David French’s Divided We Fall was WORLD’s 2020 Book of the Year in the understanding America category. As Americans of a feather flock together and our culture fragments, French says we can’t assume that a multiethnic, multifaith, continent-sized country will hang together. Will the tidal forces of history swamp the “mystic chords of memory” that Abraham Lincoln cited?

Blueberry Man by Christina E. Petrides: This lovely picture book offers a fond remembrance of the author’s granddaddy, a blueberry farmer. He provided blueberries for family, friends, and young blueberry pickers, earning the nickname “Blueberry Man.” The berries’ color spurs memories of Granddaddy’s naval uniform and his stories of adventures at sea. Beautiful watercolor illustrations suggest details of those stories (sharks and palm trees encroach on a warm scene of children listening around the grandfather’s chair).

Finding Hope in Hard Things: A Positive Take on Suffering by Pierce Taylor Hibbs: This book’s simple thesis: “Hard things are going to shape us in ways easy things can’t.” Hibbs writes vividly about three hard things in his life—his father’s death (while Hibbs was in college), his anxiety disorder, and his constant self-doubt—and how each has shaped him in positive ways. Hibbs communicates honestly about the pain and shows sympathy to other sufferers while keeping God in the picture.

John Perritt’s short A Student’s Guide to Technology (Christian Focus, 2020) summarizes positives of new technology in chapters like “One of God’s Greatest Graces” and negatives in “Every Knee Will Bow … To Something” and “Why Am I So Tired?” He cites statistics such as “we look at our phones every 4.3 minutes. … If that’s not worship, I don’t know what is.” Perritt advocates thoughtful engagement: “We are to live in the times God has called us to live in. To engage and use technology for the glorifying of His name.

In this year of polarization and racial tension, Elizabeth Varon’s Armies of Deliverance shows how Northern leaders in 1861 didn’t believe that the United States was deeply polarized. They thought wealthy plantation owners were not only bossing slaves but bossing poor whites as well, and the Civil War would be “a crusade to deliver the Southern masses from slaveholder domination.”

Editors Mary Pilon and Louisa Thomas, in their introduction to Losers: Dispatches From the Other Side of the Scoreboard (Penguin Random House, 2020), write: “The locker rooms of winners are crowded. … The locker rooms of losers are desolate and awkward. The players are somber, quiet; some shrink into the stalls. People ... keep their distance, as if losing is a contagious infection.” So true.

The Gentleman Spy by Erica Vetsch: Upon the sudden deaths of his father and older brother, Marcus Haverly becomes the Duke of Haverly. He fears his new title will interfere with his secret occupation as a spy for the British Crown, so he proposes marriage to Lady Charlotte, hoping she’ll provide the cover he needs. However, Charlotte is not a typical shallow, shy debutante. She is well-read, outspoken, and determined to help London’s population of prostitutes, including her recently discovered half-sister.