The summer is drawing to a close. Though I love summer and will be sad to see the days grow shorter and the skies grow colder, fall does bring with it some great benefits, not the least of which is a long list of new books. For that reason I anticipate squeezing in a few more book reviews than usual over the next few weeks. I hope you don’t mind!

Dr. Albert Mohler has released four books this year and they have had very different origins. Atheism Remix began as the W.H. Griffith Thomas Lectures Mohler delivered at Dallas Theological Seminary early in 2008; He Is Not Silent is an original work, written as a book; Culture Shift and his most recent work, Desire and Deceit, began as articles written over a period of years, most of which were posted at Mohler’s blog. Each of these books speaks to a different subject that is of great importance in our cultural context.

Though it has been thousands of years since it was written, and though countless people have made valiant attempts to decipher it, it seems as though we are no closer than ever to reaching a consensus regarding the Song of Solomon. Should it be read literally, as a poem that deals with love and sex? Or is this only a superficial meaning beneath which we will find a whole world of allegorical meaning pointing us to Christ? Or might it be some combination of the two, where it speaks both literally and allegorically? Christians continue to disagree.

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.

Candice Watters' professor just about blew her mind. "I was sitting in class learning about all the ways our country was slipping from its constitutional foundations. And in a moment of exasperation, I raised my hand and called out, 'So what's the solution?'" It wasn't what she expected. Her professor told her to get married, to have babies, and to do government (and in that order, too). Here she was, in grad school pursuing a master's so she could head to Washington and fight for the traditional family. Yet here she was told that she was going about it all wrong. It all comes down to math. "The people who form families, who raise children and send them into the next generation, are the ones who will influence where our government and culture go in the future." The conversation soon turned in a different direction, but she was changed; she was transfixed. She began to believe that she, too, could and should be married.

In 2000, when she was only twenty-three, Wendy Shalit published A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue, a book in which she argued that the sexual revolution may not have been entirely beneficial for women. She decried the lack of modesty this revolution has brought about and, according to TIME defended “compellingly, shame, privacy, gallantry, and sexual reticence.” Of course many people, and feminists in particular, were disgusted with the book and ruthlessly mocked her.

I recently began reading Laura Sessions Stepp’s Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both, a book I am really only reading because of the final three words of the title. That young women are pursuing sex and delaying love is common knowledge, but it’s rare to find someone who is willing to declare that this causes women to lose at both. While I am not yet at that stage of the book, I am looking forward to her conclusions.

In the first section she discusses what young people mean by the oft-used phrase “hooking up” and seeks to figure out why girls are so quick to hook up and so slow to commit to significant relationships. She shares a conversation that took place between a college-aged girl named Shaida and her friend.

I have a particular interest in books, written from a secular perspective, that say the same things Christians have been saying for years. I enjoy finding these little pears of wisdom, these little bits of common grace, that I can only hope will lead people to see and understand the the Bible truly does present the way humans can live best. One of these books is Unprotected, a book dealing with the problems inherent in campus counseling.

Two of the first books I ever reviewed dealt with the topic of sexual purity. One of these books, Every Man’s Battle by Steve Arterburn, stands out in my mind and the review I wrote continues to generate emails even several years later. The main teaching of his book is the concept of “bouncing” the eyes. What this means is that when a man sees something that is sexually tempting he is to immediately divert his eyes. The authors state that most men, after six weeks of doing this, will make it a habit and will no longer struggle with lust the way they once did. Their eyes will naturally bounce away from objects they once found alluring. When men stop filling their minds with lustful images, they can then learn to control their thoughts and stop the cycle of sexual fantasy. This is exactly the kind of solution people love to find in a book of this nature. It is a simple plan and one that depends largely on the willpower of the individual.

Some experts estimate that in Western nations as much as 50 percent of the adult population is now single. That is a statistic with tremendous significance for our nations, culture and churches. It is surely a statistic that is without historical precedent. Of course the decline of marriage coincides with increased sexual activity, showing that people like to enjoy many of the benefits and securities of marriage, but without the commitment. The Christian response to this new cultural landscape will prove interesting and will tell us much about the church’s commitment to hard truths.