• Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us © 2013
• Signal: McClelland & Stewart
• xxx+446 pages

The entire processed food industry—that behemoth which generates hundreds of billions of dollars in annual sales—can be summed up by the way they manipulate and market three simple ingredients: salt, sugar, and fat.

Michael Moss has done a painstaking amount of research, interviewing current and former food industry insiders and visiting (and even tasting the products of) food research labs. The result is this book: a narrative which shows how the simple human need to eat has generated a war between corporations trying to win the taste buds of consumers.

This book is stuffed full of interesting stories and facts:

• Philip Morris, the tobacco company, has acquired General Foods and Kraft (among others) and uses its marketing savvy to deflect obesity concerns the same way they deflected cancer concerns for years.
• Salt isn’t just used for taste. It covers the metallic and rotten taste of processed food.
• Through extensive research, food scientists determine the precise amount of sweetness (the “bliss point” ) to generate the greatest desire in consumers.
• While humans lose their desire to eat more sugary foods after a certain point, that reluctance is undermined when sugar is mixed with fat.
• Sugar and fat are interchangeable ingredients. A product can be marketed as “low fat” or “low sugar” by lowering the offending ingredient and replacing it with the other.

Moss has won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting—a skill highlighted in this book. His writing is compelling, shocking at times, but fair. He never sounds preachy or unreasonably biased.

If you’re concerned with what you put into your body, this is a book worth reading.

—Miroslav Volf, Captive to the Word of God: Engaging the Scriptures for Contemporary Theological Reflection, 118.

• Here and Now: Living in the Spirit © 1994
• Crossroad
• 144 pages

Do yourself a favour and order this book—then come back to finish reading my review. This book is that good.

Here and Now is a collection of Henri Nouwen’s reflections on life. Each reflection is about two pages long and they’re grouped together under larger categories like “Joy,” “Prayer,” and “Suffering”.

Any book of reflections is only as insightful as the life of the author. This is why Here and Now is so profound. Nouwen, a priest, became a professor who taught at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard. He devoted much of his life to the poor and lived the remainder of his life serving people with mental handicaps in L’Arche Daybreak in Richmond Hill, Ontario.

With Nouwen, there’s no pretense. What you read is the fruit of honest reflection on life. He lived what he wrote in “Who We Are” (136):

We, therefore, need discipline to keep living truthfully and not succumb to the endless seductions of our society.

Nouwen lived a disciplined truthful life apart from the seductions of society—and it shows. Here and Now will help you to see your own life-with-God in a new light.

—Miroslav Volf, Captive to the Word of God: Engaging the Scriptures for Contemporary Theological Reflection, 104.

• A Work of Heart: Understanding How God Shapes Spiritual Leader (Updated Edition)  © 2000, 2011
• Jossey-Bass
• xxv+203 pages

Once again I’m forced to write a review of a Christian leadership book and once again, I’m of two minds.

If the idea of delving into scripture to mine leadership qualities doesn’t bother you, then this book is one of the best that I’ve read.

McNeal begins by examining the lives of Moses, David, Paul, and Jesus to see how leadership qualities are evident in their lives. McNeal rightly emphasizes the importance heart-formation through remaining close to God and allowing him to change you.

In the second half of the book, McNeal examines six areas where the leader’s qualities are worked out:

1. Culture
2. Call
3. Community
4. Communion
5. Conflict
6. Commonplace

I was privileged to read this book through with a Bible College student in a mentoring relationship. There was always plenty of material and insights to discuss.

Here are a few of my problems with leadership books in general. The Bible doesn’t speak about leadership—shepherding and servanthood are the key metaphors.

Furthermore, the idea that there is a separate class of people who operate on a special “leadership” level seems foreign to the thrust of the New Testament. Jesus’ disciples didn’t look like people with high-level leadership qualities. They became effective once they were empowered by the Spirit.

We should examine what we mean by “leadership qualities,” too. Don’t we mean the sort of personal characteristics that make people successful in the business world today? What right do we have to dive anachronistically through scripture in an attempt to uncover these 21st century values?

On a hermentutical level, why do we assume that the personal qualities of people like Moses and David are qualities we should emulate? Scripture is the story of how God used these people—not how they were skilled enough to be used.

There you have it. If you enjoy the “christian leadership” genre, this is one of the best on the topic. If you share my reservations, leave this book on the shelf.

—Douglas J. Moo, The Letter of James (The Pillar New Testament Commentary), 144.

• Phoenix In Obsidian © 1970
• Grafton: Collins
• 127 pages

Second volumes rarely live up to the first. Setting aside some obvious exceptions (like The Empire Strikes Back), you expect sophomore efforts to lack the originality of the first. In the first volume you build the world, in the second volume you work within it.

Fortunately, Phoenix in Obsidian bucks this trend. This second book in Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series feels like a new start. While the characters still feel unidimensional, the world they inhabit is fleshed out in intriguing detail. Where the first volume focused on hack-and-slash style action, the second book is more of a metaphysical mystery.

After finishing this volume, I quickly found a second-hand copy of the third book in the series and ordered it online. Now I need to see how John Decker’s story arc ends!

—Nicolas Berdyaev in Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, 48.

• The Letter of James (Pillar New Testament Commentary) © 2000
• Eerdmans
• xvi+271 pages

Biblical scholars make a name for themselves by writing a commentary on Romans. The ability to survey the vast amount of secondary literature, follow the arguments in the text, and chart your own course are daunting. When I took a class on Romans in Seminary, I was assigned two commentaries: James D. G. Dunn (Word Biblical Commentary) and Douglas J. Moo (New International Commentary on the New Testament). While I lean more towards Dunn’s interpretation or Romans, I was struck by the depth and readability of Moo’s work.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the Romans scholar also wrote a commentary on James! Those two books seem to go together like oil and water! Moo highlights the difficulty (140):

Jas. 2:24: A person is justified by works and not by faith alone
Rom. 3:28: A person is justified by faith and not by works of the law

I had to know how a Pauline scholar came to grips with the message of James.

James is famous for being a disjointed tract. While Moo acknowledges its frequent shift in foci, he does an excellent job at drawing the isolated pericopae together across the chapters and explaining how they aid in the interpretation of each other. A good example of this is how he relates the patience that James requires of his audience despite their trials (James 5:7) with the introductory comments on joy in trials (James 1:2-4).

As for the central conundrum between Paul and James—justification by works or by faith—Moo makes three points:

1. Paul’s “works of the law” is different from James’ “works”. James is speaking of any good deed, while Paul has something specific in mind. (If Moo were a New Perspective on Paul theologian, this point would be easier to make!)
2. Paul speaks of “faith” where James speaks of “faith alone”. James is criticizing the sort of “faith alone” (without works) that Paul would equally criticize.
3. Paul uses “justify” to refer to “the initial declaration of a sinner’s innocence before God” (141), where James has God’s eschatological verdict in mind.

Moo does a fine job at acknowledging the difficulty while charting a reasonable way forward.

The Letter of James is a readable commentary for the thoughtful layperson with more than enough depth to keep the pastor engaged. I’m richer for having read it.

—Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, 54.