1

Let me recommend a few others:

(Cardinal) John Henry Newman The Idea of a University | John Comenius The Labyrinth of the World and The Paradise of the Heart

The first is a seminal work and the foundational classic on the purpose of higher education and its connection to the Christian life. The other is an allegorical work written by the "father of modern education" and shares some of its spirit with Ecclesiastes.

John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion | Abraham Kuyper Lectures on Calvinism

Even Jacob Arminius called Calvin's works more edifying than the Early Church Fathers and Kuyper provides, arguably, the best modern update. I'm surprised you didn't include Kuyper's lectures, Joe.

Peter Kreeft Socratic Logic | A Shorter Summa: The Essential Philosophical Passages of Saint Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica

Kreeft's Socratic Logic is not just about the method, but is "a text using Socratic Method, Platonic Questions, and Aristotelean Principles." It's a nice follow up to Copi's work and dovetails nicely into a A Shorter Summa, (also by Kreeft) a guided tour one of the most influential thinkers in Western philosophy, who built on and revised Augustine's neo-Platonic framework with his own neo-Aristotelean thinking.

2

Let me recommend a few others:

(Cardinal) John Henry Newman The Idea of a University | John Comenius The Labyrinth of the World and The Paradise of the Heart

The first is a seminal work and the foundational classic on the purpose of higher education and its connection to the Christian life. The other is an allegorical work written by the "father of modern education" and shares some of its spirit with Ecclesiastes.

John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion | Abraham Kuyper Lectures on Calvinism

Even Jacob Arminius called Calvin's works more edifying than the Early Church Fathers and Kuyper provides, arguably, the best modern update. I'm surprised you didn't include Kuyper's lectures, Joe.

Peter Kreeft Socratic Logic | A Shorter Summa: The Essential Philosophical Passages of Saint Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica

Kreeft's Socratic Logic is not just about the method, but is "a text using Socratic Method, Platonic Questions, and Aristotelean Principles." It's a nice follow up to Copi's work and dovetails nicely into a A Shorter Summa, (also by Kreeft) a guided tour one of the most influential thinkers in Western philosophy, who built on and revised Augustine's neo-Platonic framework with his own neo-Aristotelean thinking.

3

Double tap. Feel free to delete.

4

Minirth & Meier Love Is A Choice | Smalley & Trent Hidden Keys to Loving Relationships. In these days of pop "feel good" philosophy these two books cut through and get to the emotional and spiritual roots of addictions and broken relationships. Probably the most "practical" Christian psychology books out there (my opinion).

Ed Brown Our Father’s World - Mobilizing the Church to Care for Creation | Tri Robinson Saving God's Green Earth: Rediscovering the Church's Responsibility to Environmental Stewardship. If you're looking for Biblically-sound Evangelical thought on ecology these two books will fill the bill. Robinson's book is a pastoral perspective; Brown covers ecology from a missionary perspective. Both are relevant without being doom and gloom. (Schaeffer's Pollution and the Death of Man is good too).

5

Glad to see I've read some of those on the list, though not necessarily paired.

I wanted to make a comment about Flatland. Being a math major in college I picked it up. It's a quick read (a.k.a. "short") but very thought provoking. While I don't know the hows & whys of why Abbot wrote it, I see it as a great analogy of the Christian life. We have been pulled out of Flatland by the Holy Spirit, shown another dimension, and put back in to share the Gospel that there is something beyond/behind the "reality" those in the 2-D world experience. I highly recommend it.

6

Hey, Joe, I've noticed you update a lot more than you did in 2006. I really like seeing the updates every day. Thanks for being a hard-working blogger.

7

this is the exact same post as justin taylor has on his blog. which one of you copied and pasted?

8

Here's what the Chief of Naval Operations has us reading now:

http://www.navyreading.navy.mil/Resources/NPRPguide_complete.pdf

Covers everything from science fiction to naval history to leadership and management. We get them all free at the NWC library :-)!

9

Joe:

I am partial to E. D. Hirsh's Validity in Intepretation; it is a must read next to How to Read and Elements. I think Ellison's Invisible Man needs to be read if we will be civilized, along with Golding's Lord of the Flies and Conrad's Heart of Darkness. If you had not had Lewis' Abolition of Man, I would have recommended it, only because most list have Sarte, Kikergaard, Thoreau, and Nietze.

Thank you for the lists!

ECR

10

I have two college age children; indeed, they are both young men and deserve to referenced as such by me. I have encouraged them to read broadly, read for fun, but read to survive, as well. We live in a dangerous world and it is getting worse, not better. More nations have nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Even North Korea has been able to launch and navigate a missile in flight. More nations have radical elements now than when I was in college, terroristic attacks on civilization have been rampant for decades but are escalating in numbers as well as numbers of authors, and there seems to be no way out of fighting back, even when we are not sure of the identity of the enemy. In my opinion, in addition to the Scriptures, and I do not add that to the list lightly, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shirer and The Holocaust by Gilbert are essentials. We are doomed to repeat these mistakes and watch others repeat them if we do not ourselves understand what happened. Radical Islam, or hijacked Islam, will force us to make hard choices and may force us to make many of the accomodations made in the past that led to tragedy. It is clear that on the other side, Damascus, Tehran and Cairo, are failing to understand what happened at Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and many others, should they push us as hard as they have pushed Israel, beyond fear to desperation. I have encouraged the reading of treatises on the First Amendment, The System of Freedom of Expression, for example, and others, for without that understanding, the blogosphere itself might be jeopardized. I have encouraged the reading of Funny Money,by Singer, so that wise investment can exist and the fall of American banks need not be once again experienced as we did in 1982. I would also encourage every Dilbert cartoon ever made be read, otherwise we might all be doomed to the cubicle life.

11

What -- not a single person is going to recommend Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen? Doesn't anybody read anymore?

12

I suspect Sartre has been included as a sterling example of a typical going nowhere worldview that has been very influential.

13

What, no Shakespeare at all? I understand that most people assume that all high school students have studied the Bard during at least one year of their four year sentence, but i have found this to be erroneous in most cases. Also, Milton Friedman for Economics.