PositiveThe AtlanticZirin’s fast-paced biography, The People’s Historian, is an answer to the most interesting version of \'What would Howard say?\' ... Zirin argues convincingly that Zinn’s life story vindicates one of his deepest convictions: that ordinary people and \'small acts\' can change the world ... \'Was he wrong to have faith in the people?\' Zirin relates that some of Zinn’s devotees—\'those politically raised on his ideas\'—have asked him this question, in addition to the one about what he might say in any given situation. Zirin takes up the second query but answers it far less satisfactorily than the first.
RaveThe AtlanticAn important new book ... Argues convincingly that the quest for Christian America is a perennial national obsession, ... Sutton offers copious evidence ... Illustrates why mainstream U.S. historians have finally begun to take the political significance of American Christianity more seriously ... Doesn’t flinch from the worse ... Sutton’s book could spur such reflection, even though it does not offer easy answers about what comes next ... Sutton stops short of making predictions. He closes the book, instead, with a stirring reminder: What happens next is up to us.
Patrick Parr
PositiveThe Christian CenturyMost illuminating is the book’s treatment of King’s intellectual development. As others have shown, he was a serial plagiarizer of course papers. Parr offers extensive documentation of this problematic practice as well as some speculation about why King might have engaged in it, not to mention how he avoided getting caught ... Parr’s book does not mount an especially ambitious argument. But he has done some impressive digging in the historical record and there is no doubt that scholars writing about King will find The Seminarian useful. The book should also attract students and faculty at seminaries and divinity schools, who will be interested not only in the particularities of King’s experience at Crozer but also in the fascinating picture that emerges of a mid-20th-century theological education.
