Reading More Than Just Narnia

Kort, Wesley A.  Reading C. S. Lewis: A Commentary.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016. 
          ISBN: 978-0-19-022134-8

When C. S. Lewis is mentioned, what pops into your mind?  Is it The Chronicles of Narnia?  Out of the Silent Planet?  Or maybe The Screwtape Letters.  Wesley A. Kort covers all of these and more in his commentary on C. S. Lewis.

Wesley A. Kort divides his reading of C. S. Lewis's works into three parts.  Part One examines Surprised by Joy, The Problem of Pain, The Screwtape Letters, and Mere Christianity.  He spends a chapter on each book and ends Part One with a chapter of what he considers reasonable assumptions.  In Part Two, he covers Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, The Abolition of Man, and That Hideous Strength, ending with a chapter of cultural critiques.  Part Three delves into The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Four Loves, The Magician's Nephew,  and The Last Battle, and finishes with a chapter on some principles applied.

Wesley A. Kort makes clear in his introduction that he is writing a commentary not on his advocacy of Christianity or religion in general, but rather an examination of several constants found in his writings.  He is clear in what he admires about Lewis's writings.  He is also direct about what he finds troubling in Lewis's attitudes and viewpoints.  Overall, it is refreshing to have a reasonably clear eyed view of C. S. Lewis which is not colored by religious bias.

Atomic Espionage

Kean, Sam.  The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Plot to Stop the Nazi Atomic Bomb.  New
          York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2019.  ISBN: 9780316381680

Are you looking for a read that promises, intrigue, dashing heroes, derring-do galore, plus a dash of science?  Well then, just settle yourself down, pick up The Bastard Brigade and join with Sam Kean as he finally writes a book on physics!

After opening with Boris Pash leading an Alsos team to capture a scientist in France during the Summer of 1944, Sam Kean returns to the 1930s and starts introducing characters such as Moe Berg, a major league catcher who also managed to become an accomplished spy, White Russian Boris Pash who started out as a teacher at the Hollywood High School, an all-star cast of scientists of many nationalities, and other bit players in this high-stakes drama.  Kean then walks the reader through the formation of Germany's Uranium Club, the growing awareness among the Allies that Germany was trying to create nuclear fission, followed by the urgent need to stop that from happening.  Thus was born the Manhattan Project, the Alsos teams with Boris Pash, and several OSS ventures starring Moe Berg and many others agents.  And he manages all this in just 60 short chapters.

In The Bastard Brigade, Sam Kean has produced a very readable popular history of the struggle to stop the Nazi Atomic Bomb from ever occurring.  As in other books he has written, he provides lists of sources, but not direct citations which limits the use of this title by scholars and students, but perfect for public libraries.