Walker

Walker joined Difficult Run as an editor in August 2013. He graduated from the University of North Texas with an MBA in Strategic Management and a BBA in Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management. He's currently a grad student in Government at Johns Hopkins University. He has been published in SquareTwo, BYU Studies Quarterly, Dialogue, Graziadio Business Review, and Economic Affairs. He also contributed to Julie Smith's (ed.) 'As Iron Sharpens Iron: Listening to the Various Voices of Scripture'. His other online writing can be found at Worlds Without End and Times & Seasons. He lives in Denton, Texas, with his wife.

The DR Book Collection

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“There was time now…”

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

God of the Depressed: Stephen Webb, 1961-2016

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stephen_webb_photo_0I was saddened to hear of Catholic theologian Stephen Webb’s passing this last week. Webb had in recent years engaged in fruitful dialogue with Mormonism, defending the Christ-centricity of Mormonism and producing one of the best books on Mormon metaphysics I’ve ever read: Mormon Christianity: What Other Christians Can Learn From the Latter-day Saints.[ref]For a more historical, philosophical exploration of these themes, see his Jesus Christ, Eternal God: Heavenly Flesh and the Metaphysics of Matter (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).[/ref] Mormon scholars are mourning the loss of this great friend and thinker. In honor of his memory, I’d like to share from the last piece he wrote for First Things titled “God of the Depressed.” Webb states, “Theology is a form—arguably the original form—of therapy, and if the church is to compete with the pharmacy, it has to have some good news of its own concerning depression.” He describes the reason for this need:

Seminaries and graduate programs teach the God of the Oppressed, and rightly so. Poverty, war, and racism are so much more public in their debilitating consequences. But we should not forget the depressed, especially in this time of Lent. Jesus himself must have experienced depression while being famished for forty days and nights in the wilderness, praying while his disciples slept, and descending into hell. He also spent many years hidden from public view, his mission kept secret, his life so obscure that the Gospels tell us nothing about them. He had a long time of waiting, and he knew what awaited him. It is this time of hiddenness, I think, that most captures the depressant’s emotional state. The depressed wait for the long nights to end and the anguish to subside. The depressed, like Jesus during his so-called lost years, are hidden from sight, waiting for their lives to begin.

Condolences to Webb’s family. May we honor his memory by seeking out those “waiting for their lives to begin.”

“A Peculiar People”: An Interview with J. Spencer Fluhman

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This is part of the DR Book Collection.

I was lucky enough to meet BYU history professor J. Spencer Fluhman last year when he presented at the Miller Eccles Study Group here in Texas. The lecture was based on his book “A Peculiar People”: Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America. Anti-Mormonism took on a number of forms, from describing Joseph Smith as an impostor and his religion as “false” to seeing Mormonism as a kind delusion or madness to fearing the Mormons’ political power and fanaticism. The U.S. Constitution granted religious freedom, but these fears and accusations led Americans to question what was truly meant by religion.

A fascinating read.

The interview below features both Fluhman and Joanna Brooks.

Why Growth Matters: An Interview with Jagdish Bhagwati

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This is part of the DR Book Collection.

Yesterday, a friend’s Facebook wall was blowing up with debates over the merits of libertarianism. One commenter wrote, “Libertarians should spend time in India or Pakistan to see what weak, ineffective government ultimately accomplishes.” My response was, “Just finished this yesterday.” I linked him to Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for Other Developing Countries by Columbia economists Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya. The book explains how the Indian pro-market reforms of the early 1990s have led to economic growth and consequently reduced poverty. Of course, the book does not argue in favor of a stateless utopia (there are a number of things listed in the book for the Indian government to do). But it does demonstrate how powerful and positive a force liberalization can be in the lives of the most destitute.

Definitely for those interested in developmental economics.

 

International Women’s Day: Women at Work

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With International Women’s Day coming to a close, I wanted to share this article from The Huffington Post titled “39 Stunning Images of Women at Work All Over the World.” This holiday was part of the early 20th-century labor movements, organized by the Socialist Party of America. However, the actual work is sometimes overlooked in modern celebrations. Here’s a little something to remind everyone of the hard work done by women all over the world.

Pakistan
India
Israel
Germany
North Korea
Thailand

And much more. Check it out.

Communication Breakdown

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This is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

The April 1972 General Conference did not begin strong. Its Thursday morning session was a chore to get through to say the least and displayed some of the more negative aspects of Mormonism (e.g. triumphalism, authoritarianism). Most of my notes were very critical and aimed at dismantling a number of points raised throughout the talks. However, I finally reached Spencer W. Kimball’s talk on communication. He tells of being in “cattle country” in northwest Argentina where a fire had burned down a number of telephone poles. He compares this to struggling couples: “I thought that telephone lines and telephone poles are a little like people. They are built for one purpose and sometimes serve another. They are designed to be firm and stout and to give support; but in many cases they are leaning and swaying and sagging until communications are greatly impaired, if not actually cut off. In my experience I find that in a large number of marital cases, the problem is lack of communication; the wires are down, the poles are burned, husbands and wives are jangling, and there is static where there should be peace. There is growing disgust and hate where there should be love and harmony.” In many cases, the “inability to communicate in reasonableness led to anger, hard words, misunderstandings. In time, each found another person and set up different communication lines for sympathy and understanding and comfort; and this disloyalty led to physical adventures that resulted in adulteries and two broken homes and disillusioned spouses and crushed hopes and injured children. And all this because two basically good people let their communication lines get down and permitted the security poles to drag the ground.” He shares another story of a young man who had become distanced from the Church. When asked about his habits and associations, Kimball remembers, “The answers were what I expected. He had turned loose his hold on the iron rod. He associated largely with unbelievers. He read, in addition to his college texts, works by atheists, apostates, and Bible critics. He had ceased to pray to his Heavenly Father. His communication poles were burned, and his lines were sagging terribly.” He concludes by stating, “Sin comes when communication lines are down—it always does, sooner or later.”

Now, I’m not scared of atheists, apostates, or Bible critics. I’m thoroughly convinced that we should be familiar with the thoughts and writings of such people. I was about to chalk this up to the old whitewashing of Mormon history and the labeling of all things challenging as “anti-Mormon”, but then I realized this was relational in nature, not intellectual. The two examples Kimball chooses to use are the relationship between a husband and wife and the one between a young man and the Church (and ultimately God). As I thought on this, I was reminded of psychologist and marriage expert John Gottman’s “Four Horsemen of the [Relationship] Apocalypse“:

  • Criticism – attacking the person’s character and implying that they are defective as a person.
  • Contempt – displaying a sense of superiority, making the other feel like an inferior (most dangerous of the “Horsemen”).
  • Defensiveness – self-victimization; lack of accountability.
  • Stonewalling – withdrawing from the conversation.

Without going into great detail, I was embarrassed to discover that I do all four of these things plenty when it comes to the Church. While the Church is flawed, it is nonetheless important to me. Perhaps I should try to strengthen my relationship with it by cutting back on my criticisms, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling and replace them with vulnerability, accountability, charity, and engagement.

Doing so may remind me why the Church is as true as the gospel.

Lost Christianities: An Interview with Bart Ehrman

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This is part of the DR Book Collection.

Last week, I posted an interview with economist Thomas Sowell on his brand new book Wealth, Politics, and Poverty. At the time I was reading through the book and have since finished it. The relative popularity of the post gave me an idea:[ref]I’m almost certain the popularity had more to do with Sowell than my reading list.[/ref] I will begin posting clips from interviews and/or lectures (depending on their availability) that are based on the books I read throughout the year. Obviously, not all of these books will be published in 2016. In fact, most won’t be. Nonetheless, if you’re anything like me, you might like to know what others are reading. And if it peaks your interest, you might like to get a firm grasp of the book’s subject and potential quality prior to reading. So, I plan on making this a consistent thing.

Without further ado, here’s the next book.

New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has at times been the center of public controversy due to some of his more popular books (Misquoting Jesus, Jesus, Interrupted), largely for introducing pretty standard New Testament scholarship to lay readers. His Oxford-published Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, however, is one of his earlier academic publications. The book covers the history of Christian diversity and contention in the first few centuries. The debates and controversies among the chaos of early Christianity ranged from the nature of Jesus to the contents of the scriptural canon. It’s a fascinating and important history. I’d merely piecemealed the book over the last few years since I was already familiar with the sects Ehrman describes,[ref]I started studying the Gnostics on my mission when I was given a book on the Nag Hammadi library.[/ref] but I finally buckled down and read through the entire thing. Well worth it.

You can listen to a Beliefnet interview with Ehrman below.

Equal Marriage Partners, Unequal Households

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The Don Drapers of the world used to marry their secretaries. Now they marry fellow executives, who could very well earn more than they do. With more marriages of equals, reflecting deep changes in American families and society at large, the country is becoming more segregated by class.

This is how The New York Times opens an insightful article on the topic of assortative mating. The rise in assortative mating (or class segregation: take your pick) is the changing “nature of marriage itself…It used to be about the division of labor: Men sought homemakers, and women sought breadwinners. But as women’s roles changed, marriage became more about companionship, according to research by two University of Michigan economists, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers (who also contributes to The Upshot). Now, people marry others they enjoy spending time with, and that tends to be people like themselves…Another reason people are finding mates like themselves is that they are marrying later, so they know more about their partners’ prospects and increasingly meet at work. People were least likely to marry those with similar educational backgrounds around the 1950s…when people married very young.” This is an international trend, with “40 percent of couples in which both partners work…belong[ing] to the same or neighboring income bracket, up from 33 percent two decades ago, according to 2011 data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which includes 34 countries. Two-thirds have the same level of education.” The article concludes,

Researchers say the rise in assortative mating is closely linked to income inequality. The two have increased in tandem, Dr. Schwartz, the sociologist from the University of Wisconsin, said: “People who are married tend to be more advantaged, and on top of that, more advantaged people are marrying people like themselves, so those people tend to be doubly advantaged.”

The effects could become more pronounced in future generations. Studies tell us that parents’ income and education have an enormous effect on children’s opportunities and achievements — and children today are more likely to grow up in homes in which parents are more similar than different.

I’ve written about assortative mating before. It is becoming more and more apparent that this is a major player in the class divisions over the last several decades.

Master of Puppets: 30th Anniversary

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Thirty years ago today, one of the greatest heavy metal albums of all time[ref]Arguably the greatest heavy metal album of all time.[/ref] was released: Metallica’s Master of Puppets.

Philosopher William Irwin puts it well:

Something outsiders may not have realized at the time should be crystal clear to all 30 years later: Master of Puppets is serious music, a work of art. It is not mere entertainment, and it certainly is not party music. It’s meant to be felt and contemplated. Please don’t confuse Metallica with Kiss or Van Halen. Like ancient Greek tragedy, serious heavy metal can deliver a catharsis, a purging of negative emotions. With Master of Puppets, the chief emotions are anger and despair. The galloping guitar riffs and soulful solos, backed by the pounding bass and drums provide the soundtrack for alienated adolescent life. But it was the lyrics that spoke to me most.

“A theme of manipulation and resistance runs throughout the album,” including that which comes from addiction (“Master of Puppets”), religious and political power (“Leper Messiah,” “Disposable Heroes”), and insanity/social constraints (“Welcome Home/Sanitarium”).[ref]One could include violence (“Battery,” “Damage, Inc.”) and even supernatural evil (“The Thing That Should Not Be”).[/ref] Metallica was the reason I began taking guitar playing more seriously. They were the catalyst for my expanding musical palate. And they continue to be one of my favorite bands and Master of Puppets one of my favorite albums.

Minimum Wage Fallacies

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minimum wage

The New Republic has an excellent article by a Stanford doctoral student in economics that argues against the fallacies of minimum wage proponents:

The first fallacy is that changes in the minimum wage do not affect the behavioral response among firms and individuals. The second fallacy is that higher wages will force companies to innovate in order to reduce costs. Both these arguments overlook some very basic, but informative, economic principles.

The first overlooks the fact that wages are designed to compensate workers for productivity. When wages are distorted, they affect the profit-maximizing decisions that businesses make. The textbook prediction, which is generally supported in the data, is that higher minimum wages reduce employment since companies restrict the number of workers they will hire. These adverse effects are especially likely given the pace of technological change and automation.

The second overlooks the fact that there are effective and ineffective ways to stimulate innovation among businesses. The idea that making hiring more costly will spur innovation is tantamount to requiring companies to reduce the size of their physical presence so they become more productive. While these types of distortions may prompt a small fraction of companies to innovate, misallocation more generally is a major factor behind cross-country differences in productivity.

Given that many advocates of a higher minimum wage do so in the name of equality, it’s notable that the author states, “My own ongoing research, which focuses on the link between such wage-setting mechanisms and company behavior, suggests labor-market distortions like raising the minimum wage can have other negative effects on workers, businesses and inequality beyond the overall impact on employment.” The reasons include reduced hours, reduced skill accumulation, and reduced investment in workers. Finally, the evidence suggests that “even in the best of worlds—where the minimum wage has no unintended side effects—it appears to only marginally reduce inequality.”

The whole thing is worth reading. Check it out.