I’m not sure where we got it, but The Darwin Conspiracy by James Scott Bell has been in our house for a long time. I’ve been in writers conferences where Bell has been the keynote speaker or taught workshops, so I definitely wanted to read it.

It’s a novel, Bell’s first published novel, written in the 1990s when he was trying to transition from lawyer to writer. The plot is rather strange. It goes back and forth between the present day and times in the 19th century. Keeping them straight was difficult at first, easier at the end of the novel.

The premise is a document, called the Busby Manuscript. Sir Max Busby was the assumed name of a man who, as a boy, hated his father and killed him. He took on the name Max Busby and went to sea to avoid the law. The ship he sailed on was The Beagle, the same vessel on the same voyage that carried Charles Dawin on his famous round-the-world trip during which Darwin did the bulk of his formative research.

Busby sensed that the evolutionary theories that Dawin was just starting to develop would be disastrous to Christianity. Being an evil man, Busby wanted science to thrive and Christianity to suffer, and so egged Darwin on. As the story develops, Busby posed as an educated man (which he was not) and was with Darwin at every critical stage in Darwin’s work. Then he was with Darwin’s friends and every person who eventually touted the cause of evolution, right up to the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925. Busby interacts with all the famous scientists and others who had a hand in either pushing evolution forward or fighting against it.

In order to accomplish this, Bell had to have Busby live to the age of 125+ years old. Not believable in the slightest, even in a novel where it is assumed you will suspend unbelief.

The book was complicated by 1) constant switching from present to 2) Busby writing his narrative in 1927 to 3) his days with Darwin and Darwin’s successors, a period of 90 years. Keeping these times frames straight was difficult, especially because often two were mixed in one chapter.

The novel was also complicated because Bell puts himself in it. He was the one who was given the Busby narrative by an old professor, only to lose it when the professor is killed, the police confiscate the narrative, and someone steals it from them. This whole scenario was, quite frankly, ridiculous. Having Geraldo Rivira make a cameo appearance was way over the top.

I rate this book just 3-stars. It would be two for the plot, but the writing is quite good and that pulls it up. But it is not a keeper. I don’t anticipate ever reading it again, nor recommending it to anyone else.

Another book that I recently read, just like the last one I reviewed, was one I have wanted to read and not keep. Like the last one, it’s a biography and I don’t remember where I got this. Unlike the last one, I knew a little about the subject: David Livingstone.

I knew something about him from various sources over the years, as well as from a short biography I’d read about him and reviewed on this blog.

This book is titled David Livingstone: His Life and Letters. Written by George Seaver and published in 1957, at 633 pages, it is much different than the last one I read on him. That one was popular; this one scholarly. That one did little more than give the basics; this one get deeper into Livingstone’s life.

Yes, David Livingstone was a headstrong, complex person, and the life he lived has much controversy in it. He found Christ as his savior in England while a young man, and felt a call to preach, but as a missionary. He went to South Africa under the auspices of the London Missionary Society. Livingstone married Mary Moffet, the daughter of the head of that mission, Rev. Robert Moffet.

Immediately on Livingstone’s arrival in South America, the problems began. He wanted to push farther into the interior of Africa than the mission was prepared for or had the money to do. He tended to fight for what he wanted, writing letters to people back in England, going above Moffat’s head to enlist help. Eventually, they moved his family further inland. Only a year or two passed when Livingstone wanted to push even further. He had determined that the best way to promote missions in Africa was to promote trade that would bring more Europeans there.

He fought for this, eventually won, and made a transit of south-central Africa, first to the west, then back to his starting point, then to the east. This trip, immortalized in his journal and other writings, brought him instant fame in Great Britain, and he was mobbed when he returned to England on furlough.

I could go on and on about how Livingstone became so fixated on the commerce thing that he eventually became an explorer, not a missionary. But this is a book review, not a mini-biography. One thing this book did that the other didn’t was point out Livingstone’s faults and controversial traits. Here are a few of them.

• The already mentioned headstrongness and tendency to think his way was the only way.
• The dragging his wife along on some of his explorations, to the detriment of her fragile health.
• His neglect of his children, who eventually were shipped back to England or Scotland and raised by others.
• The fact that his opening the continent to more trade also opened it to more slave trading. Livingstone was strongly against the slave trade, already outlawed by England but not by Portugal and several Moslem nations. Unwittingly, Livingstone helped facilitate the vile practice he wanted to eradicate.
• His essentially abandoning missions in favor of exploration.

As for the book, while being scholarly, it was actually easy reading.  A handful of maps included were copies of maps Livingstone drew while on his journeys. While the authenticity was nice, I would have preferred having modern maps that showed the places better.

The text was a mixture of narrative and Livingstone’s letters and other writings. But the letters weren’t quoted in their entirety, but rather in limited extracts. As one who likes to read letters, this was a negative. Because of the length and limited daily reading time, it took me about two months to read it.

I give the book 4-stars, one star lost for how the letters were handled, the lack of readable maps, and…I don’t know, a sense that despite its comprehensive nature, at the end of the reading I felt like something was missing, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It’s well worth reading, however, if you can find it. I suspect other semi-scholarly biographies or David Livingstone are out there and would be better worth your time and money.

This is not a keeper. I wouldn’t mind reading more about the famous explorer one of these days, and even some of his own writings. But I won’t ever re-read this one. Into the donate/sale pile it goes.

Some books sound good when you make a decision about buying them, but upon reading, turn out to be difficult to get through. Such was the case of Great Voices of the Reformation. Edited by Harry Emerson Fosdick, t

his is a 546 page hardcover from 1952 that I picked up used somewhere.

The premise is good. Look at the people who were the main clergymen of the Reformation; give a brief bio of each and description of their publications; and provide lengthy excerpts of their writings. The documents included were mainly doctrinal writings.

Fosdick began with John Wycliffe, then John Huss, then Martin Luthor. From there he moved on to mostly familiar names, such as Zwingli, Calvin, and Knox. But he included some names I had either never heard of or hadn’t associated as being significant parts or the Reformation. One example was the Anabaptists, represented by a number of names I had never heard of. Another couple were Cotton Mather of New England fame and Jeremy Taylor of the church of England. I’d heard of both, but just hadn’t thought of them as main forces in the Protestant think tank.

One surprise was Roger Wiliams. He founded my native Rhode Island when he was banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony. I

learned about him in school, but hadn’t thought about him in years. I found his writings refreshing and his colonial methods better than many others. He believed in buying land from the Indians rather than just taking it. He was also in favor of religious freedom. This contrasted with the Puritans, who wanted freedom for their own worship but not for others—at least not in their own colony.

Part of the problem with this book was the archaic English in some of the writings. Most of the oldest texts have had the English modernized or been translated into modern English. However, I suspect they kept the English purposely a little archaic, for I found it difficult to read. Some was sentence structure, not necessarily the words.

Another difficulty was how the writers had approached their subject matter. It’s hard to explain, but the older documents tended to put me to sleep. I would settle in my reading chair in the sunroom at noon and open the book to John Huss. Knowing his story was so inspiring, I had high hopes, but I fell asleep more than once after reading a page or two. I should probably chalk that up to my failure, not the failure of the document.

The later writers—George Fox, John Woolman, and John Wesley, were definitely easier to understand. I’ve read a lot of Wesley’s works independent of this book, and, being last in this volume, it was enjoyable to wind up and end up with a familiar voice.

I had thought this was to be a reference book, permanently in my library. After reading it, however, I think it i unlikely I’ll ever come back to it. I made some marginalia in a number of places. Before putting it on the discard pile, I’ll flip through the pages and see if I should copy out anything for reference.

I give the book 3-stars. Maybe had I read it at peak powers of comprehension, it would have been 4-stars. Certainly, if you are interested in the history of the Reformation, especially the doctrinal views of the major participants, pick up a copy. Of course, everything in this book is in the public domain (except the biographical introductions written by Fosdick) and available on the internet without too much search.