Ben Sasse’s book The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-Of-Age Crisis—And How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance recently came out and I just finished reading it yesterday. Because my reading list isn’t huge (50+ books a year), I try to pick good, impactful books to read. This isn’t always easy so I’m constantly looking for sources to help me populate my reading list.
That’s one reason I wanted to read this book but it unexpectedly delivered more than a source for great literature. He went into the mechanics and techniques of making great readers. Whereas I did have some moments of pause and reflection (I’ll need to read other books to weigh his points), reading this book didn’t cause me to outright disagree at any point; that’s very rare for me.
Something I found very reassuring was that I’d read so many of the books he refers to or suggests. The shear number of books he referred to impressed me so much that I collected them in a rough bibliography. Here it is:
Bibliography for The Vanishing American Adult by Ben Sasse
- Excellent Sheep by William Deresiewicz (retired Yale professor)
- Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood by Christian Smith (a Notre Dame sociologist)
- The Great Disruption by Francis Fukuyama
- The Lonely Crowd by David Riesman
- The Affluent Society by C. Wright Mills
- Growing Up Absurd by Paul Goodman
- The Waste Makers by Vance Packard
- Outside Lies Magic by John R. Stilgoe
- Cultural Literacy by E. D. Hirsch
- The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom (philosopher and classicist)
- Agamemnon by Aeschylus
- Letters and Papers from Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
- Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
- On Old Age by Marcus Tullius Cicero
- Shop Class for Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford
- Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- John Dewey (Sasse disagrees with atheist Dewey and mentions these books, in particular, as to why he disagrees with him):
- Democracy in Education
- Self-Realization as the Moral Ideal
- The Primary Education Fetich [sic]
- The School and Society
- My Pedagogic Creed
- The Humanist Manifesto
- Dumbing us Down by John Taylor Gatto
- Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes
- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
- Escape from Camp Fourteen by Blaine Harden
- Children of Dictators by Jay Nordlinger
- White Collar by C. Wright Mills
- Common Sense by Thomas Paine
- Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
- Disappearance of Childhood by Neil Postman
- Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt
- Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck
- Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
- Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
- The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen
- Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte
- Moneyball by Michael Lewis
- Religion
- Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
- Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton
- Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen (Sasse disagrees with this book but it’s a great book to read)
- Book of Genesis in The Bible
- Book of Matthew in The Bible (especially Sermon on the Mount)
- Commentary on Galatians by Martin Luther
- The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin
- Greek Roots
- Ethics by Aristotle (starter book)
- Crito by Plato (starter book)
- Odyssey by Homer
- History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
- Three Theban Plays by Sophocles
- Homesick Souls (or, Fundamental Anthropology)
- Confessions by Augustine
- Why God Became Man by Anselm of Canterbury
- Bondage of Will by Martin Luther
- Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas
- Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
- Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Sasse has a long struggle with this book; he ultimately sees Rousseau as wrong)
- Shakespeare
- Romeo and Juliet
- Hamlet
- King Lear
- Julius Caesar
- Macbeth
- Sonnets
- The American Idea
- Declaration of Independence
- U. S. Constitution
- The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
- Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an America Slave by Frederick Douglass
- Markets
- Politics by Aristotle
- Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
- The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 by Charles Sellers
- Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman
- Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
- Tyrants
- Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (laid the intellectual foundation for communism and, hence, the murder of more than 100 million people)
- Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt (the best analysis of the rise of scientific racism and anti-Semitism in nineteenth-century Europe, which led directly to the Holocaust)
- The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek (explains the close relationship between fascism and communism)
- Animal Farm by George Orwell
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- The Nature of Things (or, a Humanistic Perspective on Science)
- On the Nature of Things by Lucretius
- Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
- Elements of Geometry by Euclid
- American Fiction
- Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
- O, Pioneers by Willa Cather (a Cornhusker substitute for Death Comes for the Archbishop)
- Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin (about his alienation as a black and gay man growing up in Harlem with an abusive Baptist minister as his stepfather. This is a disturbing book in many aspects. It illustrates the ways in which religious life can turn hypocritical and repressive.)
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
This a great list to dig through and start reading which, in itself, is an exciting prospect.
While reading—and deeply enjoying—the book Mansfield’s Book of Manly Men: An Utterly Invigorating Guide to Being Your Most Masculine Self by Stephen Mansfield, the author mentioned another book: Wild at Heart (Revised and Updated: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul) by John Eldredge. I bought Wild at Heart and, after skimming through it, began to read it as well. It’s rare for me to be reading two books I enjoy so much at the same time. They compliment each other well and have a message that I think has been missing in the Church: men are supposed to be manly. What, to me, makes the message work is that it’s in the context of scripture. This book will be one I go back to reference often. Below is a short clipping from the book:
To put it bluntly, your flesh is a weasel, a poser, and a selfish pig. And your flesh is not you. Did you know that? Your flesh is not the real you. When Paul gives us his famous passage on what it’s like to struggle with sin (Rom. 7), he tells a story we are all too familiar with:
I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. (The Message)
Okay, we’ve all been there many times. But what Paul concludes is just astounding: “I am not really the one doing it; the sin within me is doing it” (Rom. 7:20 NLT). Did you notice the distinction he makes? Paul says, “Hey, I know I struggle with sin. But I also know that my sin is not me—this is not my true heart.” You are not your sin; sin is no longer the truest thing about the man who has come into union with Jesus. Your heart is good. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you . . .” (Ezek. 36:26). The Big Lie in the church today is that you are nothing more than “a sinner saved by grace.” You are a lot more than that. You are a new creation in Christ. The New Testament calls you a saint, a holy one, a son of God. In the core of your being you are a good man. Yes, there is a war within us, but it is a civil war. The battle is not between us and God; no, there is a traitor within who wars against our true heart fighting alongside the Spirit of God in us:
A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death . . . Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells . . . if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus . . . When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. (Rom. 8:2–3, 9–11 The Message)
The real you is on the side of God against the false self. Knowing this makes all the difference in the world. The man who wants to live valiantly will lose heart quickly if he believes that his heart is nothing but sin. Why fight? The battle feels lost before it even begins. No, your flesh is your false self—the poser, manifest in cowardice and self-preservation—and the only way to deal with it is to crucify it. Now follow me very closely here: We are never, ever told to crucify our heart. We are never told to kill the true man within us, never told to get rid of those deep desires for battle and adventure and beauty. We are told to shoot the traitor. How? Choose against him every time you see him raise his ugly head. Walk right into those situations you normally run from. Speak right to the issues you normally remain silent over. If you want to grow in true masculine strength, then you must stop sabotaging yours.
Buy the book. Read it. You won’t regret it.
Back in March of this year I read the book, The Way of Serenity: Finding Peace and Happiness in the Serenity Prayer by Father Jonathan Morris. A good friend suggested I read it and, even though I had a lot of issues with the book (fundamentally), this one quote made the whole book worth reading:
I went in to do my confession, and I told the priest what I was going through. The priest was so old that I don’t know if he could even hear what I was saying. He didn’t offer me any spiritual advice about the sins I confessed, but what he did say turned my life upside down. “Young man, keep in mind that the devil wants you to be a good man, and just a good man.” Like a knife to the heart, I knew I was being tempted to mediocrity.
—Father Jonathan Morris, The Way of Serenity: Finding Peace and Happiness in the Serenity Prayer
The feeble-minded are people who know the truth, but only affirm it so far as consistent with there own interest. But, apart from that, they renounce it.
— Blaise Pascal, The Fundamentals of the Christian Religion
While reading John Wesley on The Sermon on the Mount Volume 2: The Standard Sermons in Modern English Volume 2, 21-33 (Standard Sermons of John Wesley) (Yeah, that’s the real title of the book) I came across the following:
It is just as impossible to satisfy the hungry soul that thirsts for the living God with worldly religion as it is to satisfy the hungry soul with what the world counts as “happiness.” The religion of the world includes only these three things:
- Doing no harm. That is, we must abstain from outward sin, at least from such scandalous transgressions as robbery, theft, common swearing, and drunkenness.
- Doing good. The religion of the world calls for us to relieve the poor and to be charitable (as it is called).
- Using the means of grace. This aspect of the religion of the world includes going to church and partaking of the Lord’s Supper.
If people have these three marks, the world accounts them as “religious persons.”
However, will mere “religion” satisfy the soul that hungers after God? Never. Outward religion does not provide food for the soul.
Wesley always has a way of reminding me that relativity isn’t a good standard; it’s actually the absence of a standard. It’s always tempting for one to compare oneself to others and arrogantly think “I’m doing pretty well.” That’s always wrong and it doesn’t feed my soul.
Isaiah 55:1-2 (NIV)
Invitation to the Thirsty
1 “Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
2 Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and you will delight in the richest of fare.
Psalms 69:6 (New International Version – NIV 1984)
May those who hope in you not be disgraced because of me, O Lord, the Lord Almighty; may those who seek you not be put to shame because of me, O God of Israel.
In chapter 3 of his book Twelve Ordinary Men: How the Master Shaped His Disciples for Greatness, and What He Wants to Do with You, John MacArthur describes the apostles James and John like this:
James and John were nicknamed [Boanerges] “Sons of Thunder” [by Jesus] because of their reckless tendencies.
Later, in chapter 5 on John – The Apostle of Love, he describes just how reckless and rough John could be:
The two men [brothers, James and John] had similar temperaments, … they were inseparable in the Gospel accounts. John was right there with James, eager to call down fire from heaven against the Samaritans.
But Jesus changes John and he becomes known as the apostle of love. In the same chapter MacArthur offers the following observation on love and truth:
Zeal for the truth must be balanced by love for people. Truth without love has no decency; it’s just brutality. On the other hand, love without truth has no character; it’s just hypocrisy.
Upon reading that observation, it became immediately clear to me how it applied to the current debate on Human Sexuality and Marriage in the Church. Although in its history the Church has brutally spoken truth without love, it does not excuse its current detractors of the hypocrisy of love without truth. There’s too much at stake to be that reckless.
In groups of people (committees) there tends to be an inclination, for the sake of consensus, to demand compromise from all the participants rather than evaluating (debating) whether certain points of view are wrong and should be changed and whether they are right and to remain unchanged. This is why Kierkegaard makes the claim “the crowd is untruth“; the introduction of a single untruth will corrupt the truth and, therefore, make the consensus untruth. Here’s Kierkegaard on the subject:
There is a view of life which holds that where the crowd is, the truth is also, that it is a need in truth itself, that it must have the crowd on its side. There is another view of life; which holds that wherever the crowd is, there is untruth, so that, for a moment to carry the matter out to its farthest conclusion, even if every individual possessed the truth in private, yet if they came together into a crowd (so that ‘the crowd’ received any decisive, voting, noisy, audible importance), untruth would at once be let in.
For ‘the crowd’ is untruth. Eternally, godly, christianly what Paul says is valid: “only one receives the prize,” [I Cor. 9:24]
— Søren Kierkegaard. The Crowd is Untruth
Here’s the whole scripture to which he referred:
24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.
— Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 9:24 (NIV1984)
God shapes the world by prayer. Prayers are deathless. The lips that uttered them may be closed in death, the heart that felt them may have ceased to beat, but the prayers live before God, and God’s heart is set on them and prayers outlive the lives of those who uttered them; outlive a generation, outlive an age, outlive a world.
—E.M. Bounds, Purpose in Prayer
