Megachurch pastor Andy Stanley wants to declare the Old Testament “obsolete”—see my column in this issue—but Kevin DeYoung’s The Ten Commandments: What They Mean, Why They Matter, and Why We Should Obey Them (Crossway, 2018) succinctly summarizes their importance. Sometimes we don’t obey them because we think we’ll be happier going our own way, but we find out differently.

WORLD has received a bunch of letters asking about popular Christian writer Ann Voskamp, “Is she a serial plagiarist”? The short answer is “No,” but a couple of examples of minor plagiarism should give authors and publishers new determination to take great care in attributing stories and wordings to their creators.

Daniel W. Drezner’s The Ideas Industry offers an amusing analysis of how ideas spread and pundits become brands. He portrays intellectuals competing for the attention of wealthy benefactors, in the process adjusting their ideas and demeaning themselves as proximity to power offers seductive opportunities. These merchants of flighty ideas give us witty remarks and TED Talks that fit the formula for standing ovations, but thoughtful analysis becomes less important than hitting green rooms to feed big media beasts.

Our surveys show WORLD members are great readers, so we’ve now regularized our review process: Three pages of reviews every issue, and four times a year additional articles on children’s books (late winter), fiction (early summer), history (early fall), and Books of the Year (late fall).

Sun

Sam Usher

Faith. Hope. Love: The Christ-Centered Way to Grow in Grace 

Mark Jones

Since my feature in this issue is on history books worth reading, I’ll use this space to note three that aren’t. Let’s start with Niall Ferguson’s The Square and the Tower (Penguin, 2017): Parts are fun to read, but I don’t trust its 560 gossipy pages that take us from the Freemasons to Facebook, touching on Chinese revolts, European plagues, the economic and educational consequences of the Reformation, the interactions of the European royal house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and the financial House of Rothschild, and much more.