Mike Wittmer

Category: book review

  • Thatcher on the Good Samaritan

    I learned a lot from Robert Sirico’s, Defending the Free Market. He explained how interest rates encourage responsible behavior (i.e., credit card rates should be high, for imagine how much Americans would borrow if these rates were artificially low); how important it is for the poor to retain their dignity by contributing what they can…

  • Steinbeck vs. Sirico

    In honor of the big debate we might have this fall, if we can get past the “put ya’ all back in chains” and “legitimate rape” comments, I just finished reading John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Robert Sirico’s new Defending the Free Market. Steinbeck’s classic tale is a powerfully moving story about migrant…

  • fools rush in

    I just read Fools Rush In, a rollicking book by Carl Trueman, Professor of Historical Theology at Westminster Seminary. I recommend this book both for its content and for any writer who wants to develop his own voice (and who doesn’t?). This book is teeming with voice and entirely in the first person, which is…

  • dying for the Word of the Lord

    I have refrained from using this blog to plug my new book, The Last Enemy, but I mention it now because it’s an important counterpoint to another new book on death. It’s simply called Death, and it’s written by Shelly Kagan, a Yale philosopher, and published by Yale University Press. Kagan excerpts his book in…

  • stanley hauerwas

    This morning I made the mistake of opening Hannah’s Child, the memoir of theologian Stanley Hauerwas, and I lost much of my day reading it. Hauerwas engagingly writes about studying at Yale Divinity School in its heyday (he arrived one year after H. Richard Niebuhr died) and teaching in the theology department at Notre Dame…

  • Jayber Crow

    I finished my first Wendell Berry novel this week. I picked Jayber Crow, which is a story about a balding bachelor barber who secretly “marries” Mattie, a much younger woman who is already married to a show-off that nobody likes. Jayber vows to stay faithful to Mattie and he does, though he never tells her…

  • fear and faith

    Another thing I learned while researching The Last Enemy is that it’s not wrong to be afraid of dying. Jesus was. His death contained unfathomable terrors, and he sweat blood as he braced himself for what was to come. Our deaths are infinitely easier, but we may still learn from the cross that fear is…

  • Why a book on death?

    My last two books have addressed consecutively the topics of hell and death, so I guess I’m mired in my blue period. I wouldn’t say I’m totally depressed, but my next project may be a history of the Chicago Cubs. The idea of writing a book on death occurred to me while watching Tom Brokaw’s…

  • the last enemy

    Today is the release of my book on death, The Last Enemy: Preparing to Win the Fight of Your Life. I kept the book small, with short chapters full of humorous and inspiring stories, so it would be enjoyably read by anyone. And since we’re all going to die, I think we all need to…

  • these are the days of Elijah

    Zach Bartels, a former student and the passionate pastor highlighted in Why We Love the Church (by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck), recently loaned me a copy of his first novel, 42 Months Dry. I didn’t get to it for a while, mostly because I treat fiction like my treadmill—I know it’s good for me…