A Few of Our Favorite Things - June 2024 // PLUS, Song of the Week!
Books and Conversations that Captivated Us This Month at The Englewood Review
Chris Smith and Katie Selby here. As editors of The Englewood Review of Books,
we try to share a few things at the end of the month that have captured our attention ...
(it’s been a few months since we’ve done this, so it feels like a good time to get back into this rhythm.)
This email at the end of the month highlights a few of our favorite book reviews or conversations that appeared on the ERB website that month, and a link to an article, podcast, or video from elsewhere that we have been enjoying... Drop us a line and let us know what you think.
A Step Towards Welcoming Our Neighbors
Tim Hoiland reviews the new book:
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
by Jonathan Blitzer
(Hardcover: Penguin Press, 2024)
In the introduction to Everyone Who is Gone is Here, the New Yorker journalist Jonathan Blitzer notes that the three most recent United States presidents—Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and Barack Obama—have all had to deal with humanitarian emergencies at the southern border. In every case, prevailing narratives have taken each unfolding crisis to be an isolated incident. But to compartmentalize our understanding of immigration that way, Blitzer argues, is to fundamentally misunderstand what has been happening in this hemisphere for more than four decades now.
Many books have been written about the involvement of the United States in the Cold War, including important books focused on the decidedly less-cold manner in which that conflict played out in Central America. Similarly, many books continue to be written about immigration, ranging from first-person narratives by migrants themselves to books advocating either for or against the policies that form the backdrop of immigrants’ lives. Blitzer’s book deals with both of these themes, and more. What sets it apart, however, is the way he weaves these threads together as the one interwoven story it really is. And he does so with attention to the personal and the political, the micro and the macro, the historic and the present.
It’s an audacious approach that pays off.
In a similar vein, Katy recommends this starred Kirkus review of:
The Truth About Immigration:
Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers
by Zeke Hernandez
A fresh, plainspoken take on the perpetual immigration controversy, upending many assumptions.
Hernandez, a Uruguayan immigrant, is a professor at the Wharton School. “There’s no way that I would be a professor at Wharton without all the opportunities this country gave me,” he writes. “Seeing this requires long-term thinking, framing people as an investment rather than a cost.” Arguing convincingly for a more complex approach to the issue than current fevered debates suggest, the author delivers well-reasoned analyses of how the social diversity broadened by immigration directly benefits communities and how a well-managed immigration system contributes to subtler yet longer-lasting economic strengths. [ Read the full review ]
Katie also appreciated this article on Wesley Vander Lugt’s new book Beauty is Oxygen:
Beauty is oxygen because it comes from the lungs of God.
Isolating individualism, rank injustice, and everyday monotony threaten to suffocate our souls. But Wesley Vander Lugt shows how beauty can breathe life back into us. Written in a graceful cadence that invites readers to turn these pages slowly, Beauty Is Oxygen weaves together theological reflection, poetry, cultural criticism, and Scripture. Throughout, Vander Lugt shows how beauty can break us out of self-centered malaise, promote healing and hope for our broken world, and reenchant our lives. [ Read the full article ]
A wonderful resource for book lovers that I stumbled on this week, is Bookmarks (from LitHub), a book review aggregator that pulls together reviews of recent books from key publications. As an example, here’s their coverage of Jonathan Blitzer’s book reviewed above. They do have a section of religion reviews, but it is fairly small, and generally, their focus is on literary books and prominent cultural nonfiction books.
Time is running out
to get the superb ebook deals
in the Kindle monthly sale for June!
Here are a few of our recommended ebooks in this sale...
And finally, instead of doing a separate post, I am rolling the song of the week into this eclectic digest.
The Tenth post in “The Song of the Week” series.
The previous post in this series:
(and you can link back to the previous ones from it)
9. Song of the Week - "Grief is Only Love" - Stephen Wilson, Jr.
Music sits pretty close to the intersection of the key themes of this Substack: reading/writing, community, and formation. The songs we sing are deeply formative for us as persons and communities. So, I share a song here each week that has been formative for me, and offer a couple of brief thoughts that connect it with this particular week (in the church calendar and/or natural year) and explore why it is significant for me. Let me know what you think…
Song of the Week:
“Every Hour Here” by The Innocence Mission
For at least three decades, this song has been one of my favorites, and I have been holding on to it to share in this series. From the album UMBRELLA, released in the summer of 1991, I probably didn’t hear this song until I was away at college a couple of years later. The Innocence Mission, from Lancaster, PA, did have some traction among alt-music lovers in the D.C. area when I was in high school, and I know some of their songs before I went to college (including “Black Sheep Wall,”) but not this one.
I won’t say much about this song, but will post the lyrics here, and encourage you to pay close attention to them, and see if they seem to resonate with our human proclivities (as they seem to me to do), especially these lines:
Our self-importance grows so dazzling we don't see You
But gentle Jesus, aren't You always?
Aren't You every hour here?
Here’s the full lyrics:
We ride our bikes around the circle in the cemetery weaving
I wave up to You on the Cross
Am I to come upon You suddenly like this forever?
Happy, relieved that You are here and I can see You
I can feel You
You are like the ticket-half
I find inside the pocket of my old leaf-raking coat
There all the time, all the while forgotten
I so often seem to leave You in churches and other islands
And on my beads where I can see You, I can feel You
I take the ticket-half and put it on the table saying
This is God and He's here through my comings and my goings
But I walk past the ticket-half, I walk past the ticket-half
I walk past the ticket-half just as I've walked past the Cross on our wall
Our self-importance grows so dazzling we don't see You
But gentle Jesus, aren't You always?
Aren't You every hour here?
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