What I'm Reading

Here are a few of the titles I've read in the past few weeks.

The Closing of the Western Mind - this book is a history of intellectual views from the Greeks through Thomas Acquinas. The author's arguement is that Christianity as it became the official religon of the Roman Empire served to stifle reason and I assume contribute to the coming of the dark ages. I've not completed the book and don't agree with all of the author's arguments but find the history interesting.

Learning Theology with the Church Fathers - this book traces the discussions of the early church fathers regarding competing views of the nature of Christ, the Trinity (Arius vs. Athanasius), the Holy Spirit, God's providence, the Scriptures, the Church, and the resurrection.

The Ten Offenses - I was loaned this book by my mother and in it Pat Robertson traces the Judeo-Christian foundation of the United States and how that heritage is being eroded by the courts and the culture. He nicely documents the views of the founders in this regard and is a good reference for relevant court cases. It is hard to see how a country founded as we are on the principal that all men are created equal can survive when the principle that there is a "law higher than the law" (as one of the judges at Nuremberg reminded the Nazis) is eroded.

MDA Distilled - this is a short book that describes Model Driven Architecture and its potential. I found it interesting to compare and contrast the approach with what Microsoft is developing in their Whitehorse modeling tools.

Here's a list of books I've got in the queue.

DaVinci - With the current interest in the DaVinci Code (which is full of historical problems and half-baked ideas as documented here) I thought I'd read a more historical work, a biography of DaVinci originally written by a Russian and translated into English.

The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Engineer 1874-1914 - written by Hoover biographer George Nash, a personal friend of my father-in-law

The Life of a Fossil Hunter - written by Charles Sternberg, the fossil hunter who collected for E.D. Cope in the late 1800s in Kansas and later in Alberta. He collected from the Smoky Hills chalk where my daughter and I have been fossil hunting twice in the last year.

Deadball Stars of the National League - a book acquired through my SABR membership. I keep meaning to read the entries on the 1908 Cubs.