A.W. Tozer is a man whose ministry has fascinated me. A man who held closely to biblical, Protestant theology, he was also a man who loved the old Catholic mystics. He had little formal education, yet had the ability to hold the most educated of men and women at rapt attention. He had a single-minded devotion to Christ and the highest respect for the Scriptures. Reading A Passion for God has only increased my fascination with him, for here we see more strange and seemingly irreconcilable opposites. Biographer Lyle Dorsett has written a study of the man that deals as honestly with his faults as with the areas that are laudable. And in this case the faults are almost shocking.

I knew I had to read Out of the Black Shadows after I came upon Philip Ryken's brief review of the book. Ryken wrote, "The book is a great read for Christians of all ages. The members of our book club would put Out of the Black Shadows in the very first rank of spiritual autobiographies." The book tells the story of Stephen Lungu, now an evangelist serving with African Enterprise.

In 2003 Gene Robinson was elected bishop of the tiny Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire after having served as assistant to the previous bishop for almost eighteen years. Robinson's profile, both within the Episcopal Church and outside of it, is completely out of proportion to the size of his charge. He is, after all, the first practicing homosexual to be elected as a bishop within that church body. His story has been told widely within the media and he is regarded as a hero and leader to many within the homosexual community. In the Eye of the Storm is his first book. Where I had been expecting an autobiography, that is only partially the case. While the book does deal with the events surrounding Robinson's rise to the international spotlight, the book's five parts contains essays and reflections on a variety of themes.

Love him or hate him, it is tough to accuse Shane Claiborne of being an armchair quarterback. He is not a man who seeks to convince people to do something that he is unwilling to do himself. Instead he calls Christians to live as radicals while he himself lives in a radically counterculture way. Claiborne is one of the founders of The Simple Way, a small but increasingly high-profile ministry among the poor in Philadelphia. He lives here in poverty, choosing to spend his days with the poor and the destitute, serving them and sharing in their trials. The Irresistible Revolution is Claiborne's biographical account of how he became the activist he is today and it is his cry for other Christians to become "ordinary radicals."

I missed out on the Growing Pains phenomenon. Because my family had no television while I was growing up, the Seaver family largely passed me by. I caught occasional glimpses of the program but little more than that. It was only recently that I learned the show had propelled Leonardo DiCaprio's illustrious career. The truth is I know more about Cameron's post-sitcom career than the years he spent as Mike Seaver, one of television's best known and most loved characters. And it was those years that was my primary interest as I read Still Growing, Cameron's newly published autobiography.

I try not to make a habit of posting book reviews two days in a row, but in this case I felt this book was so special that I needed to bring your attention to it.

I am a little bit late to the party with this book. Released in hardcover in 2001 and paperback in 2002, John Adams is regarded as one of David McCullough's greatest achievements. This is no little praise for a man who had previously won a Pulitzer prize (for his biography of Harry Truman)--a reward he was to receive again for John Adams. The precursor to 2005's 1776, this is a stirring biography and one of the best I've ever read. Like McCullough's other titles, this book is not hard to read and never bogs down in detail. Instead it is fast-moving and gripping, reading almost like a novel.

I am no scholar and am unequipped to comment on the accuracy of McCullough's portrait of Adams. I will leave that to the historians. So rather than provide a blow-by-blow account of Adams's life, let me simply suggest a few of the lessons and observations I drew from this book.

Ayaan Harsi Ali is one of Europe's most controversial political figures, even if she is one who has since relocated to America. One of TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world, Ali is the author of a bestselling biography and the writer of a controversial movie. When her film Submission was screened in Holland, it led to murder of Theo van Gogh, it's producer. As van Gogh cycled to work one morning, Muhammad Bouyeri shot him several times, then nearly decapitated him and stabbed a five-page letter into his chest. The letter was addressed to Ali. The film and the book have forced her to live in hiding and under constant protection.

Escape is undoubtedly one of the most bizarre memoirs you are ever likely to read. It is small wonder that it quickly made its mark on the New York Times list of bestsellers. Written by Carolyn Jessop, a woman who was born into the Fundamentalist Lattery Day Saints (FLDS), the book describes what it is like to live as part of this cult which is distinctive primarily for its beliefs about polygamy. The FLDS, which emerged in the 1930s as a fundamentalist offshoot of the Mormon church, holds that God has ordained polygamy and not only that, but that it is a requirement for anyone who wishes to attain the highest level of heaven. Most men eventually have at least three wives, with more prominent members of the cult holding far more than that. Some of the leaders are believed to have fifty, sixty, or even one hundred wives. Women are generally placed with husbands at the whim of the cult's leader (who claims to receive divine guidance about which women belong with certain men).

John Murray, long-time professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, was, until his death in 1975, widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost Reformed theologians. Iain Murray (no relation to John Murray) is regarded as one of the world’s foremost Reformed biographers. And here, in The Life of John Murray, the biographer brings us the life of the theologian.