We’re a group of heavy readers here at Difficult Run, but we’ve mainly expressed our love of books over the last couple years through sporadic lists.[ref]For example, see the “Top 10 Most Influential Books” lists by Nathaniel and Walker. And of course, there is the annual Best Books of the Year list.[/ref] As bibliophiles, we take an interest in what others are reading. We often buy or rent books based on the suggestions of others. However, we also research the books under consideration to determine whether or not we want to invest our limited time and energy into reading them. We consult reviews, interviews, and lectures based on the book. Even when the decision is made to not read the book, the research is often informative and enlightening.
Given that many DR readers are fellow book fiends, we will be posting video clips from interviews and/or lectures (depending on their availability) that are based on the books we read throughout the year. Think of it as our video Goodreads list. You can find the list of books along with the post date below:
Feb. 26, 2016: Thomas Sowell, Wealth, Poverty, and Politics: An International Perspective (New York: Basic Books, 2015).
March 5, 2016: Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
March 9, 2016: Jagdish Bhagwati, Arvind Panagariya, Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for Other Developing Countries (New York: PublicAffairs, 2013).
March 11, 2016: J. Spencer Fluhman, “A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).
March 18, 2016: Robert D. Putnam, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015).
March 28, 2016: Marcus J. Borg, John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem (New York: HarperCollins, 2006).
April 13, 2016: John G. Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012).
April 21, 2016: Frans de Waal, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2013).
April 29, 2016: Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (New York: Basic Books, 2006).
May 19, 2016: A Reason For Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine and Church History, ed. Laura Harris Hales (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2016).
May 19, 2016: Jason Brennan, The Ethics of Voting (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).
May 22, 2016: W. Paul Reeve, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
May 26, 2016: Marc Zvi Brettler, Peter Enns, Daniel J. Harrington, The Bible and the Believer: How to Read the Bible Critically and Religiously (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
May 27, 2016: Edmund Phelps, Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013).
May 28, 2016: James K.A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2016).
June 6, 2016: Adam S. Miller, Future Mormon: Essays in Mormon Theology (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2016).
June 15, 2016: John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame That Binds You: Expanded and Updated Edition (Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, Inc., 2005).
June 20, 2016: Martin E.P. Seligman, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being (New York: Free Press, 2011).
July 10, 2016: James K.A. Smith, How (Not) To Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014).
July 21, 2016: Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York City: Harper, 2015)
July 30, 2016: Harry Markopolos, No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller (Hopoken: John Wiley & Sons, 2010).
Aug. 7, 2016: Jack Harrell, Writing Ourselves: Essays on Creativity, Craft, and Mormonism (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2016).
Aug. 12, 2016: Robert I. Sutton, Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best…and Learn from the Worst (New York: Business Plus, 2010).
Sept. 13, 2016: The Economics of Immigration: Market-Based Approaches, Social Science, and Public Policy, ed. Benjamin Powell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
Sept. 17, 2016: Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012)
Sept. 29, 2016: Peter F. Drucker, Rick Wartzman (ed.), The Drucker Lectures: Essential Lessons on Management, Society, and Economy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010).
Oct. 18, 2016: Joseph M. Spencer, The Vision of All: Twenty-Five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi’s Record (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2016).
Oct. 28, 2016: Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011).
Nov. 12, 2016: N.T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion (New York: HarperOne, 2016).
Nov. 17, 2016: Ilya Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter, 2nd ed. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016).
Dec. 7, 2016: Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).
Dec. 7, 2016: Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010).
Dec. 11, 2016: Thomas C. Leonard, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).
Dec. 17, 2016: Scott Hales, The Garden of Enid: Adventures of a Weird Mormon Girl, Part One (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2016).
Jan. 7, 2017: Roger Scruton, The Soul of the World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).
Jan. 7, 2017: Louis Cozolino, Why Therapy Works: Using Our Minds to Change Our Brains (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2016).
Jan. 8, 2017: Barry Schwartz, Why We Work (New York: TED Books/Simon & Schuster, 2015).
Jan. 19, 2017: Shūsaku Endō, Silence (New York: Picador, 2016 [1969]).
Feb. 4, 2017: Brené Brown, Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution. (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015).
Feb. 9, 2017: Christine Porath, Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2016).
Feb. 23, 2017: James K.A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009).
Feb. 23, 2017: Roger E.A. Farmer, How the Economy Works: Confidence, Crashes, and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
March 9, 2017: David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005).
March 15, 2017: Michael Austin, Re-reading Job: Understanding the Ancient World’s Greatest Poem (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2014).
March 16, 2017: Russell Stevenson, For the Cause of Righteousness: A Global History of Blacks and Mormonism, 1830-2013 (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2014).
March 16, 2017: John L. Esposito, Dalia Mogahed, Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think (New York: Gallup Press, 2007).
March 17, 2017: Jason Brennan, Against Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).
May 7, 2017: Gregory Boyd, God at War: The Bible & Spiritual Conflict (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997).
Sept. 23, 2017: Catch-Up
Oct. 1, 2017: Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016).
Dec. 13, 2017: Catch-Up #2
Dec. 16, 2017: Johan Norberg, Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2017).
Jan. 16, 2018: Catch-Up #3
May 3, 2018: Catch-Up #4
June 8, 2018: Catch-Up #5
August 3, 2018: Catch-Up #6
Jan. 5, 2019: Catch-Up #7
For me, that is the scariest Twilight Zone episode.