I love church history. I consider it absolutely tragic that so few contemporary Christians have any real sense of their heritage. They know a little bit of New Testament history, can list hundreds of today’s best and worst teachers, but know almost nothing of the 2000 years between.

The Reformation: How a Monk and a Mallet Changed the World is one of a long line of books authored by Stephen Nichols, professor at Lancaster Bible College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Nichols is a prolific author who seems to be releasing books with impressive regularity. To this point all of his books have centered on church history. He has written several works on Jonathan Edwards, one each on Martin Luther and Gresham Machen, and one providing a guided tour of classic Christian writing. This new title “goes behind the scenes and uncovers the human side of the larger-than-life Reformers through user-friendly narrative stories on the Reformation.”

Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century is a book I feel quite unequipped to review. And, indeed, it has been very widely reviewed by people far more qualified than I. The reviews, which I turned to only after I had finished reading the book, are mixed. Some people feel this book is groundbreaking while others feel it rehashes old arguments simply set in a new context. It seems that the more knowledgeable the reviewer, the less enthusiasm he has for the book. I was interested to see that many of the concerns of the experts are ones I shared as well.

The author’s main point is obvious and well-proven. The world is, indeed, flat. The gap between nations is quickly closing. Countless jobs from North America and other developed nations are being outsourced to China, India and beyond. Instant communication and speedy travel have made the world seem smaller and smaller. Friedman identifies ten forces that he feels are the most important contributors to this new, flat world:

Depending on the perspective of the individual Christian, John Calvin may either be one of the greatest theologians or the worst charlatans who ever lived. For those who feel Calvin’s teachings accurately interpreted the Bible, he is a great teacher and one who rediscovered doctrines of grace that had lay largely dormant for centuries. For those who feel Calvin’s teachings are a gross misrepresentation of God’s sovereignty and human freedom, Calvin is a deceiver and one who has led countless Christians away from biblical truths.

War is terrible. It’s an understatement, I know, and something that is almost too obvious to bother saying. Yet the horrors of war can only really be understood, it seems, by those who have been involved in them. In the annals of warfare, few battles have been more brutal than the battle of Iwo Jima. Those who survived this battle were changed forever. James Bradley’s father was one of those survivors. But he was more. He was one of the six men who have been immortalized in what quickly became the world’s most famous and most reproduced photograph. The image of six men raising a flag over Iwo Jima became a national symbol and a rallying point during what was a long and costly war. The six men who raised this flag were lauded as heroes, but the three who walked off the island were reluctant to accept this fame. John Bradley, James’ father, went on to live a long and productive life, but never spoke of the battle. Though his actions in the battle earned him a Navy Cross, he never considered himself a hero.

As I make my way through the biographies of famous Christians of days past, I came across David Livingstone. Interestingly, Livingstone is a man best known not for something he said but for something that was said to him. “Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” spoken to him by Henry Morton Stanley, is a phrase that has gone down in history. But for this phrase I suspect few people would remember Livingstone’s name.

I came to realize not too long ago that, for a man of such importance, I knew shockingly little about Jonathan Edwards. I had some knowledge of the basic outline of his life and teachings, but knew little beyond that. Having heard so many positive reviews of George Marsden’s recent biography of the man, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, I turned to this book to learn more about this giant of the faith. I was richly rewarded. And if ever I have felt inadequate to the task of summarizing a book in just a few short paragraphs, this is the time.

God’s Bestseller is the second biography of Tyndale I have read this year and one of only a few produced in recent decades. Written by Brian Moynahan, the subtitle provides a glimpse of the author’s emphases: “William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the English Bible—A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal.” Less-scholarly than David Daniell’s William Tyndale: A Biography, God’s Bestseller is also more readable, as evidenced by the Mail on Sunday’s endorsement which suggests it is “almost worthy of LeCarre.”

I have only elementary knowledge of American history. This is shameful, really, as in high school and university I took at least two courses on American history and did quite well in them as memory serves. Still, somehow I have forgotten much that I ought to know. Popular history, books written about periods of the past but written in a narrative fashion rather than as dry history, have proven useful in refreshing my memory. Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower reminded me of the first days of the American colonies, and I have followed that with David McCullough’s 1776 which tells the story of what is easily the most pivotal, important year in America’s long and storied history.

Having read fifty or sixty nonfiction books already this year, I began to crave some lighter, easier reading. And, in a case of great timing, an Advance Reader Copy of Stephen Lawhead’s Hood arrived in the mail just a few days ago. Lawhead, known for writing fantasy and historical fiction, has set his sights on the greatest of the English heroes, Robin Hood. But rather than simply retelling the oft-told story, he has re imagined Robin Hood and has attempted to arrive at the source for this great story. This is a “completely re-imagined epic of the man known as Robin Hood—told in a far more earthy, eerie and elemental way than ever before.” In a lengthy appendix to the book, the author explains his belief that the story of Robin Hood may well have originated in Wales and provides ample proof that this just may be the case.

The decision that I would read Mayflower, a book that has made its way nearly to the top of the New York Times list of bestsellers, took only as long as was necessary for me to understand that it dealt with the Puritan pilgrims who arrived on the shores of American in 1620. Though the story of the arrival and early struggles of this group of immigrants is now the stuff of legend, I know surprisingly little about these people. Because this story has entered the realm of legend, it is difficult to know where reality ends and mere fantasy begins. Nathaniel Philbrick, who was awarded the National Book Award for his previous title, In the Heart of the Sea, believes that the oft-told tale of the first Thanksgiving, celebrated between the Pilgrims and the Indians, does not do justice to the history of Plymouth Colony.