Rev. Dr. Jeff Garrison
Ronald W. Hall, The Carroll County Courthouse Tragedy (2013 printing, Hillsville VA: Carroll County Historical Society,1998). 272 pages including sources and a few b&w photos. This is another book that I’ve read in order to learn about my new locale. In March 1912, there was a shooting at the Carroll County, Courthouse in Hillsville, Virginia. When all … Read more The Carroll County Courthouse Tragedy
Amy Peterson, Where Goodness Still Grows: Reclaiming Virtue in an Age of Hypocrisy (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2020), 197 pages including notes. Fifteen years ago, I read Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue by Paul Woodruff. Since then, I’ve read it several times and have spent considerable energy thinking about virtues. Perhaps this itch drew me to this book. In … Read more Where Goodness Still Grows
2020 has come to an end. It was a year that we’ll not forget. Personally, it didn’t rise up to the trauma of 2016 (when I ruptured my quad-tendon, was in the hospital with sepsis following a prostate biopsy, and dealt with a tropical storm and later Hurricane Matthew), but it was still a terrible … Read more Wrapping Up 2020 (my reading summary for the year)
Gary D. Schmidt, Orbiting Jupiter (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015), 183 pages. This young adult novel is about Joseph. A teenage father, he’s sent to a foster family who own a farm in rural Maine. The family has one other boy, Jack. After getting off to a shaky start, the two become like brothers, watching out … Read more Notes on my reading during the past month
Billy Beasley, The Girl in the River: The Grief of a Widower, The Hope of a Child (Abbeville, SC: Moonshine Publishing, 2020), 226 pages. Billy Beasley tells a great story. Several of the characters in his first novel, set in the late 1960s, reappear here. We learn what happens to them fifty years later, as they play a … Read more What I’ve been reading lately: 3 Reviews
Esau McCaulley, Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope (Downer’s Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2020), 198 pages including a discussion guide, bibliography, scriptural index and index. McCaulley provides an interesting insight into the struggles facing African American theologians today. Coming from an evangelical tradition, he quickly notes the failure of … Read more Reading as Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope
Joseph Klaits, Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1985). 212 pages including an index, notes, bibliography, and a few woodcut plates. We often think of witch hunting as something done in a pre-modern world. However, most of the witch trials and executions took place in a relatively short period … Read more Servants of Satan
John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History (2004, Penguin Books, New York, 2018), 548 pages, some photos, index and notes. This is an impressive book that does more than just provide a history of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Barry provides a history of medicine especially in … Read more The Great Influenza
Jesse Cole, Find Your Yellow Tux: How to be Successful by Standing Out (Lioncrest Publishing, 2018), 303 pages, some photos. The Back Story: One of the most amazing things I’ve seen while living in the Savannah area is the development of a summer league baseball team for college players, the Savannah Bananas. Before the Bananas … Read more Would You Wear a Yellow Tux?
Things have been busy at my house as we are now showing it and trying to begin packing for our move to Virginia… But the busyness hasn’t kept me from sailing, as I crewed a boat up to Hilton Head on Friday and then on Saturday, we raced back to Skidaway (I’ll have to do … Read more The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Volume 4)