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Showing posts with the label douglas wilson

Five Cities That Ruled the World: How Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London and New York Shaped Global History by Douglas Wilson

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Wow! What a Stinker! When I saw this title I was thrilled to pick this book up. I am a high school history teacher that loves classical history. I was eager to see what someone had to say about these 5 world class cities. What I got was a poorly written mishmash of ideas that sort of worked themselves into some kind of theme that sort of held together to make a vague point from time to time. In other words, it read like one of my high school student's research papers. I am a fan of Thomas Nelson publishing - they are a religious publisher that generally holds themselves to high standards. This book, however, makes me doubt my previous impression. Five Cities has a clever premise, an interesting cover but has no real substance and is full of too much supposition and theory rather than solid history. What do I mean? To be specific, on pages 8-9 he asserts that the Phoenicians, as part of a trade alliance with King Solomon, set across the Indian and Pacific Oceans (coloni

Is Christianity Good for the World? by Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson

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Hitchens vs. Wilson With an introduction by Jonah Goldberg (author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning ), this 67 page book consists of six rounds in a debate over the topic "Is Christianity Good?" Since  Is Christianity Good for the World? has used the term "round" to describe the turns that each authors take, I will follow that lead and treat the book like a boxing match. In this corner, we have the political conservative, political commentator and well-known atheist author of such books as God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice , undoubtedly the smartest man in the room in whatever room he wanders into...Christopher Hitchens. In the other corner, we have pastor, college instructor and author of such books as God Is, How Christianity Explains Everything and Letter from a Christian Citizen ...Douglas Wilson.