The modern Olympic Games are barely a century old, but even within that relatively brief span the games have been transformed. Along the way, notions of athletic achievement, nationalism, individual rights, patriotism, gender, and race have been transformed as well.

The 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing will put the nation of China on the world stage as never before in modern times. The government of the People’s Republic of China is intent on making these games a great publicity gain for the nation. Beijing itself has undergone a great architectural transformation, even as the entire nation is in a process of great change.

Howard P. Chudacoff has done what someone needed to do — write a history of children’s play.  In Children at Play: An American History, Chudacoff, who teaches at Brown University, traces how play has changed over time.  These changes reflect everything from the development of new technologies to big shifts in the understanding of childhood itself.

“One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn cited that Russian proverb in his 1970 acceptance speech as he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He did not deliver that speech in person, for he knew that if he left the Soviet Union he would never be allowed to return. Even after he was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, his great wish and absolute determination was to die in Russia, the land and people of his birth.

Many Christians want to know more about how archaeology informs and deepens our understanding of the Bible and specific texts.  It helps to know, for example, about Mars Hill, where Paul defended the faith in Acts 17, about the topography of Galilee, and about the setting for so many of the accounts recorded in both the Old and New Testaments.

The doctrine of adoption is one of the sweetest dimensions of salvation as revealed in Scripture.  Joel R. Beeke has written an inspiring and informative work on the doctrine that looks particularly to the Puritans for guidance.  Heirs with Christ: The Puritans on Adoption [Reformation Heritage Books] will educate and encourage Christians and help believers to understand the wonder of adoption and the comfort and challenge this represents for the Christian life.

The decade of the 1970s is now a generation behind us, but the cultural and political movements of that pivotal decade set the stage for so much of what we face in our current times.  In terms of national politics, two great developments stand out.  On the Left, the nomination of Sen. George McGovern became the pivotal event of the decade, even as the rise of a reinvigorated conservatism became the great event on the Right.

I am repeatedly asked about books that boys and men will want to read. The fact is that many guys just do not read for fun (if much at all) and yet, every now and then, they read a book that captures their attention. This list is for the moms and wives who are looking for a book that just might light that fire.

Back twenty years ago the evangelical world was torn by a controversy over the very nature of salvation — known then as the “lordship controversy.”  Out of the context of that controversy Dr. John MacArthur would write one of the most important books ever to emerge from his ministry.  In The Gospel According to Jesus Dr. MacArthur got right to the heart of the matter.

The moral status of the human embryo now stands as a central question of our times.  In fact, it has only been in recent times that we have even known much about the human embryo.  Now, with the issues of human embryonic stem cell research, cloning, reproductive technologies, and designer babies before us, the human embryo is now a central character in some of our most heated moral and political debates.

The name of the Bin Laden family is now known throughout the world – a name of infamy.  But long before the events of September 11, 2001, the Bin Laden family was well established in Saudi Arabia and in much of the Arab world.  Journalist Steve Coll, winner of the Pulitzer Prize while at The Washington Post, traces the development of the Bin Ladens in a narrative that is indispensable to understanding the events of 9/11 and the challenge Osama Bin Laden and radical Islamic groups now represent.  The book, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century, is both important and timely.

Few inventions can compete with the printed book in terms of changing human history and influencing the way humans think. The physical reality of the book — type on the printed page — made knowledge accessible on a scale never dreamed of in former times. The book, never completely stable through printings and new editions, nevertheless served as the most stable platform for information humans had ever known.