What Book Should Come Next?

I'm approaching the end of my series on Bill Bishop's The Big Sort, and I have two books lined up that I'd like to "stroll" through next. My problem is that I can't decide which one I should do first. What do Kronicle readers think?

The first option is John Stackhouse's Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World. This is an amazing book. Every so often, I come across a book that articulates thoughts I've been mulling over for years and pulls them together into a coherent package in a compelling way. This is one of those books.

The book really is two books about Christian social ethics. The book's first part reviews some mid-twentieth-century perspectives on Christian Realism. He begins with Richard Niebuhr's Christ and Culture typology and then takes a quick glance at C. S. Lewis, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The book's second part is Stackhouse's effort to develop an ethic that can genuinely guide the Christian's relationship to culture.

The book is 355 pages long and contains considerable fodder for discussion. I don't plan on doing a complete summary, but I would rather skim across some of the central points. I expect this book will take weeks to discuss.

The second option is John Stapleford's Bulls, Bears, and Golden Calves: Applying Christian Ethics in Economics. The second edition of this book just came out a couple of months ago. The book is designed to be read in either of two ways. It is organized to be read as a supplement to standard college introductory economics textbooks or as a standalone primer on Christian ethics and economics. It has nineteen chapters organized into five parts:

1. Laying the Foundation
2. Reflections on the Basic Assumptions of Economics
3. Macroeconomic Issues
4. Microeconomic Issues
5. International Issues

I'm probably biased (Stapleford was a professor of mine at Eastern University back in the '80s), but I think this is the best comprehensive primer I've read on the topic. It is almost 100 pages shorter than Stackhouse's book, but it is also meaty, and I expect it will take weeks to cover.

I welcome your feedback, either by comments here or by email. Should there be no clear indication from readers, Isaac, my seventeen-year-old tabby, will make a choice. I'll lay a book on either side of the monitor, and whichever one he curls up on will be the choice.  🙂