IT'S HARD to believe it’s been over twenty years since my first day of work at Eighth Day Books (“EDB”). Those were the good old days before the age of Amazon, or “The Jungle,” as EDB proprietor Warren Farha aptly calls it.
Those were also the days when the EDB catalog was at its peak. It would typically be mailed out around Thanksgiving, just in time for Christmas shopping. And then, sure enough, throughout December and through the early months of the New Year, we’d be flooded with orders, some for just one or two books, but many for a long list of titles. They came from a bunch of bibliophiles who were simply unable to resist the exquisite selection of books. And they came from the likes of Peter Leithart, who gives the best description of its annual arrival: “For a book addict like me, receiving the EDB catalog was like receiving a quarterly supply of crack delivered to my door by my dutiful postman.”
While many orders were phoned in, the daily arrival of the postman was always the most exciting part of the day. Why? Because a good chunk of those orders were mailed in through the U.S. Postal Service. Yes,
phoned in,
mailed in.
That’s right, I said mail orders. Imagine the slow process. Back then people took the time to slowly and thoughtfully read through the entire catalog, marking the books they were interested in. There was no surfing, scrolling, or clicking; in those days these words had a completely different connotation. Then, after the torturous process of narrowing down the list of marked books, folks actually filled out a mail-order form. Yep. They wrote down each title and price, manually added up the total, inserted the form into an envelope, stamped it, mailed it, and then, most inconceivable of all, they patiently waited for the books.
But the wait was worth it. Because you knew that every single title in that catalog had been carefully chosen, that each book had not only been held in a person’s hands who loved books, but had been carefully read, recommended, and reviewed. Moreover, the principle upon which the selection of books was based, as articulated in each catalog’s introduction, was so winsome that you had no doubt that any book coming from Eighth Day Books was going to be a prized treasure. Here’s how Mr. Farha, almost thirty years ago, described his process of selection:
If a book (be it literary, scientific, historical, or theological) sheds light on ultimate questions in an excellent way, then it’s a worthy candidate for inclusion in our catalog.
Reality doesn’t divide itself into “religious” and “literary” and “secular” spheres, so we don’t either. We’re convinced that all truths are related and every truth, if we pay attention rightly, directs our gaze toward God. One of our customers found us “eclectic but orthodox.” We like that.
Indeed! I love that. As have countless other customers over the years from all parts of the globe.
The fruit of that founding principle of selection was a mail-order catalog that offered its own sort of education. Again, Peter Leithart concurs: “Each book was accompanied by a lengthy description—not publisher’s puffery but a serious summary and interaction with the book. Buying and reading all the books in the Eighth Day Catalog would be an education, but reading the catalog was an education in itself.”
But it wasn’t just the catalog that offered an education. While working at EDB, I earned a B.A in Religion, History, Greek, Spanish, and Latin, and then an M.A. in Ancient and Medieval History from Wichita State University. I was blessed to have received a great liberal arts education. But I’m convinced it paled in comparison to the curriculum I enrolled in when I began working at EDB in 1998. Most importantly for my life and work, it’s where I learned Church history and was introduced to the Church Fathers, who have played such a vital role in the development of Eighth Day Institute (“EDI”).
Speaking of education and EDI, let me end with a small bit of history. In his acceptance speech for the inaugural 2017 St. John of Damascus Award, Mr. Farha shared an interesting story about the early days at the bookstore:
Very shortly after I opened in 1988, a customer came in, and pulled me aside in an insistent way, and said: “This is a great place. You should add some kind of educational aspect to it, there’s so much more here than books.” Now I look at Eighth Day Institute, and all that it is and does, and think of that customer, whose name or face I can’t even recall, and think how prophetic his words turned out to be.
Prophetic indeed. Remarkable. That is precisely what EDI is: the “educational aspect” to EDB.
In 2008, just a month after EDB celebrated its twentieth anniversary, EDI hosted its first Hall of Men meeting in the building next door, which is now called “The Ladder” and serves as EDI headquarters. That evening’s toast to St. Boniface, the Apostle to Germany (d. A.D. 754), would be the first of over 200 heroes to be toasted over the last eleven years. It also proved to be the foundation for the development of all sorts of other educational endeavors: Sisters of Sophia, Eighth Day Symposium, Inklings Oktoberfest, Florovsky Week,
Synaxis ,
Word from the Fathers , St. John of Damsacus Award, Cappadocian Society, a continuously growing body of content on our website, including a digital library for Eighth Day Members, and now the new addition of this annual catalog of books and culture (after its publication paused seven years ago . . .).
Before I worked for EDB, I subscribed to
Books and Culture , a bimonthly review modeled on the
New York Review of Books and launched in 1995 as a follow-up to the publication of Mark A. Noll’s
Scandal of the Evangelical Mind . Its mission was to provide Christian intellectual engagement with ideas and culture. Like the EDB catalog, it was printed on newsprint (if you are old enough to recall, that’s the type of paper newspapers were printed on). However, while the EDB catalog contained hundreds of short reviews in a little under 200 pages,
Books and Culture published essay-length reviews of about two dozen books in 40 pages.
When I first encountered the EDB catalog, I was immediately struck by its similarities to
Books and Culture . And my first thought was, “The EDB catalog needs essay-length reviews, maybe even essays.” So during my eight years of employment at EDB, just as Socrates was a gadfly to the Athenian state, I was a gadfly to Warren Farha, constantly badgering him to add essays to the catalog. Over a decade later, EDI is now publishing the EDB catalog and, with Warren’s blessing, it now includes the addition of essay-length reviews and essays. I hope you’ll be pleased by the expansion.
One final note. The print version of
Books and Culture sadly came to an end in 2016. For twenty-one years it stood against the tide of cultural decay by promoting great books and by seeking common ground with like-minded Christians. Eighth Day Books has been doing the same for thirty-one years, and Eighth Day Institute has supplemented that mission for the last eleven years. Through your earned patronage, both EDB and EDI intend to continue doing the same for many more years.
EDB hopes you will exercise the virtue of patience and resist the temptation of the Jungle. We hope you will read this catalog, mark your books of interest, and then order them through EDB: by mail, phone, or website. And do check out the new and completely overhauled EDB website. We are confident you’ll be delighted by the new online experience. But please do know, we’re still delighted receiving orders in the mail, or hearing a human voice on the phone (that old but dependable piece of technology).
Eighth Day Institute needs you to support our educational endeavors through membership. Invest in an organization that is dedicated to renewing our dying culture. You’ll be joining a community of folks who love learning, desire God, and believe Christians should be one so that the world might believe. You’ll be enrolling in the Eighth Day curriculum, receiving a world-class education through our publications and events. Plus there are a lot of great perks that come with membership, including a 10% discount on books from EDB (Patron level and above). If you are convinced we can create a Christian culture once again, as the early Christians did, and if you believe in our mission of “renewing culture through faith and learning,” then consider joining us today.
Read this catalog,
become a member , order some books, and then make a pilgrimage to Wichita so you can visit the bookstore and attend one of our events! But most importantly, let your gaze be directed toward God by paying attention rightly to every truth.
Disclaimer : Although Eighth Day Institute and Eighth Day Books have no formal affiliation or financial relationship, our support for each other is mutual and enthusiastic. Eighth Day Institute’s mission of “renewing culture through faith and learning” is carried out through not-for-profit (501c3) educational endeavors that seek to accomplish what Eighth Day Books does as a for-profit business through book sales: connect people to classics which shed light on ultimate questions and expose people to the teachings of the great cloud of witnesses, whose origin is an Empty Tomb.
*To get your hands on a hard copy of the Eighth Day Books catalog, call Eighth Day Books at 800.841.2541.
