A spiritual instruction manual that’s too overtly sectarian to have wide appeal.
An instructional guide that aims to help readers achieve their inner, divine purposes.
Robert (His Beauty for My Ashes, 2012), a pastor and preacher in Cambodia, believes that God has a plan for everyone. He likens this to a child growing inside each person, waiting to be nourished. There are numerous reasons, he says, why one might be unaware of this potential—ignorance of Scripture, a general lack of spiritual awareness, or even simple defiance. Sometimes, he says, this lack of awareness falsely leads people to believe that God is neglecting them. But, according to the author, God provides each person with the necessary tools to unearth their purpose and bring it to full fruition. Robert avers that humans experience two different kinds of emptiness: a purely negative kind that manifests as low self-esteem and another, more positive version that’s a desire to be closer to God. Building one’s relationship with God through scriptural study and prayerful self-reflection, he says, can provide everyone with a clearer sense of his plan. The author discusses a number of practical ideas on combatting stress and recognizing the consequences of fear and anxiety as well as the potentially negative influence of one’s peers. He often recounts his own experiences as references, but the true focal point of his study is the Bible, which he characterizes as the authoritative guide for this “divine program.” Robert’s prose is consistently clear and sometimes even poetically elegant: “There is a fire in every person….When the fire is lit but untended, it is a gift in hibernation and it is not going to benefit or warm others in need but rather will produce a tearful smoke.” Overall, this will be a helpful guide to some readers looking for encouragement and advice about deepening their spiritual practice. However, the author’s view is so pervasively Christian that it will only resonate with other Christians, and some of them may find it too broad. The instructions can be overly general even in sections that appear to promise more concrete, practical tips, such as “Recipes for Successful Birthing.”
A spiritual instruction manual that’s too overtly sectarian to have wide appeal.Pub Date: July 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5049-1967-8
Page Count: 198
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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