A genuine effort to help Christian teenagers, or anyone, maintain or grow a meaningful relationship with God and fellow...
A motivating, accessible guide for young Christians about developing a strong relationship with God.
In their debut, using sincere, conversational language, Cooley and Wilson describe the average teen’s struggle for faith in the modern world of Facebook and texting. The book naturally divides into four chapters: Friends, Bible, Prayer and Church. Each unit addresses the particular difficulties of finding and holding onto a religious belief system and includes the writers’ personal anecdotes about their own experiences within the Christian faith. At the end of each section, the authors present deceptively simple questions—“What three things do you see in Jesus’ life that are not present in yours?”—followed by a “fuel stop,” which is a list of suggestions for putting faith into practice, such as “find a local church that you look forward to attending and that challenges you to grow in spiritual matters.” The final component of each chapter lists relevant quotes from Scripture for further meditation. The authors discuss how various translations of the Bible use different language choices to make Scripture accessible, and they urge readers to find a version that feels right for them. Cooley and Wilson never treat their young readers condescendingly, and their inviting, straightforward tone might soften even the most jaded readers. Furthermore, the book’s authentic message doesn’t openly advocate trying to change people; instead, it supports a much-needed tolerant attitude toward religion, although there’s a hint of proselytizing. It does, however, recommend standing up for one’s beliefs (a difficult task for any young person) and seeking out those who are like-minded, perhaps steering them along a similar Christian path.
A genuine effort to help Christian teenagers, or anyone, maintain or grow a meaningful relationship with God and fellow Christians.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2012
ISBN: 978-1449761158
Page Count: 108
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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