An often helpful work that uses the “bullies” and “mean girls” of the Bible to show readers how to overcome their modern-day...
A guide to dealing with bullying that draws inspiration from biblical stories.
In her direct, punchy nonfiction debut, Reese focuses on a seemingly universal element of human society: the bully, the braggart, the person who takes advantage of others. In the author’s view, bullies can take many forms: “They can be an irascible, hot tempered person in the mall parking lot,” she writes, “a fellow customer waiting in line at the DMV, or the person sitting behind you at the movie theater, who is quick to pick a fight with a perceived weaker person.” To illustrate how to deal with such people, Reese enlists a handful of famous stories from the Old and New Testaments. She talks about David and Goliath, of course, but also about David and King Saul as well as a trio of biblical “mean girls”: Peninnah, Jezebel, and Athaliah. She writes about King Herod the Great and his descendants, and she concentrates on the persecution of Jesus Christ, whom she refers to as “our perfect example of victory over bullies.” As that description makes clear, some of the author’s readings of Scriptural readings may be problematic for some readers; for example, Jesus was horribly beaten, scourged, and crucified by his bullies before his eventual victory. Also, in her retelling of the story of Moses in Egypt, she describes Pharaoh as “a malevolent bully boss” whose belligerence and short temper were illustrated by his refusal to free his Jewish slaves. As Reese jubilantly points out, “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart for the purpose of glorifying God’s awesomeness while simultaneously giving the foolish Pharaoh a divine bully beat down!” It should be remembered, though, that part of God's “divine bully beat down,” in this case, resulted in the deaths of thousands of Egyptian first born males. Still, the author’s reassurances, such as “God will help you no matter where you are,” will doubtless comfort fellow believers, as will her book’s general tone of optimism in the face of confrontation.
An often helpful work that uses the “bullies” and “mean girls” of the Bible to show readers how to overcome their modern-day counterparts.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-88517-8
Page Count: 212
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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