Book Review: The Book of Lies. Written by Brad Meltzer. Published by Grand Central Publishing, 2008.

In his book, The Letter of Marque , Patrick O'Brian provides a scene in which Captain Jack Aubrey has to deal with a situation that arises from the actions of a group of Sethians that are on board his ship. Sethians are members of a religious cult that believe that Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve's first two sons, were brought into being by angels, but that Seth, Adam and Eve's son who was born after Abel's death, was God's direct, pure creation.  (Sethian lore is apparently silent as to whether Enoch, Adam and Eve's third son, born prior to Seth, was the product of angels.)   Sethians believe that Seth was the protoype of our Lord and they believe that Seth watches over Sethians with particular care. In O'Brian's novel, the Sethians paint the name “Seth” on the side of Aubrey's ship as a demonstration of their gratitude to Seth for his blessings, and then refuse to have the name removed from the side of the ship because they consider it to be holy. When I first read about the Sethians in O'Brian's novel, I assumed them to be a product of O'Brian's imagination, but I later found that the Sethians are not imaginary and apparently continue to exist today as either Neo-Sethians or as the Knights of Seth.

As I consider the existence of the Sethians with the backdrop of having just read Brad Meltzer's newest book, it occurs to me that one of my life-long assumptions has run nose-first into the wall of reality. There exists thousands of Christian denominations and sects, and a proliferation of cults that insist that their existence has a Biblical basis. Until now, I have assumed that the genesis of the myriad of denominations, cults, and sects was largely due to disagreements in interpretations of what the Bible does say, but now I suspect that the majority of the various Christian sects owe their existence to conjecture about what the Bible does not say. The Sethians provide us with a perfect example of this conjecture. Seth is mentioned in the Bible only ten times and each of those times he is only mentioned as a genealogical afterthought, as the son of Adam or the father of Enos. And yet, somehow, a whole religious cult sprang up to honor him.

Another notable example of conjecture over what the Bible does not say is the so-called “Gap Theory.” Theologians theorize about the existence of a historical gap of millions of years between the first and second verses of the first chapter of Genesis. This gap conveniently accounts for the existence and subsequent annihilation of the dinosaurs, and I have known of instances of Christian “brothers” resorting to fistfights over this gap, even though it is just a matter of conjecture. We could list several pages of instances where men have gone their separate ways because of a disagreement over conjecture about what the Bible does not say, but time and space dictates that we now focus on the one instance that Brad Meltzer points out in his newest book, The Book of Lies. Interestingly enough, the subject of Biblical conjecture in Meltzer's book happens to be Seth's older brother, Cain.

Book Review: Empire of Lies. Written by Andrew Klavan. Published by Harcourt, 2008.

During the past month, I have read two recently published novels which have as their antagonists groups of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. These two novels are Brad Thor's The Last Patriot and the book which we now have under review, Empire of Lies. To be sure, the plots are drastically different, and the protagonists in the two books could not possibly be more different: the hardcore CIA operative, Scot Harvath, found in Thor's novel, and the real-estate investing Evangelical Christian father of three, Jason Harrow, found in Klavan's novel. But both novels deal with the subject matter of Islamic fundamentalists, demonstrating that their primary objective is to kill anyone who disagrees with them.

We have already done a review of The Last Patriot which you can read, but I will note here that, while I have a generally positive opinion of Thor's writing, The Last Patriot tends to be a dry history lesson at times and there are some gaping holes in the plot. Apparently, not everyone shares my opinion of the book, for even as I write this current review, The Last Patriot is number five on the Times Best Seller List. Certainly, some portion of it's popularity is attributable to the fact that Thor's readers have come to know and love Scot Harvath, and they want to know what is going on in this latest episode of his life. We see this same dynamic at play in the newly published book, The Bourne Sanction. The popularity of that book can in no way be attributable to good writing – the writing is mediocre, at best – but can only be explained by the desire of Jason Bourne fans to read more about Jason Bourne.

When we compare the popularity of Empire of Lies to that of The Last Patriot, we find that not only is Klavan's book absent from the top ten on the Times Best Seller List, my local Barnes & Noble store did not even have one copy when I checked recently. In addition to the difference in popularity in the two books, we should also note the difference in notoriety. Since the publication of The Last Patriot, Brad Thor has been forced to re-locate and pay for additional personal security because of the death threats that he has received from Islamo-fascists. Apparently Islamo-fascists do not care for fictional characters searching for a fictional last revelation of the Qur'an. We have no indication that Andrew Klavan has received any similar death threats for Empire of Lies, even though the protagonist in the book can be found talking about Islamo-fascist fundamentalists, describing them as “Crazy jihadists taking over the failed kingdoms of Islam, fanatic hordes of fundamentalist warriors who seem to have burst alive out of the mural of the Dark Ages, burst, complete with beards and turbans, frothing horses, scimitars upraised, to go galloping nutso through real life. They would brook no god but their god, their ferocious god, and no law but their sharia law. They would kill any one that might oppose or offend them, any Muslim who imagined a new future, any woman who wanted to be equal or free...They were murderers in Holland. Rioters in France. Bombers in England, Russia, Pakistan, and so on.” Apparently, a writer of fiction does not merit death threats if he merely tells the truth about the fascistic behavior of Islamic fundamentalists.

Perhaps you have purchased The Last Patriot because you are a great fan of Thor's Scot Harvath, or perhaps you have purchased the book just to find out what is written there that merits the Salman Rushdie treatment for Brad Thor. But if you are a true fan of the spy thriller genre, I think that you will be doing yourself a great disservice if you choose to ignore the superior book of the two, Empire of Lies. The book is superior in it's character development, superior in it's believability, and superior in it's telling of action sequences.

Book Review: The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions. Written by David Berlinski. Published by Crown Forum, 2008.

When reading anything written in German, I never do so with the expectation of having any emotional reaction. It is my opinion that the German language tends to be very utilitarian, a language that is not often associated with love songs and endearments. It is a language which is more likely to be associated with engineering specifications than with sweet nothings or with words filled with spiritually uplifting connotations. I have no doubt that many native-speaking Germans will find fault with my opinion of their language, and would be able to show me examples of German literature replete with beauty and emotion.

The dedication of David Berlinski's newest book, The Devil's Delusion, is partially written in German and when I read it, I did indeed have a strong emotional reaction. Berlinski dedicates his book “To the memory of my maternal grandfather, Samuel Goldfein,” and then the dedication is completed in German. I have attempted to contact Berlinski's publisher, Crown Forum, to ask them about the dedication, but they are apparently too inept to actually respond to phone calls and e-mails. I wanted to ask them why the dedication was written in German, but lacking their answer, I will put here in writing what I suspect.

The dedication to the book tells the story of a sixty-six year old Ukrainian Jew, Berlinski's grandfather, who was transported to Dresden as forced labor in February of 1943, then sent to the Jewish ghetto, Theresienstadt, in March of that same year. For those who may not know, Theresienstadt was a place where many older Jews were sent prior to being sent to the extermination camps. Nearly nine months later, he was deported to Auschwitz. The dedication ends with the simple phrase “in Auschwitz vershollen.”

The American prisoners were pushed and shoved through the surging, boisterous crowd that had gathered in the city. As they were paraded towards the palace, they could hear shouts, exclamations of joy, and clapping of hands. They could hear their captors thanking Allah “for their great success and victories over so many Christian dogs, and unbelievers...”

The Americans were paraded before the Muslim leader, who began berating them, saying that he would never make peace with their country, finishing by saying “now I have got you, you Christian dogs, you shall eat stones.”

The forgoing story of American imprisonment sounds as though it may have occurred in present-day Somalia, Iraq, Afganistan, Iran, or Pakistan. But the story is actually taken from an account written by an American seaman, John Foss, and it tells of his experience with Algerian pirates in 1793. Foss was on the brig Polly out of Newburyport, Massachussetts, bound for Cadiz, Spain when his brig was captured off the coast of Spain.

In 1793, the United States had no navy, and the independence gained just ten years earlier had stripped the fledgling country of the protection of the British navy. And so, the response of the United States Congress in dealing with the Algerian pirates who captured the Polly and who made slaves of American citizens followed the pattern set by European countries: pay a ransom for the release of the prisoners and pay an annual tribute to secure immunity from seizure for American ships. In the fifteen years from 1785 to 1800, Congress made payments of close to $1 million per year to Tripoli, Tunis, Morroco, and Algiers.

The United States agreed to this national extortion while building the navy that would eventually, in 1815, provide the respite from our first taste of Isalmic terrorism (The use of the words “Isalmic Terrorism” are properly considered. By 1800, any seizure of a ship owned by Christians was, by Islamic law, part of jihad against non-believers. For more on this, see Frederic C. Leiner's well-documented book, The End of Barbary Terror). It is interesting to note that, even with the constant threat of Islamic terrorism in the form of the Barbary pirates that faced the Americans in 1793, there were citizens who questioned America's need for a navy, were adverse to the expenditures associated with building the navy, and even went so far as to question the effect that the navy may have on civil liberties. Whether these concerned citizens were the actual founding members of the ACLU could not be confirmed.

BOOK REVIEW: The Really Inconvenient Truths by Iain Murray

Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecess... Patrick J. Buchana... Best Price $17.80 or Buy New $17.97

Book Review: Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, by Patrick J. Buchanan. Published by Crown Publishers, 2008.

Does anyone else ever get the impression that Pat Buchanan, in his role as a conservative pundit and writer, is somehow trying to be an antiquated version of a modern shock-jock? He seems to always be saying or writing something that is calculated to elicit strong reaction. A case in point is his conversation with Dennis Miller the other day on Dennis' radio show. Buchanan was on the show, of course, in order to hawk his new book.

Allow me to point out that I was driving while I was listening, so I may have not have caught every nuanced detail of the conversation between Dennis and Buchanan. But I got the impression that Pat thought that the Jews had a pretty good life in pre-World War II Germany right up until Kristallnacht (You will recall that Kristallnacht was the night of November 9-10, 1938, when Nazis, in response to the assassination of Third Secretary Ernst vom Rath by a Jew, assaulted hundreds of Jews, killed scores by lynching, burned synagogues, and looted shops throughout Jewish communities.). Buchanan's assertion left Dennis nearly speechless with incredulity.

Of course, Buchanan's controversial remarks had their desired effect: I purchased and read his new book. After reading the book, I have come to the conclusion that either Buchanan did not accurately communicate his position on the Dennis Miller show, or I misunderstood him. The position that Buchanan takes in Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War concerning Kristallnacht and the German treatment of Jews before and during World War II is as follows: While Jews were certainly mistreated in a Germany ruled by Hitler, the first time that they were actually killed was Kristallnacht. Jewish genocide did not occur in Germany until after the outbreak of World War II hostilities, and so, according to Buchanan's logic, the holocaust would never have occurred if Churchill had not insisted on going to war over Hitler's invasion of Poland.

Book Review: The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists, by Dr. Ravi Zacharias. Published by Zondervan, 2008.

E.J. Dionne, Jr. in his book, Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right, makes many ill-informed statements, but possibly one of the least-informed is a statement that he makes concerning the recent popularity of the books written by the neo-atheists. Dionne says the following: “The popularity of the neo-atheists' books suggests that those who have pushed religion to the right have done more to arouse enmity toward religion than to win adherents to faith.”

You may have noticed the books to which Dionne is referring. These are the books that have been churned out by the likes of Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins, and that have titles such as The God Delusion, The End of Faith, and God is not Great. All of these books try to provide new arguments for a very old idea, namely, the non-existence of God, and they have taken up prominent and seemingly permanent residence at your local bookstore. At my favorite Borders store, they can be found in various hardcover and paperback forms at a strategic endcap that they have occupied for over a year. I say “strategic” because the endcap is in a location that is required to be seen by any person exiting the restrooms.

In his statement about the popularity of the books written by the neo-atheists, Dionne is historically inaccurate. Rather than pushing religion to the right, those of us in the Religious Right are merely attempting to prevent liberals, such as Dionne, from pulling Christianity any further to the left. But putting aside Dionne's re-writing of history, are we to understand that a person searching for God, when confronted with the absolutes of Christianity as espoused by the Religious Right, will have the default reaction of embracing atheism? Such may be the case. I really do not know for certain, but neither does Dionne. I would suggest that a person searching for God is just as likely to default to atheism when confronted with the vagaries of the liberal Christianity that Dionne espouses.

Regarding the popularity of the books of the neo-atheists, Dionne re-writes history and makes a statement that has absolutely no basis in fact. Thankfully, in The End of Reason, Ravi Zacharias avoids such ill-informed statements. Admittedly, Zacharias does not speak to the “why” of the popularity of the neo-atheists' books, other than to suggest that their popularity may have more to do with their controversial nature than any substantive arguments. But Ravi does provide us with a fact-based, eloquent, logical refutation of the positions of Harris and his colleagues in neo-atheism.

Why We're Not Emergent   Kevin DeYoung, Ted Kluck Best Price $8.50 or Buy New $10.49

Book Review: Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be), written by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck. Published by Moody Publishers, 2008.

My father took me skeet shooting for the first time when I was eleven years old. For some, the words “skeet shooting” may conjure images of fancy gun clubs with expensive shotguns and the automated traps that toss clay pigeons at pre-determined heights and speeds, but we were not of that level of sophistication. We bought a box of clay pigeons at the local K-Mart, found an open field, and tossed the clay pigeons with a plastic, hand-held device that we had purchased for $4.00. My shotgun was a single-shot 12 gauge that my dad had purchased at J.C. Penneys for $12.00.

With my first skeet shooting experience, I learned something about the difficulty of hitting a moving target. After much practice, I was able to anticipate the trajectory of the target, keep the gun steady, and concentrate to the point where I could diminish to powder a great number of the sailing discs. But hitting a moving target, such as those clay pigeons, continues to be a great deal more difficult than hitting a stationary target.

Let us suppose that when my father took me to that open field on that day many years ago, that he had said, “Son, we don't want to be limited to just a little clay pigeon as a target. That just seems to be too confining. Our target today is going to be every inch of ground, and every tree, and every blade of grass within the forty acres of this open field.” As an eleven-year-old, I may have been initially excited about the potential for churning up so much earth and the destruction that would be caused by repeated blasts of birdshot, but I would have eventually tired of the endeavor, probably prior to destroying the first acre. In the end, I would have come to the conclusion that hitting a stationary target that is not clearly limited and defined is even more difficult than hitting a moving target.

Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck encountered a similarly unlimited and undefined target when they decided to write a book about the current emergent Christianity movement. Much like trying to spray birdshot over every inch of a forty acre field, addressing the fallacies posited by the emerging or emergent church is a tiring endeavor, because the emergent church prefers to be a target with no limit or definition. Limiting and defining their movement would require the proponents of the the emergent movement to use propositions, statements that can be seen as either true or false. Addressing the fallacies of any movement requires that the movement be defined and defining a movement which seeks to avoid definition is, as DeYoung aptly puts it, like “nailing Jell-O to a wall.” After reading Why We're Not Emergent, I have become convinced that not only is it possible to nail Jell-O to a wall, but that DeYoung and Kluck must be the two best Jell-O nailers in existence. I hope that they take that as the compliment it was intended to be.

Book Review: A Matter of Honor. Written by William C. Hammond. Published by Cumberland House, 2007.

I am always amazed by the manner in which so-called book reviewers can make casual comparisons to Patrick O'Brian and C.S. Forester. If a novelist happens to write a historical novel that has a setting of the late 18^th century and early 19^th century naval wars, then they are automatically compared to the two greatest writers of the genre who gave us the gifts of Jack Aubrey, Stephen Maturin, and Horatio Hornblower. I suspect that this tendency for comparison is just an indication of laziness on the part of book reviewers, since making unwarranted comparisons is a great deal easier than actually generating an original thought.

There are a number of current writers who do provide us with some fairly good historical novels based on seafaring life during the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Julian Stockwin's novels about a seaman named Kydd are readable and Stockwin seems to become a better writer with each installment. Jay Worrall's two books have provided an entertaining perspective with a Quaker twist. S. Thomas Russell made a good showing with his first attempt, Under Enemy Colors, and I look forward to reading what he has in the future.

There are a number of other writers who have chosen this genre and they are churning out unreadable garbage. Alexander Kent has provided us with a series of very forgettable novels. Dewey Lambdin continues to have books published in spite of the fact that he is neither a writer, nor a historian, nor a remotely intelligent individual. By the way, he seems to have a rather unhealthy attachment to cats.