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The Miracle of Mindfulness © 1975 Translator: Mobi Ho Beacon Press 140 pages A couple years ago I found myself sitting in the back seat of a truck beside a person I met the night before while bumming a ride back to my van after an semi-aborted canoe trip. After learning I was a pastor [...]

The Stranger © 1946 Translator: Stuart Gilbert Vintage: Random House 155 pages Have you ever dreamed that you committed murder only to awake in a panic about the consequences? The Stranger is a short, simple, and strangely disturbing philosophical novel of casual murder and its consequences. I mentioned dreaming because as you read the work, [...]

Introducing Sartre ©1998 Icon Books 176 pages I’m no philosopher, but I love these “Introducing . . .” or “. . . for Beginners” books. They’re full of drawings that help you remember the key points of a person’s philosophy without needing a degree to get started. Sarte, as most of you already know if [...]

Letters to a Spiritual Seeker © 2004 W. W. Norton & Company 266 pages Let me just confess something up front: I bought this book because of the beautiful canoe on the cover. Sure, I rationalized it in other ways. “Spiritual” in the title peaked my interest, and I did appreciate Walden. But it was [...]

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . .: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes © 2007 Penguin Books 215 pages This book succeeds in making philosophy interesting. It takes the basic categories of philosophy—existence, knowledge, government, ethics, etc.—and illuminates them by telling jokes. I bought this book as a light read during summer holidays [...]

Candide © 1759 Translated by Henry Morley © 1922 Barnes & Noble Classics 146 pages It’s funny how many small coincidences there are in life. I picked up this book about a year ago with good intentions, only to let it sit on a shelf until I stuffed it into a box to move to [...]

The Harvard Classics, Vol. 2 Includes: The Apology, Phaedo, and Crito (Plato), The Golden Sayings of Epictetus, and The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius New York: P. F. Collier & Son Corporation 345 pages This volume was interesting, enlightening, but profoundly frustrating. Let’s start with interesting. Most Christians have little or no idea how much of [...]