2019 Books of the Year
Great books tell stories. Here’s our pick of vivid and insightful new releases for better understanding America, world events, history, science, and theology
Mmmm ... four books of the year
A committee of WORLD writers chose these books, spread among four categories, that should be ‘chewed and digested’
Our favorite genre
Readable and insightful history books from the past 12 months
Spreading the words
A Taiwanese publishing group is on the lookout for Reformed books to translate into Chinese
Voices
Marvin Olasky
Rolling stones
Fifty years ago the two greatest songs of all time (so the magazine Rolling Stone declared in 2004) emerged just one month apart. The Rolling Stones’ “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” (#2) came out in...
Andrée Seu Peterson
Beyond pessimism
Curious to peek down the road a few years to know what it feels like not to write a column, I read the swan song of Tom Fleming, outgoing editor of the monthly Chronicles: A Magazine of American C...
Janie B. Cheaney
Depravity in our hearts
From 2005 to 2007, HBO ran a series called Rome. It was the most elaborate and costly cable series produced up to that time, and in some ways it was excellent: brilliantly acted, historically rich...
The Editors
Mailbag
May 16 Coverage vs. care We should pray for more Christian doctors willing to look past the red tape to people and their needs. We should support medical school students: They are ch...
Joel Belz
The question looms
My, how you readers took me seriously just three issues back. Imagine, I challenged you in our May 16 edition to pretend that you are the owner/operator of a neighborhood bakery (see “Taking the b...
Mindy Belz
What's the story?
Tell your story, they say. Everyone has a story to tell. Our books of the year in this issue do precisely that—some layered up with the stories of characters stretched even across galaxies,...
Notebook
Sports
USA unified
U.S. Women’s National Team players Lauren Holiday and Tobin Heath are products of a Christian soccer subculture. They played on the 2006 Under-20 team at the FIFA Women’s World Championship, where...
Technology
Creative construction
Creative building toys such as Legos and Duplos seem to fascinate young children—right up to the age when they migrate to more passive video games. Electrical engineer Charles Sharman noticed this...
Science
Old and alone
Nearly one-quarter of Americans over age 65 are at risk of becoming “elder orphans,” a new term used to describe aging people who are single and childless, according to a study conducted at the ge...
Religion
Legal eagle feathers?
Native Americans are pushing back against attempts to keep them from wearing eagle feathers. The federal government restricts possession of eagle feathers as part of its effort to protect eagles. ...
Houses of God
Firle Beacon hill
Parishioners join Rev. Peter Owen Jones as he lights the beacon at Firle Beacon hill on May 23. Church of England clergymen lit a chain of beacons across the Diocese of Chichester to celebrate Pen...
Culture
Movies & TV
Inside Out
When a studio partnership has engendered as much success as Disney/Pixar has over the years, it’s easy to judge a film by how it measures up to previous successes. Is it as emotionally compelling ...
Music
Mixing match
Like most terms invented by musical taxonomists, “classical crossover” has its limits. Generally, it means pop-friendly music with one foot or at least a few toes in the Classical, Baroque,...
Books
Holding the lines
June is a big month for gay parades. Jesus Outside the Lines, by New York, now Nashville, pastor Scott Sauls, is designed to appeal to younger Christians chafing at the evangelical-conservative al...
Notable CDs
Notable CDs
If you’re a follower of the British television drama with which these ominously suggestive tracks enjoy a symbiotic relationship, they’ll call to mind the series’ moral conundrums and emotional in...
Notable Books
Notable Books
The book of Acts ends suddenly and, with it, the Bible’s narrative of the earliest Christian churches and leaders. Many Christians have wondered what happened after Acts, and this is the question ...
Movies & TV
Dinosaur camp
If Chris Pratt’s character on Parks and Recreation, Andy Dwyer, were to write a movie script about a dinosaur park starring his alter-ego, karate-chopping FBI agent Burt Macklin, it would probably...
Movies & TV
Love & Mercy
It’s impossible not to pity the grown man cowering like a child as another man screams into his face. That’s one of many heart-wrenching scenes in Love & Mercy, an Oscar-beckoning biopic of Br...
Movies & TV
Box Office Top 10
Cautions: Quantity of sexual (S), violent (V), and foul-language (L) content on a 0-10 scale, with 10 high, from kids-in-mind.com S ...
Q&A
Lynn Vincent: The narrative reversal
Lynn Vincent spent a decade as WORLD’s feature editor and action-adventure writer before becoming the best-selling co-author of Heaven Is for Real and Same Kind of Different As Me. She also collab...
Documentary
An Open Secret
It is possible there is an institutionalized issue of child molestation in Hollywood, but this is not the film to expose it. Amy Berg’s documentary An Open Secret is marketed as “the secret Hollyw...
Dispatches
Quick Takes
Quick Takes
Beyond Bieber Walmart raised wages and handed over thermostat controls to individual stores. But no action brought the kind of ovation from employees like one the company announced June 3: ...
Quotables
Quotables
‘You live in la la land.’ House Oversight chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, to the Justice Department’s FOIA chief, Melanie Ann Pustay, who defended the agency rating itself a 5-out-of-5 for...
News
Dispatches
June 6 A Thoroughbred named American Pharoah made history and carried horse racing into the limelight when it jumped across the finish line in first place at the Belmont Stakes in Elmont, N...
News
'Favored treatment'
The Supreme Court on June 1 set a high bar for employers to accommodate religious practice in the workplace, siding with a Muslim woman who was denied employment over her hijab. The court ruled 8-...
Human Race
Human Race
Announced Rick Perry, the former 14-year governor of Texas, on June 4 announced his presidential candidacy in Addison, Texas. “This will be a show-me-don’t-tell-me election where voters loo...
Looking Ahead
Looking Ahead
June 21 Just in time for its 40th anniversary, classic Hollywood thriller Jaws will return to theaters today. The limited release, sponsored by Turner Classic Movies, will take place at 500...