Just in case your summer reading list has wilted in the heat, my good friend John Nunes, president of Lutheran World Relief, recently posted a booklist of top books for the globally enlightened student.

The list was in response to a college professor who asked him what books she should encourage her students to read to gain greater global awareness. He passed along the question to a group of friends and colleagues. I was honored to be included.

My contribution was as follows:

The Gospels in Our Image: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Poetry Based on Biblical Texts, edited by David Curzon. A kind of midrashic collection of poems ranging from the deeply reverent to the keenly skeptical. Also a great primer in world poetry from the last century.

Jesus and the Disinherited, by Howard Thurman. A classic in Black theology. A seminal read for the young Martin Luther King, Jr.

Exclusion and Embrace, by Miroslav Volf. One of my own teachers in divinity school, his theological thinking is deeply influenced by his native experience of the brutal religious war in former Yugoslavia. Especially post-9/11, I can’t think about culture, society, or conflict without reflecting on the insights of this book.

John and I recently talked about keeping up a running tally for this list. I’d add my current read—Say You’re One of Them, stories by Nigerian Jesuit priest Uwem Akpan—even as we speak. And interestingly enough as we mark his passing, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn didn’t make the list. Makes me wonder what other books should be there.

Thoughts?