My 10 Favorite Reads of 2020

At risk of adding more to the glut of book lists, here are the 10 books I most enjoyed in 2020, with a few honorable mentions.

1. Edmund Morris, Colonel Roosevelt (Random House, 2010). It’s hard to recapture the whirlwind of Morris’s first volume on Roosevelt’s life, which chronicled his meteoric rise to the presidency. This third and final volume chronicles his descent — of life away from power, of unfulfilled ambition, of decline, loss, and death. Teddy Roosevelt is one of my favorite presidents — this “man in the arena” who lived life to the brim — and Morris’s trilogy does him justice.
2. Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny (Viking, 2018). Took me two years to work through this mammoth of a biography, but it didn’t disappoint. Here you have the best one-volume biography of this larger-than-life and singular figure.
3. George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (Yale University Press, 2004). Easily, one of the top ten Christian biographies I’ve ever read. Marsden masterfully excels in both examining Jonathan Edwards’s theology and situating him in his 18th-century context, where he was both a “strict conservative” and “innovator.” Marsden’s biography is full of sympathy and understanding while devoid of the hagiography that often seeps into the genre.
4. David Wells, No Place for Truth: or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (Eerdmans, 1993). Brilliant analysis of modern culture and the church’s unfaithful response. A bracing and prescient book that is more relevant now over 25 years after its publication.
5. Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers (Crossway, 2020). I read this book slowly over the course of months, reflecting on the heart of Christ “for sinners and sufferers.” Distilling the best of John Calvin, John Flavel, Richard Sibbes, John Owen, John Bunyan, Thomas Goodwin, Jonathan Edwards, and richly meditating on a variety of Old and New Testament passages, this book is a balm for weary Christians. What we most need is Christ, that bottomless ocean of rest, joy, and love.
6. Thaddeus Williams, Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth: 12 Questions Christians Should Ask About Social Justice (Zondervan, 2020). Here’s what I wrote in my endorsement: “In our tribalized social-media age, the loudest and most extreme voices are the ones that tend to get a hearing. But I’m thankful for the thoughtful voices that speak with wisdom to some of the most contentious issues we face today. In Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth, Thaddeus Williams tackles them all — racism, sexuality, socialism, abortion, critical theory, identity politics — and argues that social justice, while not the gospel, isn’t optional for Christians. Christians care about justice; justified people seek to be a just people. But Williams also reminds us that not everything branded ‘social justice’ — the increasingly superficial, knee-jerk activism of our day, or what he labels ‘Social Justice B’— is truly biblical. Whatever your starting point in this conversation, here’s a book that will help inform, equip, and serve the church.”
7. Mark Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (University of North Carolina Press, 2006). Essential reading that offers explanatory power for America’s most vexing problem. The chapter on the evolving biblical interpretations, both for an against slavery, is fascinating if also sobering — a reminder that we bring more into the text from the culture around us than we’d care to admit. Reading books like these, rather than spending hours on inane and outrageous social media discourse, will actually help deepen our understanding.
8. Peter Leithart, The Ten Commandments: A Guide to the Perfect Law of Liberty (Lexham, 2020). It’s not every day I can say a theology book is a thrilling read. That Leithart can pack in as many insights from the text and pastoral glosses into this slim volume attests to his long meditation on Scripture. Some Bible teachers unfortunately make the Bible seem boring, but Leithart helps us see the Bible anew, noticing how it pulsates with Spirit-given life.
9. Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (Random House, 2020). I had to read this book in small doses, since the history that Isabel Wilkerson presents — a lot like her previous book, The Warmth of Other Suns — is often jarring and horrifying. While I think she sometimes overextends her argument about the caste system in the United States (and its parallels to Nazi Germany and India) — what we might just call systemic racism — in the modern era (some of the personal examples she gives could have other explanations than caste; larger societal changes and events need not be monocausal), readers shouldn’t dismiss the larger history she recounts regarding sin’s uncanny way to morph, its tentacles to spread. Unlike the critical theorists of today who view oppressors as wholly blameworthy and the oppressed as wholly innocent, Wilkerson channels the Christian doctrine of original sin: “[E]vil is not one person but can be easily activated in more people than we would like to believe when the right conditions congeal. . . . [I]t means the enemy, the threat, is not one man, it is us, all of us, lurking in humanity itself” (267). While the book is short on hope, Christians know that ultimately the black and white problem can only be resolved in red.
10. David French, Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation (St. Martin’s, 2020). A plea to return to the Founders’ conception of pluralism. According to French, we need an 18th-century solution to our 21st-century problem — the “us vs. them” loathing that characterizes much of our political discourse. I find French’s analysis always clear and incisive — and I think he models well what he calls for, namely, political and moral courage in our sectarian age. His look at the religious, cultural, political, and social forces dividing us is sobering.

Honorable Mentions

• Seth Godin, The Practice: Shipping Creative Work (Portfolio, 2020). I’m not the biggest fan of Godin’s style of writing nor his overuse of “impact” (especially in this book), but I enjoyed this book. One sign of a good book is how often you’re left pondering long after you’ve put it down, and this book did just that time and again.
• Brandon Crowe, Every Day Matters: A Biblical Approach to Productivity (Lexham, 2019) and Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day (Currency, 2018). It’s rare to combine biblical faithfulness and practical usefulness when it comes to productivity books, but Brandon Crowe’s Every Day Matters does just that. Though a non-Christian title, Make Time is beautifully packaged book with principles arranged for the reader to pick up as needed (e.g., how to organize your apps, ideal time to drink coffee, when to check email, batching items, organization methods, blocking calendars, nixing notifications, snack like a toddler). Nothing earth-shattering about this book, but it takes some of the best “tips” from the genre of self-improvement and compiles them in a fun and insightful format.
• Eric O. Jacobsen, Three Pieces of Glass: Why We Feel Lonely in a World Mediated by Screens (Brazos, 2020). The car windshield, the TV, and the smartphone. Fascinating look at belonging in our age of mediated screens, made all the more relevant in 2020.
• J. T. English, Deep Discipleship: How the Church Can Make Whole Disciples of Jesus (B&H, 2020). One of the best books I’ve read on making fully-formed disciples of Jesus in the local church. We don’t outsource discipleship.
• D. Michael Lindsay, View From the Top: An Inside Look at How People in Power See and Shape the World (Wiley, 2014). One of the more eye-opening books about the leadership class in the United States—what Lindsay refers to as “platinum leaders.” I appreciated this recurring theme: “Act personally, think institutionally.”
• John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History (Viking, 2004). More than a book documenting the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, it’s a history of scientific research, both decades before and after; a biography of several fascinating characters; a look at the power of institutions for both good and ill; the unintended and overlooked effects of war; the self-sacrificing heroism of medical professionals and the cowardice of many others; and the collective memory of a disease, where even a mildly hit continent like Australia still interpreted the events as the new Black Plague (it was that bad). Even though a tragic account, the book is a mesmerizing read.
• Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow (Penguin, 2019). Perhaps my favorite novel of the year. Beautifully written.
• Timothy Keller, How to Reach the West Again: Six Essential Elements of a Missionary Encounter (Redeemer City to City, 2020). In this 60-page book we have Tim Keller at his most concise and incisive best.
• Robert Iger, The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company (Random House, 2019). The guy who oversaw Disney acquiring Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel, and the launch of Disney Plus writes a “leadership autobiography.” Presented as stories of a lifetime in the industry, several of the leadership lessons are full of common grace wisdom. Iger will step down as CEO at the end of 2021.
• Betsy Childs Howard, Arlo and the Great Big Cover-Up (Crossway, 2020). Perhaps the book I’ve read the most times, since it’s a go-to for my daughter. It’s better to confess sin than to cover it up. Children and adults alike need to remember this lesson. Young or old, Jesus came to save sinners. In confessing sin, we find mercy and reconciliation. Betsy Howard creatively and simply makes that clear, with lush illustrations from Samara Hardy.
• Trevin Wax, Rethink Your Self: The Power of Looking Up Before Looking In (B&H, 2020). I can’t think of a more timely book that at once counteracts today’s “be true to yourself” message and shows the beauty of denying self and following Jesus.