I had a lot of free time this year due to a work transition, so I was blessed to read more than 40 books by this writing. My “best reads” aren’t all books that were published in 2022, but are all books I read in 2022.

The list consists of theology, political philosophy, history, biography, fiction, time management, and even a graphic comic. 

Two books top my list, tied for the top spot: How to Inhabit Time, by James K. A. Smith, and The Religion of American Greatness, by Paul D. Miller. The rest of the list is not ordered by rank, but alphabetically by title. 

I could not take the pressure.

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The Very Best

How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now, James K. A. Smith (Brazos Press)

There are times when the book meets the man and this is one of those times. No book I read this year spoke to me in the moment like How to Inhabit Time. Using three meditations from Ecclesiastes as a template, Smith demonstrates how most of use live “nowhen,” disconnected from our past, unaware of our place in the present, and therefore anxious about the future. 

Rather than striving to be contemporary, we should attend the “sacred folds of kairos,” and embrace the fact that we “are longer than our lifetime.” Like the Teacher of Ecclesiastes, Smith encourages us to remember life is made of seasons, and 

“we should note: in important ways, seasons are environmental and involuntary. Winter’s arrival is a cosmic condition; so too is our escape from it in spring. Seasons can be expected and are something that befall us rather than something we bring on. It is important to recognize this so we don’t confuse a season with our identity, nor imagine that a season is either a reward or a punishment.” (p 139)

The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong with Christian Nationalism, Paul D. Miller (IVP)

Miller takes on one of the rising risks to the American expression of Christianity is this crucial volume. Distinguishing between patriotism and nationalism, he explains why the latter is dangerous and why the Christian version of it is both unbiblical theologically and untenable politically.

He warns Christians:

“When America is most just, it is most tempting for Americans to treat it as a precursor to the kingdom of God, reducing the church to the chaplaincy of American nationalism. The opposite case is an even greater problem: When America is at its worst, when it does not live up to its creed—as happens sadly all too often—American Christians nonetheless continue to act as cheerleaders and defenders of the nation, Christians have blessed sin and called evil good. We have taken the name of Christ as a moral fig leaf while shilling for the whore of Babylon.” (p 8)

The Best of the Rest

American Prometheus, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin (Vintage)

I’ve had this book for a while as a used-bookstore find, but decided to read it before Christopher Nolan’s epic on the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, opens next summer.

This is a thorough yet thoroughly accessible biography, worthy of its award-winning status. There is so much here I did not know, including Oppenheimer’s post-WW2 investigation by the House Unamerican Activities Committee, his open philandering, and the broad opposition that the scientific community had with the use of atomic energy in weapons. 

Bluebird, Bluebird, Attica Locke (Mulholland Books)

Her fourth novel, and the first featuring Texas Ranger Darren Matthews, Bluebird, Bluebird takes place in the town of Lark in East Texas, a spot on Highway 59 so small you could see across it.

How Locke, novelist and former writer/producer for the television series Empire, manages to weave so broad and tight a story involving music, food, love, and lust with so few characters is phenomenal. Besides the characters and plot, I enjoyed the turns of phrase and emphases from an African American writer than I never would have used.

I will be reading her other four novels in 2023.

Everything Sad is Untrue, Daniel Nayeri (Levine Querido)

Quite simply, one of the most unusually written, yet best books I’ve ever read.

I remain convinced the best way to read this book is with zero information as to what it is about.

So, there; just buy it.

4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman (75 FSG)

I love good business books and this one did not disappoint. In a year that had me revisiting how economic systems can disciple people, 4000 Weeks was instrumental in helping me think about the length of a normal life and how it is spent.

“[O]nce ‘time’ and ‘life’ have been separated in most people’s minds, time became a thing that you used—and it’s this shift that serves as the precondition for all the uniquely modern ways in which we struggle with time today. Once time is a resource to be used, you start to feel pressure, whether from external forces or from yourself, to use it well, and to berate yourself when you feel you’ve wasted it.” (p 24) 

Maus Vols 1 & 2, Art Spiegelman (Pantheon)

The Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic biography of Spiegelman’s father’s experience in Nazi Germany and survival of the extermination camp at Auschwitz, I became aware of Maus when it was banned from a school district in Tennessee, a foolish and short-sighted decision by an overzealous, and likely politically motivated board.

Spiegelman makes the narrative accessible to teens by anthropomorphizing the characters as mice and cats but does not shy away from the devastation the experience wrought on his and his father’s relationship. The narrative includes his repeated attempts to interview his father about it, the anger both of them experience, and his father’s recollections of persecution and suffering, while demonstrating the lasting effects of trauma on people and their relationships.

The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther, Jeffrey Haas (Lawrence Hill Books)

Written by a 1960s Chicago radical lawyer, Jeff Haas, The Murder of Fred Hampton chronicles the run-up to and aftermath of one of America’s most blatant and forgotten acts of state terrorism, carried out by the FBI and the Chicago Police Department, assassinating the up-and-coming political force and influential Black Panther leader, Fred Hampton.

Anyone with an interest in 1960s American history, the Black Power movement or Black Panther Party, police violence, or the Civil Rights Movement should read this book.

We the Fallen People: The Founders and the Future of American Democracy, Tracy McKenzie (IVP)

McKenzie, ah historian at Wheaton University, tackles the promise and problems of a nation with high standards that it has repeatedly failed to meet. Locating the pivot of America the “nation as an idea” to America run by the so-called “will of the people,” during in the presidency of Andrew Jackson, we see a republic failing before our eyes due to resurgent populism, which, as McKenzie shows, is a dangerous belief that the will of the people is always right.

Similar to Williams’ Religion of American Greatness, We the Fallen People addresses the problems when churches align too closely with politics, though the latter examines more history than political philosophy, invoking Tocqueville who 

“further warned that such an alliance had devastated the churches of Europe. There, ‘Christianity allowed itself to become the close ally of temporal powers.’ Then when those powers began to collapse, Christianity found itself ‘buried, as it were, beneath their debris.’ Although still ‘a living thing,’ the church was ‘lashed to cadavers.’” (p 272)

Winter Counts, David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Ecco 50)

I picked up this book whilst perusing one of our local indie bookstores this summer. Weiden is a lawyer and professor, and enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota Nation. Winter Counts is his first novel, and it is a good one.

The protagonist is anti-hero Virgil Wounded Horse, a rez enforcer similar to Hector from the Longmire series. The story follows the too-familiar-to-real-life arc of drugs and cartels trying to penetrate Native American populations, exploring damaged families, failed systems, and political chicanery. An easy, excellent read.