My Review of "How to Think"

Alan Jacobs' How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds is the right book for the right time. Jacobs is a good thinker, as any with knowledge of his previous books, many essays, and invaluable blog posts will know. How to Think is vintage Jacobs -- an incisive, consistently thoughtful work that hits a post-truth, "alternative facts", right-side-of-history American culture right between the eyes. The worst thing that can be said of it is that it doesn't say quite enough.

Fortunately, How to Think is not directed at any one political polemic or a guidebook for navigating Facebook or Twitter. Jacobs writes that it's a mistake to assume that human beings are ultimately rational beings whose irrationality cannot be understood. On the contrary, human nature, and therefore human thinking, is inescapably moral. We often think and live poorly because we want to. How to Think says we fail to think correctly, fairly, and helpfully because doing so may interfere with what we want.

How to Think is a valuable work that combines an intelligent awareness of the crisis with literary and deeply humane suggestions for addressing it. My advice? Read this book in silence. Consume it in periods of quiet contemplation. Don't snack on it in between refreshes of the Twitter feed or during a break in your online debating. Steal away to a good library or a quiet field, pen in hand, and learn how to think.

I received a free copy of this game from the Blogging for Books review program in exchange for my honest review here.

Comments

My Review of "Misfit Faith"

Jason Stellman's Misfit Faith: Confessions of a Drunk Ex-Pastor was not quite the book I had expected it to be. It was so much better! Jason Stellman was a Presbyterian pastor, but he became a Roman Catholic. I expected Misfit Faith to be, therefore, a semi-autobiographical work of Catholic apologetics. I read of Scott Hahn's mentorship of Stellman, and expected Misfit Faith to be a new, milder version of Hahn's scholarship. But I did not see any defense of Peter being the first pope in Misfit Faith , or any criticism of Sola Scriptura, or an explanation and defense of the Catholic understanding of justification. Instead, I read the story of Stellman's own spiritual journey. From the opening confession that Stellman had flirted with Christian universalism, I knew this wasn't going to be a Catholic apologetic. I wouldn't even characterize Misfit Faith as an apologetic at all. Because if there's one thing Stellman isn't sure on...

My Review of "Radical Spirit"

Joan Chittister's Radical Spirit: 12 Ways to Live a Free and Authentic Life continues her literary tradition of making Benedictine spirituality accessible for new generations. I read her Distilled from the Daily several years ago and found her spiritual wisdom deep and transformative. In Radical Spirit Chittister focuses on the tough "spiritual hinge" of Benedict's Rule: The 12 steps of humility. Through her judicious use of spiritual parables from around the world and events from her own life, Chittister engages readers with narrative and humor, drawing them down a path to self-revelation and spiritual grounding. These thoughtfully choreographed chapters address the individual and offer an antidote to contemporary trends where "demagoguery is the new political brand, where narcissism is too often misunderstood to be leadership." Chittister writes that humility is the corrective to dangerous grandiosity, which "in religion ... makes i...

My Review of "Roadfood"

Jane & Michael Stern's Roadfood gives us another (this is the 10th edition!) gastro road trip across the US. Roadfood is like a road map through backroads and interstates for some of the best food in each state and region in the US. Roadfood celebrates venues most travelers would never venture near, let alone enter. Most of the state-by-state listed restaurants are, however, for dining on the cheap. Like Litton's in Knoville, TN -- which really does have amazing burgers. While one could hardly map a road trip by the Sterns' restaurant finds -- some cities, like Chicago, are overrepresented, while the rest of Illinois is all but ignored -- this fun and fanciful volume is pure pleasure. I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

The Mrs. & the Minister

Search This Blog