RED LETTER REVOLUTION: WHAT IF JESUS REALLY MEANT WHAT HE SAID? by Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo

 

Published in 2012 by Thomas Nelson.

Very simply put, the two authors are advocates of Christians focusing their attention of the Red Letter verses in the Bible and endeavoring to live their lives by those verses. If you are not familiar, since 1899 some publishers have decided to print the words of Jesus in red ink. Claiborne and Campolo have decided to take those words very seriously - Jesus is the model of how they try to live. 

This emphasis on the Red Letters means that their version of Christianity has a lot of emphasis on verses like Matthew 25: 31-46:

31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. 41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: 42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: 43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. (King James Version)

When texts like this one become your guiding model, there is more emphasis on action. They are clear that the action is not what brings salvation - as Campolo says on page 11, "Being saved is trusting what Christ did for us, but being Christian is dependent on the way we respond to what he did for us." On page 17 he notes that this will always be a constant work in progress: "I'm promoting this movement, but to what extent am I actually living out those red letters? My only defense is that I'm not as unfaithful today as I was yesterday."

The authors, Claiborne (left) and Campolo (right)

The balance of the book consists of 26 dialogues between Campolo and Claiborne about three broad topics: Red Letter Theology, Red Letter Living, and Red Letter World. Topics include: On Community, On Hell, On Family, On Racism, On Being Pro-Life, On Civil Disobedience, On Politics, On War and Violence, On Reconciliation, and more.

I mostly found this book to be interesting. I was not interested in every topic of dialogue, but the discussions are all fairly short. The book was hurt by the fact that it was published in 2012 and that means it completely misses the personality that has warped the political and (often) the religious world around himself since 2015: Donald Trump. Some of the discussions simply seemed dated because there was no discussion of Trump or the MAGA movement.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: RED LETTER REVOLUTION: WHAT IF JESUS REALLY MEANT WHAT HE SAID? by Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo.

AMERICAN REBOOT: AN IDEALIST'S GUIDE TO GETTING BIG THINGS DONE (audiobook) by Will Hurd

 

Published in March of 2022 by Simon and Schuster Audio.
Read by the author, Will Hurd.

Duration: 8 hours, 47 minutes.
Unabridged.

Will Hurd has done a lot of things in his 45 years. He has been an operations analyst for the CIA (working in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan), he was worked in high-tech (including cyber-security and artificial intelligence), has served 6 years as a member of the House of Representatives from Texas, and is now a Republican candidate for President in 2024.

This book was undoubtedly an attempt to introduce Will Hurd to a larger audience. I follow politics pretty well and I had never heard of Will Hurd until he announced his campaign for President in June of 2023 (to be fair, there are 535 members of Congress and most are not well known outside of their districts.) I heard about this book in a political podcast and, lo and behold, it turns out that my library had it.

Just to let you know where I am coming from as I review this book, I am a Never Trump Republican and have been since 2015. I am anti-MAGA. Hurd got my attention because he says a lot of the same things.

That being said, his audiobook was a mixed bag for me. It has real moments of clarity and inspiration but it also has sections that are kind of boring (discussions of old political fights and debates, for example.) I am going to end up giving the book 3 stars our of 5 because it was not a bad listen, but also not an amazing listen.

What it all comes down to is this - while this is not the most exciting book, listening to him speak about a wide variety of topics for almost 9 hours did help me decide to look into Will Hurd more seriously (

The author. I freely admit that I 
stole this picture from
 his campaign website.

here is his campaign website) and at this time he is my choice in the GOP primary. What does that mean? Probably nothing - I was a Ted Cruz man in 2015 and I've been nothing but disappointed in him since 2016. But, it's good to know that I have an option in the Republican Party after feeling 100% left out since the summer of 2016.

The book demonstrated that you can have Conservative principles and not be MAGA in today's GOP. You can argue and not be unpleasant and demeaning. You can argue and learn new things and change your mind. You can have friends in the other party because they're not evil - they just see the world differently than you. Also, you don't have to participate in the culture wars to win. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: AMERICAN REBOOT: AN IDEALIST'S GUIDE TO GETTING BIG THINGS DONE by Will Hurd.

BOMBS AWAY (audiobook) by John Steinbeck

 

Originally published in 1942.
Published in 2016 by Penguin Audio.
Read by Scott Aiello.
Duration: 4 hours, 36 minutes.
Unabridged.

1942 was a rough year for America in World War II, especially in the early months. The Pacific Fleet was devastated and American troops were barely involved in the European Theater.

As part of a total war effort, every resource had to be tapped, including pulling in famous authors like John Steinbeck to write books that assured the American public that the Army Air Corps/Air Force (he uses both terms interchangeably) had a plan, was implementing the plan, and it was going to be a successful plan. 

Steinbeck was a bold choice to write what is basically a piece of American propaganda. His novels Of Mice and Men and Grapes of Wrath caused quite an uproar just a few years earlier with their criticism of the American capitalism. I think the reasoning was that if Steinbeck approves of what the Army Air Corps/Air Force was doing, it must be okay.

A B-17 (left) and a B-24 (right)

Steinbeck starts with an overview of the history of airplanes in the U.S. military. Then, he looks at 2 kinds of bombers - the B-17 and the B-24 and discusses the jobs of the men that flew those planes. Finally, he looks at a pretend recruit class and follows a crew through their individual training. Finally, he puts them all together in a plane and the reader gets to see them finish their training. The book ends with the crew on the runway. The crew opens their orders to an undisclosed location, the navigator lays in a course and they fly off to join the fighting.

Generally speaking, this book does not feel like a Steinbeck book. It spends a lot of time talking about the unique characteristics of America and Americans that will help them win the war. It has an element of truth, of course, but it also is very, very obvious.

The book does have the Steinbeck characteristic of being about regular people. There are few high level officers in the book and they have few lines. There are no big shots - no quotes from FDR, not sweeping pronouncements from MacArthur. Just young men from regular, almost boring, places being trained to go off and do extraordinary things.

I cannot say that this was a good book. It's too obvious and doesn't really have a plot. But, it is an outstanding record of how America trained its bomber crews in a palatable form. 

I rate this audibook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Bomb's Away by John Steinbeck.

THE BIG BREAK: THE GAMBLERS, PARTY ANIMALS, and TRUE BELIEVERS TRYING to WIN in WASHINGTON WHILE AMERICA LOSES ITS MIND (audiobook) by Ben Terris

 

Published in June of 2023 by Twelve.
Read by Tim Andres Pabon.
Duration: 9 hours, 32 minutes.
Unabridged.

Ben Terris offers up a collection of stories about a few of the people that casual political observers have never heard of. I regularly watch the Sunday morning political shows and listen to political podcasts and I'd only heard of 4 of the people featured in this book, and only 1 of them by name. 

That, of course, is the point of the book - a look at the movers and shakers below the obvious level of movers and shakers. Some move and shake a whole lot in the world of Washington politics, some barely do any moving at all, and some used to move and shake a whole lot but now have been sidelined by scandal.

Terris looks at people like Matt Schlapp, who is the head of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) - the travelling roadshow of right wing politics. Schlapp is an example of a hyper-connected mover and shaker in the book. But, he also looks at people with less influence like a person that runs a website for staff members on Capitol Hill who want to complain about pay and working hours, members of Congress that fart during staff meetings and some that are a little too grabby with the help.

Some of these are compelling stories, some are not. For example, I was not particularly impressed with one of the stories that he started with - a young, idealistic staff member who thought he would make a profound political statement by resigning and then sneaking back into his boss's office (Diane Feinstein) at night and smoking a joint in her chair while recording himself on video. I thought this was a fairly pathetic attempt at protest and I felt pity this young former staffer rather than being impressed by his actions.

The only person that I knew by name was Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and advisor. Luntsz's specialty is coming up with more politically advantageous wording. He is credited with coming up with the renaming of the estate tax as the "death tax" and global warming as "climate change." Luntz used to do a lot on work on TV on CBS and Fox discussing his polls.

The first part of the book was okay (3 stars), the middle part drug a bit (2 stars) and the last part was pretty good (4 stars.) Do all of the math and that makes it a 3 star book for me.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE BIG BREAK: THE GAMBLERS, PARTY ANIMALS, and TRUE BELIEVERS TRYING to WIN in WASHINGTON WHILE AMERICA LOSES ITS MIND by Ben Terris.

AN ABUNDANCE of KATHERINES (audiobook) by John Green

 

Originally published in 2006.
Published by Listening Library in 2019.
Read by Jeff Woodman.
Duration: 6 hours, 47 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Colin Singleton is a child prodigy who has recently stopped being a child. He has graduated from high school, is preparing to go to a great college but he is unsettled by a couple of things.

Number one: being a child prodigy means that you are potentially an important adult. Colin is aware that it is now time for potential to turn into something - anything - meaningful.

Number two: Colin just got dumped - again. He has dated 19 different girls and all are named Katherine. Technically it is 18 different girls because Katherine 1 is also Katherine 19, but the point is pretty much the same.

So, Colin is wallowing in self-pity when his best friend, a slacker named Hassan, comes to him and suggests that they need to go on a road trip. They head south through Indiana and eventually end up in Gutshot, Tennessee where Colin meets a girl named Lindsey who has only dated a boy named Colin...

My Review:

Despite the 3 star review, I thought this book has several good quotes.

This is a fair to middling audiobook. For the first half of the audiobook, I would have rated it 2 stars out of 5. I kept on listening because I am a fan of John Green (both his books and him generally) and he and I have both adopted the same city as our hometown. 

As the book went on, I bumped it up to a weak 3 stars because it did get better. By the way, I am very aware of the irony of reviewing a John Green book on a 5 star scale considering how much that Green hates assigning stars to things in reviews (check out his excellent collection of essays The Anthropocene Reviewed for more info.)

Part of the problem with this book was the reader Jeff Woodman. He has a perfectly pleasant reading voice and is very clear but - whatever "it" is, he didn't have "it" in my opinion. By the way, this is the reason that Green hates the 5 star system - I am rating the reader based on something that I can't define. We all do this, though. You hear two different bands play the same song and one has "it" and one clearly doesn't. In this case, I may very well have liked the book a little better with a different reader.

My other complaint about this book is Colin's insistence on trying to create a mathematical formula to figure out who is going to dump who in a relationship. I get that only a kid would try to do such a thing, but there were so many tedious scenes describing the development of the formula and discussions of the formula that I got sick of hearing about it. At one point, I thought that Colin had accidentally shot the notebook with the formula with a shotgun and I was so happy to be done with it all. I think it was a convenient thing for Green to use to occupy Colin's time - a sponge to suck up his time while other things were going on. Character A does this, Character B does that and Colin goes into the other room and works on his formula for 3 hours. 

So, while not a bad book, certainly not a great book. So far, I've read 5 of his books. 3 have 5 stars and 2 have 3 stars. That's a pretty good track record.

Update  - in November of 2023 it was announced that the  group Moms for Liberty challenged 300+ books in Florida. This book is one of them. See the entire list of books that the Moms want banished here.

I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: AN ABUNDANCE of KATHERINES by John Green.

THE GIRL from the SEA (graphic novel) (kindle) by Molly Knox Ostertag

 

Illustrated by the author.
Published in 2021 by Graphix.
Winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Comic/Graphic Novel (2022)

Synopsis:

Morgan Kwon's parents have recently divorced. 15 year old Morgan, her annoying little brother and her mom have moved away from the city to an island just off of mainland Canada.

Morgan seems to be doing pretty well. After all, she has a great group of friends. But, there are struggles. Her little brother has become extra annoying, she misses her dad and she can't wait to get off of this island and go to college and be her true self. 

You see, Morgan has a secret that she is afraid to share with anyone - she's gay and she's afraid her friends and family will reject her if they find out.

It all comes to a head when she meets a very cute girl while swimming one day. There is a more than a spark of romance, but it turns out that this new girl has a secret that dwarfs Morgan's secret!

My review:

This is an absolutely enjoyable coming-of-age story. The publisher recommends grade 7 and higher and I agree with that recommendation. The book has two main plots - Morgan's secret and the new girl's even bigger secret. But, it also has an environmental subplot, a strong family message and a tiny sweet subplot that is sort of hidden throughout. This book contains no nudity and nothing sexual beyond a few kisses.

I rate this graphic novel 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE GIRL from the SEA (graphic novel) (kindle) by Molly Knox Ostertag.

NOTE: I only heard of this book because it was listed in an article about a MAGA parent who is challenging 3,600 books in a county school district in Florida in an effort to, as he describes it, "overwhelm" their challenge procedures. The parent was particularly unhappy about The Girl from the Sea and is quite vocal about it.

MY NAME IS SALLY LITTLE SONG (audiobook) by Brenda Woods

 

Book edition originally published in 2006.
Audiobook published in 2019 by Listening Library.
Read by Asmeret Ghebremichael.
Duration: 3 hours, 0 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

This short piece of historical fiction focuses on a slave family in Georgia in the 1790s. The main character is Sally. She has a brother, a mother and a father. The one thing that this family has going for them is that their owners have a policy of not breaking apart families.

That is the policy until relatives of the owners find themselves struggling financially. In a couple of days, Sally and her brother and 3 other slaves are going to be sent to the other plantation to help it get back on its feet again. 

The family decides to run away together rather than be split apart.

After some discussion with a friendly house slave who has done some traveling with the family, they decide not to head north. They haven't seen a map but they know that the trip across northern Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Maryland to get to Pennsylvania is just too far.

However, rumor has it that if they can make it to Florida (at the time, Florida was owned by Spain), they would be welcome to live with the Seminoles...

My Review:

The author, Brenda Woods

This short book would be an excellent addition to any history classroom or school library. It has compelling characters, provides details but does not wallow in them, and is very honest about early American history from the point of view of slaves and Native Americans. 

There are a variety of characters and they don't all hit the stereotypes. For example, not all of the slaves are sympathetic characters. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: MY NAME IS SALLY LITTLE SONG by Brenda Woods.

Note: I reviewed this book because I read about it an article about Florida book bans in schools. I checked it out and this teacher doesn't find anything objectionable about this book. Here is a link to another article with a list of 176 books that were banned by a Florida county.