A satisfying guide to comparable African and Christian teachings.
A debut reference book connects themes in African proverbs to biblical passages.
South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu once quipped, “My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” That Tutu, one of the most important Christian voices of the 20th century, often delivered his teachings in the form of proverbs points to the ways in which African wisdom can enrich Christian traditions. Organized thematically on more than three dozen topics that range from forgiveness and compassion to death and anger, this book offers readers a unique reference tool of complementary African proverbs and Bible verses. Focusing on Jesus’ golden rule to love your neighbor as yourself, Morehouse gives readers a myriad of African proverbs with parallel messages, including the Malagasy maxim “If you know what hurts yourself, you know what hurts others.” Similarly, where the Bible’s Gospel of Matthew urges people to avoid praying bombastically in public for their own glorification, a Swahili proverb reminds listeners that “Closing the eyes and prostrating is not praying; praying is in the heart.” Recognizing the importance of symbols to convey aphorisms in African spirituality, such as the Adinkra Sankofasymbol for learning from the past, the book delivers proverbs that are accompanied by almost 40 images in addition to useful maps and charts. The result is a user-friendly guide that not only draws on ancient wisdom from African and biblical traditions, but also highlights the “universal principles that find a voice in many cultures and societies.” While the volume mostly lets the proverbs and Bible verses speak for themselves, it features brief editorial commentary that contextualizes African cosmology for Western readers. This analysis is particularly adept at parsing the nuances of African culture, emphasizing the rich diversity of a heterogeneous continent. The inclusion of diasporic communities from the Caribbean and South America further reflects this complexity. While the author, an active Presbyterian, does not hide the Christian lens through which he views ancient wisdom, the proverbs listed in the book have much to offer to people of various faiths.
A satisfying guide to comparable African and Christian teachings.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 281
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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