What is Marvin Olasky’s Lament for a Father? Is it a tracing of the plummet of twentieth-century intellectual life into eugenics and anti-Semitism? Is it the chronicle of Jewish suffering in World War II? Is it a critique of the secularization of American society and education? Is it an attempt to understand the psychology of how brutality passes from generation to generation? Is it a son’s attempt to understand the dysfunction of his parents’ deeply unhappy marriage, his father’s failure, and his mother’s scorn? Is it the story of a broken actor on a broken stage? It is all of these, but ultimately it is one man’s agonizingly circuitous journey to faith in Christ, to gratitude, and finally to honoring a tragically flawed and tormented father.
Daniel Darling
For decades, few voices have been more important in the American church than that of Marvin Olasky, as he has shaped a generation of Christians to apply the good news of the gospel toward the flourishing of healthy communities. But in this book, Marvin pulls back the layers of his own storied life, one that itself is a dramatic tale of God’s saving grace. Olasky allows us to see the story behind the sage, sharing for the first time his difficult relationship with his father, sharing in emotional and poignant words the aching longing in his heart for the father who could have been and the satisfaction he has found in the Father he knows. Every human being, no matter how accomplished, wants to know and be known by their dads. Pick up this book, read it, and buy an extra copy for a friend who needs to read it. You will not be disappointed.
Lynn Vincent
Marvin Olasky’s memoir of his quest to understand his inscrutable father whisked me from working class New England to the brutal execution of his Russian great-grandparents to the concentration camps of the Third Reich. With the diligence of a journalist and the penitent longing of an errant son, Olasky digs up his father’s past to learn what changed him from a passionate scholar to a remote stoic whose wife called him “lazy and lacking ambition.” The result is a vividly drawn journey during which Olasky exchanges scorn for honor and bitterness for grace. Lament for a Father is a poignant reminder that even our most deeply rooted family resentments can be gloriously and unexpectedly redeemed.
Wayne Grudem
Marvin Olasky explains how he finally came to understand, appreciate, and forgive his brilliant but emotionally distant and underachieving father who died in 1984. Through painstaking but fascinating historical research, Olasky comes to understand his father’s difficult life as he grew up as a young boy in a Jewish immigrant community in early twentieth-century Boston and then experienced debilitating stress as a US Army soldier assigned to help to clean out the horrible remains of Nazi atrocities in Jewish death camps at the end of World War II. Olasky has written this book not only to honor his father’s memory but also to explain how he himself changed from an atheistic, zealous communist to a born-again evangelical Christian who has edited World magazine for the past three decades. Anyone who has experienced a difficult parent-child relationship will appreciate the wisdom in this book.
Karl Zinsmeister
In this accessible true-life tale, Marvin Olasky truly fathoms his father for the first time, uncovering a loss of faith in God that led to a collapse of faith in self and eventually an evaporation of all confidence in the promise of life. It’s a searing, unblinkingly honest, yet ultimately consoling story of family life, ethnicity, and growing up, capped by an engrossing appendix in which the author describes his own recovery of faith.
Anthony B. Bradley
Marvin Olasky walks readers through the process of understanding his father’s world and in the process teaches all to do the same with our own fathers. With a posture of compassion, grace, and mercy, Lament for a Father puts on display what happens when the gospel shapes the way we remember our fathers and gives us permission to experience the joy and pain of imperfection. Olasky shows us how researching our parents’ past can lead to a place of healing and reconciliation. It’s an extraordinary testimony to the all too common brokenness of the families of World War II combat veterans that shaped the generation after them. It’s a riveting tale.
John R. Erickson
Marvin Olasky is an extraordinarily gifted man: a journalist, editor, professor, theologian, and writer with a talent for doing relentless research. In this book, he turns his microscope on a man he didn’t like, who disappointed him and failed him, a man he wanted to admire but couldn’t: Eli Olasky, his father. Eli graduated from Harvard, a brilliant man with scholarly ambitions, but after returning from military service at the end of World War II, he drifted from job to job and became a stoic who never laughed or played baseball with his son. Why? What happened? It’s a gripping story about family, faith, suffering, and forgiveness. A true lament.
Cal Thomas
I first discovered Marvin Olasky through his book The Tragedy of American Compassion, which told the history of faith-based charities designed to lift people out of poverty by transforming their lives, not sustaining them in poverty. Newt Gingrich, the future speaker of the House, was so impressed that he bought copies to distribute to his fellow members of Congress. In his latest book, Lament for a Father, Marvin takes us through the early part of his life in ways that sound depressing until you get to the end. As a brilliant writer and thinker, Marvin consoles those who have had difficult parents and shows through his own experience they do not have to determine the course of the lives of their children.
Trevin Wax
A sense of longing and loss pervades Marvin Olasky’s tribute to his father—a reckoning with his Jewish heritage that remains sensitive to time and culture, faith and freedom. A beautiful lament suffused with gratitude and honor.
Robert A. Sirico
Marvin Olasky has been an intellectual, theological, and economic treasure for decades. In Lament for a Father, he serves up a poignant, intimate, and engaging memoir crammed full of lessons about what makes for manhood with honest meditations on themes ranging from anti-Semitism to redemption. Beware: this book is addictive.
Joel Belz
After spending more than forty years with Marvin Olasky the journalist, I needed this great little book to discover several other facets to his colorful persona. There are no “bare facts” in this man’s life. Everything is part of a sovereign design.
Douglas Bond
What is Marvin Olasky‘s Lament for a Father? Is it a tracing of the plummet of 20th century intellectual life into eugenics and antisemitism? Is it the chronicle of Jewish suffering in World War II? Is it a critique of the secularization of American society and education? Is it an attempt to understand the psychology of how brutality passes from generation to generation? Is it a son’s attempt to understand the dysfunction of his parents’ deeply unhappy marriage, his father’s failure and his mother’s scorn? Is it the story of a broken actor on a broken stage? It is all of these, but ultimately it is one man’s agonizingly circuitous journey to faith in Christ, gratitude, and finally to honoring a tragically flawed and tormented father.” “...Olasky’s agonizingly circuitous journey to faith in Christ, gratitude, and finally to honoring a tragically flawed and tormented father.
Douglas Bond is author of more than thirty books of historical fiction
What is Marvin Olasky‘s Lament for a Father? Is it a tracing of the plummet of 20th century intellectual life into eugenics and antisemitism? Is it the chronicle of Jewish suffering in World War II? Is it a critique of the secularization of American society and education? Is it an attempt to understand the psychology of how brutality passes from generation to generation? Is it a son’s attempt to understand the dysfunction of his parents’ deeply unhappy marriage, his father’s failure and his mother’s scorn? Is it the story of a broken actor on a broken stage? It is all of these, but ultimately it is one man’s agonizingly circuitous journey to faith in Christ, gratitude, and finally to honoring a tragically flawed and tormented father.”
“...Olasky’s agonizingly circuitous journey to faith in Christ, gratitude, and finally to honoring a tragically flawed and tormented father.
Cal Thomas Syndicated Columnist
I first discovered Marvin Olaksy through his book 'The Tragedy of American Compassion" which told the history of faith-based charities designed to lift people out of poverty by transforming their lives, not sustaining them in poverty. Newt Gingrich, the future Speaker of the House, was so impressed that he bought copies to distribute to his fellow Members of Congress. In his latest book, 'Lament for a Father,' Marvin takes us through the early part of his life in ways that sound depressing until you get to the end. The work of a brilliant writer and thinker, Marvin consoles those who had difficult parents and shows through his own experience they do not have to determine the course of the lives of their children.
JOEL BELZ
After spending more than 40 years with Marvin Olasky the journalist, I needed this great little book to discover several other facets to his colorful persona. There are no “bare facts” in this man’s life. Everything is part of a sovereign design
Rev. Robert A. Sirico
Marvin Olasky has been an intellectual, theological and economic treasure for decades. In Lament for a Father, he serves up a poignant, intimate and engaging memoir crammed full of lessons about what makes for manhood with honest meditations on themes ranging from anti-Semitism to redemption. Beware: this book is addictive.
