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BOOK REVIEWS and NEWS

Big Dumb Eyes: Stories from a Simpler Mind by Nate Bargatze. Grand Central Publishing. 232 pages. 2025
***

If you enjoy the comedy of Nate Bargatze, you’ll enjoy this book, his first. I listened to the audiobook edition, which was read by Bargatze, and I would recommend that version to you as he reads it with his deadpan, self-deprecating delivery.
This light-hearted book has Bargatze telling stories about McDonald’s, shopping, his family, his barber, who is also his trainer, dogs, his car named “Old Blue”, his best friend Pee Pee, his wife Laura and daughter Harper, his unfailing love of Vanderbilt University football (who will never win the national championship), and his father, who was a magician and still opens Nate’s shows. He tells us about growing up in a small town in Tennessee, where you could never say the “F-word” in his home (no, not that “F-word”), his poor performance in college, living in a rat-infested apartment in Chicago as he learned standup comedy, and playing basketball in the NBA (no, not that NBA). The book includes blank pages, and random food thoughts. Throughout the book, Bargatze makes reference to his and his family’s Christian faith.

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BOOK REVIEWS ~ More of this review and a review of Roots & Rhythm: A Life in Music by Charlie Peacock
BOOK NEWS ~ Links to Interesting Articles
BOOK CLUB ~ Truths We Confess by  R.C. Sproul
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BOOK REVIEWS and NEWS

BOOK REVIEW:
2084 and the AI Revolution, Updated and Expanded Edition: How Artificial Intelligence Informs Our Future by John Lennox. Zondervan. 375 pages. 2024
****

The world of AI (artificial intelligence) is changing so quickly, that John Lennox has already seen the need to update and expand his 2020 book 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. I was first introduced to the teaching of Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University (emeritus), a few years ago at the Sing! Getty Music Worship Conference (Lennox is Kristyn Getty’s uncle). Since then, I’ve read five of his books.

In this book, he brings a Christian worldview to the present and future of AI.

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BOOK REVIEWS ~ More of this review…
BOOK NEWS ~ Links to Interesting Articles
BOOK CLUB ~ Truths We Confess by  R.C. Sproul
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BOOK REVIEWS and NEWS

BOOK REVIEW:
Sunday Matters: 52 Devotionals to Prepare Your Heart for Church by Paul David Tripp. Crossway. 289 pages. 2023
*** ½

I’ve read several of Paul Tripp’s books, most of them being his books of devotional readings (daily, Lent, Advent, etc.). This new book features a reading for each week of the year (reading 51 is for Easter week and 52 is for Christmas). The brief devotionals are intended to help prepare your heart for the beauty of what Sunday worship has to offer you. After each reading, there are suggested scripture passages to read, reflection questions and a family discussion section.
I enjoyed these readings, and commend this book – and all of Paul Tripp’s books – to you.
Here are 20 of my favorite quotes from the book:

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BOOK CLUB ~ Truths We Confess by  R.C. Sproul
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BOOK REVIEWS and NEWS

R. C. SPROULBOOK REVIEWS

This week we look at two new book releases from R.C. Sproul:

Holy Week: The Week That Changed the World by R.C. Sproul. Ligonier Ministries. 88 pages. 2025
***

R.C. Sproul went to be with the Lord in December, 2017. Fortunately, he left a tremendous amount of teaching material for Ligonier Ministries to release in book form in the years after his death. Ligonier edited and adapted Dr. Sproul’s original material to create this volume, with the assistance of Sproul’s wife Vesta.
This short book looks at one week, from the time in the upper room when Jesus established the new covenant with his disciples through the time Jesus appeared to Thomas after His resurrection.

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BOOK REVIEWS ~ More of this review and a review of The Great Rescue: Understanding the Saving Work of Christ by R.C. Sproul
BOOK NEWS ~ Links to Interesting Articles
BOOK CLUB ~ Truths We Confess by  R.C. Sproul
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BOOK REVIEWS and NEWS

Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. Penguin Press. 348 pages. 2025. Audiobook read by Jake Tapper
***
This book was written by Jake Tapper, of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios. The two interviewed 200 people, including members of Congress, White House staffers and campaign insiders, primarily after the 2024 presidential election.
The book claims that Biden’s inner circle helped to conceal his declining physical and cognitive health as he and his aides insisted he was fit to serve a second term. The Democratic Party failed to question that decision until after Biden’s disastrous June 27, 2024 debate with Donald Trump, and by then, it was too late.
The authors write that their only agenda is to present the disturbing reality of what happened in the White House and the Democratic presidential campaign in 2023-2024. They tell the story pretty much chronologically.

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BOOK REVIEWS ~ More of this review and a review of The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
BOOK NEWS ~ Links to Interesting Articles
BOOK CLUB ~ Truths We Confess by  R.C. Sproul
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BOOK REVIEWS and NEWS

O Sacred Head, Now Wounded: A Liturgy for Daily Worship from Pascha to Pentecost by Jonathan Gibson. Crossway. 444 pages. 2023
**** 

This is the third of book of liturgies from Jonathan Gibson, following 2021’s Be Thou My Vision and 2023’s O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, books that I hope to read in the future. This volume is designed to help us prepare better for meditating on the great work of God in the person of his Son from Pascha (more commonly known as Easter), to Pentecost.
The author tells us that remembering Jesus is a divinely inspired, apostolic imperative. The remembrance of Jesus has been expressed in the liturgy of the Christian church for over two thousand years through the simple preaching of the gospel and the faithful administration of the sacraments. Since the days of the early church, Christians have also observed times in the church calendar for a more focused remembrance of key moments in the life of our Lord.

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BOOK REVIEWS ~ More of this review…
BOOK NEWS ~ Links to Interesting Articles
BOOK CLUB ~ Truths We Confess by  R.C. Sproul
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BOOK REVIEWS and NEWS

Legacy from Christ: What’s My Message by Robert Smart. WestBow Press. 108 pages. 2017
****

This is the fourth, and final, book in the author’s (my longtime pastor) series on the seasons of spiritual formation. He has taught the information from this series in classes to thousands of people over the past several years, and continues to do so.
He tells us that the Christian in his or her final season of spiritual formation – legacy from Christ – is a blessed person, and their influence is greater than ever before. This season is designed to shape us into the glorious likeness of Jesus Christ. It will sufficiently prepare us to leave this earth with a message and a benediction, and to enter eternity in heaven and the new earth. The spiritual formation season of legacy is the best season to speak the message God has given you. This is a season of life to reflect and clarify how we may speak well of others’ futures, express our lives’ messages, and prepare our final wills and testaments.

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BOOK REVIEWS ~ More of this review…
BOOK NEWS ~ Links to Interesting Articles
BOOK CLUB ~ Truths We Confess by  R.C. Sproul
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BOOK REVIEWS and NEWS

Ask Pastor John: 750 Bible Answers to Life’s Most Important Questions by Tony Reinke. Crossway. 712 pages. 2024
****

One of my favorite podcasts is Ask Pastor John, in which the host Tony Reinke reads questions from listeners to Pastor John Piper for him to answer. At the time of the writing of this book, 1,881 episodes of the podcast had been released, which have been played over 230 million times, or about 125,000 times each. Currently, Reinke and Piper release two episodes of the podcast each week – on Mondays and Thursdays.
Reinke tells us that to understand the podcast’s success, you need to understand one part of John Piper’s life, the part about why he thinks asking good questions is essential to succeeding in life. He states that over time, Piper came to discover that Christian learning is the process of heart convictions gained by asking great questions and finding convincing answers in the Bible. A quote from Piper included in the book was “All learning is the fruit of question-asking and answer-seeking”.

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BOOK REVIEWS ~ More of this review…
BOOK NEWS ~ Links to Interesting Articles
BOOK CLUB ~ Truths We Confess by  R.C. Sproul
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BOOK REVIEWS and NEWS


Yogi: A Life Behind the Mask by Jon Pessah. Little, Brown, and Company. 577 pages. 2020
****

I grew up as a New York Yankees fan, probably because in the 1960’s the Yankees were often on television on Saturday afternoons. There were no ESPN or regional sports networks on which all of a team’s games were broadcast. My favorite player was Mickey Mantle. I did not know much about Yogi Berra as he completed his Yankees career when I was still quite young.
I am glad I read Jon Pessah’s well-researched and enjoyable biography of Berra – the result of hundreds of hours of interviews with more than 150 people conducted during a more than four-year span. I had no idea how impressive Berra’s career was. He won thirteen (ten as a player and three as a coach) World Series championships, was a fifteen time All-Star and was the American League’s Most Valuable Player three times.

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BOOK CLUB ~ Truths We Confess by  R.C. Sproul
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BOOK REVIEWS and NEWS

The Life of Peter: Molded in the Master’s Hands by Derek Thomas. Ligonier Ministries. 140 pages. 2024
****

In this book, respected pastor, seminary professor and Ligonier Teaching Fellow Derek Thomas examines the Apostle Peter’s life from the accounts of the Gospels and Acts. He also occasionally draws from Peter’s two epistles lessons that Peter may have learned during his life with Jesus and the early days of the church and pondered in the decades that followed.
The material in the book originally came from a series of sermons that Thomas preached at First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina. In addition, Thomas has recorded an excellent companion teaching series of the same name for Ligonier Ministries, which includes nineteen twenty-three-minute messages.
Peter is a favorite of many because we see him “mess up” so often. We can relate to him because we do as well.

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BOOK REVIEWS ~ More of this review…
BOOK NEWS ~ Links to Interesting Articles
BOOK CLUB ~ Truths We Confess by  R.C. Sproul
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