Study Commentaries

Elinor Cleghorn became an unwell woman 10 years ago. She was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after a long period of being told her symptoms were anything from psychosomatic to a possible pregnancy. As Elinor learned to live with her unpredictable disease, she turned to history for answers, and found an enraging legacy of suffering, mystification, and misdiagnosis. In Unwell Women, Elinor Cleghorn traces the almost unbelievable history of how medicine has failed women by treating their bodies as alien and other, often to perilous effect.

Often called Paul’s magnum opus, Romans has been pivotal to Christians’ understanding of salvation for generations. It had a profound influence on Augustine and Luther. Calvin saw it as the key to understanding all of Scripture. In this volume, Dr. R.C. Sproul introduces us to Paul’s fullest, grandest, most comprehensive statement of the gospel and explains why it is just as vital for believers today as it has been for believers throughout history. Verse by verse, Dr. Sproul unfolds the vast truths that Paul has clearly and carefully woven throughout this book.

This translation of the life and teachings of Jesus creates an image of not only a great spiritual teacher, but of a real person. Eminent author and translator Stephen Mitchell's approach to the Gospels has been widely praised for its depth, clarity, and radiance. This is a stunning work for believers and non-believers alike.

In January 2012, having covered a Somali pirate trial in Hamburg for Spiegel Online International, Michael Scott Moore traveled to the Horn of Africa to write about piracy and ways to end it. In a terrible twist of fate, Moore himself was kidnapped and subsequently held captive by Somali pirates for 977 days. Yet Moore’s own struggle is only part of the story: The Desert and the Sea falls at the intersection of reportage, memoir, and history.

In recent years, the theological—and, more specifically, Roman Catholic—question of the supernatural has made an astonishing return from seeming oblivion. David Bentley Hart's You Are Gods presents a series of meditations on the vexed theological question of the relation of nature and supernature. In its merely controversial aspect, the book is intended most directly as a rejection of a certain Thomistic construal of that relation, as well as an argument in favor of a model of nature and supernature at once more Eastern and patristic.

In this volume, Dr. R.C. Sproul delves into the rich teaching, praises, and exhortations contained in one of his favorite books of the Bible. Take up this verse-by-verse guide to gain greater insights into the grace of the gospel and the glory of the Lord in the redemption of His people.

"Finishing Well" is the name of the game. Here was a rich, young ruler - a first century "yuppie" if you will - who, although getting off to a rather problematic beginning, finished well, indeed. A rich young ruler questioned Christ about what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. Mark's Gospel includes a detail that Matthew and Luke failed to mention: "And Jesus looking upon him loved him..." This hints at the possibility that young John Mark himself may have been that rich young man.

Lost in time for generations, the story of a 19th-century English gentleman in British India - a family mystery of love found and loyalties abandoned, finally brought to light. In 1841, 20-year-old Nigel Halleck set out for Calcutta as a clerk in the East India Company. He went on to serve in the colonial administration for eight years before abruptly leaving the company under a cloud and disappearing in the mountain kingdom of Nepal, never to be heard from again.

Atheist? Believer? Uncertain? No matter: The Portable Atheist will engage you every step of the way. From the number one New York Times best-selling author of God Is Not Great, comes this provocative and entertaining guided tour of atheist and agnostic thought through the ages with original pieces by Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Mental Illness is real. Will the Church get real? This book is a collection of essays from various authors: men and women, pastors and congregants, counselors and nurses, parents and children. All have a unique view of how mental health conditions affect people, and how the church has responded to these circumstances. Whispers in the Pews tackles how the mentally ill have been, and still are, treated in the church at large by sharing stories. This is not fundamentally a teaching book, but a book of moments and lives, knitted together by the common theme of mental health.

Until the 1970s, if you suffered a medical crisis, your chances of survival were minimal. A 9-1-1 call might bring police or even the local funeral home. But that all changed with Freedom House EMS in Pittsburgh, a group of Black men who became America’s first paramedics and set the gold standard for emergency medicine around the world, only to have their story and their legacy erased—until now.

The beginning of the modern contraceptive era began in 1882, when Dr. Aletta Jacobs opened the first birth control clinic in Amsterdam. The founding of this facility, and the clinical provision of contraception that it enabled, marked the moment when physicians started to take the prevention of pregnancy seriously as a medical concern. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Donna Drucker traces the history of modern contraception, outlining the development, manufacturing, and use of contraceptive methods from the opening of Dr. Jacobs' clinic to the present.

In 1932, the US Public Health Service recruited 623 African American men from Macon County, Alabama, for a study of "the effects of untreated syphilis in the Negro male". For the next 40 years - even after the development of penicillin, the cure for syphilis - these men were denied medical care for this potentially fatal disease.

More, Please is a chronicle of a lifelong fixation with food—its power to soothe, to comfort, to offer a fleeting escape from the outside world—as well as an examination of the ways in which compulsory thinness, diet culture, and the seductive promise of “wellness” have resulted in warping countless Americans’ relationship with healthy eating.

Best-selling author Peter Kreeft presents a series of brilliant essays about many of the issues that increasingly divide our Western civilization and culture. He states that "these essays are not new proposals or solutions to today's problems. They are old. They have been tried, and have worked. They have made people happy and good. That is what makes them so radical and so unusual today. The most uncommon thing today is common sense".

Ostensibly written by an English knight, The Book of Marvels and Travels claim to recount his experiences in Egypt, the Levant, India, and China. It describes a journey from Europe to Jerusalem and further into Asia, and the many weird and wonderful peoples and practices of the East. The author claims to have traveled in land populated by Amazons, dog-headed people, cannibals, one-footed tribes, and Pygmies.

Jesus said that the psalms spoke about him (Lk 24:44). Christ's birth, betrayal, agony, death, resurrection, ascension, coming again in glory, and his worldwide reign - all are pictured in inspired vividness. They constitute irrefutable testimony to the divine inspiration of the Scripture.

I and II Kings provide a record of Israel's history from the beginning of the movement to place Solomon on David's throne through the end of the reign of Zedekiah, Judah's last king. There are great lessons to be learned from Israel's desire to be "like those around us" and its consequences.

It's never too late for a new beginning. Look closely and you'll see that theme all through the Bible. Page after page, God delights in turning tragic endings into new beginnings. A childless woman conceives in her old age; a fearful, self-conscious shepherd becomes a leader of millions; and a prostitute becomes a wife and mother in the lineage of Christ. Every biblical fresh start reveals the amazing, awe-inspiring hope we have for our own new beginnings in God's plan for our lives.

Andrew Murray (1828-1917) was a South African writer, teacher, and Christian pastor. This Best Of collection comprises seven of his most trenchant books.