I don’t know how many people who read this blog know that I’m a skeptic when it comes to accepting the official version of the death of president John F. Kennedy. I’ve read most things about it that I can get my hands on. My collection of books concerning this subject is fairly large.

So I was glad when I was in a thrift store and found one I hadn’t seen before. Reasonable Doubt, by Henry Hurt, is a 1985 book that purports to be an overview of the entire assassination theories up to that point, say until 1983. Thus, it is a somewhat older book, with much research having been done since then.

The book is good, not great. It covers the major theories about Kennedy’s death: Who did it? Was it a conspiracy? If so, whose conspiracy? Did Oswald have anything to do with it? Was he just, as he claimed, a patsy? If it was a conspiracy, how could it have been pulled off, and why haven’t some conspirators come forward and proclaimed their stories? All good questions.

The book covers very little new ground, though I think I learned a little something in each chapter.  The one thing that was new to me was the alleged participation of Robert Easterling. He approached Hurt in the early 1980s, wanting to tell his story. Easterling’s supposed part in it was very low level, driving some people in and around New Orleans, and in Dallas. As Hurt tells Easterling’s story, he was supposed to be the getaway driver for Oswald the day of the assassination, but Oswald didn’t show.

The Easterling connection seems very thin. Hurt describes it as such. Easterling had problems in his life, and wasn’t a source that could be believed without having corroboration. It seemed quite far-fetched that he had been used in this manner, and that the people he was “in contact” with either existed or, if they were real people, were involved in a conspiracy to assassinate the president.

The chapter on Easterling helped to lower the book in my estimation. The rest of it was good. For sure, if you were just getting involved in wondering about the murder of JFK and if the government was telling the truth about it, this book would be a good one to start with. Three stars out of five. It would have been four except for the Easterling chapter.

Some time ago I picked up, at Barnes & Noble, a copy of their Classics edition of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Of course I’ve known about this book for a long time, and perhaps should have read it a long time ago.  Alas, no matter. It’s read now.

I give it an unqualified 5 stars, and will do so on B&N soon. Not that the book needs my review. It’s staying power for over 150 years speaks for itself. The things I like about the book:

• It’s well written; the English is clear, especially considering how little education Douglass had had by the time he wrote this. A little training in reading, and a whole lot of self-study did wonders for him and his book.
• The book gives insights into the slave life that I haven’t read before. And I’ve read a fair amount on slavery. I realize he was in Maryland, not the deep south, and that might account for some of his experiences and how slaves lived as not being quite what I would have imagined. That’s a good thing.
• The length was about right.
• Although the book was an inexpensive volume, the quality is good. After reading you can barely tell I read it, the wear is so little.

What I didn’t like about it:

• It doesn’t tell any details about his escape. I realize that when the book was originally printed he couldn’t give those details, so that those who helped him would not face consequences. I wish, however, years later he had added some of those details.
• The Introduction was waaaaaaay too long. It was written by Robert O’Meally. I read it first, along with a review that was contemporary to the book. O’Meally wrote much too much. In hindsight I should have just read the book, then come back and read the Introduction.

This is a keeper, at least for now. I’m not sure I’ll ever read it again, but I may. It can also serve as a reference book for my work-in-progress, Documenting America: Civil War Edition. After that, we’ll see. I think, however, I’d like to pass it down to my grandchildren. The further away we get from the Civil War, the more we need books like this.

It was at a thrift store, I think, that I picked up The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? by F.F. Bruce. Originally published in 1943, the small paperback I bought was from July 1971, and a printing of the 1959 revision of the book.

I had seen this book referenced in various other writings about the New Testament. Other writers always made it sound like a book I’d like to read sometime. When I finally found it on those mixed shelves, I was surprised at how small it was. 120 pages is all. Sure, the font is small, but still it’s a fairly short book. I haven’t done any reading into Bruce’s background, and why he would write this book and what his qualifications are to do so. That research remains in the future for me. For now the book stands on its own without me knowing anything about the author.

As, perhaps, it should be. While we want to know for most non-fiction that the author knows what he’s talking about, whatever they write should make sense regardless of who wrote it. Bruce’s little volume does.

I was surprised to see that such a small book was so highly prized and referenced. Yet, as I read it, I could see why. Bruce makes an excellent case that the New Testament is reliable both as “a witness to God’s self-revelation in Christ” as well “as a record of historical fact.”

I’m already a Bible believer, so Bruce was speaking to someone who was anxious to have his current beliefs reinforced. He didn’t disappoint me.  Starting with why it matters whether they are reliable, he moves on to the probable date the books were written and how they came to be accepted into the canon of the scripture. From there it was on to the gospels, a special chapter on the gospel miracles, thence to Paul’s writings, then Luke. He digs into the archaeological evidence for what the New Testament says, and concludes with looking at contemporary and near-contemporary writings to show how they testify to these scriptures. All this packed into 120 pages.

Bruce certainly doesn’t waste words. Nor is this work boring, though it is scholarly. I think Bruce was writing to the average Christian of the 1940s, to give them confidence, in a world that was beginning to question, that the documents upon which their faith rested were indeed reliable. He achieved that aim, in my not-so humble opinion.

This book is a keeper. Perhaps someday I’ll re-read it; or maybe go back into it as a reference for something else I’ll write in the future. If you have a chance to read it, by all means do so.

I’ve read a couple of books by Francis A. Schaeffer, and heard/read much about him, so when I saw his book Pollution and the Death of Man at a thrift store, I bought it and put it at the top of my reading pile. I finished it about a month ago. Today I’ve finally gotten around to writing a review. My verdict: 3 stars only; not recommended to others.

The book dates from 1970, at the height of the early environmental movement. Shaeffer was living in Switzerland at that time, and looked from afar on that movement in the USA. He attempted to write a Christian response to these issues. As always Schaeffer’s writing is clear and easy to read. My problems with the book, which keeps me from rating it higher and recommending it to others, are:

1) poorly stated premises and intent.

2) no clear conclusions drawn, i.e. what then should Christians do.

3) over-reliance on two magazine articles, to refute them.

The book I have is a paperback, published in 1992 by Crossway Books. It includes an added chapter to what Schaeffer originally published, written by “Udo Middleman”, as well as reprints of the two articles. The book itself, that is the material provided by Schaeffer, is less than 100 pages.

As I read that material, I had a hard time telling the difference between what Schaeffer declares is the way things are, as opposed to how he suggests it ought to be. This led to some confusion. The book appears to have been written to refute claims in the two articles from the late 1960s which said that, at least in part, Christianity was to blame for the environmental crisis, what with their “have dominion over the earth” mentality. Not so, says Schaeffer. A Christian is a steward of the earth, a protector, and should act accordingly. That is the gist of what I took away from the book.

Some excepts and comments:

So pantheism is not going to solve our international ecological problem. Lynn White’s position [one of the articles] is not going to solve it because it is obvious in practice that man really does have a special role in nature that nothing else has. And, third, a Platonic view of Christianity is not going to solve it.

He came close to losing me with his discussions of pantheism and Platonic views. I had to plow through this part, the only part of the book that was difficult to understand.

The value of a thing is not in itself autonomously, but because God made it. It deserves this respect as something which was created by God, as man himself has been created by God.

I agree with this completely. The creation of all things by God is what gives them value. Nature has value because it was created by God and forms a vital part of what man is.

He made me as I am, with the hungers of my spirit and my body. And he has made all things, just as he has made me. He has made the stone, the star, the farthest reaches of the cosmos. He has done all this!

Again, I agree. Well stated, Mr. Schaeffer.

It is the same when we have dominion over nature: it is not ours. It belongs to God, and we are to exercise our dominion over these things not as though entitled to exploit them, but as things borrowed or held in trust. We are to use them realizing that they are not ours intrinsically. Man’s dominion is under God’s dominion.

Again, well stated. This is the closest Schaeffer comes to stating a solution to environmental problems.

…a truly Biblical Christianity has a real answer to the ecological crisis. It offers a balanced and healthy attitude to nature, arising from the truth of its creation by God. It offers the hope here and now of substantial healing in the nature of some of the results of the Fall, arising from the truth of redemption in Christ.

This is a good summary, although it really offers no specifics for how a Christian should deal with the environmental crisis, if indeed in 2015 it is still as dire—or if it is worse—than it was in 1970. Schaeffer may have been trying to make his book timeless, but in so doing he lessened the value of it by presenting no practical solutions.

For here is our calling. We must exhibit that on the basis of the work of Christ the church can achieve partially, but substantially, what the secular world wants and cannot get.

A valid statement, I think, though I’m not sure he has really made his point in the book.

When we have learned this—the Christian view of nature—then there can be a real ecology; beauty will flow, psychological freedom will come, and the world will cease to be turned into a desert.

This is perhaps a stretch. So i agree with his somewhat soft conclusion, that the Christian should be a steward of all that God has given us. This includes nature and the natural environment. Schaeffer spends too much time on visual pollution and the spoiling of the picturesque beauty of nature’s appearance, rather than on the structural aspects of environmental degradation.

The bottom line is: The book isn’t bad, but I suggest you not waste your time on it. Find a better book dealing with environmental protection. I don’t plan on reading this a second time, and so it will go in my giveaway pile.