Introducing “Books in Focus”

There are more good books . . .

than any of us has time to read.

That is especially true in the fields that matter to the Schubach Library. New books appear constantly on the Bible and its ancient world, Judaism and Christianity, Jewish-Christian relations, history, theology, and the many places where these subjects meet. Some are written for specialists. Others reach a wider audience. Many contain ideas worth knowing even if we never find the time to read the books themselves.

Books in Focus is our way of bringing some of those books—and the ideas they contain—into the life of the Schubach Library community.

This is not simply a book-review series. We will be curating books that we think are worth your attention. Some will be new. Others may be older works that continue to shape important conversations. We will not necessarily agree with everything in the books we feature. What they will have in common is that they give us something worth thinking about.

Bringing a book into focus

Each installment will begin with a simple question: Why this book? Why is this particular book worth bringing to your attention?

From there, we will try to bring the book into focus. What is it about? What is its big idea? What is the author asking us to see or reconsider? And what does the book contribute to the larger conversation?

Good books also invite questions. So we will ask where we might hesitate. Has something important been left out? Does an argument reach farther than the evidence will carry it? Are there assumptions that deserve another look? The goal is neither to praise nor to criticize for its own sake, but to engage a book seriously enough to recognize both what it offers and where questions remain.

Finally, we will ask who might want to read it. Some books will be accessible to almost anyone. Others will require more familiarity with the subject. We will try to give you enough of a sense of the book to decide whether it belongs on your own reading list.

You don't have to read the book

But there is another reason for Books in Focus.

Books carry ideas. And sometimes knowing about an important idea matters even when we never read the book in which it appears.

We hope each installment will therefore be worthwhile on its own. If you read one of these Dispatches and never open the book, you should still come away knowing something you did not know before: an argument scholars are considering, a different way of looking at a familiar subject, a question worth asking, or an idea worth carrying into another conversation.

And perhaps, every once in a while, you will encounter a book that you decide you really do need to read.

Either way, we hope Books in Focus will help us keep learning together.