I had to have a God—and I did find him, after a long search, after a terrible fight—in my own heart.” The God he found was communism. In a catechism composed in 1846, Hess contrasted his new faith with the one that prevailed in the society around him. Whereas Christians invest their hopes “in the image of heavenly joy….We, on the other hand, want this heaven on earth.” (353) When the common people come to power, the humble worker, the land cultivator, the self-made man and woman, then yo got an American and the American system. Never Socialism. A true American is a man like George Meany. Thankfully, most Americans can recognize themselves in Meany, still at this day and time. I liked my post about it last time more than anything I'd say this time, so let me just use it (the final paragraph is new): Musical counterpoints perhaps? McBride is himself a musician and musical historian, and music plays a prominent role in the book, so the conceit is not impossible. Satan promises the best, but pays the worst; he promises honour and pays with disgrace; he promises pleasure but pays with pain; he promises profit and pays with loss; he promises life but pays with death."

But beyond that, the book is sound, it is orthodox, it is Biblical—throughout Brooks points the reader to The Book and The One Who inspired it. His aim is to show "that believers may in this life attain unto a well-grounded assurance of their everlasting happiness and blessedness." He then goes on to examine the nature of that assurance, hindrances that keep believers from it, reasons to encourage believers to seek it, and how they can go about it, the difference between true and counterfeit assurance, as well as answering questions about assurance. Examining the doctrine from so many angles, you really feel (and probably do) that you come away from this book having an exhaustive look at the doctrine. Here we have a description of assurance, and then an expression of the assured heart. Brooks' Heaven on Earth is both an explanation of the doctrine and an exhortation to pursue it. Quotations like this are just a hint of that. Brooks is one of the best Puritans on this topic—and everything the Puritans wrote about the doctrine is head an shoulders above their Continental brethren. This is pure gospel gold. Divine knowlege fills a man full of spiritual activity; it will make a man work as if he would be saved by his works, and yet it will make a man believe that he is saved only upon the account of free grace." (178) I can't imagine leaving this discussion out of the book, because the link to Hegel is enormously important and explains the motivations of a huge number of communists. I think he probably needed to seek an editor that was more knowledgeable in the subject. He also should have probably included a chapter on postmodernism and its connection to Marx, since this is where the Hegelian stuff is important. This is an excellent book on socialism. Heaven on Earth is a readable and very detailed history of socialism through recent centuries. Joshua Muravchik was raised in a socialist home and was a “devout” socialist for a time. He recounts the history and life of some of the leaders of the socialist movement and shows the triumphs and failures along the way. There are four chapters on the Beginnings, four chapters on the Triumphs and four chapters on the Collapse of Socialism. At the end of this section is a very interesting chapter on the Kibbutz showing the most humane socialism. The book ends with an excellent Epilogue to bring us up to date.

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The first 4-5 chapters in the book are fantastic. The chapter on Marx and Engels is one that I'll definitely re-read in the future since it was such a thorough account of these two. Also the later sections of the book (while it has issues that I outline below) is important to understand if you want to make sense of what China and Russia are up to today. It was only in the dying days of the Revolution that someone came forward to argue that there was a contradiction within the revolutionary agenda—that fulfilling the promise of equality would require not merely the abolition of feudal titles and privileges, but the institution of a new way of economic life, in which individual ownership would be abolished and each citizen would be furnished with an identical portion of nature’s bounty. CHAPTER VI: THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN A TRUE AND A COUNTERFEIT ASSURANCE, BETWEEN SOUND ASSURANCE AND PRESUMPTION Ascertain whether you have the things that accompany salvation; notably Knowledge, Faith, Repentance, Obedience, Love, Prayer, Perseverance, and Hope

That said, the pride and strength shine through, too. None of McBride’s characters portray themselves as victims. No, they plan, scheme, and collaborate to help each other, and in a real-life, gritty way. I loved Chona, doling out credit to her neighbors, writing letters to the newspaper to decry the Klan marches in her town, and protecting young Dodo. How Nate’s character unfolds, slowly, carefully, dangerously, was wonderfully done. Even the “Lowgod” community, murky and spooky as it is, was interesting to watch. There was power in those gatherings, and the coming together of two different groups was smooth and clever, done with mystery novel style. Assurance is not of the essence of a Christian. It is required to the well-being, to the comfortable and joyful being of a Christian; but it is not required to the being of a Christian. A man may be a true believer, and yet would give all the world, were it in his power, to know that he is a believer. To have grace, and to be sure that we have grace, is glory upon the throne, it is heaven on this side heaven. I listened to the audiobook version which is narrated by the incredible Dominic Hoffman (who previously narrateded Deacon King Kong, Homegoing, The Starless Sea). If you decide to give The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store a try, I highly recommend this format. Muhammad's flexibility, rather than casting a dubious light on his prophethood, emerges as an attribute of his political wisdom and leadership. And it seems that a similar spirit, protean and adventurous, guides Islam through those first few centuries of its ascent, when it breaks out of the little world of Arabia and is fertilised by the classical civilisations of Byzantium, Persia and India. "Indeed," Kadri writes, "Islam would have been incapable of developing such traditions without a capacity to learn and borrow." The traditions referred to here are architectural, but the point holds equally true for other schools of learning, like medicine, mathematics and – Kadri's speciality – the law. I truly enjoyed the creative use of language, as this book is wonderfully written, and a joy to listen to - when I wasn't crying for one or other of the characters! Referring to predicting whether or not someone would survive their illness: "She won't swallow her birth certificate any time soon." Another phrase I found interesting is the Yiddish curse "may onions grow in your navel." I don't remember hearing that one before.First of all, I loved Deacon King Kong:it was a lyrical,heartwarming, sad and tight story, with wonderful characters and one of the best love stories I´ve ever read. I wanted to read more McBride, and I´ve been consistently disappointed. All saints shall enjoy a heaven when they leave this earth; some saints enjoy a heaven while they are here on earth. That saints might enjoy two heavens is the project of this book.’— JOSEPH CARYL Book Description If you build it, they will leave” (xvi). What could be more ominous, obvious, and even humorous than this pithy observation at the end of Joshua Muravchik’s preface? Muravchik grew up as a card-carrying socialist who was thoroughly imbued with the doctrines of socialism from an early age—actually, he calls it faith: “Socialism was the faith in which I was raised. It was my father’s faith and his father’s before him” (xi). However, like many others, he eventually came to see the deep flaws in socialism: logical incoherence, contradictions, and worst of all, utter failure to realize any of its dreams. In short, it does not work, despite its allure. His own experience leads him to conclude late in the book, “Historically socialism always appealed most to the young” and then he quotes “…an aphorism sometimes misattributed to Churchill but in fact coined by conservative French politician Clemenceau, who had begun as a leftist journalist: ‘any man who is not a socialist at twenty has no heart, and any who is still a socialist at forty has no brain’” (387).

Also he goes over a semi-history of the writing of the Communist Manifesto, but spends effectively zero sentences going over what is actually written in it. He doesn't have to print a word-for-word duplicate, but the overall theory is actually important to understand if you want to grasp the motivations of the characters later in the book. This is a strange oversight. Although it was an excellent outcome, it was not the end of the story. After a hiatus of a couple of decades, new voices emerged, proposing to try it all over again. Innocent of all that had come before, they wanted to revive socialism. Chapter 6—which takes more than its fair share of space, almost half of the book—is an extended detour from the point of the book, but it still serves to support the theme. He begins by saying, "In the previous chapter, you saw the seven choice things which accompany salvation. But for your further and fuller edification, satisfaction, confirmation, and consolation, it will be very necessary that I show you," these seven choice things. Which are: Poussin’s painting results in the most remarkable discussion. Clark begins at the center of the painting, with Mary, Joseph, and the priest placed on a cross patterned in the marble floor. Clark discusses the mysterious nature of the sacraments, while simultaneously establishing them as “social and natural facts” (143). Through the positioning of the figures and the use of light, Clark observes how the painting primarily communicates Mary’s relationship to Christianity, with the priest figuring much more dominantly than Joseph. Then, the analysis moves to the utter left of the painting, where a figure is half hidden behind a column, with only cloths and veils visible. Clark’s associations flow freely from what this figure is doing there and which meanings she might convey. He identifies her as a primary witness of the event. While she is positioned far away, she is the only one that really observes. But then Clark suggests, because her face is invisible, perhaps she looks out the picture plane. Contrasting his own line of argumentation, this second interpretation relates the divine marriage scene (and the sacrifice of Christ it prefigures) to the outside world. This relation between inside and outside, between divine and earthly, is Clark’s favorite (and arguably the most interesting) connection to make in understanding depictions of alternative worlds. It is such a great chapter, and would make a remarkable little booklet unto itself that I really can't complain too much that it's such a departure from the rest of the book (though it did take me a little bit to get used to the notion).

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James McBride is a master storyteller and I felt fully invested in the characters of this wonderful book. He describes Bernice as having "the kind of face that made a man wire home for money," that made me chortle. An important theme in the novel is how disability affects people. The author had worked in a camp for disabled children throughout his college years. The camp's director was an inspiration for the book. Fwiw it bugged me that the prologue was written so conversationally, and that there was no further attention paid to who the conversants might have been. through, and so far it's not grabbing me. Maybe it'll jump into gear once all the place-setting is through. This is exactly what I want in a book of theology: a humble teacher, a good writer who reads (bonus points for frequent references to Lewis and Tolkien!), and a winsome love of Scripture. When I was a kid and became a Christian, I believed that I was saved, but I didn’t know what I was saved for. Jim’s book, like a companion to N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope, is a rousing reminder of how good the Good News is. - Andrew Peterson