40 books that have shaped my faith

22 August 2023 - 27 minutes read - 5574 words - kudos:

A friend of mine recently asked whether I had a list of books “that have been particularly impactful or interesting,” especially in the realm of spirituality and religion—and suggested that if I didn’t already have such a list, I could put one together for one of my next blog posts. It took me a while to actually put the list together, but it’s ended up being a really interesting exercise. Of the forty books that I’ve picked, some have been more influential than others. There’s also a bias toward the recent, and I haven’t shied away from the idiosyncracies of my reading habits (that is, there are plenty of comics and plenty of French books on the list—not to mention at least one French-language comic). Nonetheless, I hope this is helpful to other folks looking for a book to read in these domains!

asking existential questions

The faith I grew up with was so tied to every other part of my worldview that reconsidering this faith meant tackling deep existential questions; conversely, being confronted with deep existential questions has typically required me to ask if my beliefs hold up to the test. Here are four books that have been useful in asking these kinds of questions.

Le mythe de Sisyphe, by Albert Camus

The final essay in this book (which gives its name to the entire book) has long been of interest to me, and it’s the only part of the book that I think I actually enjoyed reading. I find Camus’s belief that we can find meaning in spite of the absurd (as exemplified by Sisyphus) inspiring, but his hammering home in this volume of the reality of the absurd is something that doesn’t sit comfortably with me. I read the book shortly before beginning my faith transition, and I wonder if I would read it any differently now, a few years later.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari

I understand that this book has received some criticism from experts in the field, and while I’m not qualified to evaluate that criticism, I’d be happy to replace this with a similar, stronger book. Nonetheless, I find it valuable to think about human history (how long—and yet how short—it is) and about early humanity (including Neanderthals, Cro Magnon, etc.) when getting existential. This book does that trick for me in the same way that visiting the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History does.

L’Anomalie, by Hervé Le Tellier

This is a bizarre but great book (and not the last on my list that could be described that way). Its premise is straight out of science fiction: three months after a regularly scheduled Air France flight from Paris to New York touches down, the exact same flight with the same passengers aboard also touches down. Le Tellier uses this wild premise to explore really interesting questions, like our relationships with ourselves, the consequences of small decisions, and whether life as we know it could just be a simulation. I understand the English translation (The Anomaly) is pretty good, too.

A Short Stay in Hell, by Steven Peck

Peck is a BYU biology professor and probably my favorite contemporary Mormon writer. This novella is the story of a devout Mormon man who succumbs to cancer and wakes up unexpectedly in the hell of another, obscure religion. He’s told that the deity of this religion is a merciful one and will let him out of hell once he completes a particular task: to find the book containing his life story within a library that contains all possible books (within constraints inspired by Jorge Luis Borges). Although technically a finite hell, this is still a task that could take billions (trillions?) of years and is therefore existentially horrifying. That, of course, is Peck’s point, to encourage believers to not be so cavalier about tossing around the word “eternity.” This book has done more than any theological treatise to make me reject a belief in hell—in fact, it’s helped me pivot hard from caring about an afterlife of any kind to focusing on the here and now.

deconstructing fundamentalism

When I spent time re-evaluating my faith, I spent more time deconstructing fundamentalist Christianity as a whole rather than deconstructing Mormonism in particular. I’m grateful for that, because I think it put things in helpful perspective, and I credit this with helping me hold on to some kind of faith (though I’m happily married to an atheist, so I’m not in the habit of insisting that others have faith).

Faith Unraveled, by Rachel Held Evans

I’m doing Rachel Held Evans a big disservice in this list. I read two or three of her books in a short period of time, and while they were all tremendously influential, they’ve blurred together in the years since then. I’ve picked this one because I think it’s the one where she most explicitly discusses her own deconstruction of fundamentalist Christianity, but I don’t think you can go wrong with any of her books.

The Bible Tells Me So, by Peter Enns

In grad school, I participated in a lunchtime discussion group made up of an evangelical pastor, a skeptical (but open to the paranormal) friend of his, an atheist grad student, and me (then, an open-minded but orthodox Mormon). I’m glad to have been part of that group, because it made me think harder about some things than I’d thought before; I think it laid some groundwork for my faith transition a few years later. Anyway, this is one of a few books that we read together, and it’s a good one. Enns is unflinching about how horrifying and terrible the Bible can be sometimes, but he also helpfully offers new ways to read those stories.

The Sin of Certainty, by Peter Enns

We also read this book by Enns during that same group, and it was equally helpful. I think it’s my favorite of the three of his that I mention on this list. Enns is a Bible scholar by profession, so he never strays far from that material, but this book is a broader consideration of challenges to fundamentalist Christianity and how they don’t have to be challenges to faith in general.

How the Bible Actually Works, by Peter Enns

In some ways, this is a sequel to Enns’s earlier book on the Bible. If the first book is “let’s acknowledge that the Bible is troubling in some ways” with a little bit of “this is how we respond to it,” this book reverses the formula. That is, it starts by laying out a framework for responding to the Bible that can help with the troubling bits—and a lot more besides. I’m not sure it’s entirely necessary if one has read his other two books (or listened to enough episodes of his excellent podcast), but I still enjoyed reading it, and it might be better than his first book for someone just beginning their deconstruction.

deconstructing Mormonism

Deconstructing Christianity as a whole was important for me, but Mormonism is its own thing, and I needed some time to work through the particulars of my faith as well.

David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, by Gregory A. Prince and Wm. Robert Wright.

One of my BYU professors recommended this book, though I didn’t actually read it until I was in grad school. This was probably the first sustained interaction I had with non-apologetic Latter-day Saint history, and it was eye-opening. Getting a glimpse into the inner workings of Church leadership was particularly interesting, especially in the entire chapter dedicated to the trouble Ezra Taft Benson caused to his colleagues among the General Authorities. Some time after reading this book, my uncle commented at a family reunion on some recent news about squabbles in the Vatican bureacracy and expressed gratitutde that nothing like that ever happened “in our church.” Thanks to what I had read, I was no longer so sure!

Dendō: One Year and One Half in Tokyo, by Brittany Long Olsen

This is a gorgeous graphic memoir of Olsen’s 18 months as a Latter-day Saint missionary, and it deserves the 2015 award it received from the Association for Mormon Letters. It’s also one of the hardest books that I’ve ever read; I received it just as my faith was entering a period of crisis, and reading about Olsen’s mission anxiety caused a lot of my own to flood back to me. Making myself finish the book was actually kind of painful, but it also helped me come to terms with the fact that no matter how many fond memories I have of my mission (and I have many!), there are some ways that that experience (and even my broader Mormon experience) was not healthy for anxious, perfectionist me. Olsen seems to have gone through a faith transition of her own and has acknowledged having “complicated feelings” about the book, and that somehow makes me appreciate the book even more.

This is My Doctrine: The Development of Mormon Theology, by Charles R. Harrell

I think this is the book that really gave me permission to decouple from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Even when I first felt like that was the right thing for me and my family, I had internalized a lot of the Church’s teachings and story, and they loomed over the decision that I was considering. Harrell’s book is both a careful history of how major themes of Mormon doctrine have evolved from ancient Israel to the present and a frank discussion of how few Mormon scriptural prooftexts hold up under scrutiny. Harrell writes as a believer but from a critical perspective, and that was the blend that I needed in the moment. With some important exceptions, I like to think that I’m still a respecter and even defender of Mormon doctrine—even all the weird stuff. Nonetheless, I also needed this book to help me see the human elements behind that doctrine—and give myself permission to take another direction.

The Giant Joshua, by Maurine Whipple

This book is an uneven-but-compelling story of Mormon pioneers. Rather than the reverent stories I grew up hearing, this told the story of 19th century Utah in a way that didn’t hold back from the pain of polygamy, the difficulty of the pioneer experience, and the rough edges of Mormonism. Like This is My Doctrine, it’s not meant as a bristling critique of Mormonism—just to be frank about the things that Mormons tend to paper over and ignore. I really enjoyed reading it.

keeping the best of Mormonism

I think one of the greatest things about Latter-day Saint leaders’ rejection of the word “Mormon” is that it leaves room for me to reclaim it. I am practicing in another faith—and happier for it—but there’s so much I love about the Mormon experience and want to hold onto. These books illustrate the kind of Mormonism that I wish were more present in the institutional Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Garden of Enid, by Scott Hales

I’m not as well read in Mormon comics as I would like (especially since it can’t be that big of a genre), but I still feel pretty confident that this is the best out there. I read this when Hales was releasing it as a webcomic, and I’m a proud owner of the two printed volumes that are available through Greg Kofford Books. Enid represents the best of Mormonism: someone who loves the religion but is aware of its flaws, someone who isn’t afraid to ask questions but also finds answers, someone who is fond of the culture but doesn’t hesitate to critique it. It also helps that Hales lived in the Cincinnati area when he was doing the webcomic, and Enid lives somewhere in unspecified southern Ohio. As a Kentucky Mormon, this setting felt like it captured my experience better than so much Mormon literature.

Letters to a Young Mormon, by Adam S. Miller

It’s been a while since I read this book, and I actually don’t remember a lot of it, so this will be kind of a fuzzy endorsement. I stand by the endorsement, though, because Miller’s writing is a great example of Mormons claiming Mormonism rather than leaving that entirely up to institutional leaders. Bottom-up Mormonism has a lot going for it, and the version of the faith that Miller writes about is something that I miss.

Way Below the Angels: The Pretty Clearly Troubled but Not Even Close to Tragic Confessions of a Real Life Mormon Missionary, by Craig Harline

If Dendō made it painful to think about my mission, Harline’s memoir was a reminder of everything I loved about it. I think the difference is that Olsen is writing in the moment with all of the naïve conviction and heartbreaking anxiety that a Latter-day Saint missionary experiences in the moment, whereas Harline is writing with some distance that lets him think about things differently. He knows that the missionary experience is kind of ridiculous, that some of that conviction is unwarranted, and after processing some of the anxiety (without shying away from how painful it can be). Dendō made me resent some of my mission experiences, but Way Below the Angels makes me remember why my memories of it are still overwhelmingly positive.

The Book of Laman, by Mette Harrison

Harrison’s retelling of the early stories of the Book of Mormon from the antagonist of the canonical telling is really compelling. I haven’t enjoyed her other subversive revisitings of Book of Mormon stories as much, but this one really spoke to me. I think there’s a lot to be gained from the Book of Mormon if we take it seriously (if not literally), and Harrison makes a good example here. She doesn’t let Laman off the hook, but she does add nuance to the story and offers a view of God who loves even the antagonists of the scriptures.

expanding my Christianity

My faith transition was a deliberate decision to conserve a Christian core even as I negotiated what parts of the Joseph Smith Jr. tradition I held onto. That’s not to say that I’ve adopted a kind of Christian fundamentalism—hence the earlier section on books that helped me reject it. Rather, thinking about my faith as primarily Christian (rather than primarily Latter-day Saint), expanding my view of Christianity (beyond how Latter-day Saints see it), and being willing to take a critical perspective of it (rather than take this new view for granted) have all been helpful.

A Way of Life: Understanding Our Christian Faith, by Anthony J. Chvala-Smith

Tony is more or less the de facto head theologian for Community of Christ, and I deeply appreciate the way that he works to bring this religious community into conversation with the broader Christian world (even if I sometimes feel he’s too critical of Restoration distinctives). This book is his summary of Christianity as understood by Community of Christ, and it gave me a lot of helpful new ways of revisiting familiar concepts in ways that make more sense for me in this time of my life.

Aux sources de l’amitié de Dieu: L’année liturgique avec l’abbé d’Einsiedeln, by Urban Federer

Over the years, I’ve really enjoyed many episodes of the Radio Télévision Suisse podcast Babel, and it’s where I first heard about a couple of books on this list. Federer is a Swiss abbott and once appeared on Babel to talk about the French translation of his originally German book walking Christians (primarily Catholics) through the liturgical year through a lens of friendship with God. I bought the book when I decided I was going to give this liturgical year thing a try as part of my exploration of Community of Christ. Not all of the chapters resonate with me, but there are some that have done so deeply. Like A Way of Life, this has been helpful for seeing how other Christians see Christianity—and deciding how I want to approach it.

Short Stories by Jesus, by Amy-Jill Levine

I’ve read a number of books by Levine, a Jewish New Testament scholar, and I find her specific perspective really helpful. This book, on Jesus’s parables, is kind of difficult for the way that it challenges common interpretations of these stories—including interpretations that I like! Yet, I find it valuable for reminding me that there are so many different ways of approaching the New Testament; it’s not just the straightforward text that readers like to think of it as.

The Misunderstood Jew, by Amy-Jill Levine

Levine’s treatment of Jesus in this book is critical for Christians to read, I think. Levine is unflinching in her calling out of anti-Jewish attitudes among Christians, and this book is compelling for the way that it presents Jesus as a Jew and asks Christians to see him as such. It’s been a while since I’ve read it, so I don’t remember all the details, but I got a lot out of this book, and Levine’s writing as a whole has been tremendously influential in shaping my new faith.

rereading scripture

This theme has been hinted at as I’ve described other books (let’s be honest, my organizational scheme here is pretty arbitrary), but one thing that has kept me engaged in the world of faith is my fascination with holy texts. Even if they aren’t what they claim to be (which is increasingly my opinion of most of them), books like these had an important role in showing me the complexity and richness of these texts. I learned to read familiar stories in new ways, and I really enjoy continuing to do that.

The New Testament: A translation for Latter-day Saints, by Thomas Wayment

Wayment’s translation of the New Testament is the first non-KJV translation of the Bible I ever read, and it was a mind-blowing, liberating experience. Wayment speaks faithfully to a Latter-day Saint audience but doesn’t hesitate to point out where the Greek text doesn’t support specific Latter-day Saint interpretations of particular passages. I still pull this out pretty often to read through specific New Testament passages: I’m grateful for the way that it showed me new ways to approach these scriptures.

A History of the Bible, by John Barton

This is yet another book that I have fuzzy memories of, but I distinctly remember how much I appreciated the way that Barton complicated the story of the Bible. This is true of all of the books in this section (and maybe in the whole post), but reading this book reinforced for me that I liked and appreciated religion and scripture all the more after learning how complicated, messy, and human they are.

Understanding the Book of Mormon, by Grant Hardy

Hardy’s book forever changed how I read the Book of Mormon. Hardy argues that if we bracket questions of historicity and treat the characters and stories of the Book of Mormon as real (whether they are or not, though I suspect Hardy has a conservative view himself), we can get a lot more out of the text than if we limit ourselves to religious prooftexting or to superficial critiques. I think there are limitations to the bracketing of historicity (most importantly, as they relate to what the Book of Mormon claims about indigenous peoples of the Americas), but the approach that Hardy introduces is the way that I now approach this text. He illustrates how to see the characters as three-dimensional and self-serving and how to read between the lines to find new meanings to stories.

Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne, by Wilda C. Gafney

I think this book is the one that taught me how to read scripture through a deliberate lens, rather than simply assuming that the intended meaning of the text is clear and self-evident. Gafney’s privileging of womanist (that is, black feminist) questions and concerns is a compelling invitation to critique the Hebrew Bible (and, by extension, scripture as a whole) rather than simply accept it for what it is. Just because I still appreciate holy text doesn’t mean that I think it’s perfect—I learned a lot of horrible things about the Hebrew Bible while reading this, and I’ve learned from it the importance of rejecting scripture when it doesn’t match with my vision of God.

rethinking God

My conception of God was so closely linked to my broader religious views that it was impossible to change the latter without changing the former. I sometimes describe myself as a “believing agnostic”: that is, while I’m comfortable using the language of God and of belief in God, I’m often happy for that belief to be just as metaphorical as stories in the Bible or Book of Mormon. These are books that helped me deconstruct and reconstruct those beliefs in particular.

L’invention de Dieu, by Thomas Römer

This book is based on Römer’s excellent 2011 to 2012 lectures on « Le dieu Yhwh : ses origines, ses cultes, sa transformation en dieu unique » (“The god Yhwh : his origins, his worship, and his transformation into the only god”). If you prefer audio and understand French, you can probably get just as much out of the podcast version of these lectures as out of the book; conversely, the book has also been translated into English (“The Invention of God”) for those who prefer that route. Listening to these lectures (I think in early 2021?) was helpful for a thorough deconstruction of my ideas of God, and I also appreciated reading the book sometime thereafter.

New Seeds of Contemplation, by Thomas Merton

This book was a kind gift from a friend on the occasion of my confirmation into Community of Christ. I’m not a very good mystic, and so I’m not sure that this book resonated with me as deeply as it has for many, but it’s a good one. Even if I’m still working on understanding the idea (and practice) of contemplation, I found that Merton’s understanding of God is one that can work for the religious, the “merely spiritual,” and even the skeptic. There’s a lot to like in this book, and writing about it now makes me want to return to Merton.

The Universal Christ, by Richard Rohr

Rohr is similar to Merton in that he has a view of God—and Christ—as present in all things rather than concentrated in a single, semi-embodied figure. As with Merton, Rohr’s emphases on seeing God in all things, appreciating God in all things, and simply being present and contemplative aren’t things that come naturally to me. However, just like Merton, he offers me a view of God that I feel like I can work with even on days where I don’t feel particularly believing.

La réinvention du nom de Dieu, by Gérard Siegwalt

My French is pretty good, but I still struggle with academic French, so this work of theology was a real struggle for me to get through. Yet, I know I’ll be returning to this book, and I really appreciated Siegwalt’s view of God as a being we turn to in response to the problems in the world. He lays out some of the crises facing the world today and lays out a vision for how to “reinvent God’s name” in order to turn our religious beliefs and practices into responses to those crises. This, by the way, was the other book I learned about on Babel—Siegwalt’s interview was awesome and had me thinking for days afterward.

finding new faith

This is one of the most tenuous of the categories that I’m organizing these books into, but these four books were helpful for thinking about approaching my faith in new ways—each in its own way.

The Book of Mormon Girl: A Memoir of an American Faith, by Joanna Brooks

Brooks’s memoir was written at the height of the “Mormon Moment” in the early 2010s, but I would not have appreciated the book if I had read it then! A decade later, though, it was exactly what I needed. Brooks’s modeling of choosing her own relationship with Mormonism and choosing to honor that tradition in her own way was a useful example to me. Her love for Mormonism and her impatience with its flaws are equally obvious from her writing, and I appreciated the example of how to forge your own religious path rather than let a broader institution dictate it to you.

Kirtland Temple: The Biography of a Shared Mormon Space, by David Howlett

Howlett’s book is fascinating for the way that it demonstrates how multiple Mormonisms intersect at the Kirtland Temple. He draws on history, personal experience, and other sources in a way that made me rethink what I knew about the Kirtland Temple and that helped me see the similarities and differences between the tradition I grew up in and the tradition that I was growing into.

Apostle of the Poor: The Life and Work of Missionary and Humanitarian Charles D. Neff, by Matthew Bolton

Neff was an influential apostle at a critical time of RLDS history, which makes his biography fascinating. To read about his church service is to read about the RLDS church’s rethinking of itslef in the mid twentieth century, its decisions to put itself onto the path that led to it becoming Community of Christ. I’ve told a number of people that one thing that really appeals to me about this denomination is the fact that it has gone through a faith transition at a denominational level; that seemed to validate and affirm the decisions I was making at an individual level (not least because many of them were in the same direction).

Conversions: Two Family Stories from the Reformation and Modern America, by Craig Harline

This is the second Craig Harline book on my list; after reading his Way Below the Angels, I couldn’t help but buy this book when I saw it in a used bookstore in Boston. Harline tells the semi-parallel stories of a young man in the 17th century who upsets his family by becoming a Catholic and a young man in the 20th century who upsets his family twice by converting to Mormonism—and then coming out of the closet and leaving religion. In a moment where I was undergoing a conversion of my own, it was helpful to have these other stories and see what was familliar about them despite how different my experience was.

rediscovering hope

Let’s be honest: A lot of the changes that these books helped me through have been difficult. As much as I’m glad for my new faith trajectory, paring away old beliefs and identities has sometimes left me feeling lost and adrift. These books have been helpful for finding a way to feel hope when it’s not based on absolute conviction in my qualification for the best rewards offered by a plan of happiness.

Heike’s Void, by Steven Peck

Peck’s writing is brilliant because it’s weird but deeply moving. Peck’s love for Mormonism is clear in this book, but he’s not afraid to offer a different kind of Mormonism than the correlated one. He dares to describe the Book of Mormon’s Nephi as someone whose exaltation has been halted because he hasn’t repented of his slaying of Laban, and when the fictional, conservative LDS apostle who is one of the main characters of his book says something homophobic, it’s clear that Peck doesn’t approve. Yet, one of the key themes of the book is that no one is beyond the reach of redemption, and that’s the kind of religion that I don’t have any trouble believing in.

The Book of Forgiving, by Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu

So much of my faith journey over the past several years has been about using faith to stand up and against those who seek to marginalize others. I like a good social gospel, but it’s easy to let that gospel be just as limited and selective as the gospel that I grew up with. This book from the Tutus was difficult to read for how seriously it took Jesus’s teachings to love our enemies and to forgive seventy times seven. To hear that message from someone who lived through—and fought against—apartheid makes you think about it in a different way, and while I still don’t know how to reconcile speaking truth to power and forgiving the unrighteous powerful, I’m glad for the invitation to try.

Walkaway, by Cory Doctorow

This is not at all a religious book, but it kind of is anyway? Doctorow is a tech activist and science fiction writer whose thinking and writing I really admire. This book is his vision of a future where things are pretty sucky, but maybe there’s still some hope after all that we can fix things. It’s bonkers-level weird, but through his characters, Doctorow makes a powerful case that hope and optimism are different things and that even if the future doesn’t look great, we ought to hold out hope anyway. I appreciate the radical commitment of his walkaway characters, who reject the awful world they live in and go out into the unclaimed, polluted wilderness to try to make something different. There’s a lot in here that reminds me of the radical early Christianity that I recently wrote about.

Still Just a Geek, by Wil Wheaton

If anything, this book is even less religious than Walkaway, and I’m not even sure how I wound up buying a copy of Wil Wheaton’s memoir, but it fits this theme of finding hope. I appreciate Wheaton’s candid exploration of his own mental health struggles, and because much of this memoir is an annotated version of a previous edition of the book, I also appreciate his own self-criticism as a person and a writer, acknowledging where he got things wrong in the past. I’ve wrestled a lot recently with whether I need to limit my expectations for myself because of my own struggles with anxiety and depression, but reading Wheaton’s story reminds me that I can experience mental illness but still do big things. I don’t know why I bought it, but I’m glad that I did.

finding meaning

My religious worldview is less and less focused on truth and more and more focused on meaning. I’ve found that for me, spiritual experiences often come when I find something deeply meaningful. These books aren’t really spiritual or religious in nature, but they’ve moved me in ways that I now count as spiritual.

Kiffe kiffe demain, by Faïza Guène

This short book was an amazing find in the French section of a used bookstore in Knoxville, Tennesse. It tells the story of an Arab teenager growing up in the Parisian banlieue, figuring out her life and sharing her experiences. I don’t remember a lot of details of the story, but it’s the kind of book that reminded me that there are people out there whose life experiences are wildly different than mine but are just as complex, rich, and meaningful as anything I’ve experienced. I really ought to reread this soon.

Bonheur d’occasion, by Gabrielle Roy

I read this book as part of a BYU course on French Canadian literature. Like the other literature course I took as a French Teaching major, I was kind of expecting to not enjoy the class but wound up changed by it. This book, the story of a poor family in Montréal in the early 1940s, never fails to move me, and I’ve read it a number of times since the class where it was required homework. The main character—and her whole family—live in heartbreaking circumstances, and this book probably did more to change my worldview than any political tract or academic paper could. It may be one of my top ten books of all time.

Chroniques de Jérusalem, by Guy Delisle

It was less than a month ago that I read the English translation of this fantastic comic (Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City), and thanks to my brother-in-law’s visit to a French bookstore in New York, I’m now making my way through the original French version. Delisle has a real gift with telling stories through comics, and some of his best known works are travelogues of his time in various places around the world. Yet, as interesting as it is to read his glimpse into Pyongyang, Jerusalem is a unique city, and while I’m fairly knowledgeable about the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict thanks to a few classes in college, Delisle’s depiction of the year he spent living in East Jerusalem while his partner worked in Gaza was eye-opening and perspective-changing.

March (Books 1-3), John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

These comics from the late Representative John Lewis share his experience during the civil rights movement, and I’m almost embarrassed by how much I learned from these comics (and that I probably should have learned in school). It was a sign of my white naïveté that my reaction to many of the stories told in the three volumes was to think that Lewis must surely have been exaggerating—that things couldn’t have been that bad. Like Bonheur d’occasion and Chroniques de Jérusalem, these comics were helpful in firing up some of my moral indignation about the injstices of the past—and the ones that continue today. Like many of the books on this list, I really ought to reread these ones soon.

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