The Book Of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood is the latest by William Bennett (author of The Book of Virtues and The Moral Compass).  This book is a collection of short writings collected from various authors sprinkled with original essays and profiles written by Bennett himself.  All of the writings, taken from such diverse sources such as Homer, Augustine, and Mark Twain, are focused on the point of what it means to be a man.  This may seem to be a presumptuous task and certainly vulnerable to accusations of male chauvanism or misogyny but Bennett does well to avoid these twins dangers.  In fact, one entire section (100 pages) of the book is devoted to the interaction between man and woman (and children) and he demonstrates nothing but the need to hold women in high esteem.

Larry Niven's Ringworld is considered a science fiction classic.  Somehow I missed reading it back when I was in highschool.  I have a suspicion that I started reading back then but I must have stopped.  The first chapter or two were quite familiar but then after that everything was new.

The book revolves around the place called Ringworld.  This is a strip of land that orbits around a central star. The inside (sun facing) of this strip has been terraformed to build an earthlike environment.  The land spins so that centrifugal force balances against the gravitational pull of the star.  This land is incredibly vast with a surface area three million times the surface area of earth.

One of the things that comes with the territory in the science fiction genre is the fact that things don't always make sense -- at least not right away.  But in good science fiction all of the strange things eventually resolve into some sort of coherence.  Unfortunately this wasn't the case with They Also Serve by Mike Moscoe.  The crew of Second Chance makes a bad "jump" through space and ends up at a planet in some unknown area of the universe.   Against all odds, this is the same planent that another ship accidently stumbled across 300 years earlier.  In order for the crew to get back to their home planet they need to establish a base and build the required resources. Seems simple enough.

The Final Summit by Andy Andrews describes the "final" summit meeting of many of the world's great thinkers throughout all of time to address the issue of how to save mankind. The archangel Gabriel, supposedly at God's command, has organized this meeting.  But it is more than just a friendly gathering.  Gabriel announces that if the group of people cannot correctly find the answer on how to save mankind, they will be destroyed.  The group is given a time limit and some rules on how to conduct the meeting.  Under this structure, the majority of the book consists of 'conversations' between these notable people.  

Orthodoxy is one of those books that has developed some legend around it.  References to this little book pop up all over the place in Christian literature as if everyone who is anyone has read the book.  It always receives high praise.  So much so that the praise is simply assumed and never stated.  After reading this I too sense the richness of the book.  One time through is not enough.

If we consider Lewis to be the first layer of the apologetics onion then Chesterton is the second layer. A little stronger.  A little denser.  And certainly a little less obvious.  But this book is excellent. 

One thing that must be said right from the start is that Orthodoxy is metaphorical.  All throughout the book Chesteron relies on metaphor to make his point.  The logical rigor and abstract philosophy that Lewis brings to his works is just not there.  This can make the book either better or worse, depending on your likes.  As for myself, I simply took it for what it was.

I believe the Chesterton constantly resorted to metaphor simply because he is a poet.  By that I don't necessarily mean that he writes verse, I mean that he expresses passion and life through the use of words and word pictures.   Therefore, using metaphor is the natural way for him to make his point.

He Who Saw Everything is an English verse redition of the Epic of Gilgamesh.  This is the oldest written work that exists still today.  It is approximately 4000 years old and has been peiced together from ancient Sumarian, Babylonian, and Akkadian scripts.  It is most interesting simply because of how old it is.  This story was told and retold by generations of man hundreds of years before the Greeks and other ancient cultures came on the scene.  

There is a common misconception about Shakespearean English. That is that it is "old English".  This is not true.  In fact, Shakespeare is considered "modern English".  This misconception is fairly widespread accross a broad range of education levels.  In fact, just last night I was talking with a college president and he referred to Shakespeare as "old english".  I would like to shed a little bit of light on this topic.