I am currently reading Peter Schweizer’s book Reagan’s War: The Epic Store of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism. It is a very interesting survey of Reagan’s thoughts toward and interactions with communism beginning with his time as president of the Screen Actor’s Guild. The media tend to present Reagan as a dufus who happened to be in the right place at the right time. More fair views of Reagan paint him as an intelligent man who happened to be able to defeat communism. Schweizer has done a lot of research including KGB files on Reagan and presents him as a man with basically one purpose for 40 years. Reagan had one goal throughout his time at the SAG, to his speaking engagements for General Electric, to being governor of California, and finally as the President of the United States. He understood the evil of the communist system and knew that it could not be contained - it had to be defeated. I have always liked Reagan as a president and knew that he did many good things. Reading this book shows me that his interactions with the communist system for 40 years was central to the defeat of communism. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Reagan or the fall of communism.
Monthly Archive for December, 2004
A while back I received an e-mail from the Conservative Book Club advertising the book A Concise History of the Crusades. Based on their description the book sounded really interesting and I added it to my Amazon.com wishlist hoping to get it for Christmas. I got it for my birthday instead which was good because I already have it. The book is concise as the title says with only 214 pages. I plan to start reading it soon. After having reading Angels in the Architecture a few years ago I wanted to gain a more true understanding of the 1500 years of Christian history before the Reformation.
While I am thinking about it, another book that is helpful in pointing out misconceptions concerning pre-enlightenment people is Inventing the Flat Earth : Columbus and Modern Historians. While I am not entirely sure where I got the notion I do believe that my upbringing including Christian school taught me that pre-enlightened people all thought the world was flat. It wasn’t until I read an article by Gary Demar that I realized this wasn’t true. Inventing the Flat Earth does a very good job of proving that it is not true. The majority of people in the middle ages did not believe the earth was flat. The idea was invented to ridicule Christians.
Many blogs I read have linked to Peter Leithart’s recent articles on Islam. I really enjoyed the aritcle Islam: Mirror of Christendom Part 1, Part2, and Part 3. Reading these articles reminded me of the original reasons I started to move toward reformed theology. The writings of Peter Leithart, James Jordan, and Doug Wilson among others make the most sense of everything in the world. It is good to see that the universe God has made and its movement through time can all make sense to a thinking Christian.
Note: Leithart.com appears to be down as I post this article. Hopefully it will return soon though.
