Jens Andersen. The Lego Story. Translated by Caroline Waight, Mariner, 2022.

My prayer to the Lord for LEGO is that he will help us run a business that is honest in every way, in our life and dealings, so that our lives are lived in his honor and with his blessing. (62)

—Ole Kirk Christiansen, 1942

The Lego Story tells the history of the well-known toy company, its origins and its growth. It is a fascinating story covering three generations of a family-run business into the fourth generation.

Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891-1958) was the founder of the toy company. He began in rural Denmark on the Jutland Peninsula as a carpenter. In the 1930s, he found that the wooden toys he made were in demand. He was careful to make high quality wooden toys, and his only real competitor in Northern Europe was the Swedish Brio, which still makes wooden toys today. It was then that he coined the name Lego (often written in all capital letters) from the Danish leg godt, or “play well.”

The business managed to survive the German occupation—in one exciting tale of what was probably the closest call they had to being taken over by the Germans, the principal involved pretended not to understand the German language and eventually the officer gave up and never returned. By German standards Lego was still small potatoes.

After the war, Christiansen saw that plastics were being used more and more for toys, and he began experimenting with plastic molds. By 1949, Lego was making some plastic toys along with its nearly 300 different wooden toys.

The bricks that changed the world of toys did not emerge overnight, nor were they an immediate sensation. Christiansen saw some similar hollow blocks with short columns for connecting them and copied them. They had been patented in England, but he could sell them in Denmark and, later, Germany. In 1950 Lego made cubical hollow blocks that attached. The brick shape came out a few years later. Kids could build things better than with plain wooden blocks, but they still did not stay attached to each other well.

A couple of significant events happened in the 1950s. Lego would make an arrangement with a British company to sell the bricks in the United Kingdom. They were then able to take care of the patent issue to everyone’s satisfaction. But the big breakthrough was in 1958 when Lego, after much experimentation, figured that by putting hollow columns inside the bricks, the bricks would interlock and stay attached much better.

In 1959 they made their first foray into North America by entering a marketing agreement with Samsonite. Samsonite makes, and still makes, very rugged plastic-based luggage. Both sides thought it would be a match since both were concerned about the quality of their plastic products. However, the toy market is very different from suitcases and briefcases, so the toy was largely still unknown in North America when the agreement ended in 1969.

As is true with all toys in the toy market, there were ups and downs from year to year, but we gradually see how Lego took advantage of new developments and different licensing agreements. In the early 1970s, Legos finally became well known in the United States and Canada when the company made a licensing agreement with McDonalds to include a small Lego kit in its children’s Happy Meals.

In the 1990s, when the Star Wars films were re-shown in theaters, Lego came out with various Star Wars kits. Later, they would do the same with Harry Potter. By 2000 they realized that many adults still built things with Legos, so they began more marketing aimed at them such as the series of famous buildings made with smaller bricks.

Probably the single biggest change or improvement since 1958 came out in 1978 and caught on in the 1980s: the Lego figures. Some strategic people hired by Lego promoted the idea of role playing and making little plastic people to populate the various buildings and vehicles children made with Legos. the figures also began to attract more girls to play with the Legos, which up till then was largely seen as a toy for boys.

The Lego Story is largely told from the perspective of the three generations of family members who ran the company: Ole, his son Godtfred Kirk Christiansen (1924-2015), and Godtfred’s son Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen (b. 1947). Other family members were involved. Even fathers and sons had different visions for the company. Ole, for example, was more interested in quality and manufacturing, often spending more than others might have. Godtfred was a businessman, but one who never forgot how to play. The front of the book has a helpful family tree that the reader may have to consult once in a while to keep the names straight. Kjeld, by the way, spelled the family name more in line with current Danish orthography. No one in the family had a problem with the way he spelled it.

There were a number of flops or products that were not worth retaining along with related products like Duplo blocks that took off well. Kjeld stepped down from his position in 2004 and the first non-family member ran the company though Kjeld would remain on the Lego board until 2016. The company is still privately owned.

The author was able to interview many people including family members, workers, retired workers, and townspeople of Billund, Denmark, which still is its headquarters. The book is full of quotations from Kjeld. It gives an intimate view of the family dynamic over the years as well as many experiments: some like the Lego people were successful beyond imagination, and others did not succeed like the deal with Samsonite. But that is life and corporate life.

As suggested by the quotation which introduces this review, Ole and his wife were devout Christians, impacted by the widespread revival that took place in many lands shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. Until the 1960s, workers could attend an optional prayer meeting before work each day. While neither Godtfred nor Kjeld were as openly expressive about it, they both acknowledged that a faith in the God of the Bible was important to them, to the company, and, perhaps as we have seen, to the joy and peace of many children around the world as they played and continue to play with Legos.

James Reasoner. Gettysburg. Cumberland House, 2001.

Well, the last book I reviewed turned out to be fifth in a series. Gettysburg turns out to be sixth in a series of ten novels, each named for a battle of the American Civil War. I was interested to see how this book deals with the battle I am probably most familiar with. I have visited Gettysburg and toured the battlefield—I have done that at a number of historic sites connected with both the Civil War and the American Revolution. But also my great-grandfather was a fourteen-year-old apprentice working in Gettysburg in 1863. He did not get there till after the battle, but heard Lincoln give his Gettysburg Address in November.

Reasoner’s Gettysburg is told from a Southern point of view. He follows the vagaries of five brothers from Culpeper in Northern Virginia. Four are in the Confederate Army and together cover a lot of what the CSA soldiers would experience. One is in Vicksburg. He is just mentioned in passing here; clearly, he will probably be the main character in Reasoner’s Vicksburg, number five in this series.

Titus Brannon is currently a prisoner in Camp Douglas in Illinois. Camp Douglas was the most notorious Union POW prison, sometimes called the Andersonville of the North. Yes, here the Union does not come across too well. As in the writings of Mary Chesnut or Henry Timrod, the Yankees typify pharisaical self-righteousness—at least most of them do. What complicates things is that everyone back in Virginia thinks Titus is dead. There was no Red Cross or Geneva Convention overseeing POWs back then and sending notes home. Some Quakers attempt to do their part with some success.

One of Titus’s fellow prisoners is his brother-in-law, Nathan. Nathan joined the Union Army but was imprisoned from a mistaken identity. He has come to loathe the North, too, because of his treatment at Camp Douglas, though he still believes slavery is wrong.

The main focus is on the two brothers in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia: Mac, a cavalryman under Jeb Stuart and Fitzhugh Lee, and Will, an infantryman. Because they are in very different units and usually miles from each other, they only run into each other from time to time. However, their peregrinations with the army keep the reader abreast of the travels of Lee from Virginia to Pennsylvania and the various skirmishes they have before the big one in Gettysburg.

Will is a Captain. He enlisted back when the war began but has been promoted. From his perspective we get a sense of what a typical Confederate infantryman would have experienced. As a junior officer, though, he is privy to some strategy sessions and orders, so we also get a sense of what A.P. Hill, Ewell, and others were thinking during the month leading up to the battle.

Macbeth “Mac” Brannon’s perspective gives us the closest sense of the Confederate command. He is an aide to General Fitzhugh Lee, who is just under Stuart in the cavalry’s chain of command and nephew of Robert E. (“Uncle Bob” to Fitzhugh). Mac has one of the best horses in the country, so he not only fights vigorously, but he also is often called upon to deliver messages to and from the command. Through his persona we get a good sense of what Lee and Stuart are thinking. Indeed, Stuart and both Lees are significant characters in the story.

One cannot help but compare this to probably the most famous novel about Gettysburg, The Killer Angels, upon which the film Gettysburg is based. That novel tells the story from both sides, focusing primarily on Lee and Longstreet for the South and Hancock and Chamberlain for the North. While there are also fictional characters who are important in the story, the personal narratives are mostly about the historical figures, unlike this Gettysburg which focuses on the Brannon family.

Besides the Southern sympathies expressed by the Brannons and other characters, Gettysburg has much more about the events leading up to the Gettysburg battle. We read about Brandy Station and Winchester, and a number of the skirmishes both the Stonewall Brigade and Stuart’s Cavalry get into. Since the series is more of an attempt to cover the whole war, we get an overview of what the armies in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania are doing between Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. Only chapters 21 through 23 out of 24 chapters in all are about the actual Battle of Gettysburg itself.

While The Killer Angels focuses on Little Round Top and Pickett’s Charge, Gettysburg deals more with Culp’s Hill—which changed hands and had its own share of brutal fighting—and the cavalry skirmishes of Stuart around Harrisburg and Hanover.

There is one curious parallel. The Killer Angels tells us a bit about a foreign military officer who is observing the Southern army, namely Arthur Fremantle, an attaché apparently assigned to help England determine whether or not to recognize or support the Confederacy. While Fremantle is mentioned on one page, Reasoner’s Gettysburg introduces us to another foreign military officer who also wrote about his experiences in the war, Johann Heros von Borcke (Reasoner spells it Borke). Borcke was a Colonel in the Prussian army and had immigrated to North America specifically to join the Confederate Army. I guess we will have to find a copy of his memoir and see what he has to say.

One slight literary allusion runs through the novel. All the Brannon siblings’ names are inspired by Shakespeare. Titus is Titus Andronicus, Macbeth is obvious, Will is William Shakespeare Brannon, Cory in Vicksburg is Coriolanus, and Nathan’s wife and the Brannons’ sister is Cordelia. There is also the youngest brother Henry, who is still at home keeping the family farm with his widowed mother. There are any number of Henrys, but we assume Henry V was his namesake.

There could be complications back home, too. Since everyone in Culpeper thinks Titus is dead, Henry and Titus’s wife are developing an interest in one another. Guess I will have to read the next novel to find out what happens: Kind of like reading Richard II through Richard III with the six Henry plays in between to learn English history during their civil war in the fifteenth century.

This book is slightly reminiscent of the nonfiction Witness to Gettysburg because it details a number of battles leading up to the big one in Pennsylvania. Unlike Witness to Gettysburg, this novel has no maps, a real liability for readers.

Mark Greaney. Back Blast. Berkley, 2016.

We have reviewed a few books by Mark Greaney, but they have all been posthumous or coauthored “Tom Clancy” works. Here was something that Greaney did that had no connection to Jack Ryan, Jr., or the Clancy mythos.

Back Blast actually will remind readers of the Jack Ryan, Jr., stories, especially ones about the Campus. Like some of those books, there is just about nonstop action involving secret agents operating on the limits of legality. In this case, there is not a clandestine organization like the Campus, but simply a CIA apparatchik who has created his own bureaucratic kingdom and can do pretty much whatever he wants and get away with it. It is a reminder how much evil government workers can do when they no longer see themselves as serving the people.

Dennis “Denny” Carmichael leads a division of clandestine services within the Central Intelligence Agency. He has it in for Courtland “Court” Gentry, one of the best covert operatives in the CIA until Carmichael gave the order to terminate him. For five years, Gentry has been on the lam in foreign countries, escaping from CIA assassins and others. The problem is that he has no idea why the Agency suddenly turned on him. It becomes clear to him that Carmichael is behind it, but he cannot imagine why.

It turns out that this is the fifth of at least seven novels about Gentry, who becomes known as the Gray Man. This is the first in the series that I have read, and there is nothing lost by reading this book out of order. The narrative provides enough background so that the reader is up to speed pretty quickly.

Speaking of speed, Back Blast is a true page turner. Gentry decides it is time to return to the United States to see if he can straighten things out with the CIA—provided, of course, that no one tries to kill him first. People are trying to do that even before he lands in North America.

Gentry is clever, skilled with weapons, and physically fit. He makes for a kind of ideal character in an entertaining story. Of course, things get complicated right away. Gentry arrives in Washington, D.C., more or less under the radar, and tries to stay that way. However, he is not terribly successful at that.

Some muggers try to rob him one night. Big mistake. He injures one of them, and gets the other to tell him who the drug dealer behind their action is. Gentry sees an opportunity not just to get even and maybe help law enforcement a bit, but perhaps to get a hold of some ready cash since pushers usually have a lot of Benjamins on hand. He does accomplish his goal at the house of the drug dealer, but the FBI and CIA both see this as evidence of Gentry’s work. Macheath’s back in town, so to speak.

Carmichael has one of Gentry’s former associates, Zack Hightower, assassinate the CEO of a security firm often used by the CIA, and the Agency blames it on Gentry. Gentry also happens to be in a convenience store late one night when three thieves try to rob it. He successfully thwarts the robbery, but again his skills and methods make it clear that the robbers had encountered a trained counterterrorist.

It gets more complicated. It becomes clear that Carmichael has some secrets he does not want exposed and is willing to kill to keep them secret. He comes to depend on an associate from Saudi Arabian intelligence who has diplomatic immunity to do some of his wet work. He even has men disguised as D.C. Metro Police to hide the fact they are hit men.

A young reporter from the Washington Post assigned to the D.C. crime beat becomes suspicious that the official story he is getting from the police and FBI is at the very least not the whole story. He is able to enlist the help of one of the most experienced reporters whose specialty is the intelligence bureaucracy. They begin to discover things that may eventually answer some of Gentry’s questions.

There are few narrow escapes. The body count gets higher. While most of it is blamed on Gentry, the only ones he seems to have actually terminated or injured were armed criminals like the drug dealer and the convenience store holdup men.

Greany is very good at showing us how Gentry attends to detail. He manages security cameras well—hiding his face from them and even setting up a meeting during the time of day that the sun’s glare obscures a camera’s image. He is very stealthy, but also does some extreme things to heighten his stealth by creating distractions. He is a very entertaining character.

There is also a classical element here. Carmichael’s near obsession with Gentry, who appears innocent of any wrongdoing, reminded this reader of Javert’s obsession with Jean Valjean in Les Miserables or Lt. Gerard trying to catch Dr. Kimble in The Fugitive. (I believe the film based on the TV show Gerard is a U.S. Marshal, but the idea is the same.) Like Richard Kimble, Gentry tries to stay ahead of various plots to capture or kill him while at the same time trying to find evidence that will exonerate him.

To tell much more would get into spoiler territory, but Back Blast is a blast to read. For anyone who enjoys the derring-do and action of the Jack Ryan, Jr., stories or the books about Jason Bourne, this will be a lot of fun and hard to put down.

Dee Henderson. Undetected. Bethany House, 2014.

Undetected is really two stories. First, and foremost to this reader, there is the story about submarines and research on underwater navigation. Second, there is a stock romance.

Let us take care of the romance first. I tell my male students when we read Jane Eyre that that book contains the seeds of the plots of most romance novels written today. So in Undetected, Gina Gray is being courted by two sailors, St. John Rivers and Edward Rochester; oh, sorry, I mean Daniel Field and Mark Bishop.

Gina, though, is no Jane Eyre. She is reluctant to speak her mind and afraid of being hurt. She is also a genius. I recall once hearing an interview with a successful movie actress who married an actor considerably older. She said simply that the guys her age had neither the money nor the experience she had as a matinee idol. She could relate much better to the older and more experienced actor. The narrator hints that is the kind of man Gina needs.

Gina graduated from high school at fourteen, got her first Ph.D. at twenty-one and developed a sophisticated sonar system for submarine navigation and safety. The cross-sonar system—something like it actually exists—is more accurate because it uses sonar from at least two points to triangulate. She was curious about it because her older brother, Jeff, is a submariner, and she thought that it might help make his job safer.

Gina is now 28 or 29, and brother Jeff is the Commanding Officer of a fast attack submarine. Commander Mark Bishop is the Commanding Officer of a ballistic missile submarine. Jeff tries to fix Gina up first with Bishop, who is about twelve years older than Gina and a widower. He demurs, so Jeff has her meet one of the younger men on his crew, Daniel Field. The one perhaps factual flaw in this story is that Daniel is described as a sonarman but also as a Naval Academy graduate. Sonarman is an enlisted rate. An academy graduate might be a sonar specialist, but he would have an officer rank.

Much of the story, then, tells of Gina working out her relationships. Since the cover has the picture of a higher ranking naval officer—he has the gold braid or “scrambled eggs” on the visor of his cap—we can guess which guy she will end up with.

The cool part, though, is the imagined (or maybe classified) technology. Hunt for Red October appealed to its “technodude” readers partly because the submarine Red October had a unique tractor-type propulsion system. Theoretically, it might have been quieter than propellers. I am not sure anything like it was ever tried, but it was an interesting idea. So is the cross-sonar, and so is Gina’s latest experiment.

What if it were possible to “ping” a vessel without being detected? This idea sounds like it might work. Simply passively record and ambient sound (waves, ice, underwater rock slides, a whale) and use that sound to ping, that is, to bounce a sound wave off a vessel. It would likely be dismissed as part of the natural surroundings by any vessel that happened to hear it.

So Cdr. Bishop and Mr. Field become involved in some of those experiments, which seem to work very well. Once the Secretary of the Navy understands what has been accomplished, Gina gets a permanent personal security detail. Can’t have other countries find out about this very interesting stuff. The detail does put some limits on her personal life.

Gina also contributes to a team that is using satellites to come up with a more accurate map of the sea floors of all the oceans.

There is one chapter that is worth reading even if the reader were to pass over the rest of the story. Chapter seven is a conversation between Gina and Bishop which at its core is about the concept of a just war. Gina got interested in underwater acoustics because her big brother was a submariner. But what if her research just made it easier to kill people? That begins to bother her. The discussion really boils down to the whole question of good and evil.

“People can misuse what God created. But that has everything to do with man’s free will and tendency to evil, not science. What God created is good. So do what you were created to do. Break new scientific ground. Help us understand the dynamics of what God created.

“You can’t protect the world from itself, Gina. You can only give good men the tools necessary to do their jobs…” (148, cf. Genesis 1:31)

At any rate, Gina has decided that she has done enough marine acoustics work and wants to get into something else. She has standing job offers from NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She thinks that getting into astronomy or astrophysics would be a change of pace—except that she makes a connection between a solar flare she has recorded data on and how that information can be used to passively detect submarines. Henderson makes the science sound reasonable, just as Clancy did with Red October.

While I did have a question about the sonarman, otherwise, Henderson described life aboard a nuclear submarine and on a sub base pretty accurately. As someone who lived on a sub base for two years and worked with submariners and sub hunters, I can vouch for that.

Besides the intriguing technology, excitement comes for Commander Bishop’s crew as somebody in the Eastern Pacific apparently shoots a torpedo at Jeff Gray’s boat at the same time North Korea launches a missile and China is threatening to take over some uninhabited islands claimed by Japan. China also alleges that someone may have deliberately sunk one of its submarines. Suddenly, on orders from the President, Bishop’s boat prepares to fire some intercontinental ballistic missiles as soon as Washington gives them the word.

It reminds us that in the real world, many submariners have witnessed geopolitical events that the rest of the world has no knowledge of.

In all fairness to the romance aspect, all the main characters—Gina, Daniel, Mark, and Jeff—act like mature adults who really have the interests of others foremost. There are also some kittens and a puppy to add some cuteness. But the submarine story is the selling point to this veteran.

Robert L. Dilenschneider. The Ultimate Guide to Power and Influence. Matt Holt, 2023.

The Ultimate Guide to Power and Influence provides a handbook for people in a position of leadership or influence. It is direct, clear, and based on the author’s own experience as a consultant for large corporations and his wide reading and research.

The author’s basic thesis is simple:

The goal is to give you ideas and to help you think about how to make your life better. Why? Because if your life is better, then everyone you come into contact with will be better. And that is an achievement. (21)

Beginning with the Socratic idea that the unexamined life is not worth living, the reader is encouraged, even exhorted, to examine his or her own life. And the overarching theme is that if you make the lives of those around you better, you have succeeded. Dilenschneider does quote a number of philosophers, but also he quotes many successful people in business and even a few from politics.

A recurring theme is integrity. A good leader must lead with integrity. People must trust the leader. There are practical chapters on networking, helping others, communicating, using social media, reacting to crises. All these things can contribute to one’s ability to lead. It is not so much cleverness as honesty and character.

One repeated idea is that good leaders listen. He gives numbers of examples of successful corporate leaders who in different ways received input from the people working for them. In some cases it was a matter of going through an entire plant and talking with all the workers. In other cases, it might be having meetings with no specific agenda, just to hear how things were going and if anyone had any good ideas.

Dilenschneider repeatedly tells us the importance of communicating by telling stories. And that is what much of the book is—stories about people in leadership positions. In some cases, it is how they got there; in some cases, how they stayed there; and in some, how they lost their positions. There is chapter on learning from mistakes. After all, anyone who takes a chance to lead something is bound to make some mistakes.

Two stories he tells illustrate a difference. Back in the early 1980s there were about half a dozen incidents of people receiving poisoned Tylenol. The capsules were apparently all poisoned while on store shelves, but Johnson & Johnson initiated a huge recall and handed out many refunds—and started using tamper-proof packaging. While sales fell at first, the quick response and willingness to take responsibility for something they did not initiate brought good will, and the sales revived quickly.

More recently, about ten years ago, news reports surfaced that Volkswagen was fudging some of its emissions measurements. At first they denied it, and then began making weak excuses. Many people at the car company ended up losing their jobs, though a final explanation continued to be vague. Sales declined and have never really recovered.

Both instances involve power, leadership, and issues of integrity. Perhaps some of the actions were perceptions not based on all the facts, but the handling of the two crises produced what many would say were predictable results in either case.

There are many stories and examples like these that make The Ultimate Guide to Power and Influence memorable and worth reading.

OK. So how does it compare to the granddaddy of such books: Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People? I would not be surprised to hear that Mr. Dilenschneider took a Dale Carnegie course at one time.

When I was quite young, my father took a Dale Carnegie course. Being a preschooler and living in Pittsburgh, I think I got Dale and Andrew a little confused, but my father at the time was in both sales and politics. I know the classes helped him get elected and give effective speeches. I also recall much later when my father retired. At that point he was an officer of a well known insurance company. At his retirement party, his boss said that my father was always a man of integrity. That not only made me proud as his son, but also reminds us that, as Thoreau said, “truth alone wears well.”

Both books spend a lot of time about how we relate to others. Leaders need people. Good leaders do not exploit people. The commanding officer of the Coast Guard group I worked for had the rank of commander. He had worked his way up from the enlisted ranks to that position. He knew his stuff. But he said that he could not have become a commander if he did not have good people working for him.

Dilenschneider says something similar. If you want to be the best leader, bring out the best in those around you. This book shows you how in a surprisingly easy to digest form. And, of course, it includes things like emailing and social media and other things that did not exist when Mr. Carnegie was flourishing. If Dilenschneider were not so busy consulting and writing, perhaps he could start his own course.

Stephen W. Hiemstra. Image and Illumination. T2Pneuma, 2023.

Image and Illumination is a profound book. I was recently given this book to read and am already starting to reread it. I am a wide reader and used to work in a Christian bookstore, but I have never come across a book quite like this.

The book basically and simply discusses what it means to be created in the image of God. He tells us:

Probably the most inconvenient verse in the Bible is this: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27) (91)

The “inconvenience” of this verse is that we are meant to be “joined with our spouses to accomplish God’s mission.” God Himself is triune, Father, Son, and Spirit. His nature is that like a loving family. So the family is God’s main instrument on earth for carrying on His mission and fulfilling His covenants.

So Dr. Hiemstra very slowly and deliberately takes us through the significance of what it means to bear the image of God. Obviously, since the Fall, that image has been marred, but as C. S. Lewis reminds us, every human being is an eternal being. That means both a blessing and a responsibility.

A recurring theme is what Hiemstra calls the Deuteronomic Cycle. We are reminded that whenever man tries to create an accomplishment outside of God, it eventually will wane. Our world is presently faced with many utopian schemes. They are bound to fail if they do not acknowledge what God says about the nature of mankind.

Moses anticipated the course of human development in Deuteronomy 30:1-3. You (plural) will sin; be enslaved; and cry out to the Lord. God will send you a deliverer and restore your fortunes…This pattern, called the Deuteronomic Cycle, outlines biblical history and with it the rise and fall of nations. (105, emphasis in original)

So Illumination, the second part of the book’s title, begins with the discussion of light. The first thing God created when He was creating the universe was light.

What is God’s first act of creation after creating the heavens and the earth? The Bible reads: “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.” (Gen. 1:3) Then, God declares the light to be good. Goodness and light are equated as God begins by creating a moral universe. (111)

So there is “a moral mandate even before human beings are created.” Interestingly, the book notes that after God created humans, God said things were not merely good but “very good” (Genesis 1:31).

Now, since the Fall, God’s main mission, if you will, is one of restoration.

Faith matters; right now it matters a lot because God in his mercy delivers on a familiar promise: “A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.” (Ps. 91:7) At this point in time, lost opportunities are a pattern. Life expectancy in the United States is falling due to preventable causes—suicide, drug overdoes, and refusing to be vaccinated. Fertility rates and living standards are also falling, all indicators of a society under stress and underperforming. (133)

So the book is a study of what it means to be a human being, created as a moral being in the image of God. What can we learn from history? What can we learn from God’s Word? How do we see ourselves? Part of understanding the meaning of life is understanding who we are.

Image and Illumination is formatted almost like a devotional book. The chapters are fairly short, usually under ten pages. At the end there is a prayer to pray or at least to meditate upon. Then there are a few, usually four, questions to consider.

It is clear Hiemstra wants us to think. That is why I am rereading this book.

There is so much. Yes, there is the Deuteronomic Cycle, but there is also the image of God. That means relationships. So, yes, while some of the book is about how we relate to God and how God relates to us, much is about how we relate to other people, beginning with the family.

Being created with our spouse in the image of a Triune God, who is in relationship even within himself, suggests that our own identity is revealed in relationship. (170)

The ideal relationship would be that of a husband and wife. But he does not slight those who are single, even using the example of Catholic priests and nuns. They, he notes, are ideally bringing a heavenly lifestyle to earth since in heaven people will not be married to each other (see Matthew 22:30) but are part of the Bride of Christ (see, for example, Revelation 19:7-8).

God continues to test us to see ourselves the way He sees us. Hiemstra uses the example of Moses quite a bit, perhaps because more is written in the Bible about him than any other person apart from Jesus. Moses committed murder because he wanted to free his people. That clearly was not God’s way, so Moses spent forty years in exile. Finally, after being a shepherd on the edge of the desert in Midian, God called him.

God first created in Moses a desire to free his people from bondage and then God called Moses to honor that desire. While the burning bush served as a Rorschach test, it did not project Moses’ attributes on God. Rather, God used the burning bush to teach Moses about himself, laying bare Moses’ own desires. (184)

Now the people of God under Moses had much to learn. “The forty year curse incident (Num. 14:34) demonstrated the power of fear to hold back those unwilling to trust in God’s promises” (201).

Yes, one may argue that in the New Covenant under Christ, we live by grace. But it was God’s grace that delivered the Israelites from Egypt.

Christians live under grace, but those resisting God remain subject exclusively to law. Even for Christians, the temptations of secular society are real, ever present, and hard to resist. But we have the image of Christ given in scripture to guide us during trials and tribulations when we have no alternative but to rely on God. (205)

There is so much more. One simple example is the author’s take on the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32).

In the parable, the younger son thinks only of himself asking for his inheritance and leaving home for a faraway country where he squanders it. What is unique about this story is that suffering that the young man goes through draws attention to his sin and allows him to see the error of his ways. He grows up and learns to love his father. Unlike Moses’ Deuteronomic Cycle, the cycle of sin is broken and his life transformed. (258)

The book points out that the father did not try to dissuade the son. The son had to learn on his own. Indeed, “The difference between the two brothers arose because the younger son proved teachable and his older sibling proved unwilling to learn” (1994).

Hiemstra is writing from much study and experience. He freely uses the Bible. He also refers to many Christian authors including Aquinas, Augustine, Calvin, Luther, as well as a number of contemporary authors. He served as a counselor or chaplain for hospitals and street ministries, so he got to see people in all kinds of situations, many down-and-outers. He sees the need for transformation, not only for the drug addicts and street people, but for the many of us who tend to look down on them, like the older brother in the Prodigal Parable.

At the same time, he is direct and clear. What God calls sin is sin. Part of the transformation is turning away from sin, even sin that may be acclaimed by some as liberating. He takes the casting out of demons seriously, not mere “first-century psychology.” It gets back to the question of light and darkness.

He also deals with the question of establishing righteousness “to be proved righteous and blameless under the law.”

You hear a variation on this pharisaic argument today when people reject the applicability of original sin and argue that people are basically good. The implication is that we have no reason to ask for forgiveness and, by inference, we have no need for Jesus to have died for our sins. (326)

Much then involves the idea of restoration. Yes, the Prodigal Son was restored to his father. How then do we restore the image of God in our lives?

Restoring the image in which God created us requires that the original sin that tarnished the divine image in us must be accounted for and overcome. The cycle of sin and death must be overcome because human progress is fleeting. It is not enough to condemn the sin or to console the brokenhearted because our hearts need to be transformed. Divine intervention is required because we cannot do it on our own. This is why Christ needed to pay the penalty for sin on the cross and we need the intervention of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives. (351)

I could go on quoting the book to demonstrate how realistic and honest and clear it is. Read it for yourselves. You will be glad you did—or perhaps you will be offended. Either way, it will be worth it.

N.B.: Citations are Kindle locations, not page numbers.

M. C. Beaton and R. W. Green. Death of a Traitor. Read by Graeme Malcolm, Hachette Audio, 2023. A Hamish Macbeth Mystery.

We have enjoyed and reviewed several Hamish Macbeth mysteries. This one, Death of a Traitor, we listened to on CD. The reader’s smooth accent and varied voices helped make the tale come alive. It has many of the elements that have made these mysteries popular: Hamish’s fluster over women, suspicious outsiders, hostile insiders, Hamish’s pets, and some exciting action.

The mystery this time is quite complicated. Kate Hibbert, the outsider, has lived in Lochdubh, Macbeth’s remote Scottish village, for about a year. She does occasional housekeeping and odd jobs for people, but for reasons that become clear only during the investigation of her murder, she has rubbed a number of people the wrong way. At one point even MI5 comes into play.

She disappears with her suitcase. Her only relative, a cousin from down south, files a missing person report after a few days. The cousin, one of several attractive females in this story, is concerned because Kate is a silent partner in her up and coming fashion business. Kate has promised to invest half a million pounds. Where does a transient who does mostly odd jobs get that kind of money?

After missing for three weeks, Kate’s body washes ashore on a small island in the loch. The locals associate the island with a medieval tale (which begins the story) about a woman who commits suicide after being accused of witchcraft. A couple of researchers examining the flora of the island discover the body. While Kate was last seen wearing the coat on the body, her face and limbs are disfigured beyond recognition—a combination of three weeks in the water with various crabs and fish and of the apparent tortures she endured before being killed. It requires dental records to insure the identity.

Some of the regulars in the Hamish stories help to complicate things. Inspector Blair, as usual, is trying to make Hamish look bad and take credit for himself. Hamish’s friend, Inspector Anderson, was taken off the case because he drove a car while drunk and is laid up in the hospital recovering from broken bones and other injuries. As a result, Chief Inspector Daviot, who holds an ambivalent opinion of Hamish, supervises things more closely than usual.

Without giving away too much of the story, Hamish learns that nearly everyone Kate worked for or knew her had a reason to dislike her. The title suggests a general reason, that she betrayed people’s trust. Let us just say it is much more than mere gossip. Many people had a reason to see her gone. There is a kind of refrain in the story: I am glad she’s dead, but I did not do it. Curiously, one document found near her body contains the encrypted names of Daviot, Anderson, and Blair. What exactly is going on?

Hamish himself has some trust issues. He is assigned a new constable for this case by Blair. So, he wonders, can he trust this young recruit or is he spying for Blair? Jimmy Anderson swears by him, tells Macbeth that the young man is his godson, that his father was a distinguished police officer, and that he can be trusted. The new constable adds some humorous relief as he gets distracted and perhaps smitten by several of the women they encounter on the case including Kate’s fashionable cousin and Hamish’s former fiancée Priscilla.

Priscilla’s father, a minor nobleman, never forgave Hamish for being engaged to his daughter. He saw Hamish as beneath their status, and now his daughter is acting friendly towards another policeman. Let us just say that he keeps a very close watch on the two of them to a humorous effect.

Green’s preface to the first Hamish Macbeth mystery that he completed after the death of Mrs. Beaton, the author, made it sound like that Death of a Green-Eyed Monster was going to wrap up the series and that Mr. Green merely fleshed out what Beaton had already started. The ending of that book seemed to tie up a lot of loose ends. Clearly, there was at least one more book. And the preface to this one makes no suggestion that we have heard the last of Sergeant Macbeth.

Barry Jackier. God’s Covenants with Mankind. Word and Spirit, 2023.

God’s Covenants with Mankind—the title sums it up. This is a book enumerating and describing the covenants God the Creator established with His people. There are six in the Hebrew Scriptures, and, of course, the New Covenant in the New Testament. (Testament is an older word for covenant.)

Jackier focuses a lot on the first covenant, the covenant with Adam. In a sense, there are two parts to it, before and after the transgression. Before the Fall, Adam was told to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the earth. Sadly, the Fall meant Adam surrendered the dominion to the devil. But after, God in a sense ratified His covenant with Adam and Eve by killing an animal to clothe them and making a promise that the seed of woman would crush the serpent’s head.

He notes, correctly, that the warning God gave about eating the forbidden fruit was literally, “In dying you shall die.” That suggests a state or condition, not an instant poisoning as we might imagine today. Our ancestors now had a sin nature which would be passed on to the rest of us. He notes, as others have, we do not become sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners by nature.

So God’s first promise of redemption from that sin nature was given to Eve. Because of the cutting of the animal, it was in the form of a covenant. (The Hebrew word for covenant, b’rith, simply means “cutting.”)

The second covenant God made was with Noah. That covered a few things: that God would not flood the earth again, that mankind could eat animal flesh but not the blood, and, most importantly, “seedtime and harvest” would remain as long as the earth remained. In other words, people could trust that the seasons would continue so that they could plan their lives and their sustenance around them.

The third covenant was arguably the most important of all the Old Testament covenants, the covenant with Abraham. This covenant is given in detail and covers at least three chapters of the Book of Genesis. In his explanation, Jackier makes an interesting observation. God deliberately limited Himself by His Word. Because of what he had established at the beginning and even with Noah, He could not continue His plan of redemption until He found a man of faith, someone who would take God at His Word in spite of what it might mean to him personally. He found that person in Abraham.

So the Adamic covenant was one of multiplication. The Noahic covenant was one of seedtime and harvest. The Abrahamic covenant was one of faith. We see with Enoch, with Noah, and especially with Abraham, that faith in God brings God’s righteousness to the believer. Any righteous acts follow. The covenant with Abraham was intimate. God told Abraham His plans for Sodom. Abraham was willing to give up his only legitimate son. They could trust each other. Yes, we read that Abraham still sinned, but his righteousness was based on faith, not on his good works, though he had plenty of those, too.

The next covenant may be the most dramatic, the covenant with Moses. The Mosaic covenant manifested God’s glory. It was this covenant that established the formal sacrificial system with the Tabernacle or Tent of Meeting. God demonstrated by His miracles that He was indeed superior to the gods of the nations, including Egypt, which was the most advanced civilization at the time. He established the Law, which was more specific about proper behavior and which provided order to the newly-formed nation of Israel. Both the glory and the Tabernacle system pointed to God’s ultimate plan of redemption in the New Covenant.

Jackier also notes that what distinguished Moses himself was that he was concerned and focused on God’s reputation. He saw and understood what God was like, and wanted to be sure that others understood. This was why he sometimes got angry. The incident with the golden calf, for example, only happened about two months after the crossing of the Red Sea. Had the people forgotten so quickly? When God said that He was frustrated and was thinking of starting over with Moses as a kind of new Abraham to begin a new chosen people, Moses reminded God of what the other nations would think if the God of Israel had His people miraculously escape only to die in the desert.

Next is the covenant of David. God promised David that an ancestor of his would be the world’s savior. This was more specific than even the promise to Abraham. David’s covenant involved a number of things, but its main emphasis was praise. David established his tabernacle, not as a place of sacrifice, but as a place of praise. David, of course, wrote many of the Psalms. We are told that he had a heart after God.

The sixth and last covenant was that with Solomon. Solomon built the Temple, the place of “God’s permanent abode on earth.” Solomon’s name means “man of peace.” His rule was largely peaceful and perhaps in a minor way illustrated God’s heavenly city, a habitation of peace for God’s people. But more importantly, “Jesus, the Messiah, David’s greater son, called the Prince of Peace, built God’s eternal habitation, the Church” (1495).

Jackier sums up the New Covenant, the seventh and final Scriptural covenant of God:

Jesus had the dominion originally given to Adam; He practiced the law of seedtime and harvest as given to Noah; He lived in and relied completely on faith, as was shown Abraham; He fulfilled the law and declared God’s glory, as was demonstrated through Moses; He lived a life of continual praise, as David’s greater Son; and He created a habitation for the people of God, as did Solomon. (1500)

Ultimately, of course, “The chief aim is to say, along with the apostle Paul, that Jesus came to save sinners” (1507).

God’s Covenants with Mankind, then goes into detail about Jesus’ sacrifice; and not just a sacrifice but a legal punishment as a result of sanctions for mankind breaking the various covenants. God ultimately established the New Covenant, not with symbolic substitutes, but with Himself.

This review is a mere overview of what this book offers. It really is a summary of God’s plan for history and gives us great insight into the nature of God Himself. Unlike, say, Trumbull’s The Blood Covenant, it focuses on the Bible’s story (or, as some like to say today, the Bible’s metanarrative).

Jackier does espouse the so-called Gap Theory, that there is a time gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, that God created the earth and earlier beings led by the devil destroyed it. He notes that the King James Version of Genesis 1:28 which uses the word replenish. However, the original Hebrew is better translated fill, not refill. The word replenish had a little different meaning in 1611 than it does today. Other than these minor quibbles, which honest Christians do discuss and recognize, this book has much to share. Like Moses, it does glorify God. Jackier is a true son of Moses.

N.B.: Citations are Kindle locations, not page numbers.

Tyler Kepner. The Grandest Stage. Doubleday, 2022.

The Grandest Stage is subtitled A History of the World Series. I suppose there is a certain irony or appropriateness that it is published by Doubleday.

The Grandest Stage will fascinate any reader interested in baseball. It is divided into seven chapters—like the best of seven format of the World Series. Each chapter is thematic rather than chronological. It
is not a historical overview: “In 1903 the first interleague baseball championship featured the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Pilgrims, later renamed the Red Sox.” No, not that. Instead, each chapter focuses on a different theme.

Kepner has been a sports reporter for various publication including the New York Times for over twenty years. Much of what he shares is from interviews with players, coaches, managers, and team officials—both from his own interviews and those from others. For example, he occasionally quotes from The Glory of Their Times, the well known baseball oral history of the early years major league.

Chapter One, for example, is about how players, coaches, and managers learn to handle the pressure of being in the World Series. It begins, perhaps for obvious reasons to baseball fans, with a discussion of Reggie Jackson. Some players like Jackson, a.k.a. Mr. October, handled the pressure just fine, thank you. Others, not so much. Quotations from a variety of people give us a sense of what it was like. The solution which seemed to work for many was simply to treat the Series like any other game.

Chapter Two is a record of overlooked plays and events in well-known World Series games. One example resonated with me because as a boy I attended the seventh game of the 1960 World Series between the Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Yankees. Yes, it has rightly gone down in history as a famous back-and-forth battle decided by a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning by Bill Mazeroski. What is often overlooked was the three-run homer the inning before by Hal Smith which put the Pirates ahead of the Yankees. Kepner notes that by modern sabermetric standards, before that two-out home run, the Pirates had a thirty percent chance of winning the game. Afterwards, they had a ninety-three percent chance. Of course, the Yankees tied the game in their half of the ninth, so that set the stage for Maz’s blast.

It also explains in some detail why the Cincinnati Reds were the better team in the 1919 World Series and probably would have won it anyway apart from the Black Sox scandal. Other interesting notes include about the unusual event that set the table for Kirk Gibson’s famous homer in the 1988 World Series or the possible strategic pitching change that happened before Joe Carter’s walk-off in game six of the 1993 World Series.

Other observations include, yes, the Cardinals got a bad umpire call in the 1985 World Series against the Royals, but “the Cardinals deserved to lose” (66). Later in the book, Kepner tells the story that Royals’ starter Mark Gubicza never got to play in that World Series though he had won the deciding game in the ALCS. When his manager apologized for that, he told him that he did not care because they won the championship. Gracious.

Chapter Three tells of unlikely World Series heroes like Del Unser of the 1980 Phillies who had been called out of retirement from baseball for the season and was basically a pinch hitter and utility player for the team. All he did in the World Series was hit three home runs in three consecutive at-bats pinch hitting. There is also an interesting discussion on Bill Wambsganss who achieved a World Series feat that has never been equaled—an unassisted triple play. (There have only been fifteen in the entire history of the Major Leagues).

Chapter Four sets the tone for much of the rest of the book. It is a chapter on managing the World Series. Sometimes the managers are goats—and I do not mean GOATs. Sometimes they are the heroes. While it is likely that 1960 would be Casey Stengel’s last year managing the Yankees, his decision not to start Whitey Ford in the first game, thus making him available for games 4 and 7, would haunt him. (For what it is worth, I wrote a poem about why Red Sox manager Grady Little did not replace Pedro Martinez in game seven of the 2003 ALCS.) Terry Francona, who has managed both Boston and Cleveland in the World Series, said simply, “If you win, you’re smart; if you lose, you’re dumb” (119).

One weird thing to me in this chapter was an alleged quotation from Casey Stengel saying that he chose the pitchers he did because Pittsburgh had a small park. That is absolutely not true. Center field was 457 feet. They kept the batting practice batting cage on the field in center because hardly anyone ever hit balls that far. The shorter left field had a tall scoreboard and right field had a large screen in front of the stands. It was hardly a band box.

Chapter Five also speaks of a different kind of strategy. It is a overview of how front offices build or attempt to build a World Series winning team. Baseball is unique among professional sports because of its long season of 154 or 162 games. To reach the playoffs requires one kind of approach, much of it having to do with endurance and cohesion. The postseason is basically a tournament which has to do more with players getting hot at the right time. In other words, Kepner would say, luck. Often trades made during the season especially near the August trade deadline can make a difference. Again, using many examples and quotations from many sources, readers get a sense of how the World Series team sausage is made.

Chapter Six is titled “It Wasn’t Your Fault, Kid.” It takes a look the ignominy associated with certain plays or player in the World Series. Probably the classic example is Giant outfielder Fred Snodgrass who dropped a ball in the tenth inning of the last game of the 1912 World Series against Boston, allowing the Red Sox to win. Even though he had made a spectacular score-saving catch earlier in the game, he was never forgotten for dropping the ball in the tenth. I can honestly say as a baseball fan, that that is all I ever knew about Snodgrass.

Some players can overcome mistakes. We read about Oakland’s Dennis Eckersley, who served up Dodger Kirk Gibson’s home run in the 1988 World Series. Eckersley had a distinguished career and is in the Hall of Fame. He is able to look back with some good humor about it. In game four of the 2018 World Series at Los Angeles, Eckersley threw out the ceremonial first pitch to Gibson.

Chapter Seven may be one that will generate the most discussion. It is a chapter of interesting and probably controversial lists. One especially stands out: who Kepner believes would have received the Most Valuable Player award for the World Series before 1955 when the prize was instituted. Another one was MVP mistakes, that is, who should have gotten the award instead of the person who did.

There is one that I have noticed before, and Kepner noticed the same thing. The 1960 World Series MVP was Bobby Richardson, a player for the Yankees, the team that lost. As a ten year old, that is when I learned about coastal, especially New York, media bias. I thought it was even brave of Kepner to say that since he writes for the New York Times. He also notes that while Richardson did break a record for the most hits in a series, he made most of those hits in the three Yankee blowouts (16-3, 10-0, and 12-0) when the whole team was hitting.

He also puts together two World Series all-time all-star teams. Why two? The Yankees have been in so many series (forty in all) that he made one list of Yankees and one list of non-Yankees. This includes players who have played in the World Series, so, yes, it does not include Hall of Famers who never made it to the Big Dance. His player choices focus on the postseason. He chose Roberto Clemente as a starter and Hank Aaron as a backup, for example. Clemente was a better fielder and his World Series record was better, even though Aaron held (some would say still holds) the all-time home run record.

Even just from these examples, readers can see how this book could lead to many interesting discussions. More than most baseball books, it also takes a close look at strategies, including in game decisions of the moment, pitching decisions, decisions about who starts, as well as decisions by the front offices in putting teams together, and yes, even umpiring decisions. This is a thinking fan’s book.

One criticism is that the copy I received the pages listed in the detailed index do not correspond to the pages in the book. If this goes into a second edition, hopefully that problem will be corrected.

Jeffrey Perso. Water Bodies. Black Rose Writing, 2019.

“Violence is different in small towns…” (42)

Water Bodies is weird and wacky. Some readers, especially those from the Mississippi River Valley, may find it hilarious. Others may scratch their heads.

Water Bodies is a novel. That is, it is a fictional prose narrative. However, the plot is secondary to the setting and character sketches that make up the bulk of the story. We are introduced to a small city on the banks of the Mississippi in Wisconsin, across the river from Minnesota. It is not too far from Lake Onalaska.

The narrator, one Professor John Voltaire, has returned to his hometown of L after many years of being away—and, we the get the sense, not really relishing the return. Like some nineteenth century novels, the dates and town name are not filled in; for example the story takes place in May___. However, we are aware that the letter L, especially when pronounced in certain dialects, sounds like hell. That could be where we are.

Instead of the five classical rivers traversing the Underworld, there is one, the mighty Mississippi. But since Dr. Voltaire has returned, there have been many unfortunate accidents, most somehow involving the river. Readers soon lose track of the body count. The deaths include picnickers, drunks, partiers, students from the nearby college, boaters, swimmers, suicides. The means include assaults, accidents, miscalculations, murders, and simple stupidity.

In the course of the novel we are given sketches of many of the people and institutions: the bars, the churches, the gangs, the politicians, the law officers, the lawyers, the fishermen, the civil engineers, among others. L sounds like a decaying city, perhaps like Empire Falls expressed with a lot more hyperbole. The population seems largely made up of hypocrites.

The deaths appear to be caused by an unspecified miasma or pestilence or river monster or random fate. Since some recent graffiti in town has smiley faces and similar images, law enforcement begins to think there is a mass murderer out there who is leaving these images. People start referring to the Emoticon Killer.

Among chapters of such descriptions and wild speculations, we learn that Prof. Voltaire has returned to help settle the family legacy. His mother is dead and his father has been confined for many years to a mental institution. His brother and sister still live in the family homestead. The sister Lara wants to sell the house; the brother Cristo does not. John returns because all three have to agree on whatever the disposal of the estate will be.

Lara has been married four times and is single again. Cristo has never married and considers himself an artist and writer. He mostly wanders the town with a shopping cart collecting cast off items in alleys to use for his art or to describe in his writing. The opus he is working on will supposedly solve the problem of fate versus free will.

All three siblings were affected by the death of their parents. The mother was hanged and the father shot point-blank in an apparent murder-suicide attempt, except that no one could determine who initiated the crime. The father survived the wound to the head, but it affected his mental capacity, hence his institutionalization.

So it goes on. Cristo takes John on a tour of the town’s seedy places as a Virgil to John’s Dante in this modern Inferno. No one is pleasant or comes across positively. It is a satire not unlike Dante’s, except (one hopes) that all the characters are fictional.

While the tale tends towards the gonzo style, there are literary allusions. The story begins with an epigram from The Waste Land quoting Wagner. One of the family names in L is Sosotris, like the fortuneteller in the Eliot poem. London was the center of Eliot’s wasteland. L is Perso’s. One of the characters happens to quote from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

The ending suggests—perhaps—there is another river, more inviting than the deadly, ravenous Mississippi. Perhaps there is a Paradiso somewhere? I was reminded a bit of the ending of Fahrenheit 451 as well as the ending of the Book of Revelation. After all the disasters, plagues, and curses of John’s Apocalypse, including such things as the sea turning blood-red and waters infected by wormwood, it ends with a far different image:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed… (Revelation 22:1-3)

Water Bodies (which reminds us, by the way, that the human body is about 60% water) might not be for everyone. It does contain some ribald and scatological humor, but it is a wild entertainment with an intellectual current propelling it along.