C.S. Lewis in America: Readings and Reception, 1935–1947

Noll (emeritus, history, Wheaton Coll. and Univ. of Notre Dame; The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind) applies his talents as a historian to the description and evaluation of early North American reviews of C.S. Lewis’s works. The content originates in a series of lectures given at Wheaton College in 2022. Its chapters concentrating on the Roman Catholic reception of Lewis, the secular response, and the Protestant reaction are each followed by an essay from a Wheaton professor. Noll uses their book reviews as a window into the cultural life at the time, and to suggest that there was more social consensus in that era than might be expected. He also asks the question of what application can be made from the broad acceptance and influence of Lewis for evangelicals looking to emulate him today. While the attention to historical nuance and details in this study is to be commended, the takeaways and application to current issues could have been developed further.