FILM REVIEWS

Inside Job (PG-13) exposes what led to the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, the film traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships that have corrupted politics, regulation and academia.—Gordon Houser

Fair Game (PG-13) tells the true story of Valerie Plame, whose status as a CIA agent was revealed by White House officials allegedly out to discredit her husband after he wrote a 2003 New York Times op-ed piece saying the Bush administration had manipulated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq. Well-acted and tautly paced, this film shows how U.S. government officials misled the public in order to go to war.—gh

BOOK REVIEW

War, Peace and Social Conscience:Guy F. Hershberger and Mennonite Ethics by Theron Schlabach (Herald Press, 2009, $39.99) locates Hershberger in the pantheon of Mennonite leaders from the “Goshen school” of Anabaptist studies in the middle part of the 20th century. According to Schlabach, the central theme of Hershberger’s life is this: Do justice but do not seek justice (through activism that is coercive). Schlabach places Hershberger alongside H.S. Bender and John Howard Yoder and documents Hershberger’s arguments with theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Schlabach also examines Hershberger’s involvement in matters such as the labor struggles at Hesston (Kan.) Manufacturing in the 1970s and the formation of Mennonite Mutual Aid in the 1940s. This 725-page tome provides an exhaustive defense of Hershberger’s rightful place in U.S. Mennonite history.—Everett J. Thomas