Mark Martin
Co-host, Martin's Must-ReadsMark passed away unexpectedly Friday, October 21, 2022 in Independence, Mo. Read the obituary. He will be missed.
Mark Martin (also known as Mr. Betty Martin) was born in Midland, Texas. In 1979, after graduating from Texas Tech University, he worked as a financial analyst for Conoco. Upon graduating from Concordia Seminary with a Masters of Divinity degree in 1993, he began his ministry at Trinity Lutheran Church in Egypt Mills and later moved to the Associate Pastor position at St. Andrew Lutheran Church. In November of 2019, he began a new career as a Transitional Pastor of LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod). When he's not pastoring, he's watching sports, reading, or riding his BMW motorcycle. His reading tastes gravitate to nonfiction: history, sports, science, biographies, and the human condition. As a monthly guest reviewer, he adds another dimension to Martin's Must-Reads.
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“I didn’t spend a year building a wooden flatboat and then sailing it two thousand miles down the Mississippi River simply because I was suffering from a Huck Finn complex, although that certainly played a part....I hungered to see that river country when I stumbled across an account of one of the first boatmen who braved the water route that America followed toward prosperity and greatness.” -
Bryan Stevenson in his book Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption recounts his work with Walter McMillian, a black man convicted of capital murder of a white woman in a white, racially bigoted county in Alabama. -
Kate Murphy in her book You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why it Matters lays out a fundamental problem in our world today: we don’t listen and what that means for our society today. -
The last thing she ever said to him was “I’m falling asleep.” In vacationing with friends, Sheryl Sandberg and her husband, Dave, were relaxing on a beach in Mexico. When Sheryl woke up an hour later, Dave was gone. They found Dave collapsed in the hotel workout room. Dave died a short while later at the hospital. -
The book Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America by Jared Cohen weaves personal information with the context of history to bring the challenge faced by these eight men to life. -
Many histories of World War II focus on the battles, the generals, or the political intrigue. Giles Milton in Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare recounts stories of World War II that were never talked about or publicized and the secret people who helped win the war. -
In Growing Up Getty by James Reginato the reader will experience emotions from empathy to humor to historical inquisitiveness all while reading of the highs and lows of one the richest and most influential families of the world. -
Drew Magary in his book "The Night The Lights Went Out: A Memoir of Life After Brain Damage" tells the story of his recovery in the hospital and the long process after of trying to put his life back together. -
“When did USA become shorthand for the United States of Anxiety? From the moment Americans wake up, we’re bombarded with all-new terrifying news about crime, the environment, politics, and stroke-inducing foods we’ve been enjoying for years.” -
“My Seven Black Fathers tells the stories of the men who have shaped my sense of what it means to be a Black man in twenty-first century America...My Seven Black Fathers retells the story of who Black fathers are. My seven Black fathers demonstrate there’s no one right way to mentor and there’s no standard fit.”
