by Andrew P. Hicks and Mack R. Hicks ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2019
Misses an important mark or two, but passionately and cleverly champions the Catholic faith.
A wide-ranging, playfully irreverent guide to 21st-century Catholicism.
An American generation raised on the stern televised nostrums of Archbishop Fulton Sheen will hardly be prepared for the tone and execution of this nonfiction collaboration from Mack Hicks (Social Self and the Social Desirability Motive, 2015, etc.) and debut author Andrew Hicks. And that dissonance is no doubt intentional. The Hickses are serious Catholic apologists using a wide array of disciplines and techniques to make their case for faith, citing everything from applied psychology to Bayes’ Theorem. Throughout most of their book, however, they also strive to leaven their deeper concerns with lighter tones. They mention, for instance, that people pay to talk with psychologists, whereas “confession is a safe place to disclose the private, inner self, and Catholics get it for free.” This empirical approach can have pitfalls—the authors’ overview of arguments for the historicity of Jesus, for instance, is wobbly as is their assessment of the famous Shroud of Turin. But the sheer energy of the overall defense on broader subjects compensates quite a bit for the occasional factual lapses that can occur in religious apologia. On the notorious Catholic sex scandals, readers may be surprised to find a mild response. The authors counsel both a more nuanced reading of the Church’s (ultimately faulty) attempts to rehabilitate offending priests and, even more controversially, an avoidance of “hysterical” reactions. The authors are particularly clear on defending the record of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular throughout history as a progressive force in defense of intellectual inquiry and a more ethical treatment of women than other options throughout the ages (“Both Plato and Aristotle endorsed infanticide,” they write, “and guess which gender they were eliminating?”). Catholics especially will treasure such an upbeat defense of their world.
Misses an important mark or two, but passionately and cleverly champions the Catholic faith.Pub Date: May 1, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Splenium House, LLC
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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by Daniel Kahneman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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