D. G. Hart is visiting professor of history at Hillsdale College and the author of the standard biography of J. Gresham Machen, and most recently, a history of Calvinism.
Here are five biographies he recommends:
1. Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (1950).
A colorful treatment of an even more colorful figure that captures the central dynamic of the Reformation, namely, how to be right with God.
2. Stewart Brown, Thomas Chalmers and the Godly Commonwealth in Scotland (1982).
A scrupulously researched inquiry that situates a hero of Scottish Calvinism within the political, educational, and ecclesiastical complexities of nineteenth-century Scotland.
3. Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (1991).
A provocative account that looks past hagiography to capture the human (and sometimes unflattering) aspects of Protestantism’s greatest evangelist.
4. Terry Teachout, The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken (2002).
Arguably the best biography of the infamous literary critic in part because the author, a music critic, takes into account the subject’s love of music.
5. Bruce Gordon, Calvin (2009).
A smartly conceived narrative that allows Calvin’s “greatness” to emerge not from hindsight but from the accidents of sixteenth-century Europe.
Sean Michael Lucas is senior minister at The First Presbyterian Church, Hattiesburg, MS, and previously taught church history at Covenant Theological Seminary. Among his books is a biography of Robert Lewis Dabney: A Southern Presbyterian Life (P&R, 2005).
Here are his top five picks:
1. D. G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America (Johns Hopkins, 1994; reprint, P&R).
2. Allen Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Eerdmans, 1999).
3. Bruce Gordon, Calvin (Yale, 2009).
4. Harry S. Stout, A Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Eerdmans, 1991).
5. George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (Yale, 2003).
“This is an odd list. I think the one common thread is that these are all intellectual biographies that pay attention to the way that their ideas or actions operated within their cultural systems. Another is that they all (except for Gordon) influenced the way I thought about biography when I went to write my Robert Lewis Dabney: A Southern Presbyterian Life (P&R, 2005).”
Kevin DeYoung is senior pastor at University Reformed Church in East Lansing, MI, and a PhD candidate at the University of Leicester, studying John Witherspoon under John Coffey.
Here are his picks:
1. Allen C. Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Eerdmans 1999).
This book shines because Guelzo is an excellent writer, with a knack for penetrating insights and fresh interpretations. I felt like I got to know Lincoln, so much so that by the end I was terribly sad when he showed up at Ford’s Theater.
2. Paul C. Gutjahr, Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy (Oxford 2011).
While I don’t agree with every conclusion in the book, it is a great example of an academic biography that is eminently readable. The chapters are short and the story moves at a good pace. Gutjahr is sympathetic to Hodge without being uncritical.
3. David McCullough, John Adams (Touchstone 2001).
The guy can flat-out write. No one does popular (yet substantive) biography as well as McCullough.
4. Paul Johnson, Churchill (Viking 2009).
Johnson demonstrates that you can write meaningfully about a massive subject in a short biography (181 pages). This book is especially strong in the lessons it draws from Churchill’s life.
5. D.G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America (P & R Publishing, 2003).
Hart writes lucid prose about a figure he knows inside and out. By helping us understand Machen, we come to understand an entire era in American church history.
