Speakeasy review

Mike Morrell, founder of Speakeasy, says here:

Speakeasy is a way to spread and discuss compelling ideas – author to bloggers to readers. It’s like a funnel of literary goodness, precise and deliberate at the entryway (we’re selective in what author and publisher submissions we accept) and wide-open at the end (when a campaign takes off, we get ‘everybody’ talking).

My second book to review for Speakeasy is Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Charles Marsh.

This book was detailed and gave more information about Bonhoeffer than I knew existed.  It was thoroughly researched and in looking at the extensive footnotes, the number of pages of references was about 20% of the entire book.  Many details of his childhood and early life showed him to have come from a privileged background.  It was written in a pedantic style, obvious since Marsh is a professor and scholar. 

It took over a month for me to get through the first half of the book; not an easy read.  But for one who wants to know minutia of this Lutheran icon who served the Lord as a martyr, this is the book for you.  Otherwise, if you want a brief overview of the life on Bonhoeffer, Widipedia would do.  This is not to diminish the work of Marsh, but it was written in dissertation style, not for the average reader of biography.

Review ends here.

The following hymn was written by Bonhoeffer in the concentration camp, shortly before his death.

By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered,

And confidently waiting come what may,

we know that God is with us night and morning,

and never fails to greet us each new day.

Yet is this heart by its old foe tormented,

Still evil days bring burdens hard to bear;

Oh, give our frightened souls the sure salvation

for which, O Lord, You taught us to prepare.

And when this cup You give is filled to brimming

With bitter suffering, hard to understand,

we take it thankfully and without trembling,

out of so good and so beloved a hand.

Yet when again in this same world You give us

The joy we had, the brightness of Your Sun,

we shall remember all the days we lived through,

and our whole life shall then be Yours alone.

source

This hymn appears in the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal (695)