Browse the best books on Christianity as recommended by authors, experts, and creators. Along with notes on why they recommend those books.
Coming Fall 2022: The ability to sort this list by genre (signup here to follow our story as we build a better way to discover books).
By Roy Jenkins
The late politician Lord Jenkins made a name for himself with his political biographies. Churchill: A Life was the culmination of a critically successful career as a writer. Jenkins leaves no stone unturned in assessing Churchill’s thirst for political glory. Andrew Roberts called the book ‘a masterpiece.’
The best books on Winston Churchill and which book to start with
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By C.S. Lewis
Lewis’s classic is the most popular and influential defense of Christian belief published in the last 100 years. It is cited more often than any other book, particularly among scientists, philosophers, and other thoughtful people as important to them on their journey to the Christian faith. It’s a little dated now—the gap between Lewis and ourselves stretches wider each year—but it’s still compelling.
The best books to understand why smart people believe in Christianity
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By Jasper Fforde
The first thing I noticed when I started reading Jasper Fforde was how funny and clever he was. This is what I’m looking for, I thought, smiling broadly. The heroine of the series of which this book is a part is a literary detective named Thursday Next. Need I say more? You know immediately the kind of humor you are getting into.
I am not easily entertained by stories with average complexity and imagination. When I find a writer like Fforde who can push my boundaries, I am so grateful. In this book, he creates a delightful alternate world in…
The best funny sci/fi fantasy books
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By Francis Spufford
The anti-John Gray – and, in purely literary terms, the best writer on my list, which is saying something. It’s not, Francis Spufford says, an apologetic, a reasoned defence of faith. It’s a personal account of why his Christianity makes emotional sense to him, and why it might make emotional sense to other people too. Worth reading for his retelling of the life of Jesus alone. He doesn’t deal with the intellectual questions of religion vs. atheism (though he has some sly hints). What he does is explain why you might want to deal with those questions. So it’s an…
The best books about atheism and religion
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By Gene Wolfe
I remember picking this up, not expecting much since it was marketed as a novel for adolescents, but what I found was a gripping story, very dark, about a time when there was a struggle between paganism and Christianity. It was a lot more than I’d expected, and so, like all the books on my list, it’s one I’ve returned to, to reread. It’s set in a simple village, and there’s a dark presence in the woods that surround the village, that might be a devil. The lead character is a young man trying to define the boundaries between good…
The best fantasy novels that feature the devil
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By Bart D. Ehrman
Ehrman’s many books are worthy of study, especially this one which shows how Christianity developed over the first three centuries. The older view, that there was one mainstream church surrounded by many smaller deviant sects or “heresies” has now been discarded. Prior to Constantine, there were many groups all claiming to be Christian and no one was dominant. Each battled for supremacy. Only in the 4th century CE did one faction emerge as dominant, the group favored by two Roman Emperors, Constantine and Theodosius.
The best books on early Christianity
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