Dec. 14 will be the 100th anniversary of the death of college student George Gipp, nicknamed “The Gipper.” He was a halfback, quarterback, and punter on the 1920 Notre Dame football team coached by Knute Rockne. Cause of death: a streptococcal throat infection and pneumonia. Cause of his being remembered: Ronald Reagan played him in the 1940 film Knute Rockne, All American and ran for president with “The Gipper” as his nickname.

Accessible History
Book of the Year

The Year of Peril: America in 1942 is our history winner in another year of peril, 2020. Although I know the end of the 1942 story, author Tracy Campbell made me feel I was reading a novel in which it wasn’t clear that the hero would survive. It’s hard for us to believe now, but in 1942 War Production Board chairman Donald Nelson had good reason to say, “The awful realization was slowly coming over the country that America was losing a war.”

Understanding America 
Book of the Year

The United States is more polarized than at any time since the Civil War. The highly discussed book that best recognizes that—and proposes what to do—is David French’s Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How To Restore Our Nation. If Christian conservatives no longer fall into Trump and anti-Trump camps in 2021, it’s time to think through ways to forestall dissolution. Here are some questions and French’s answers.

Accessible Science
Book of the Year

The Mystery of Life’s Origin: The Continuing Controversy is two books in one: a classic that in 1984 provided the base for the intelligent design movement of the 1990s, and a series of newly written, cutting-edge chapters that set the stage for a Roaring 20s decade of scientific advance.

This is our 13th annual Books of the Year issue, and if we were superstitious we might, like some hotels, skip the 13th floor: What good writing is likely to emerge in a year characterized by pandemic, political polarization, and cultural chasms? Happily, God’s still in charge, so all is not lost, and much awaits ­finding: In a year with less travel and more reading, the following pages present 25 books accessible by ­general readers, not just by scholars or specialists.

This is WORLD’s 23rd year of choosing a Dan of the Year, which began as a way to honor someone very different from the power-graspers Time used to celebrate as Man of the Year (now Person of the Year). Our honorees have included persecuted Christians in China and Syria, 21 Christians martyred by ISIS on a Libyan beach, and American teen believers forced to consider a question: “What would you say if someone put a gun to your head and asked, ‘Do you believe in God?’”

Daniel Vaca’s Evangelicals Incorporated: Books and the Business of Religion in America (Harvard University Press, 2019) shows how some evangelical publishers that lived by bestsellers died by bestsellers.