1945. - book reviews

National Review, Oct 23, 1995 by John Simon

1945, by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen (Baen Books, Riverdale, N.Y., 382 pp., $24)

FANS of Newt Gingrich may be hard put to find much evidence of the fighting Speaker or the inspiring lecturer in this novel of a World War II that might have been (would have been, as the dustjacket has it) if Hitler had not declared war on the U.S. in 1941. Presumably Gingrich's co-author and, especially, the book's "technical editor," Albert S. Hanser, have earned their pay. If your tolerance for catalogues of aircraft and weaponry and their capabilities is moderately well-developed, you should find this a genuine thriller and a gripping read. It deals mainly with a German commando raid on Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at a crucial stage of the Manhattan Project in (oddly, in view of the book's title) 1946, but there is also a lot of geostrategic debate about the German campaign for which the attack is a curtain-raiser. This features a real but fictionally re-elected Winston Churchill, a fictional but Truman-like American President, and the real but rather unrealistically subdued and compliant figures of General MacArthur and Admiral Halsey. Although much publicized, a sexy spy actually plays only a small part, and the sex itself could hardly be more demure and understated. The true note of Newt Gingrich is sounded in occasional excursuses on the iniquities of bureaucracy, the folly of gun control, or the dangers of national complacency.

The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version, edited by Victor Roland Gold, Thomas L. Hoyt Jr., Sharon H. Ringe, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Burton H. Throckmorton Jr., and Barbara Withers (Oxford, 535 pp., $14.95)

IN his translation of the Bible, Martin Luther made God speak German. In this "inclusive version," the editors attempt to make God politically correct. To avoid sexism, they cut out God the Father and begin the Lord's Prayer with "Our Father - Mother in heaven." The Son of Man becomes "the Human One." Children should not "obey" their parents but simply "heed" them. To avoid offending people of color, the editors eliminate all references equating "darkness" with sin, evil, or ignorance. They prefer "dominion" to "kingdom" because the latter implies male authority, and they reduce the number of references to "lord" and "master" because these words connote male control or slavery. Seeking to make the Scriptures accessible to all, they replace or rephrase "all gender-specific language not referring to particular historical individuals, all pejorative references to race, color, religion," or "physical disability." The editors' solicitude is touching. The reader is left wondering how, before they came along, the Bible managed to get through to men and women, to the lame and the blind, to people of every clime and color -- as today's 2.8 billion Biblical believers attest.