windows in winter was not unusual in Harvard-owned buildings because the steam heat could make the rooms stifling.

We get a sense of gradual revelation. Cooper first hears of Jane’s murder as a kind of rumor or urban legend. There was a woman grad student in the sixties when the school had virtually no female professors. She apparently had an affair with a professor. When she wanted more, she was murdered. The professor was still there many years later. There was even a file passed around among female anthropology students to this day as a warning.

Cooper herself would graduate from Harvard and eventually work for the New Yorker. As she wondered about this murder, she gathered details, and it became an obsession.

One reason why anthropology students thought her murder was an inside job, so to speak, is that her body was found with material that looked like red ochre powder spilled on it. That has been a common product in ancient burial sites on every continent. It sounded as if it were done by someone who knew archaeology and was making a statement.

A few months later another young woman in another part of Cambridge was killed in a similar manner, but no red ochre. Was this related?

Much of the book takes us through the lives and events concerning the four prime suspects. The first, the professor. Dr. Karl Lamberg-Karlovsky would learn shortly after Jane’s death that he had been given tenure. She had worked with him on a dig in Iran (this was ten years before the Ayatollahs took over). There were rumors of sexual harassments, but in those days no woman would complain. When police interviewed him and asked if he had ever had an affair with Miss Britton, he said he was happily married to an attractive woman. Why go out for hamburger when you can have steak at home?

There were a couple of grad students who knew her who would become suspects later. Jane was outgoing, and some young men may have thought she was flirting when she was just being friendly. A few years later one such young man was on a Native American archaeological survey in remote Newfoundland when his female co-worker disappeared. He was the only witness. Had he murdered her? Had he done it because he had gotten away with murdering Jane a few years before?

Then there was another grad student in archaeology who seemed to be socially awkward. Jane tried to be friendly to him, too. A few years later, he would come out as gay. A few years later his younger roommate would die under mysterious circumstances. Had he murdered him? Could he have done the same to Jane?

There was a serial killer who lived in Cambridge at the time. He was a career criminal. He was released a few times on the Massachusetts prisoner furlough program which came to national attention when Governor Michael Dukakis ran for president in 1988. Every time he was released, he raped or killed another woman.

Then there was another man, an ex-boyfriend that no one seemed to like. It appears that he may have abused Jane when they dated as undergraduates. People who knew the two of them suspected him. However, he seemed to have a perfect alibi. He was in Peru at the time of the murder.

Author Cooper would actually leave the New Yorker and go back to Harvard as a dormitory advisor in the dorm where she once lived as an undergrad. She audited a class given by Lamberg-Karlovksy and learned a lot about the anthropology department there. This reviewer had taken a class given by Irven DeVore, one of the professors she interviewed, and I did recognize Lamberg-Karlovksy’s name.

He would come to illustrate how a person could succeed not only in archaeology but in academia in general. In 1969 he had achieved a certain amount of fame by discovering the site of an ancient city in Iran. He believed it was a city that had been founded by Alexander the Great and since lost to history.

When evidence surfaced that it was another city, he had no problem accepting the evidence. He was no fool. But to him archaeology was a story. The story that went with the discovery made it interesting. Cooper even joined an archaeological dig in Bulgaria for a summer just so she could get a sense of what such a venture would be like. She noted that Jane’s notebooks, like those of some other students, mostly just presented the facts. Dr. Lamberg-Karlovsky and others would turn them into stories.

I was starting to believe there were two kinds of archaeologists: the scholars like Jim Humphries and Richard Meadow [both friends of Jane], who were meticulous and bound by data, and, as I had seen sitting in his class, the story tellers like Karl. I was starting to believe that the story tellers always won. (147)

That certainly seems true in academia. Two of the best teachers that I had at Harvard were exceptional story tellers. Both Nobel-winner George Wald and Pulitzer-winner Walter Jackson Bate gave some lectures in which the lecture hall overflowed. People who were not enrolled in their classes had heard that certain lectures were so good, they had to come to watch them.

I personally suspect that is one reason why evolution caught on. Even though there is little evidence that evolutionary or uniformitarian changes have occurred, and even some evidence for a young earth, evolution is such a fascinating story that people want to believe it. I have quoted Dr. Wald elsewhere what he said about it.

Dr. DeVore was also a good story teller. One reason I took his class on primate behavior was that I had devoured Robert Ardrey’s The Territorial Imperative and African Genesis. Those books were also great stories that connected primate and human behavior because they had a common evolutionary ancestor. DeVore’s class, though, may have been where I began to be an evolution skeptic. There I was told that Ardrey had it all wrong. But weren’t both DeVore and Ardrey presenting scientific evidence? How could they dispute each other since they were both talking about science?

Anyway, Cooper quotes another anthropology professor who told her, “The best story? That is the truth. Whether or not it actually happened” (147).

Cooper expresses frustration at using the Freedom of Information Act to get any information on Jane Britton’s case even though it was over forty years old and some of the suspects had died. She had an acquaintance who had been a reporter in Miami and had come to Boston to teach journalism. He could not believe how hard it was to get FOIA records in Massachusetts compared to Florida. His observation sounds like a conservative’s comparison of red states to blue states:

In Florida, the default position is that government belongs to the public[…]Here in Massachusetts, I got the sense that the burden is exactly the opposite. (216, brackets and ellipsis in the original)

We also read about how the Cambridge police seemed to browbeat anyone who knew Jane. Her neighbor and fellow anthropology student Jill, who found her body, tells us “I almost told them, ‘Yeah, I killed her.’ Anything to make them stop.” (237) Some of this reminded me of She’s So Cold where two boys were interrogated for over twenty-four hours until they confessed to a crime they could not have committed.

Throughout the story, Cooper wants us to see the challenges that women face in academia and other prestige jobs. Presumably, things have changed some, but she notes:

If Iva [a friend of Jane’s she interviews] was right and Jane’s story functioned as a kind of cautionary tale, then it was perhaps less about the literal truth of what happened to Jane than it was an allegory of the dangers that faced women in academia. (199)

Later, she tells us of her reaction to some events of 2018: “…the #MeToo movement felt like 1969 had come crashing fully and completely into the present day” (379).

This might be a slight spoiler, but the crime was solved recently because of updates to DNA matching technology. Ironically, in a conversation Cooper had with Dr. Lamberg-Karlovsky, he told her of how DNA studies have completely changed the way some scholars view human migration. They do not match at all what the archaeological evidence had been showing. As he put it, it must be true, but it does not make much sense.

So that is with other stories as well, even things we have witnessed and tell ourselves. Cooper concludes, “There are no true stories; there are only facts, and the stories we tell each other about those facts” (426).

Radical Humility. Edited by Rebecca Modrak and Jamie Vander Broek. Belt, 2021.

Radical Humility is a collection of essays purported to be on the subject of humility. Considering that a few are written by journalists and the rest by academics, it is no surprise that a majority of the writers find the subject distasteful. Academics can be among the proudest people on the planet. The next book reviewed here has some examples.

There are a couple of essays, notably “Loving Knowledge Together” and “Education is a Space to Change the World,” that speak of Socrates. Both tell us that when the Oracle said Socrates was the wisest man, he responded that his wisdom was simply admitting that he did not know very much. That is a good place to start.

Alas, most of the essays barely touch on the subject of humility or present it in a negative light. Two essays suggested that white people could not be humble. We could at the very least say that the essays used hyperbole, at the worst they showed racial prejudice themselves. What about the millions of mixed race marriages in our country alone? Lest I come across as a hypocrite, I do note that even where I went to college some of the professors were indeed humble men and women.

The honest author of “Journalism in an Era of Likes, Follows, and Shares” admits she is not crazy about most of the concepts of humility. Still, she acknowledges one near synonym of humility does describe good journalism: unobtrusiveness. The idea that journalism is balanced and objective seems to have disappeared from my local daily, so it was refreshing to at least read of the possibility of some kind of ideal reporting. A Platonic ideal? Alas, then the writer confesses she is not singing “some wistful ode to the past.” Some of her examples are not exactly free from bias, to put it mildly.

There are some helpful reflections on not coming across as a know-it-all and a few on learning from mistakes. “Epic Failures in 3-D Printing” has some clever pictures and cartoons. The reality about most of what we do ought to keep all of us humble. I am reminded of something George MacDonald wrote, which actually sounds a lot like Socrates: “But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool of you that you will know yourself for one, and so begin to be wise!” An important element of humility is an acknowledgment of truth.

There is a political tone in many of the essays. The academics and progressives authoring the majority of the selections in here seem annoyed if not offended by the concept of humility. This takes on one of two approaches: Either the old Garfield cartoon caption, “It’s hard to be humble when you’re as great as I am,” or simply putting the chip on the shoulder and saying, “Try and make me humble!” It is almost as if the book should have been called Radicals vs. Humility.

Benjamin Franklin in his Autobiography said that to be humble he had to “Imitate Jesus and Socrates.” Three essays in this book to show us some things about Socrates. For getting insight into real and radical humility, though, take another look at Gentle and Lowly. Like Socrates, Jesus is the real deal.

Dane Ortlund. Gentle and Lowly. Crossway, 2020.

I have never read a book like Gentle and Lowly, and, believe me, I am glad I have read it. I pray that I can take what it has to say to heart.

One point the author makes is that there have been other books like this. They tend to be a lot longer and written in the seventeenth century. Ortlund has digested the devotional writings and sermons of numerous Puritan-era writers to illustrate the heart of God. What does God really think of us. How does he look at us?

The key is the verse which gives the book its title:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

This is Jesus’ self-description, and numerous stories and passages in the Bible support this. Yes, God is the Creator. He is all powerful. But He is also loving. He hates sin and injustice more than we do. He came in the flesh to solve that sin problem for us, and He has for those who follow Him.

The chapter titles indicate other verses that highlight this love and compassion towards people. Because Jesus came to earth as a man, He is able to sympathize with us. “He knows we are dust” (cf. Psalm 103:14). At the same time, He has great plans for us. Just as we might have great plans for some project we have done or some person we love, so He has great plans for His people.

Many times we do not really think about God as an emotional being. But that is part of His nature. And if we do think of God’s emotions, we often think of anger. Yes, He hates sin. But so do many people. Unlike most people, he has had a plan to take care of sin. He does it because He loves us.

Not only is Jesus a savior, but He is an advocate. He is our defense attorney who has come alongside us. By His grace we can be declared not guilty—not because we are innocent but because He took our sins on Himself.

All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)

There is more than just this. This book has a sense of Irresistible Grace—not because the author is Calvinist, though he clearly is, but because the author presents the heart of God in such an attractive way, that He becomes irresistibly beautiful. Why would anyone turn Him down?

One chapter is cleverly entitled “Our Law-ish Hearts, His Lavish Heart.” We are reminded that when God revealed Himself to Moses—the lawgiver, the guy with the thou-shalt-nots:

The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”(Exodus 34:6-7 alt.)

There seems to be a theme running through some of the things the Lord is trying to tell His people in these times. As the hostility to Him seems to be increasing around the world, He is reminding us that the Gospel is Good News. The solution to sin is not a cover-up or pretending there is nothing wrong; the solution is His love as shown through the Cross of Christ.

One of the passages Ortlund addresses is Hebrews 7:25:

Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

Jesus lives today to speak on behalf of us. And He can save to the greatest degree. There is no word like the Greek word pantelès (παντελὲς), which is translated “uttermost” in many translations. In the last year most of us have learned what the prefix pan- means: “all, total.” Pandemic literally means “all the people.” (The root -dem- is like the root for democracy or demographics, it means “people.”)

The root -tele- we have in many words like telescope, telephone, teleology, and so on. It means “far” or “distant.” It can refer to a physical distance as it does in telescope, literally “far seer.” But it can also refer to distant future time as in teleology, “the study of the distant future.” So pantelès is really uttermost—in the sense of both distance and time. He can save us covering all distance and for all time. It is hard to imagine something more absolute than that!

One saying of Jesus that is especially reassuring is John 6:37: “…whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” And that never is doubly emphatic in the Greek. It is really more like “never ever” or “no way.” We note that the last command in the Bible is “Come” (cf. Revelation 22:17). The Christian book store where I used to work sold a poster that said, “God’s favorite word is come.”

He quotes about two pages of John Bunyan to emphasize this. If we come, He will take us in and not send us away. Calvinist Ortlund says this can prove the “once saved always saved” dogma. Ironically, Bunyan himself was not a Calvinist and did not believe that teaching. However, that does not means he did not have assurance. The problem is, as the parable of the sower tells us, some who come may later walk away. Still, that is a minor point because even a non-Calvinist like Bunyan can write a whole book on the subject entitled Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ. It emphasizes how honest and reliable God is. And how good He is to us. As one who was raised in a church that said it was presumptuous to assume you are saved, it is comforting to know assurance apart from dogma.

The only real quibble I have with the author is the in a couple of places he calls Monophysites heretics. I would prefer the term that he uses for some other believers, namely, having a “defective Christology.” This was one early interpretation of the nature of Christ in an attempt to understand the Trinity. Today we mostly find it in the Coptic and some other Near Eastern churches. When we consider how the Copts have endured centuries of Islamic rule and in recent decades have been able to present Christ effectively to Muslim compatriots, I believe we have to consider them brothers in the Lord. Many historic Christian churches do, even if they differ on some doctrinal points. Man looks on the outward appearance, God looks on the heart. (See I Samuel 16:7)

When I first received this book, I wondered if the author was related to two other well known Christian authors Anne and Roy Ortlund. They are his grandparents. Praise God. It it a sign that God does honor that promise that He will bless those that fear Him, even to the third and fourth generation.

This is a short book with short chapters on small pages, not small print. Most people could probably read it in an hour, but it has so much to share that most readers will want to take it slowly and let it sink in.

Read this book. You will be blessed.

Anya Seton. Dragonwyck. 1944; Mariner Books, 1971.

Dragonwyck is a gothic historical novel with a little something for everyone. Because of the twists and turns in the plot, it is hard to describe it much without giving the story away. Still, the story is not as plot driven as many other stories are. It would not be the tale that it is without its two main characters and its strong roots in real history.

Imagine Heathcliff if he were to the manor born. That is Nicholas Van Ryn, a patroon from Hudson, New York, and master of the Dragonwyck estate. Yes, he has a strong self-absorbed personality like Heathcliff with a strong will and good looks. But unlike Heathcliff, he is the heir to the Van Ryn patroonship, a holdover from the Middle Ages that was transplanted to America. His challenge is to keep it all in the family and maintain the high status of the Van Ryns. He has no rival.

Van Ryn rents out much of his large estate to tenants who pay him annual rent based on the size of their land and on the agricultural products they produce. Dragonwyck is the mansion he had built for his enjoyment. It has a staff of twenty servants for him, his wife Johanna, and young daughter Katrine.

The story begins around 1844. Anyone familiar with the history of Upstate New York may recall that this was the time of the Anti-Rent War (a.k.a. the Rent War). Tenants were beginning to object to the patroon-tenant system because it smacked of aristocracy in the age of Jackson. Van Ryn by force of will and condescension is able to avoid some of the conflict endured by other patroons, but he bends very little.

Still, he is handsome, very cultured, and a pillar of society even in New York City, where he also owns some property. Indeed, he has learned to buy property on the edge of the populated areas in the city because he knows the city will be expanding and he can make a profit in real estate even within a few years.

His distant cousin, Miranda Wells, an eighteen-year-old farm girl from Greenwich, Connecticut, is invited to Dragonwyck to be introduced to society and to tutor their daughter. Yes, Dragonwyck does have echoes of Jane Eyre. Even though the mansion is only about ten years old, it has secrets and is probably as close as anything in the United States to a castle. There is even a madwoman, though she is not a secret like Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre.

The first few chapters tell us of the Wells family and Miranda’s fish out of water experience in her new setting. She is a little like Jane Eyre except for two distinguishing features. Jane is considered plain, even unattractive. At one point she is compared to a toad. Miranda is a tall blonde and no toad. Jane and her employer Rochester end up falling in love as soul mates. Cousin Nicholas, on the other hand, seems distant and completely self-possessed. He is a hard person to get to know. Besides, he is married already. Yeah, Rochester was married, too, only here Van Ryn has no problem admitting the fact.

Rochester also is not physically attractive, either. The only reason the gentry ladies find him attractive is that he is rich. Van Wyck is probably richer, but he is also tall, dark, handsome, and strong. Without going into too much detail, there is some conflict, not unlike King Henry VIII, because Johanna cannot have a son. Like royalty and aristocracy, that is the wife’s main contribution—besides, of course, presumably having some noble ancestry herself to pass on to the male issue.

Miranda is more or less overwhelmed by it all. Although she seems to have had a personality back on the Wells farm, arriving at Dragonwyck she becomes much more passive. She has to learn how society does things. She learns fashion and how to make herself beautiful if not charming. Although she can read and play the piano, she has not been exposed to the latest in the culture. She is a naïf when it comes to the upper classes. She is dutiful when it comes to her older cousin Nicholas and his wife Johanna.

Seton gives us a great view of the 1840s. Though fiction and set in the Northeast, one can see echoes of The Year of Decision. Not only is there the Anti-Rent War, but America gets involved in the Mexican War. While railroads are beginning to extend through the country, steamboats are certainly the most effective means of transportation around New York, Connecticut, and the Hudson River.

We enjoyed this book because it is set in an area we are familiar with: Western Connecticut, New York City, the Hudson River, Hudson, and Catskill. Although the main characters are fictional, we meet some real historical New Yorkers including Herman Melville, Edgar “Eddie” Poe, James Fenimore Cooper, P.T. Barnum, and even a cameo by former President Martin Van Buren. Seton herself lived in Greenwich and clearly knew her way around both geographically and historically.

Seton is a very good story teller. Miranda may be the main character similar to a young lady in many romance novels, but this is not just chick lit. There are deaths, marriages, riots, violence, boat races, big parties and picnics, famous people, theater shows, museums, real ghosts, opera songs, and something for just about everyone.

At the center is the enigmatical Nicholas Van Ryn. At times kind and generous and considerate, at other times he is cruel and even violent. There is a little Brontë in Seton, a little Du Marier, and even some Henry James. As with Wuthering Heights, there is hardly a word out of place. Pay attention to details. As Chekhov said, “One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off.” Anya Seton doesn’t.

Rebecca Heiss. Instinct. Citadel, 2021.

“All literary men are Red Sox fans…” John Cheever

The title sounds like something Michael Crichton might have written, except that this book is nonfiction. I suspect Crichton would have liked it, though. It is subtitled Rewire Your Brain with Science-Backed Solution to Increase Productivity and Achieve Success. The subtitle sounds more like advertising than a description of the book. But the book is worth reading.

The author takes a look at certain human behaviors, ones that all of us can identify with. She takes a look at the instinctive or biologically inherited behaviors of people that once may have served a purpose for survival but nowadays tend to get us in trouble or make things more complicated.

Her discussion of sex, and even noting differences between the sexes, might be considered non-PC in academic circles, but most readers would probably identify with her descriptions. Or at least, most have witnessed such behaviors. Certainly, it is hard to imagine anyone really liking crude things some people do, but some of those crude things may be wired into us. That is not an excuse—let’s use a little self-control.

Other sparkling descriptions include our inherent appeal for variety. It was one thing when people were hunter-gatherers and happy to have a little variety in diet. Now when most of us are overwhelmed with choices, it can actually be stressful. We note that some retailers have understood this. Aldi, for example, does not stock the variety that most supermarkets do, but one can still get a pretty well balanced diet from them. Five Guys hamburgers are another example.

Another chapter is on accumulating information. Again, this used to be important for survival, but now we are on information overload. How do we begin to determine what is really important in the Information Age?

Probably the most telling chapter is the one on self-deception. We all use rationalizations to justify ourselves and make ourselves look better. She reminds us of a certain political figure whose wife died in a car accident. While the inquest determined she was at fault, he still blames it on another driver. Similarly, in my own experience, a few years ago I was stopped for speeding in a Southern state. I did not at the time think I was going over the limit, so I just assumed the policeman was handing out tickets to cars with Yankee license plates. Rationalizations all.

There are a couple of chapters on group identification, both identifying with one group and fear of those from a different group. Again, in tribal societies this may have been necessary for survival, but it creates more conflict in civilized places.

There is a touch of humor and understanding in this book. The author admits that these instincts are difficult to overcome. And sometimes they are harmless fun, such as when she tells us about being a Red Sox fan. The tribalism is in full view in Fenway Park, and it is OK in that context to “hate” anyone wearing a Yankees hat. We understand, of course, in conversation with any fan of an American League East baseball team except the Yankees, that New York team is commonly known as “they who must not be named.”

The author’s conclusion is entitled “Becoming Fearless.” How do we handle these things that we instinctively may see as fearful (the other, lack of variety, lack of information) or as being good (our own kind, our rationalizations)? It really comes down to two things: truth and self-control.

While the author does not write about religion and treats evolution as a fact, she does tell us that she was raised in the church. Truth and self-control are two key behaviors commanded in the Bible. Instead of instinct, the Bible speaks of the Fall and sin nature inherited from Adam, or the “natural man.” Whether we call it human nature or instinct, such things can get us into trouble. The Bible calls it sin. That is our natural inclination. We sin instinctively.

While the Bible’s ultimate solution to sin is salvation through Jesus Christ, how does the Bible tell us that we can tell the Lord is helping us overcome sin? Two of the things are truth and self-control.

Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. (I John 3:18-20)

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives…(Titus 2:11-12)

This is a secular book. Most of us on our own probably cannot exercise self-control over all our instincts. But the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth (see John 15:26) and self-control (II Timothy 1:7). With God’s help, we have a fighting chance. Our instinct, our natural personality, opposes these things. Dr. Heiss notes this, and so does the Bible (see I Corinthians 2:14).

Some of us may be able to control some of these things on our own, but why not take the next step and get divine help from the Holy Spirit? And get eternal salvation thrown in?

Instinct is worth reading. Its humor and timeliness may even make it a best seller. It is a good start. The Lord knows we all need to face truth and exercise self-control. As Sam Cooke sang, What a wonderful world it would be.

Älexander McCall Smith. The Talented Mr. Varg. Pantheon, 2020.

This installment of tales about the Department of Sensitive Crimes of the Malmö, Sweden, city police ironically and consciously tips its hat in echoing the title of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Mr. Varg is no Ripley. He is a pleasant but passive, phlegmatic character who is suited to the unusual department that he runs.

The cleverness and humor are not as strong as the first novel, but The Talented Mr. Varg still makes for some enjoyable light reading. We note that on the cover and title page, Smith puts a dieresis over the A in his first name to make it look Scandinavian.

One recurring image satirizes the multiparty system in Sweden and other parliamentary governments. Mr. Varg has a brother who is a leader in the Moderate Extremist Party. The right-wing Moderate Extremists are not to be confused with the left-wing Extreme Moderates. Even those names suggest something about the way we view ideological “wings.” Though there is a two-party system in the United States, we wonder from time to time if the Socialists will split from the Democrats or if the Populists will split from the Republicans.

Here the sensitive crimes that Varg investigates (and we use the term investigate lightly) are two that one might have to be careful about. Long-time girlfriend of novelist Nils Personn-Cederström fears her lover is being blackmailed. A newspaper is publicizing some shocking revelations about Cederström in an upcoming series. She witnessed a large amount of money changing hands between Cederström and a journalist.

Ordinarily, blackmail would be handled by the regular police department, but the apparent blackmail turns usual blackmail on its head. Cederström is known as the Swedish Hemingway. He writes about big game hunting, bullfighting, hard drinking, and various macho enterprises, but it looks like he is really more like Clark Kent than Superman. He writes well, but he is a vegetarian who does not like to drink much. He may be being blackmailed because someone wants to reveal him as a fraud. He’s not the fast-liver the public thinks he is.

Around the same time, his co-worker Anna has good reason to believe her anesthetist husband is having an affair. She finds an earring in his underwear and notes that her husband is working late a lot. Can Ulf discreetly discover what is going on? It is complicated because Ulf carries a torch for Anna. If there were grounds for divorce, then maybe he would have a chance with her, but he would hate to see her hurt.

Oh, there are a few other loose ends, too. Ulf’s Saab’s front grill is damaged, but he knows the replacement given to him is stolen. What can he do? A policeman receiving stolen goods? And not reporting it? And a breeder of Huskies appears to be selling some of his dogs to a Colombian zoo as wolves. Whether it is an endangered species issue or a problem with fraud, Ulf has another sensitive challenge.

There are then a number of clever ideas here. Varg himself, while observant, also seems quite passive. He does get to the bottom of the problems, but a lot of it seems to be lucky and a matter of circumstances. But some of those circumstances are fun to read about. Just as no one would confuse Cederström with, say, Lawrence of Arabia, no one will confuse Ulf Varg with, say, Sherlock Holmes, or for that matter, maybe even Precious Ramotswe—at least not in this story.

T.D. Jakes. Crushing. Faith Words, 2019.

I have heard of T. D. Jakes but do not know much about him. I know he wrote a play script which was turned into the movie Woman, Thou Art Loosed, but he is a pastor of a megachurch for his day job. It certainly was not planned this way, but Crushing goes along very well with the last book reviewed here, Hit Hard.

This title can be looked at as an active verb or participle or as a passive gerund. In this case, it is the gerund. Jakes takes the biblical analogy of God’s dealing with people like a vintner making wine from grapes. If you are a grape, the process is painful and you lose your identity, but you end up as something desired by the vintner himself. Isaiah 5 compares God’s people to a vineyard. In John 15 Jesus calls Himself the true vine and His people the branches who bear fruit. There is a pattern God wants us to see, and Rev. Jakes explains.

Jakes takes a number of examples from the Bible of people who were “crushed” to be purified. He actually spends little time on Job, but does include Peter, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus Himself. But he also spends time describing his own personal experiences of crushing.

The book begins by him sharing when his thirteen year old daughter told him she was pregnant. I work with teenagers, and that got my anger up because this would be statutory rape on the part of the baby’s father. As a pastor, Jakes saw it a little differently, more like “What are people going to say about me?” Here he is the pastor of a church trying to teach his congregation to walk the strait and narrow, and look at what happens in his own family.

We are assured that things worked out all right in the long run, say over a course of about ten years. God had some refining to do in Jakes’ own life and ministry as well as in the heart of his daughter. He reminds us that God does not promise an easy life for his followers. What he promises is truth and love. That often means our faith will be tested, and pressures (“crushing”) will happen to makes us more conformed to his image (see Romans 8:29).

As I said, I knew little about Rev. Jakes other than what I have already mentioned. I did pick up one thing about him that I found interesting. He writes that people will categorize him as a so-called prosperity preacher. I wonder if this is stereotyping because he is a black pastor of a megachurch. (He says his church has 30,000 members).

I speak of suffering. [Italics in original] I don’t remove this subject from my sermons because our Vintner and True Vine experienced the worst suffering known to man, and he did it for a humanity that is quick to lean on their own understanding and flesh. I’m not a “Name-It-and-Claim-It,” “Blab-It-and-Grab It,” or “Five-Ways-to-Own-a-Bentley” type of pastor. So I marvel at the people who wrongfully believe that the acceptance of Christ into their lives equates the absence of pain.

In fact, the opposite is true if we look in God’s Word. How can we be exempt from pain and trouble in the world when Jesus told us to expect the exact opposite? “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” [John 16:33]. (104-105)

I tell students that the Bible has many great promises for believers, but John 16:33 is one of those promises, too. Jakes recognizes this.

This quotation not only perhaps debunks a stereotype, but also gives you a sense of the style of this book. It is straightforward, based on the Bible and the author’s own experiences. It could make a good companion not only to Hit Hard but to Derek Prince’s Why Bad Things Happen to God’s People. Any one or all three of these book could minister hope to people going through tough times. The perspectives are different, but in its own way each points to God. That orientation works out for the best in the long run.

I confess to being a little nervous. It is strictly coincidental that I read this book right after Hit Hard. Hit Hard was given to English Plus to review. Crushing was given to me as a Christmas present that I was getting around to reading. I wonder if by reading these two books one after the other that I am being prepared for some “trouble” (many Bible translations of John 16:33 say “tribulation”). Naturally, I hope not, but if God is doing it for my own good, then wisdom tells me I will be better for it.