A few years ago now, Atria Books sent me an ARC of The Princess Spy by Larry Loftis to review and I immensely enjoyed the story. Since then I haven’t had a chance to look at Loftis other works and I’ve recently discovered another book by him I would like to read and have added it to my reading wish-list plus, The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. I can’t wait to read them! They look so good. I have a feeling I will be shedding quite a few tears reading them. World War II stories do that to me. Let me know in the comment area if you’ve read these stories!
Stephanie Hopkins
The Watchmaker’s Daughter: The True Story of World War II Heroine Corrie ten Boom by Larry Loftis
About the book:
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
New York Times bestselling author and master of nonfiction spy thrillers Larry Loftis writes the first major biography of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch watchmaker who saved the lives of hundreds of Jews during WWII—at the cost of losing her family and being sent to a concentration camp, only to survive, forgive her captors, and live the rest of her life as a Christian missionary.
The Watchmaker’s Daughter is one of the greatest stories of World War II that readers haven’t heard: the remarkable and inspiring life story of Corrie ten Boom—a groundbreaking, female Dutch watchmaker, whose family unselfishly transformed their house into a hiding place straight out of a spy novel to shelter Jews and refugees from the Nazis during Gestapo raids. Even though the Nazis knew what the ten Booms were up to, they were never able to find those sheltered within the house when they raided it.
Corrie stopped at nothing to face down the evils of her time and overcame unbelievable obstacles and odds. She persevered despite the loss of most of her family and relied on her faith to survive the horrors of a notorious concentration camp. But even more remarkable than her heroism and survival was Corrie’s attitude when she was released. Miraculously, she was able to eschew bitterness and embrace forgiveness as she ministered to people in need around the globe. Corrie’s ability to forgive is just one of the myriad lessons that her life story holds for readers today.
Reminiscent of Schindler’s List and featuring a journey of faith and forgiveness not unlike Unbroken, The Watchmaker’s Daughter is destined to become a classic work of World War II nonfiction.
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, Elizabeth Sherrill, and John Sherrill
“Every experience God gives us . . . is the perfect preparation for the future only He can see.”–Corrie ten Boom
About the book:
Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch watchmaker who became a heroine of the Resistance, a survivor of Hitler’s concentration camps, and one of the most remarkable evangelists of the twentieth century. In World War II she and her family risked their lives to help Jews and underground workers escape from the Nazis, and for their work they were tested in the infamous Nazi death camps. Only Corrie among her family survived to tell the story of how faith ultimately triumphs over evil.
Here is the riveting account of how Corrie and her family were able to save many of God’s chosen people. For 35 years millions have seen that there is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still. Now The Hiding Place, repackaged for a new generation of readers, continues to declare that God’s love will overcome, heal, and restore.
In a post not too long ago, I mentioned that I’m deeply involved in Bible studies-such as theology and the early Christian church history and other history research. In the latter for example, I’m focusing much on ancient cultural backgrounds; including the Old Testament and New Testament.
What led me to do a deep dive study in early Christianity history was a YouTube video by AOC Network. The channel has a video on the early Christians and it inspired me and deeply moved me to learn more about Christians in the first and second century AD. I approached my father about this subject and we talked about specifics and he handed me a book, Church History in Plain English by Bruce L. Shelley. He also printed off summaries of information on several saints during that time. I believe from his Logos Bible study subscription. Such a great resource that many ministers, students of theology and laypeople use. Logos in Greek means word. I also asked him if he could give me more information on the Reformers. Since then I have added quite a few books about the Reformers to my reading pile. That subject is for other blog post topics.
As I started reading Church History in Plain English and read about the Saints, I felt a strong feeling of emotion within me and I began to other sources of research on the Christian Orthodox Church. I look forward to sharing more of my spiritual journey with you all in this endeavor. For now, check out the book description for Church History in Plain English and another book on, The Religion of the Apostles (Orthodox Christianity in the First Century) by Stephen De Young I have added to my to-read pile.Many of you might be inspired to check them out.
Stephanie Hopkins
God Bless
Church History in Plain English by Bruce L. Shelley
With more than 275,000 copies sold, this is the story of the Church for today’s readers. The third edition of Shelley’s classic one-volume history of the church brings the story of Christianity into the twenty-first century. This latest edition of the book takes a close look at the rapid growth of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity in the southern hemisphere, addresses the decline in traditional mainline denominations, examines the influence of technology on the spread of the gospel, and discusses how Christianity intersects with other religions in countries all over the world.
The concise book provides an easy-to-read guide to church history, with intellectual substance. The new edition of Church History in Plain Language promises to be the new standard for readable Church History.
The Religion of the Apostles (Orthodox Christianity in the First Century) by Stephen De Young
Rev. Dr. Stephen De Young, creator of the popular The Whole Counsel of God blog and podcast, traces the lineage of Orthodox Christianity back to the faith and witness of the apostles, which was rooted in a first-century Jewish worldview. The Religion of the Apostles presents the Orthodox Christian Church of today as a continuation of the religious life of the apostles, which in turn was a continuation of the life of the people of God since the beginning of creation.
This past Sunday, I met a dear friend at a local coffee shop and what a treat it was! We talked about many topics and our mutual love for nonfiction. My friend is currently listening to Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer and she highly recommend it to me. Later on, when I got home, I sent her a picture of the nonfiction book I’m reading. The title is, The Neighborhood Project by David Sloan Wilson. I received the book as an ARC many years ago.
This led me to further explore more nonfiction books to add to my to-read wish-list. Below are five new titles I have added. My wish is for you to be encouraged and inspired to read more and to explore nonfiction in a broader sense-if you haven’t already.
Stephanie Hopkins
The Book-Makers
A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives
by Adam Smyth
Description
The five-hundred-year history of printed books, told through the people who created them
Books tell all kinds of stories—romances, tragedies, comedies—but if we learn to read the signs correctly, they can tell us the story of their own making too. The Book-Makers offers a new way into the story of Western culture’s most important object, the book, through dynamic portraits of eighteen individuals who helped to define it.
Books have transformed humankind by enabling authors to create, document, and entertain. Yet we know little about the individuals who brought these fascinating objects into existence and of those who first experimented in the art of printing, design, and binding. Who were the renegade book-makers who changed the course of history?
From Wynkyn de Worde’s printing of fifteenth-century bestsellers to Nancy Cunard’s avant-garde pamphlets produced on her small press in Normandy, this is a celebration of the book with the people put back in.
Twenty Years
Hope, War, and the Betrayal of an Afghan Generation
by Sune Engel Rasmussen
Description
An intimate history of the Afghan war—and the young Afghans whose dreams it enabled and dashed.
No country was more deeply affected by 9/11 than Afghanistan: an entire generation grew up amid the upheaval that began that day. Young Afghans knew the promise of freedom, democracy, and safety, fought with each other over its meaning—and then witnessed its collapse. In Twenty Years, the Wall Street Journal correspondent Sune Engel Rasmussen draws on more than a decade of reporting from the country to tell Afghanistan’s story from a new angle. Through the eyes of newly empowered women, skilled entrepreneurs, driven insurgents, and abandoned Western allies, we see the United States and its partners bring new freedoms and wealth, only to preside over the corruption, war-lordism, and social division that led to the Taliban’s return to power.
Rasmussen relates this history via two main characters: Zahra, who returns from abroad with high hopes for her liberated county, where she must fight to escape a brutal marriage and rebuild her life; and Omari, who joins the Taliban to protect the honor of his village and country and winds up wrestling with doubt and the trauma of war after achieving victory. We also meet Parasto, who risks her life running clandestine girls’ schools under the new Taliban regime, and Fahim, a rags-to-riches tycoon who is forced to flee. With intimate access to these and other characters, Rasmussen offers deep insight into a country betrayed by the West and Taliban alike.
Warsaw Testament
by Rokhl Auerbach, Translated by Samuel Kassow
Description
Born in Lanowitz, a small village in rural Podolia, Rokhl Auerbach was a journalist, literary critic, memoirist, and a member of the Warsaw Yiddish literary community before the Holocaust. Upon the German invasion and occupation of Poland in 1939, she was tasked by historian and social activist Emanuel Ringelblum to run a soup kitchen for the starving inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto and later to join his top-secret ghetto archive, the Oyneg Shabes. One of only three surviving members of the archive project, Auerbach’s wartime and postwar writings became a crucial source of information for historians of both prewar Jewish Warsaw and the Warsaw Ghetto. After immigrating to Israel in 1950, she founded the witness testimony division at Yad Vashem and played a key role in the development of Holocaust remembrance. Her memoir Warsaw Testament, based on her wartime writings, paints a vivid portrait of the city’s prewar Yiddish literary and artistic community and of its destruction at the hands of the Nazis.
The Great Mosquito Huntand Other Adventures
by Elizabeth Manson-Bahr
Description
This book is the author’s answer to the question Who do you think you are? set in China, Russia, Egypt, Kenya, Fiji and the US during the 18th to 20th centuries. It describes the battle to discover the causes of malaria. Sir Patrick Manson, the author’s great-grandfather, known as Mosquito Manson, was the first scientist to prove that insects were vectors of disease, a discovery which led to the detection of the malarial parasite. He founded the Chinese Medical School in Hong Kong and the London School of Tropical Medicine. Among his pupils was Sun Yat-sen, the first President of modern China.
It is the story too of plagues and pandemics, of Scottish and German merchants who made their fortunes in 19th century Egypt and 18th century Russia. The author’s mother, orphaned by the Spanish flu, made her way to Africa where she served as a FANY in 1942, marrying Clinton, the third in the family line of tropical medical specialists. The chapters are interspersed with the author’s own childhood memories growing up in Fiji and Kenya.
The Demon of Unrest
A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War
by Erik Larson
Description
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War—a simmering crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two. One of Time’s Most Anticipated Books of the Year
On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor: Fort Sumter.
Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter—a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were “so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.”
At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between them. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous secretary of state, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable—one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans.
Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.
In my last blog post, I mentioned that I was deeply involved in Bible studies-such as theology and the early Christian church history and other history research. In the latter, I meant to say my additional research, or study if you will, was centered on ancient cultural backgrounds. Last year I was gifted by my father the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible. This is my third study Bible I have acquired and I am thrilled to have this edition to my growing theology library. My father also gifted me the Holman Illustrated Guild to Biblical Geography (reading the Land) by Paul H, Wright. In addition, I am blessed to be studying from my father’s theology library as well. Including his NIV commentaries of each book of the Bible.
When I was a child my first Bible was the King James version and on June 14, 1994, I received my first NIV study Bible from my parents. That particular version is the NIV Disciple’s Study Bible.
What I love about the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible I was gifted last year, is a richer look behind the scenes that I was looking for with my current Bible studies. I will most likely acquire the New King James version at some point in time. I can’t wait! Another version I want to read is the Geneva Bible. This Bible is significant of the Bible into English during the 16th century English Protestantism. Thankfully my father has a copy.
Recently I’ve also started to use my Bible App as another form of Bible reading. To listen through the Bible in a year and then repeat every year. At times, I will read along with one of my Bibles. I find that helps me with staying in the word and memorization. Other tools that help me for a better understanding during my Bible studies and research are the Oxford Bible Atlas and Holman’s Bible Dictionary. In a later post I will be sharing other theological and cultural books I’m studying from. If you are interested in historical backgrounds and a better or deeper understanding of context, I highly recommend the books above to start with.
As I wrote this post, I reflected on how fast last year flew by and how 2023 was the year that I completely got over my fiction reading burn out. I contribute that to several factors but most of all to not setting any particular number of books to read. Instead, by being more intentional about absorbing what I’m reading at a slower pace. I wasn’t boggled down by pressures to gain any number of books read by the end of the year. I learned so much about myself and what drove me to burn out in the first place. That subject may come as a blog post at a later date.
There are a few books on my bookshelf that I visited again and new ones that were recommended to me and that were on my wish-list. I was quite surprise by how different my experience was by re-reading stories this time around. A few were favorable and others not so much. Jane Eyre of course is always like visiting an old friend and the visit brought me closer to the story than it has in quite a while. I credit that to absorbing Jane’s story at a slower pace. Her life’s journey is among my favorites since my first time meeting her in the early 1990’s. Not only that but of the spiritual lessons through its pages.
I didn’t read as many fictional books as I have in the past because I am deeply involved in Bible studies-such as theology and the early Christian church history and other history research.
I look forward to sharing more about my nonfiction reads and posting about my reading 2024 reading adventures this year soon.
Layered Pages 