nonfiction

“A refined jeremiad sure to
shake up the Christian establishment.”
from bad religion
While Putin carefully maintains stability and order to keep his
grip, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela cultivates popular chaos, stacking
all government institutions with supporters so that he has
amassed “unchecked executive power.” Besides speaking with
plenty of brainwashed supporters of these regimes, Dobson
sought out activists in the political opposition who have bravely
endured terror and intimidation.
A pertinent work of journalistic research that will gain
fresh meaning as authoritarian regimes both evolve and fall.
RON PAUL’S REVOLUTION
The Man and the
Movement He Inspired
Doherty, Brian
Broadside Books/
HarperCollins (272 pp.)
$26.99 | May 15, 2012
978-0-06-211479-2
A breezy and generally admiring
though not hagiographic look at the
quixotic fixture at the far-right extreme
of the last couple of presidential elections.
Reason editor Doherty (Gun Control on Trial: Inside the Supreme
Court Battle Over the Second Amendment, 2009, etc.) would seem
to share Ron Paul’s libertarian leanings, though he professes
some amusement and bewilderment at Paul’s tactics, if not his
message. Paul, for instance, has often spoken of terrorist activities
as the blowback attendant in our messing around in other
countries’ business, to which Doherty responds, presumably
channeling Joe Six-Pack, “Whoa—a history lesson, recognizing
consequences to our actions, an empathetic approach to what
the rest of the world would think” The rhetorical trick gets a
little old, but it’s clear that Doherty cares greatly about capturing
what Paul’s supporters think about him and his ideas and,
moreover, that he cares about representing them fairly. Much of
the narrative is thus given over to fan notes, as against the words
of the supposedly elite media. Not that the fan base is huge to
begin with: “Paul’s rigorous hewing to a vision of government
that almost every part of America’s learned political, academic,
and media elites considers silly was only the start of his problems
with the American electorate.” Doherty offers considerable
insight into some aspects of Paul’s ongoing presidential
campaigns. The chances of his ever being elected, after all, are
vanishingly small, but one desired effect might be the opportunity
to influence the choice of vice president, as he might have in
2008. Yet Paul, a maverick if nothing else, keeps his own counsel,
insisting, for instance, on giving lessons in Austrian economic
theory and demanding the abolition of the Federal Reserve
rather than sharpening crowd-pleasing attacks on America’s foreign
wars and the ill-advised war on drugs at home.
Illuminating, if sometimes a chore to read, and a welcome
aid to understanding the evolution of Paul’s offbeat
ideas.
THE BLOOD OF HEROES
The 13-Day Struggle for the
Alamo—and the Sacrifice
that Forged a Nation
Donovan, James
Little, Brown (544 pp.)
$29.99 | May 15, 2012
978-0-316-05374-7
A popular historian revisits the most
stirring siege in American history.
On Feb. 24, 1836, vastly outnumbered
and defending an old Spanish mission in San Antonio against
Santa Anna’s Mexican army, garrison commander William Barret
Travis issued a plea for reinforcements. To the people of
Texas and “all Americans in the world,” he declared, “I shall
never surrender or retreat.” He did neither, and the slaughter
of the Alamo’s defenders has reverberated ever since. Donovan
(A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Big Horn—The Last Great
Battle of the American West, 2008, etc.) rightly deems the Battle
of the Alamo the signal event of the Texas struggle for independence.
The two-week siege bought precious time for the fledgling
provincial government to organize, for settlers to recognize
the immediacy of their peril and for Sam Houston’s Army of
the People to assemble and train. The siege bogged down Santa
Anna’s avenging force, killing many of his best troops. When,
seven weeks later, Houston’s army surprised and routed the
Napoleon of the West’s exhausted soldiers at San Jacinto, the
Texans’ battle cry was “Remember the Alamo!” Donovan’s
thoroughly researched and agreeably told story focuses on the
13-day standoff, but he also supplies crucial context, helping us
to understand the history of the breakaway province and notable
characters in the revolution like Houston, Stephen Austin,
Ben Milam and James C. Neill. He explains how the principal
actors in the Alamo drama—including, of course, former congressman
and frontiersman David Crockett and knife-fighter
James Bowie—arrived at this juncture in history. Yes, the Alamo
is remembered, but not without controversy. What really happened
inside those battered walls Did Travis really draw a line
in the sand, asking all who would stand with him to step across
it Without breaking the flow of his compelling story, Donovan
reliably separates fact from legend, persuasively assessing the
evidence and artfully setting the scene.
An authoritative, moving retelling of an enduring episode
of sacrifice and courage. (Author tour to Dallas, Houston,
Austin, San Antonio, Killeen)
BAD RELIGION
How We Became
a Nation of Heretics
Douthat, Ross
Free Press (336 pp.)
$26.00 | Apr. 17, 2012
978-1-4391-7830-0
A piercing critique of heresy in a
country where “traditional Christian
teachings have been warped into justifications
for solipsism and anti-intellectualism,
jingoism and utopianism, selfishness and greed.”
New York Times columnist and National Review film critic
Douthat (Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling
Class, 2005, etc.), a practicing Catholic, takes aim at the forces,
on both the left and the right, that are corrupting American
Christianity from within. From its glory days after World War
II, when preachers were respected as legitimate moral arbiters
and theologians had huge followings, Christianity has fallen on
hard times. The traditional pillars of American religion—the
once-omnipresent Protestant mainline exemplified by Reinhold
Niebuhr, the nuanced and self-confident Catholicism of
Archbishop Fulton Sheen, the evangelical revival led by Billy
Graham and the beleaguered but transcendent black church of
Martin Luther King Jr.—have all ceded their place in the public
imagination, writes the author, as hundreds of dubious upstart
doctrines claim converts in droves. The mushy universalism
embraced by Protestant churches has caused believers to lose
interest, the Catholic Church has been riven by dissension and
scandal and the evangelical and historically black churches have
given way to the creepy prosperity gospel of Joel Osteen, Creflo
Dollar and others. While some of the particulars of Douthat’s
arguments will be controversial—e.g., his portrayal of the academics
involved in the Jesus Seminar as being as unconcerned
with the facts as are fabulists like Dan Brown—his full-throated
defense of Christian orthodoxy deserves to be heard in an age
when theology, if not spirituality, has become something of a
niche interest. For Douthat, the beauty of Christianity lies in
the “paradoxical character” of Jesus, who “sets impossible standards
and then forgives the worst of sinners.” When churches
focus on only one aspect of Jesus’ nature and profess to offer
easy answers to all of life’s problems, he writes, they hold up a
false idol for worship.
A refined jeremiad sure to shake up the Christian
establishment.
GODFORSAKEN
Bad Things Happen.
Is There a God Who Cares
Yes. Here’s Proof.
D’Souza, Dinesh
Tyndale House (290 pp.)
$24.99 | Feb. 17, 2012
978-1-4143-2485-2
Conservative writer and speaker
D’Souza (The Roots of Obama’s Rage, 2010,
etc.) draws on years of experience publicly
debating atheists in crafting a new argument for the existence, and
benevolence, of God.
Though widely sympathetic to the reasons that most atheists
and agnostics have decided against faith, the author argues
that too often belief against the existence of God stems primarily
from a disappointment with God, which is then rationalized
into unbelief. Therefore, a defense of God’s existence cannot be
divorced from a sound theodicy, an explanation of why God allows
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