The On The Bookshelf Podcast

Betsy Leondar-Wright opens a civil dialog about Racism & Sexism

Is It Racist? Is It Sexist? Why Red and Blue White People Disagree, and How to Decide in the Gray Areas

            by sociologists Betsy Leondar-Wright (and Jessi Streib)

Racism and sexism often seem like optical illusions, with some people sure they see them and others sure they're not there, but the lines that most consistently divide our decisions might surprise you. By asking white people—Southerners and Northerners, Republicans and Democrats, working-class and professional-middle-class, men and women—to decide whether specific interactions and institutions are racist, sexist, or not, Leondar-Wright and Streib take us on a journey through the decision-making processes of white Americans. By presenting them with a variety of scenarios, the authors are able to distinguish the responses as being characteristic of different patterns of reasoning. They produce a framework for understanding these patterns that not only offer new tools for making more accurate and productive judgment calls, but that invite us all to engage with each other in a new way—even on topics that have come to divide us. Best of all, they don't treat us as bad if we disagree.

Best-selling Author Joe Finder with The Oligarch's Daughter (spy novel)

  THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER by Joseph Finder (from Harper) is already on the bestseller list. The hero, Paul Brightman, is a regular finance guy who by accident falls in love with an Oligarch’s daughter. The U.S. intelligence community traps him into spying on his father-in-law and his activities.  Combining the opulence of Succession and the spycraft of The Americans, the book is getting raves!

  While he’s written novels about the opiate crisis and big pharma (HOUSE ON FIRE), about #MeToo (JUDGMENT), about government secrecy (THE SWITCH) ,Finder didn’t really write about his area of expertise, Russia, for years. Why not and where did the idea for this book come from?

Is it really possible to disappear anymore, as the main character Paul is on the lam, living in New England outside of the grid?

 

Life Changing Mission Trips edited by Patric Knaak

No Matter How Short, Your Next
Mission Trip Will Be Life-Changing

New devotional helps teams get the most
out of their trip and live on mission upon return

Anyone who has ever gone on a mission trip knows that the experience gives participants a unique opportunity to see and experience God differently than they do at home. While most people who take short-term mission trips describe them as life-changing, the truth is that after they return home, not a lot changes in how they live day-to-day, and the memories start to fade. However, Life-Changing Mission: Devotions for Your Short-Term Trip​(New Growth Press), a new resource from Serge, helps short-term mission teams get the most out of their trip, record their experience, and live on mission once they get back home. 

 Written by men and women who serve as missionaries and edited by Patric Knaak, Deputy Director of Mission at Serge, Life-Changing Mission offers ten impactful devotions from Acts for short-term mission teams that will help them prepare spiritually for their trip, stay connected to Jesus while they serve, and continue to expand God’s kingdom when they return home. All of the devotions focus on how the Holy Spirit works to motivate, sustain, and equip us. The expansion of God’s kingdom is recorded in Acts, but it continues today, and we are meant to be part of it. The same Good News about Jesus that we are bringing to the nations, is the same Good News that we ourselves need—even as believers—in order to love others.

 Knaak shares, “Mission trips play a significant role in the life of the church and individual believers. So many times people take a trip and experience God in unique ways, but then return home and forget about those experiences.  Serge believes that the gospel is the power and motive for mission so we want to help people be deeply transformed by God’s grace while they are on their trip, so that when they return home they continue to live on mission in their everyday life.”

 The devotions in Life-Changing Mission will help readers connect what they are doing each day to God’s big kingdom and see how God is using them, just as he did the early Christians, to bring hope and healing to the world. Each devotion emphasizes the power of God to use weak and needy people to bring the gospel to a broken world. The book also includes a pre-trip exercise and space for journaling about the unique memories, people, and experiences encountered along the way. There are also three debriefing sections for after the return home that give participants an opportunity to process all they saw and learned.

 “Even though the events of the book of Acts have ended, its story has not. The story of the expansion of God’s kingdom continues today. And you and I are part of it, every bit as much as Paul and Barnabas were,” Knaak, who is also the author of On Mission,​writes. “Life-Changing Mission was written to help you connect deeply with your heavenly Father as you join his ‘family business’ of seeing his kingdom expand. God is at work using weak and broken people to bring the message of his good news to those who do not yet know him. 

 

Civil Rights Activist & Troy native Rev. John Reynolds on SCOPE60

Rev. Dr. John Reynolds returned to his native Troy in March 2025 to observe the 60th anniversary of the SCOPE Registration drive for Black voters. He brought along his wife and Steve and Susan Gutherz, the two grown children of Leon Gutherz, the man who recruited him for the Project. Dr. Reynolds spoke to us about this historic trip. (He previously visited our studios several years ago and spoke about his 2012 book, "The Fight for Freedom: A Memoir of My Years in the Civil Rights Movement". That podcast is also available at onthebookshelf.podbean.com.)

Reynolds had volunteered as an 18-year-old in 1965 to help student civil rights workers sent to Alabama by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as part of the SCOPE Project, a campaign to register Black voters. At the end of that summer he received training at the Penn Center in South Carolina, and was hired for the field staff of SCLC by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  His next seven years involved working ac ross the South in Selma, Birmingham, Green County and Greensboro in Alabama, as well as on the Meredith March in Mississippi. Reynolds also worked with Dr. King on the Open Housing Campaign in Chicago, organized the Poor People's Campaign in New England, and served as Sanitation Director in Resurrection City Washington, DC. as well as worker's strikes in Charleston and a successful SCLC project in South Carolina to get Native American children admitted to public schools. He left SCLC in 1971 and eventually served as Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in Rhode Island from 1997 to 2008.

Wesley Hill on the Season of Easter in the Fullness of Time series from IVP

"He is risen indeed!"

Easter Sunday is the holiest day of the year, a day when even those who don't usually observe the Christian calendar or attend liturgical churches greet each other with the proclamation "Christ is risen!"

But Easter is more than a day—it's a season even longer than Lent. In fact, for the Christian who has died with Christ and been brought to life in him, Easter is the new, joyous, and radical way of living. The world is turned upside down. In this short volume, priest and New Testament scholar Wesley Hill explores the history and significance of the season of Easter for the church and for our own spiritual formation.

This volume of the Fullness of Time series offers readers--

An accessible, digestible introduction to the history and practice of the season of Easter,

Practical application of the Scriptural story and theology of Easter to our own spiritual formation, and

A helpful contextualization of the Easter season into the context of the rest of the church calendar.

About the Series

Each volume in the Fullness of Time series invites readers to engage with the riches of the church year, exploring the traditions, prayers, Scriptures, and rituals of the seasons of the church calendar.

Wesley Hill is an Episcopal priest and associate professor of New Testament at Western Theological Seminary. Among his books are Washed and Waiting, Paul and the Trinity, Spiritual Friendship, and The Lord's Praye