John S. Dickerson’s Hope of Nations (Zondervan, 2018) sees persecution of Christians growing and wants us not to lose hope. He notes that Christians “cannot control what children are being taught by American society at large … cannot control the direction of cultural change in the U.S.

Two court dramas in the last half of July and 6,000 miles apart showed the need for two new hyphenated words: hyper-sexualist and hyper-Islamist.

Definitions of the words’ cores run like this: Stressing sex as a central concern of life. Believing that Islam should be a central concern of not only individual living but political and societal structuring.

Thirty years have gone by since Ronald Reagan in 1988 spoke to students at Moscow State University. At a time when the Soviet Communist Party still claimed to be the vanguard of wisdom, Reagan said, “Freedom is the recognition that no single governmental authority has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious.”

YouTube is a great resource for ideas about backyard do-it-yourself projects: brick pizza oven, fire pit, wave pool, foam pit, putting green, mini metal foundry, mini ice rink, chicken coop, pig pen, and—the most audacious—a personal fountain of youth.

Our annual Hope Awards for Effective Compassion stories can also be a great resource. Stunt videos often come with a warning: “Kids, don’t try this in your own backyards.” Our Hope Awards stories come with a welcome: Local Christians can and do emulate the compassion we bring to their attention.

This year is the 50th anniversary of Richard Scarry’s terrific picture book, What Do People Do All Day? It’s also the 70th anniversary of Candyland, which Eleanor Abbott designed in 1948 after she contracted polio in San Diego and sought something to delight the children in her hospital ward.

Charlan Nemeth’s In Defense of Troublemakers (Basic, 2018) makes a good point—hearing diverse perspectives makes for better decisions—and makes it again and again, turning what would be a good article into a repetitive book that will have readers at first nodding, and then nodding off to sleep.

Netflix disgraced itself during the first two weeks of July by streaming and then refusing to apologize for Episode 7 (July 8) of The Break with Michelle Wolf, with its 33-year-old “comedian” host. Among her jokes: Abortion “should be on the dollar menu at McDonald’s.” (Shot of a fake dollar menu listing menu choices: Burger, Abortion, Cheeseburger, Fries.) Another: Abortion “doesn’t have to be a big deal. It’s actually a great deal. It’s about $300. That’s like six movie tickets. … God bless abortion.”