Invitation to the Classics

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A Guide to Books You've Always Wanted to Read

By Os Guinness and Louise Cowan, editors
(Baker Books, 2006)

A paperback edition of our acclaimed guide to literature.

Fifty brief essays by a number of respected Christian literary scholars that extend invitations to readers to experience anew or for the first time the wonder and the beauty of selected classics. Each essay contains a biographical and historical sketch, a summary of the work being considered, suggestions and bibliographies for further study and questions raised by the text about the interaction of Christian faith and society. Also includes other essays on different genres.

384 pages. Hardcover edition published in 1998.

Category: Featured Books by Staff

It is significant, I think, that in the presence of a story, whether we are telling it or listening to it, we never have the feeling of being experts—there is too much we don’t yet know, too many possibilities available, too much mystery and glory. Even the most sophisticated of stories tends to bring out the childlike in us—expectant, wondering, responsive, delighted—which, of course, is why the story is the child’s favorite form of speech; why it is the Holy Spirit’s dominant form of revelation; and why we adults, who like posing as experts and managers of life, so often prefer explanation and information.

Eugene Peterson

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