The Case for the Real Jesus

I just finished reading Lee Strobel's The Case for the Real Jesus. If you aren't familiar with Lee (and even if you are), Lee was an award-winning investigative journalist and then legal editor for the Chicago Tribune back late 70's and 80's. With a journalism degree and a Masters of Studies in Law, he is highly qualified to be particularly inquisitive and skeptical while trained to be unusually objective. I have read his four popular books (a few of them several times) and I highly recommend them.
I am aware that there are critics of Lee's entire starting point and outlook on evangelism because they feel that the Holy Spirit does the work of saving people and changing their affections. While this is very true, there is certainly a way to Christ through the critical mind examining the evidence for Christianity and finding that it stands up to the fiercest scrutiny and is a firm foundation to build a faith and worldview on. Lee came to a saving faith in Christ this way in an attempt to disprove Christianity to his newly-converted wife, and I was heavily influenced by an examination of the evidence for myself before I committed my life to Christ.
Criticizing Christianity is certainly in vogue these days (while other faiths are fiercely protected from attack) largely on historical grounds. It is not easy to believe all of the things that the Bible teaches actually happened. I mean, how are we really expected to believe that a man went around and did half of the things that Jesus supposedly did? If the writers of the gospels embellished a few things or made them up all together, how can we trust them? Am I really supposed to willingly give up my life (even in martyrdom) for something that I can't really trust is true? How can I be so sure?
Some people say that you just know in your heart that it's true and that is the essence of faith. If you need evidence, it isn't true faith. Baloney. The Bible itself appeals to evidence for the existence of God (Romans 1:18-23) and we should not be afraid of scientists, historians, archaeologists or anyone that studies the Book of Nature when we are examining the Bible. I, personally, have greatly benefited from studying the evidence for Christianity before and after I became a Christian. There have been plenty of times when I seriously doubted my faith for a moment and was so thankful that I could go back through the evidence and the arguments in my mind, reread books and articles and rest again in the fact that our faith is well grounded in truth.
In response to the heavy criticisms of Christianity, there are many good books out there by brilliant defenders of the faith. Lee interviews some of them and points the reader to more books that are also very helpful. I have learned a great deal and found my faith growing deeper and deeper by reading these great men and women.
The four titles by Strobel that I would highly recommend (in this particular order although they were not written in this order) are: The Case for a Creator, The Case for Faith, The Case for Christ, and The Case for the Real Jesus. From there I would read some of the bibliographies found in those books and I suspect that you, like I, will be surprised at how firm a foundation we stand on in our Christian faith.