During the month of April 2018, I read quite a few books that warrant recommendation. My top rated books from that reading list that were published in 2018 appear below.
- (5.0) Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks by Diana Butler Bass (HarperOne, 2018)
- (5.0) The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income is Our Future by Andrew Yang (Hachette Books, 2018)
- (4.5) New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms (Doubleday, 2018)
- (4.5) On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis (Penguin Press, 2018)
- (4.0) Faith: A Journey for All by Jimmy Carter (Simon & Schuster, 2018)
- (4.0) Enduring Bonds: Inequality, Marriage, Parenting, and Everything Else that Makes Families Great and Terrible by Philip N. Cohen (University of California Press, 2018)
- (4.0) How to Preach a Dangerous Sermon by Frank A. Thomas (Abingdon Press, 2018)
- (4.0) Open to the Spirit: God in Us, God with Us, God Transforming Us by Scot McKnight (Waterbrook, 2018)
- (3.5) The Outlier Approach: How to Triumph in Your Career as a Nonconformist by Kevin Hong (KB Media Group, 2018)
- (3.0) The Very Worst Missionary: A Memoir or Whatever by Jamie Wright (Convergent Books, 2018)
So What?
Once again Diana Butler Bass has penned the right book at the right time. First mentioned on this blog in her role as a book author in 2012, her book Christianity After Religion: The End of the Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening was recognized as one of my top two books that year. Her 2015 work Grounded: Finding God in the World – A Spiritual Revolution made my top ten books of that year. Like these earlier works, Grateful was published at just the right time. With the many changes at the macro level of the human experience as well as the many challenging transitions within the American experience in recent months, people seem less inclined to be grateful than at any point in my memory. Reading Grateful is a powerful way to connect and/or reconnect with gratitude as an important part of the individual and communal experience. And to do so not from an understanding of gratitude as a “transaction of debt and duty,” but rather as “spiritual awareness and a social structure of gift and response” (xxiv).
Andrew Yang is an author, entrepreneur specializing in start ups, and a Democratic candidate for US President in 2020. His new book provides a deep dive into how work has changed, is changing, and will likely change in the future. In this well researched yet easy to read book Yang clearly communicates the challenges we will soon face as fewer people are needed in the workforce, and as work itself changes. More importantly, he offers some substantive proposals for human flourishing in that future world. While universal basic income is a key proposal, Yang recognizes that it alone will not lead to a better world for all unless joined with other shifts.
The other books on this month’s list span a variety of topics. All helped me think new thoughts, and inspired multiple helpful conversations.
- Share one book you have read in 2018 that you highly recommend.
- Share one book that you hope to read this spring or summer.