What Went Wrong with Capitalism

(Simon & Schuster $30)
BY RUCHIR SHARMA

People generally agree: The economy isn’t working for everyone. In this new book, investment strategist Ruchir Sharma aims blame at both major parities. Because in his assessment, capitalism’s failures — intense concentration of wealth, massive debt — all go back to government interventionism — a crisis to which both parties readily contribute.

Sharma, who is currently the chairman of Rockefeller International and a columnist for Financial Times, spends nearly 300 pages essentially making this case: “When government becomes the dominant buyer and seller in the market — as it has in recent decades — it distorts the price signals that normally guide capital,” he writes. And a little later: “Flaws that economists blame on ‘market failures,’ including wealth inequality and inordinate corporate power, often flow more from government excesses.”

What Went Wrong with Capitalism unfolds in three parts, tracing the growth of government interventions, how interventions hurt the economy, and some constructive ideas for a “balance.”

To Sharma’s credit, this book reads smoothly and should be accessible to more readers than the typical economics book.

Out June 11, 2024

Wildcat (film)

(Oscilloscope)
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ETHAN HAWKE

The iconic 20th-century Southern writer Flannery O’Connor only published two novels. A new film by actor and director Ethan Hawke looks at her efforts to finalize the first one. The 103-minute movie features Maya Hawke (Stranger Things), Ethan Hawke’s daughter with fellow actor Uma Thurman, as the idiosyncratic O’Connor, a young writer whose devout Roman Catholicism comes into constant relief with the landscape of the American South. Maya Hawke is effective in the central role. She captures O’Connor’s famed charm and bite, as well as her obsessions with God and with her place. For readers of the Georgian, Wildcat gives a literature-charged romp: The movie moves in and out of dream-like sequences extracted from O’Connor’s more than 30 short stories. The result is both that Wildcat seems like it belongs within the O’Connor canon of haunted stories, and, as other critics have pointed out, it isn’t exactly accessible to the unbaptized.

Limited release on May 3, 2024; wide release to follow

The Slow Road North: How I Found Peace in an Improbable Country

(Mariner Books $29.99)
By Rosie Schaap

Food and travel writer Rosie Schaap last talked to her husband on Valentine’s Day 2010. The next day, he died following a fight with cancer. In The Slow Road North, Schaap recounts her grief and the (slow) road to healing. As she enters a too-young widowhood, she leaves New York for North Ireland, a place she lived in college. There, the pace and culture of village life prove a futile ground for Schapp’s journalistic impulse to learn others’ stories — stories invariably plotted with losses and griefs and the joys that give them context. Really, Schaap’s book reads like an exercise in the kind of story-sharing she experiences in North Ireland. The result is a personal story braided in and out of the stories of a place and the people who inhabit it. Some reviews spend too much space on Schaap’s treatment of North Irish social history, and she does recount regional history throughout. But The Slow Road North isn’t about North Ireland nearly as much as the relationship among grief and memory and love and a community’s ability to share it. As Schaap writes, “To love is to remember; to remember is to keep loving.”

Out August 20, 2024

Here’s the etcetera part

The podcasts, music, movies, and books we’re recommending this summer.

[BOOK]
Life in Flux: Navigational Skills to Guide and Ground You in an Ever-Changing World
(Baker Books $19.99)
By Michaela O’Donnell and Lisa Pratt Slayton

The world changes faster than training and education can. So what we need is guidance in adapting. That’s the goal of this short book from leadership and career experts Michaela O’Donnell and Lisa Pratt Slayton. In the book, they teach the practical skills needed in order to navigate constant change. Out August 20

[BOOK]
Defiant Hope, Active Love: What Young Adults Are Seeking in Places of Work, Faith, and Community
(Eerdmans $29.99)
By Jeffrey F. Keuss

For most church traditions, younger people are leaving far faster than joining. This new book draws on five years of qualitative and quantitative research to present findings around how churches can be more hospitable to younger adults. A lot of the data is revealing and seems important, even if the author’s conclusions often sounds like little more than, “Chill out, dude.“ Out July 30

[BOOK]
The Way of Christ in Culture: A Vision for All of Life
(B&H Academic $27.49)
By Dennis T. Greeson and Benjamin T. Quinn

Reinhold Niebuhr’s 1951 Christ and Culture, though by no means the first exploration of how the Christian faith relates to its cultural surroundings, set a pattern for the conversation.  Into that conversation, this book proposes a framework for Christians: knowing one’s time in God’s story, one’s place in creation, and following the “way of Wisdom.” The authors’ aim is to give readers categories to think Christianly about every arena of culture. Out August 15

[BOOK]
To Gaze Upon God: The Beatific Vision in Doctrine, Tradition, and Practice
(IVP Academic $40.99)
By Samuel Parkison

Though contemporary Christians have to some degree dropped this language, throughout history Christians have broadly affirmed  the use of the beatific vision in the Christian life and teaching. In this new book, Parkison reasserts the beatific vision’s centrality for the life of the church, and he argues for the vision’s biblical foundations and — through readings of Anselm, Aquinas, Dante, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards — its place in the history of theology. Out September 3

[BOOK]
Soul Care: Find Life-Giving Rhythms, Live Restored, Avoid Burnout, Discover Unspeakable Joy
(Harvest House Publishers $24.99)
By Debra Fileta

In Soul Care, licensed counselor Debra Fileta shows you how Jesus’ own life rhythms can guide you to true health and rest, teaching you how to live full rather than empty. Out September 3