It’s been a while since I’ve had the time to do one of these lists. Over the past few years of working on a PhD and finishing it, I’ve done nothing but read “as much as I can” on Martin Luther and Dorothee Sölle, so summer reading lists seemed impossible to create. “Read all of Luther” doesn’t make for a great list item really. Not to mention, as heavily implied, it’s hard to make a list when you are focused on two authors. So, here we are with the dissertation/defense super combo completed and wrapped up, it’s time to get some different and interesting reads on the table, the ones I put off the table because they were not directly related to my research. My goal is to start in on this list once I’m done with any of the three texts I’m currently reading (those are: Christine Helmer, Theology and the End of Doctrine, Louisville: WJK, 2014; Kirren Schnack, Ten Times Calmer: Beat Anxiety and Change Your Life, London: Bluebird, 2023; Joachim C. Fest, Hitler, trans. Richard and Clara Winston, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974, originally published as Hitler, Verlag Ullstein, 1973.) I may add some texts to the following list as I find them…

So, here we are and in no particular order:

1. Staci Robinson, Tupac Shakur: The Authorized Biography, New York: Crown, 2023.
2. Sasja Emilie Mathiasen Stopa, Soli Deo Honor et Gloria: Honour and Glory in the Theology of Martin Luther, Zürich: Lit Verlag, 2021.
3. Kate Hanch, Storied Witness: The Theology of Black Women Preachers in 19th-Century America, Minneapolis: Fortress, 2022.
4. Hanna Reichel, After Method: Queer Grace, Conceptual Design, and the Possibility of Theology, Louisville: WJK, 2023.
5. Rick Hanson, Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness, New York: Harmony, 2018.
6. Robert M. Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping, 3rd edition, New York: Henry Holt, 1994.
7. James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Maryknoll: Orbis, 2011.
8. Robert Boak Slocum and Martyn Percy eds., Fearful Times; Living Faith, Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2021.
9. Emma Percy, What Clergy Do: Especialy When it Looks Like Nothing, London: SPCK, 2014.
10. Jonathan Eig, King: A Life, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.
11. Christine Helmer, The Trinity & Martin Luther, Revised Ed., Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2017.