It’s December 1st, time to share our annual round-up of historical works that have cracked various “Best Books of 2015” lists, for any reader who might be looking for gifts for the history buff in their life. (Key: G = The Guardian; NYT = New York Times; PW = Publishers Weekly; WP = Washington Post; Philip Ball, Invisible: … More The Top Histories of 2015?
Last Friday North Korea announced that it would soon be adopting its own time zone — putting the country half an hour behind South Korea and Japan and half an hour ahead of China. Now, this isn’t actually unprecedented; Foreign Policy pointed out that there’s a “long history of what might be described as time zone manipulation … More North Korea and a Christian View of Time
Here… • Should non-theologians like Rachel Held Evans and me be doing theology? • All readers interested in Pietism beyond 17th century Germany need to check out Mark Safstrom’s new translations of C. O. Rosenius and P. P. Waldenström. • Some more in this vein: the newest issue of a periodical written by the Baptist descendants of … More That Was The Week That Was
Here… • As we neared the end of our J-term sprint through the history of World War II and my students heard from a Holocaust survivor, I returned to my Epiphany theme of “thick darkness.” • Lots of MLK Day posts claiming to reclaim some lost or neglected dimension of MLK: e.g., that he was … More That Was The Week That Was
I think it was sometime in the fall of 2003, my first semester teaching at Bethel University, when I blurted out to members of my Modern Europe class something like, “You wouldn’t be interested in a course on the history of World War II, would you?” More than ten years and lots of student requests … More Previewing My New WWII Course
Here… • When the week started, did I think that I’d writing about the spiritual implications of birdwatching? No. By Thursday afternoon had I written the phrase “orni-theological musing“? Yes. Blogging is weird. • Jared Burkholder introduced us to the Moravian branch of the Pietist family tree. I’m hoping for a sequel in which he … More That Was The Week That Was
I wish I could say that I was clever enough to have planned yesterday’s post on the beginning of the Second World War in Asia to be published on the 68th anniversary of the Japanese surrender that ended that conflict, but… Total coincidence. But I was reminded of the significance of August 15 in the … More China and Japan 68 Years after WWII
On my recent vacation spent driving from small Minnesota town to slightly smaller Minnesota town looking at war and veterans memorials, I listened to The War, Geoffrey Ward’s book based on Ken Burns’ PBS miniseries of the same title. I’d picked it simply because it was one of the few WWII histories available as a … More The Second World War Before Pearl Harbor: China, 1937
GW Carlson’s tribute to the late Virgil Olson continues today. While the first part focused on Virgil’s understanding of the Baptist Pietist heritage and how it shaped the Baptist General Conference and Bethel College and Seminary, today GW turns to Virgil’s advocacy for missions and Christianity in the Global South. (Virgil headed the World Missions … More Virgil Olson: A Faithful Disciple of Jesus Christ (G.W. Carlson) – part 2
It’s late November, which means that newspapers and periodicals are starting to put out their “Best of 2012” lists. Here are the works of scholarly and popular history (and some historical fiction) that have shown up on “Best Books” lists produced by Publishers Weekly (PW), The Washington Post (WP), and Britain’s The Guardian. For each, … More The Best History (and Religion) Books of 2012?
