ESN has a long history of book reviews of significant works that help us think Christianly about the world. We so appreciate this review from Gregory Rummo of a C.S. Lewis classic, that makes a great summer read! SUMMARY The Great Divorce – A Dream,[1] is a fantasy “with an intended moral.” It is an allegory about Heaven and Hell. Whether inspired by or written in response to William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,[2] The Great Divorce dispels the notion that a person can get to Heaven while still clinging … [Read more...] about Book Review: The Great Divorce
Book Review/Discussion
A Call for Book Reviews
Summer is approaching and it is a great time to kick back with a good book. Over the years, ESN has included reviews of books broadly focusing on the intersection of Christian faith and academic life. If you are reading or have read something that fits that, we'd love to post your review to let other Emerging Scholars members know about the book. Here's what we suggest: We like to work with an upper limit of 1500 words, so this would not be the kind of in-depth review you would submit to a journal. Generally, we … [Read more...] about A Call for Book Reviews
Science Corner: Dawn – A Proton’s Tale of All that Came to Be
Stop me if you've heard this one: a biophysicist, a writer, a theologian walk into a bar. OK, so that's not actually how Dawn was written, but the diverse backgrounds of the three co-writers--Cees Dekker, Corien Oranje, and Gijsbert van den Brink respectively--do sound more like résumés for the cast of a niche joke than for collaborators on a novel. And not just any novel, but one that spans 14 billion years--from the instants after the Big Bang until the moment the manuscript was sent to the printers (or so it seems, … [Read more...] about Science Corner: Dawn – A Proton’s Tale of All that Came to Be
Science Book Review: Being You – A New Science of Consciousness
At various times while reading Anil Seth's engaging and accessible Being You, I was reminded of the people in Helen Thomson's Unthinkable, the subject of a previous blog post. Thomson was documenting the distinct experiences of people whose perception of themselves and/or the world around them depart substantially from what is typical: people who think they are tigers or dead or who can have their orientation to the world flipped instantaneously. Seth is giving an account more generally of why perception works the way … [Read more...] about Science Book Review: Being You – A New Science of Consciousness
Science Corner: A Planet of Viruses Book Review & Virus Appreciation
I don't know about you, but viruses have been on my mind a lot lately. One virus in particular, SARS-CoV-2 (a.k.a. COVID-19), continues to hold my attention way more than I would like it to. However, viruses are pretty amazing, and I learned to appreciate them when I read Carl Zimmer's book, A Planet of Viruses. Like everything I have read by Carl Zimmer, who writes a weekly science column for The New York Times, this short book is a fun read, and it doesn't require a background in biology, or any other science, to … [Read more...] about Science Corner: A Planet of Viruses Book Review & Virus Appreciation