May Book Log

My May bookload was more about quality than quantity, as I took my time with several longer books and started another that could take me 6 months to finish...stay tuned for that review. Nevertheless, I read enough to give you six reviews: two books on discipleship, one presidential biography, one coffee table book about a pop culture phenomenon, one collection of Bronze Age comics, and a recent Marvel miniseries that is not to be missed. Enjoy the reviews and let me know what you're reading!

RENOVATION OF THE HEART: PUTTING ON THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST by Dallas Willard

"What would Jesus do?" is a question that sold a lot of bracelets in the 1990s and that has driven a lot of discussions about Christian ethics since the days of the apostles. Countless faithful believers approach each day with the intention of doing the things Jesus would do in a given situation, of changing their actions based on what the Bible says. They want to act like Jesus, and are frustrated when temptation then gets the better of them.

Enter Dallas Willard, who says that the issue is a fatal misunderstanding of discipleship: we are not called just to behave like Jesus, but to be like Jesus. What is needed is not just a change in behavior, but a renovation of the heart. A model of discipleship that begins by addressing one's actions, he says, puts the cart before the horse. The biblical discipleship model is one of spiritual formation, in which you are inwardly transformed by the grace of God in Jesus Christ and out of that inner renewal comes the change in behavior--you are able to do what Jesus would do not because you are imitating his behavior, but because your will, soul, mind, body, and spirit are aligned with Christ's purposes.

It's a relatively simple thesis, but one with profound implications for each Christian and for the church at large. For example, he states in the book's final pages that this understanding of discipleship means the church's primary goal should not be outreach but inreach, "making disciples" (as the Great Commission commands) of its members instead of making converts from outside, because when a church is dedicated to seeing its people truly transformed in Christ, outreach will happen through those people as a natural consequence instead of a willful strategy. My Baptist brain, raised on the all-important command to "go ye therefore" (Great Commission again) instinctively rebelled against the thought of outreach being secondary, but at least in theory, Willard's point makes sense, and I've been chewing on it ever since.

As for the book, I enjoyed it, but needed to read it in small portions (something I did not have the luxury of doing when I halfheartedly sped through it for a seminary class a few years ago). Willard comes from a philosophy background, and because of that and the focus of the book being on the inward self, much of the first half is heady, abstract stuff. But he finishes strong, tying it all together in a way that is practical, biblical, and meaningful. Renovation of the Heart falls somewhere between easy reading and academic reading on the difficulty scale, but is worth the time. Having read a bunch of Willard's works for the aforementioned seminary class, I'd say this ranks as my second-favorite of his books, behind The Divine Conspiracy--I'm glad I gave it a second, slower try, and would certainly recommend it to anyone interested in a deeper examination of discipleship.

BEYOND CONVERSION by Paul W. Powell

You're saved, but now what? That's the question the late Paul Powell, former dean of Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary, seeks to answer in this short book on discipleship. In twelve chapters, Powell addresses topics like worship, service, giving, and witnessing, all in the pursuit of explaining what the Christian life is supposed to look like. Most of all, he wants to remind people that Christ came not just to save people from death, but to give them life.

Each chapter reads like a sermon, offering several memorable points about the subject at hand and using both the evidence of Scripture and illustrative stories to make those points. As such, I opted to read this book slowly, one chapter per day, instead of breezing through it in one or two sittings--while it would be a pretty easy task to knock this book out in a couple of hours, you'll be rewarded for allowing each message to sit with you for a little while before moving to the next.

Contrasted with Renovation of the Heart, this is an easy read, written as much for the layperson as the preacher or scholar. Powell, perhaps best known for his contributions to academia, never comes across as an ivory tower elite, bearing instead the style and cadence of the country preacher he once was. He combines solid biblical interpretation with folksy stories and plain language, making his messages accessible to both the professor and the plumber.

I'd be lying if I said I learned anything new or revelatory from reading this--it's a pretty boilerplate treatise on discipleship. But Powell had a talent for condensing big ideas into concise, understandable messages, and never forsaking a biblical foundation in doing so. For me, this little book will make a valuable reference for my life's work and the mission of every Christian: making disciples.

DESTINY AND POWER: THE AMERICAN ODYSSEY OF GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH by Jon Meacham

Every president in my lifetime has seen his approval ratings climb in retirement, but none quite like George H.W. Bush, the only one of the bunch who had actually been voted out of office. When he left the presidency, Bush 41 was seen by many as an out-of-touch, old-fashioned wimp with no vision for the country. 25 years later, he is remembered as a statesman, more interested in governance than campaigning and with world peace than political gain. To quote the prologue of this book, "He embraced compromise as a necessary element of public life, engaged his political foes in the passage of important legislation, and was willing to break with the base of his own party in order to do what he thought was right, whatever the price. Quaint, yes: But it happened, in America, only a quarter of a century ago."

When this book was being written, its working title was "The Last Gentleman," and that serves as an effective summary of the portrayal Jon Meacham, author of the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Andrew Jackson, American Lion, offers of Bush in Destiny and Power. In Meacham's eyes, Bush 41 would have made an ideal 19th century president--patrician, qualified, an elite in every sense--but he had the bad fortune to hold office instead at the end of the 20th century, when Americans demanded a president not only be good at the job, but also be good at doing it on TV. George H.W. Bush was our last president from the duty-bound "Greatest Generation" that won World War II, and everything from his morality to his refusal to publicly show emotion to his dedication to public service showed it. He was the right man for the job; we just didn't know it back then.

I learned a lot about George H.W. Bush in reading this book, from the important (he was prepared to send troops to Iraq for Operation Desert Storm even if Congress had refused to authorize military action, thereby risking his own impeachment) to the trivial (he is a lifelong fan of country music, something D.C. elites always believed was just a put-on to appeal to his Republican base.) I was particularly struck by Bush's love for his family, from Barbara to the sons who followed him into national politics to his grandchildren to, most memorably, his daughter Robin, who died at age four of leukemia and who Bush still weeps when talking about. Upon reading the letter he wrote to his mother after Robin's death, I was right there with him.

In terms of the book's style, Meacham is an excellent writer who summarizes events with a historian's eye for detail but a storyteller's love of language, and he lets the primary sources do the heavy lifting (as evidenced by almost 200 pages of end notes) instead of drawing his interpretive conclusions out of whole cloth. I was never bored reading Destiny and Power, and left feeling like I had a good grasp of what makes Bush 41 tick, the sure sign of a job well done by a biographer. I would highly recommend this book to any friends who love history or politics. George H.W. Bush was underappreciated during his time--hopefully this biography of a qualified, cautious, fundamentally decent president will make us appreciate him in ours.

HAMILTON: THE REVOLUTION by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter

First, some background. When Hamilton: An American Musical started to really take off and it became hip among New Yorkers to brag about having seen it, I stubbornly decided I didn't want anything to do with it. Part of it was hipster insecurity (nobody wants to be late to a bandwagon), part of it was a Southern inferiority complex (after all, neither I nor anybody close to me was even capable of seeing Hamilton, since at the time it was only showing on Broadway), and part of it was simply my own backlash to the unrelenting hype it was receiving in the media. Whatever the reasons, I decided Hamilton must be overrated and that I was uninterested in it.

Then the Tonys came, and Hamilton won basically everything, as everyone knew it would. What's more, the cast performed one of the show's songs during the ceremony, meaning that the entire country was able to see, free of charge and for the first time, a peek of the show. When I got on YouTube the next morning and saw the clip of that performance on the homepage, my curiosity overpowered my cynicism and I watched the video. After it ended, I clicked one of the suggested links to a lyric video of a song from the cast album. When it was over, I clicked on another song. And then another. And then another. The next day I bought the cast album. Nothing else had played on my car's stereo system for the next 3 months.


More than a year later, I remain hooked on this incredible piece of art and convinced of its greatness. I've been wholly converted from Hamilton skeptic to Hamilton fanboy. When the touring Hamilton show comes to Dallas in 2018-2019, Lindsey and I will be there, having already bought our season tickets for the 2017-2018 season--the season before Hamilton arrives--just so we'll be guaranteed seats when we renew those season tickets the next year. So all that was really left to complete my turn from skeptic to fanatic was to buy and read Hamilton: The Revolution, a coffee table book lovingly nicknamed "the Hamiltome" by fans because of its size and scope. And surprise, surprise, I loved it.

The Hamiltome is the ideal coffee table book--large, colorful, and full of visuals, from photographs of the cast and crew in action to reproductions of historical paintings. I'm neither a photographer nor an expert at layouts, but I thought it was an attractive package.

As for the words, there are two features that were catnip to this Hamilton fan. The first is the complete script to Hamilton, with footnotes written by Lin-Manuel Miranda about the hip-hop influences behind certain songs and lyrics, stories of how he came up with them, historical minutia that didn't make it into the musical, and more. I found all of this fascinating, naturally. Second, there are 32 essays, roughly one per song, about the making of the musical and the people involved--the cast, crew, and producers, and the historical characters themselves. I started every morning in May reading one of these essays with a cup of coffee, and it was a reliably wonderful way to wake up.

If you already love Hamilton, you should buy this, or at least check it out from the library. It's fun, easy reading and will make you love the musical even more (not to mention fill in some gaps you weren't even aware existed in the show). If you don't care about Hamilton, then I've been there, I understand, but you need to listen to the cast album once before you dismiss it...it's a pop culture phenomenon for a reason, and right now you're missing out. I wouldn't read this book without having at least a passing familiarity with the musical though--it's a companion guide for fans, and it's just not going to mean much until you know the musical. So, you know, listen to the musical. I can testify that you won't regret it.

*One last note* If you were unfamiliar with Hamilton until the cast's eloquent but politically loaded speech to Vice President Mike Pence during the presidential transition, and if that act of protest turned you off to the musical forever, two things: 1) Rejecting art because you don't like the artists' politics is, frankly, immature and a symptom of our nation's political division. You can disagree with the cast's politics and still love the musical...I know because that's exactly what Vice President Pence did. 2) While the cast, including the show's creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, are pretty uniformly liberal (it is Broadway, after all), Hamilton is NOT a liberal musical. It is an American one. Barack Obama famously said Hamilton's merits are the only thing he and Dick Cheney agree on. If you don't like the show on its merits, that's fine...but don't reject it out of political spite. You'll be missing something great if you do.

ESSENTIAL BLACK PANTHER by Don McGregor, Rich Buckler, Billy Graham, and Jack Kirby

Few heroes in Marvel Comics history compare to the Black Panther. Relatability is in the DNA of most Marvel characters, but T'Challa is the king of a fictional, prosperous, technologically advanced civilization. Most Marvel characters get their powers through the wonders of science (usually radioactivity), but the Panther gets his from participating in an ancient ancestral ritual and eating mysterious herbs. Most Marvel heroes are quick with a quip at all times, but the Black Panther is stoic and enigmatic, always seeming to know more than he lets on.

Perhaps because he is so different from the typical Avenger in these and other respects, the Black Panther is one of those characters who always seems to sell better as a supporting character than as the leading man--though Disney is counting on that not being the case at the multiplex, with Black Panther coming to theaters in February 2018. Until Christopher Priest took the reins on a relaunch of the book in 1998, the Black Panther had only had two short-lived series, and they could not have been more different from each other. This Essential volume collects both of those runs: Don McGregor's arcs from the 1972 Jungle Action comic and Jack "the King" Kirby's brief 1977 return,  in the eponymous Black Panther, to the character he'd help create over 11 years earlier.

McGregor's run is ambitious in scope and hit-or-miss in execution. His opus was a 12-issue story (back in the days when a serial story of that length was unthinkable) called "Panther's Rage", in which the Black Panther returns home to Wakanda after some time with the Avengers only to find that a rival named Erik Killmonger has led a rebellion against him, aided by a cohort of evil allies like Venomm, King Cadaver, and Salamander K'ruel. In his quest to defend his kingdom, T'Challa is pushed to the limits of his physical, mental, and royal abilities before the final epic showdown with Killmonger. In the second story, T'Challa and his girlfriend Monica Lynne face off against a Ku Klux Klan-like group called the Dragon's Circle in Georgia as they attempt to solve the murder of Monica's sister.

There's a lot to like about the Jungle Action run, particularly "Panther's Rage." The art, by Bronze Age stalwarts Rich Buckler and Billy Graham, is beautiful, especially in the crisp, clean black-and-white format of the Essential volume. McGregor's writing is an appropriate fit for the epic scale of "Panther's Rage", and he deserves every commendation for creating most of Wakanda's history, geography, and customs, not to mention T'Challa's supporting cast. However, the Jungle Action crew needed some work in the storytelling department--as pretty as the writing and art are individually, it never quite seems like writer and artist are on the same page, and each issue feels more than a little disjointed, like you missed something off-panel. Also, I don't think I've ever read a comic book writer who took himself as seriously as McGregor, or who used so many words on a page. His stories are self-serious to the point of being sanctimonious, and can be a chore to get through. All in all, the crew at Jungle Action is to be applauded for their creativity, which was ahead of its time, but they lose points for execution.

Jack Kirby's 1977 run on the character could not have been more different. Shelving all of the mythology McGregor and Co. had created, Kirby sends the Panther on an Indiana Jones-style adventure with the collectors Abner Little and Princess Zanda, where they encounter time machines disguised as King Solomon's golden frogs, battle the Six Million Year Man, and explore Samurai City before T'Challa ultimately returns home to defeat his monstrous half-brother Jakarra (literally, he had been transformed into a monster), help by the royal family, the self-styled Black Musketeers (yeah, I know.) As you may have gathered, these are some wacky stories, much like everything Kirby wrote for Marvel in the 1970s. If you've ever read any of his output from that era, you know exactly what to expect, the pure creative id of a master, albeit one who worked better with collaborators than alone. In contrast to McGregor's run (and seriously, the contrast could not be starker), the storytelling flows really smoothly, and the constant action always keeps the book moving, but the dialogue is laughable and the art sloppy, even as it crackles with energy. If you unconditionally love Jack Kirby's work (and I do), then you'll be able to overlook the flaws in this book, but the more discerning reader may not be able to take this run seriously. To each his own.

Overall, this Essential book earned the title--having only read Black Panther stories previously in the pages of Avengers and Fantastic Four, I really enjoyed reading him in solo stories. Sometime in the future I'll have to check out Christopher Priest's run from the late 1990s, as well as Pulitzer Prize winner Ta-Nehisi Coates's current, much-lauded series. I suspect they'll be quite different from McGregor and Kirby, but this was where the foundation was laid.

THE VISION VOL. 1-2 by Tom King, Gabriel Hernandez Walta, Michael Walsh, and Jordie Bellaire

Superhero comics aren't supposed to be this good. The comic book is a disposable medium, something meant to entertain you just as long as you're reading it, then get tossed in a drawer or an attic or the trash can. It's the reading equivalent of a summer popcorn movie: loud, dumb fun. Superhero comics aren't supposed to make you think or feel too much, they're just supposed to entertain you for a few minutes until you move on to "real books."

To that conventional wisdom, The Vision would like a word.

Holy cow, was this good. Tom King, a former CIA operative-turned-comics writer, takes a B-list Avenger and offers up a 12-issue miniseries that is equal parts reinterpretation of the character, suburban thriller, and family drama. The Vision is one of those characters whose history is so convoluted and outlandish that it's difficult to even know where to start--his creation by Ultron using the brain waves of Wonder Man, an Avenger? his marriage to the Scarlet Witch? his mind and personality being wiped, only to be programmed back into him years later? Faced with all this baggage, King does the only sensible thing: he ignores it at the outset of his own unique story, then slowly but surely weaves it all through the story until, by the end, you're certain you're reading the definitive take on the character.

The premise of the series is that the Vision, after years of living alone in Avengers headquarters, has decided he wants a family. With Tony Stark's help, he creates an android wife, Virginia, and two children, Viv and Vin (and later in the story, a dog) and they move to the suburbs to live a normal life. Their idyllic suburban existence is shattered by the end of the first issue, and the rest of the series tells the story of the ensuing fallout, as they all wrestle with what it means to be human vs. to be a machine (since, as androids, they are sort of both).

There's a lot to admire and heap praise on. The dialogue is great, using the robotic speech patterns of Vision and his family to great effect for both comedy and pathos. The art is beautiful, and a great fit for this story. Perhaps most impressive to this fan of the character, continuity is used perfectly, as a tool for characterization instead of a maze to be navigated. Issue #7 in particular, which traces the story of Vision's romance with the Scarlet Witch, brilliantly condenses 50 years of continuity in a way that makes perfect sense and that, by the last page, connects that continuity to the story the series is telling. Continuity in comics is tricky, and so most writers either ignore it completely or get so bogged down in it that the story gets lost in the weeds--in The Vision, Tom King walks the tightrope with a master's precision.

If all you know about the Vision is what you've seen onscreen, you'll still enjoy this series--that's how good storytelling works; you won't have to do research beforehand to enjoy it. But if you have some grounding in the character and his history, you will love this series. Superhero comics don't have to be an endless cycle of events, fights, and movie tie-ins--The Vision points the way to something better.