by Ellema Albert Neal ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 31, 2022
An elaborate but useful resource for men seeking spiritual growth.
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In this debut self-help guide, Neal aims to teach men to relearn masculinity by tapping into their deepest selves.
The author, a software developer and former Lutheran lay minister who holds a doctorate in education from Fielding Graduate University, has designed a trilogy of books, of which this is the first, as “a strategic roadmap for men who want to become better men.” She begins by citing research and theory to explain how men have arrived in a precarious position of unchecked power within a quickly changing world, noting that in a “command-and-control reality,” the “shadow aspects of masculinity have been elevated and normalized over centuries and have become socially conditioned as appropriate male behavior.” She then points out that “These preconceived notions no longer serve men, humanity, or the planet.” Neal encourages the men to undertake a strategy to examine this situation by deepening their knowledge of themselves and their relationships, using such practices as mindfulness meditation and intentionality. One of the book’s major strengths is that it’s guided by the idea that “abstractions of race and gender are historically and profoundly distorted…men have claimed they possess God-ordained supremacy over women, animals, and the planet for thousands of years.” While offering up personal anecdotes from her own journey, such as her experience in the Evangelical Lutheran Congregational Church of America, Neal shows how one can cultivate vulnerability and transformation through a process of “conscious evolution,” which she calls “the game that aims to awaken, inform, and recall to life.” The book insightfully supports its conception of healthy, sustainable masculinity; it doesn’t seek to demonize men but rather to lift them up by challenging them to become aware of their egos and how they interact with the world. It’s a fine self-help resource for men “to incorporate other ways of being.”
An elaborate but useful resource for men seeking spiritual growth.Pub Date: March 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-66571-980-3
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2024
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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SEEN & HEARD
by Bob Woodward ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2024
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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