Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park (Alfred A Knopf, 1990)
The movie franchise powered by man-eating dinosaurs has largely overshadowed the more thoughtful aspects of this novel. That’s not a departure from the spirit of Crichton’s work: the 1995 sequel, The Lost World, is pure thriller from the first to the last page. However, Jurassic Park is one of Crichton’s more thoughtful novels. There is a brilliant philosophical analysis of scientism—the belief that science can explain everything—in the interaction between John Hammond’s hubristic attempt to domesticate thunder lizards and Ian Malcolm’s sarcastic doomerism. The 1993 film—which is still remarkable for the quality of its CGI—doesn’t do justice to the philosophical themes Crichton explores. There’s still plenty of man-eating dinosaurs and incredibly close calls in this book, so that this can rightly be called summer reading. However, it’s also helpful as a parable for understanding why too quickly accepting the latest technological innovation can be dangerous.
Alfred Lansing, Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (Basic Books, 2015)
The story of Ernest Shackleton’s failed attempt to cross Antarctica gets a lot of attention for its leadership lessons. There are good reasons for its popularity. Some of the story has been romanticized in various tellings, but the facts of the account are remarkable. Lansing’s account of the adventure seems to hew closely to the unadorned truth. Though Shackleton failed to accomplish his primary task of crossing the frozen continent on foot, he succeeded in something much more important: bringing his entire crew back alive in the face of desperate odds. This required knowledge, wisdom, and the sort of personality that keeps people from open rebellion, when death seems inevitable. This is a book that belongs on every leader’s shelf, but more importantly, it’s a book that deserves to be read.
John Lennox, My Story: A Spiritual and Intellectual Autobiography (SPCK, 2026)
I was introduced to Lennox when he lectured in Raley Chapel in 2007. He was on his way to debate Richard Dawkins regarding Dawkins’s book, The God Delusion. That debate is still available on YouTube and Lennox shows up with sound arguments for Christianity. But that debate is just a tiny sliver of Lennox’s career. He was raised in Ireland during “the troubles” and yet didn’t become sectarian. He is an expert in mathematics and a scholar in the philosophy of religion. He made many trips behind the Iron Curtain at the height of the Cold War, preaching the gospel to thousands who had little access to the Bible. His biography is lengthy, but it’s difficult to put down. Like many Christian biographies, it’s an encouragement to read what God has done through the life of an individual willing to go wherever God calls him.
Matt Smethhurst, Tim Keller on the Christian Life: The Transforming Power of the Gospel (Crossway, 2025)
For most of my decade in seminary, I had an hour commute to the nuclear power plant each day. One of the best things I did during that time was download as many of Tim Keller’s sermons as I could and listen to them on repeat. Keller’s insistence that the gospel has implications for all of life has shaped my scholarship, my career, and my approach to ministry. Matt Smethurst’s 2025 volume isn’t a summary of Keller’s work, it’s a synthesis of Keller’s frequent themes like the Christological reading of all of Scripture, sin, grace, work, and prayer. Keller’s faithfulness to orthodox theology in a hostile culture is an encouragement for pastors and church leaders as they try to understand and resist the latest cultural fads. To better understand how Keller became who he was, Collin Hansen’s Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation, is another strong reading recommendation.
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