2 of 2

6. Minding the Darkness: A Poem for the Year 2000 , by Peter Dale Scott (New Directions). This book-length poem is the concluding installment in Scott's trilogy, Seculum. For me the first volume in the trilogy appeared as a revelation. That was Coming to Jakarta: A Poem About Terror (1988), which among other subjects took up the CIA's involvement in the 1965 massacre of more than half a million people in Indonesia. A Canadian diplomat, then for many years a professor of literature at the University of California, Berkeley, Scott has also published books on the cocaine traffic and the Iran-Contra scheme. His work has compelled me to take seriously (though not uncritically) points of view I had previously—complacently—dismissed as products of the lunatic fringe. But Minding the Darkness is above all a work of spiritual autobiography.

7. No Trace of Christmas? Discovering Advent in the Old Testament , by Christoph Dohmen (Liturgical Press). Translated from the German by Linda M. Maloney. In fewer than 100 pages, Dohmen shows how "many of the biblical texts we associate with Christmas can only be understood in their full depth if we are aware of their Old Testament roots." This is a gem, with fresh insights on every page for all believers. Especially if you are a pastor or are involved in adult ministry, please take a look at Dohmen's book and consider making use of it for Advent in the coming year.

8. Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, by Robert Rosen (Soft Skull Press). A good many Beatles books were published this year, including lavish productions that landed in a haze of nostalgia. This small-press volume by journalist Robert Rosen is something else altogether: an obsessive, corrosive, unforgettable account of Lennon and his menage at the Dakota. Even readers who never bought the air-brushed image of Lennon the benign father and house-husband are likely to experience powerful cognitive dissonance as they read Rosen's chronicle of weirdness, in which the tragic and the absurd are inextricably mixed.

9. Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find? , by Philip Yancey (Zondervan). In his Introduction to Christianity, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger writes that "in every age [belief] represents the risky enterprise of accepting what plainly cannot be seen as the truly real and fundamental." That situation, the perennial challenge of belief, is the subject of Philip Yancey's new book. He addresses it with the probing candor we have come to expect from the author of Disappointment with God and What's So Amazing About Grace?

10. Theology, Music, and Time , by Jeremy Begbie (Cambridge University Press). If it is true (as Anita Albus says in The Art of Arts) that for many centuries the eye has been king among the senses in Western culture, there are signs that a balance is being restored. This book is a case in point. Begbie, who is both a practicing musician and a theologian, directs the Theology Through the Arts program at the University of Cambridge. Here he explores ways in which music's engagement with time—for example in rhythm, meter, repetition, and improvisation—can deepen our understanding of theological themes.

John Wilson is Editor of Books & Culture and Editor-at-Large for Christianity Today.

Christianity Today's lists of best books for 1999 include:

My Favorite 1999 Books By John Wilson (Jan. 21, 2000)

My Favorite 1999 Books By Mark Galli (Jan. 21, 2000)

Christianity Today Book Awards 2000 | CT picks the top ten books of the past year (Apr. 14, 2000)

Wilson writes a weekly column, Books & Culture Corner, that appears every Monday on ChristianityToday.com. Some previous Books & Culture Corners include:

Are You Re:Generated? | Inside one of the best religious publications on the planet (that's not Christianity Today). (Dec. 4, 2000)

The Promise of Particularity Amid Pluralism | A dispatch from the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature. (Nov. 22, 2000)

The Horror! | Joan Didion encounters evangelical Christianity. (Nov. 13, 2000)

Election Eve | Why isn't anyone focusing on those who simply won't bother to vote? (Nov. 6, 2000)

Three Books and a Wedding | Remembering the good news. (Oct. 30, 2000)

first page |  2 of 2

share this page

January (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45