My Favorite Books of 2020
By: Jason Park
Tags: Christianity, Psychology, History, Books, Reading

As usual, nonfiction makes up the entirety of my list (I didn’t read any great fiction this year, as good of a story as Max Brooks’ Devolution was). So let’s start with the honorable mentions. Raleigh Sadler’s Vulnerable: Rethinking Human Trafficking was a perfect late addition to my 2020 reading plan and delves deep into the Christian motivation to protect the vulnerable and fight human trafficking along with giving terrific practical advice on what you can do where you are. Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise is one of the audiobooks that completely caught me off guard this year (I don’t write full reviews of audiobooks because it would be very difficult), as Tisby relays an in-depth history into how the church has been complicit in racism throughout the American experience. It’s a rough one, but Tisby’s love for the church shines through even as he lays out the unavoidable facts about how it has failed. Finally, J.T. English’s Deep Discipleship is the best book about discipleship I’ve ever read, briefly outlining the church’s problems before devoting the rest of the book to how a church can make disciples of Christ well.

Now, the good stuff. My list includes 6 mass market books and 4 Christian market books, which about normal for how this list shakes out. Where I’ve reviewed the book before, I will link to my full review in the subheading. There are 4 books for which I did not write a review, however. On to the top ten!

I teach AP World History, and before this year I had never heard of the Berbice slave rebellion. It seems that not many people have. But the quality of this story deserves a wide telling, and the characters within it are as strong as those of the Haitian Revolution or the more widely-known slave rebellions in the United States.

The African-descended people in the Dutch colony of Berbice took control of half the colony for almost a year in this rebellion, and the reasons for their eventual defeat show just how disadvantaged non-Europeans were in conflicts with Europeans during this time, even if they were just as powerful of a force (or more so) militarily. Kars’ research and writing here is strong, and it deserves your time if you are at all interested in world history.

A book that absolutely every Christian should read. There is a growing list of books written by Christians who have struggled or still struggle with same sex attraction (SSA), such as Sam Allberry, Christopher Yuan, Jackie Hill Perry, and more. I recommend all of them. But Rachel Gilson’s stands out for her willingness to explain that God never took her feelings of attraction away. This is the experience of so many with SSA, and I was so glad to learn about how Gilson has wrestled with that. So often we expect God to take away our struggles and temptations, but God’s glory is made perfect in our weakness. He never promises to take away temptation, but instead “with the temptation he will also provide a way out so that you may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). In this way, as with all of the best Christian memoirs, the truth applies even if the details are different. I learned a lot about sin, grace, and redemption from Gilson, and I also learned about the specific struggles of those brothers and sisters with same sex attraction.

8. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

This book is the best dive into principles of learning and memory that I’ve seen. Teachers will benefit greatly from implementing the ideas, but everyone should read this because everyone has to learn, even as an adult. And let’s be honest, everyone teaches too. Some of the major principles in the book include:

Distributive practice — spacing out your practice of concepts or skills leads to more efficient learning than massed practice (doing it all at once) Interleaving — mixing together different topics or forms of practice leads to better retention. For example, if you have multiple subjects to study, mix them together instead of studying one at a time. The testing effect — being tested on content strengthens knowledge of the content. Regular and repeated testing of content leads to more effective learning. Example: testing content in the form of a daily or weekly quiz, then a unit exam, then a final exam. Effortful retrieval — this is the reason the testing effect works. Trying to retrieve information from memory strengthens the memory itself through a process called long-term potentiation. My psychology students, when I give them a form of retrieval practice through a daily bellringer, tend to go to their notes first instead of making an effort to retrieve it from memory. It is only when we learn about the benefits of effortful retrieval that I have seen them rely on their notes (or Google) less and make consistent attempts at retrieving it from memory first. Elaboration — the deeper you process something, especially focusing on the meaning of a concept or term and making connections to other concepts or terms, the better you will learn and remember it. This is in contrast to what is called “maintenance rehearsal”, repeating information out loud or to yourself, which only focuses on structure rather than meaning. Study as if you need to write an essay about a topic, not answer a multiple choice question.

There are many other examples of principles from this book that I have incorporated into my teaching, but I wanted to give you a taste of the plethora of information in store. Seriously, I think it would have immense benefits for anyone.

7. Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life — Donald S. Whitney

This was my second time reading Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (the first time since college) and it hit me just as heavy this time as it did the first. The broad range of disciplines included within the book is a message for every Christian that your sanctification is not complete and God always has a new space for you to grow in your relationship with him. Because of the relentless focus on prayer and Bible reading in the church (which is essential, don’t get me wrong), some Christians find themselves “stuck” and feel like something is missing. What’s missing is all the other places God can move in your life, such as fasting, meditation, and reading. This time, I read through it with my church and participated in teaching and discussion each week. I highly recommend it for any church, so if you have any opportunity to participate in a similar group study, please do it.

The most common complaint I hear from my AP World History students is probably: “Why do we have to talk about China so much?” I get it. They’ve learned nothing about China (or the entire continent of Africa, for that matter) their entire lives. It’s a hard sell to start from zero background knowledge and work your way up. It doesn’t feel good. Students interpret this feeling as “boring”. But with the students that push through that feeling, they find that it’s not boring at all. Michael Schuman’s Superpower Interrupted is a perfect example of how exciting and important Chinese history can truly be. Schuman looks at world history through China’s eyes, where they are the global superpower that briefly lost the mantle as European-descended people colonized the world (including China, to an extent). But the key, Schuman argues, is that China has always considered itself a superpower simply waiting to reclaim its title. If you are at all interested in world history or simply want to know more about China, this one is a necessary read.

This is where the books take a leap from “very good” to “great”. Graff’s oral history of 9/11 is a classic in waiting. He interviewed huge numbers of people about their experiences on and around 9/11: some in the towers, relatives of those who passed away, first-responders, news anchors, and regular people who weren’t there but had a story to tell. Frederick Terna, a holocaust survivor who lived in Brooklyn on 9/11, pops in for a brief moment to compare what he saw at Auschwitz to what he saw here:

As ashes were falling, I was back in Auschwitz, with ashes coming down. In Auschwitz, I knew what the ashes were. Here, I assumed I knew what the ashes were — it was a building and human remains.

It is perspectives such as this, from regular people living through extraordinary events, that make Graff’s oral history the most compelling book I’ve read in a long time. Everyone should read it.

I will always read Russell Moore’s books, and each one is great in a different way. In The Courage to Stand, Moore uses the story of Elijah to teach about courage: not the kind described by American culture, where courageous manhood has turned into squabbling about who is an “alpha”. This is a courage to stand when no one else is standing; to stand for God in a culture where even professed Christians are running away from his commandments. It is, as Moore writes, “instead being led, like Elijah, where we do not want to go (John 21:18).

The courage to stand is the courage to be crucified.”

Because what Moore writes in this book is even more applicable now than when I reviewed it in October, I have to pull one more quote:

The problem is that much of what is actually defined as courage in Scripture — the bridling of the passions, kindness, humility — is seen as timidity, while many who feel themselves “courageous” because they “tell it like it is” are really just seeking to be part of their protective tribes, even when those tribes are boisterous and angry.

Maybe I’m on Twitter too much, but I suspect this I’m not alone in seeing that professed Christians have been abandoning the truth of God for lies… in droves. This happens on the left and the right of the political spectrum, but I tend to see it on the right more often because it’s more common from people in my church and my denomination. Take a look at this one:

So yeah, that’s not courage. That’s running away from the truth of God and exchanging it for a lie. That is what Moore talks about in his book. It is even more impactful that Moore shares he was almost a teenage suicide, and that was directly related to what he saw in the church. He felt that so many people, including church leaders, were using Christianity in a way contrary to the gospel he learned, which he felt meant that the gospel couldn’t be true. He felt he had been living a lie. The despair almost killed him.

That is why Moore’s book is so important. There are others like him, with physical lives and eternal lives depending on the courage of the church to stand up for the truth of God. We must have that courage to stand.

3. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption — Bryan Stevenson

I should have made it to this one a long time ago. I knew that before I read it. But I didn’t know it would touch me as much as it did. I was introduced to Bryan Stevenson while reading The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row, which came in at number 5 on my favorite books of 2018. In that book, Anthony Ray Hinton shares his experience being unjustly convicted of murder and sentenced to death row, not to be released until 30 years later. His lawyer was Bryan Stevenson, and Stevenson wrote the foreword.

As much as I loved The Sun Does Shine, Stevenson’s Just Mercy is even better. It’s just superb. It will make you rethink the justice of the death penalty altogether (if you’re not already against it) and you will weep over the injustice done and the lengths to which certain powerful people will go to keep the status quo. And if that’s not enough, Stevenson is a Christian and the depths of his faith shine through in an explicitly Christian message. Near the end, he elaborates on the title of his book, the combination of justice and mercy, by reflecting on a time when he received it himself. He writes:

I didn’t deserve reconciliation or love in that moment, but that’s how mercy works. The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It’s when mercy is least expected that it’s most potent. Strong enough to break the cycle or victimization and victimhood, retribution and suffering. It has the power to heal the psychic harm and injuries that lead to aggression and violence, abuse of power, mass incarceration.

This is what all of us have through the power of Christ. And if we have received it, we should be willing to extend it to others. My wife understands this better than me. She offers mercy to the undeserving even when I tell her to stop. And she’s right. Just Mercy is not only an amazing book; it’s an essential principle for Christians.

I said this one would be an instant classic, and I haven’t felt it in the zeitgeist yet, so I’m giving one more try to increase its reach. Because this book deserves to be read by all Christians. You could think of it as a continuation of the message of John Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Life, as the connection is made explicit.

Through scripture, personal narrative, and stories of others who have sacrificed for the gospel of Christ, Greear displays to the reader what it meant when C.T. Studd wrote: “Only one life, ‘twill soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last.” The titular question “What are you going to do with your life?”, which Greear asks everyone to answer for themselves, in one sense results in the same answer for every Christian (“Make disciples”, as Jesus called us to do) but in another sense is a question we must ask God to answer in order to receive a more detailed mission. But what is great is God will answer this question, because that is what he wants from us.

If you’re struggling through the question of your life’s purpose, if you want to refocus your life on God’s mission for you, or if you simply want to know more about the most zeitgeist-y Christian book of 2021, I encourage you to get a copy of What Are You Going to Do with Your Life?

1. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness — Michelle Alexander

I didn’t know this book would be #1 until I was making the list, but The New Jim Crow is the book I kept thinking about most this year, and when it came down to it I couldn’t say that any book affected my thinking more. And isn’t that why we read? So that our ideas are merged in some small way with the ideas of the author?

Alexander argues that the “new Jim Crow” is mass incarceration. It disproportionately affects people of color, and those who have a conviction on their record are discriminated against for the rest of their lives, including being barred from voting in some states and being kept out of gainful employment.

But there are higher crime rates among people of color, right? No. That is one of the most pervasive, racist myths in American society, and Alexander sets it straight. For example, rates of illegal drug use are roughly even across ethnicities (here is just one study that I Googled in 2.5 seconds that shows white young adults reporting higher rates of illegal drug use than African American young adults). So why are people of color jailed at much higher rates for illegal drug use? It’s not even about what drugs they’re using, as a deep dive into the above link show, but about one thing: economic disadvantage.

Police departments across the country have made the conscious decision to crack down on open-air drug dealing instead of the kind that happens in homes, workplaces, and places of business everywhere. And the individuals forced into open-air drug dealing because of circumstances are prevalently people of color. Enforcing the law on open-air drug dealers is an efficient use of resources, as it takes less time and manpower to do so. But this comes at the expense of the mass incarceration of black and brown people, while white drug users and dealers don’t have to worry about being caught. In addition, Reagan-era laws across the country and at the federal level have made crack cocaine use have more drastic consequences than powder cocaine use, even though they are the same substance and have the same effects. There is no difference between crack cocaine and powder cocaine except the people who use it: black and brown people are more likely to use crack cocaine; white people are more likely to use powder cocaine.

Why is there such a drastic difference between those who use illegal drugs and those who are incarcerated for it? It comes down to racist laws and policies that are still prevalent in our society and, at this rate, not going away soon. You’ve heard about systemic racism a lot this year, and this is what it looks like. I encourage you to take a look at this book, because it will change your outlook on the American justice system and the many ways it could be reformed to make life better for all people. The New Jim Crow is essential reading.