Baylor Bears’ books named among 2017’s best by Christianity Today & ALA
The end of each year brings with it a series of lists that bibliophiles eagerly await — a rundown of the year’s best books. Baylor professors are routinely honored on these “best of” lists, particularly in the areas of faith and religion.
This year, three books authored by a trio of Baylor professors and two Baylor graduates earned prestigious 2017 honors from Christianity Today and the American Library Association (ALA), giving readers throughout the Baylor Family a few new titles to add to their reading list.
* Benjamin Franklin: The Religious Life of a Founding Father, by Baylor history professor Thomas Kidd, was named one of the Top 10 Religion and Spirituality Books of 2017 by the ALA’s Booklist Online. Kidd’s book, which we highlighted here last summer, examines the complicated religious beliefs of one of America’s most influential early figures. Kidd is no stranger to these lists; two of his previous books (The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America and God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution) were each named among Christianity Today’s best in previous years.
* Restoring the Soul of the University: Unifying Christian Higher Education in a Fragmented Age, by Baylor School of Education professors Perry Glanzer, MA ’91, and Nathan Alleman, and Baylor alumnus Todd Ream, BA ’93, received an Award of Merit from Christianity Today. Drs. Glanzer and Alleman wrote the book with Dr. Ream, now a professor at Taylor University; in it, they form the “outlines of a renewed vision for the future of the broken university… The focus is ultimately on the Christian university, and the animating question can be put like this: What if the unifying center of the university, its soul, were reclaimed by a winsome faith in Jesus Christ?”
* Giving the Devil His Due: Demonic Authority in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky, by Baylor alumna Jessica Hooten-Wilson, PhD ’09, was named a top book in Culture and the Arts by Christianity Today. Now an English professor at John Brown University, Dr. Hooten-Wilson explores themes of the devil’s influence in books by O’Connor and Dostoevsky. The book, Christianity Today says, demonstrates “the timeless power of fiction to teach us what it means to be human.”
Sic ’em, Drs. Kidd, Glanzer, Alleman and Hooten-Wilson!
You might also like:
* Baylor grad authors Amazon’s top history book for 2016 (Jan. 2017)
* 7 books that should be on every Baylor Bear’s shelf (May 2015)
* NBA Bear’s book club builds community online and in-person (Oct. 2014)