This Christian-themed handbook offers insight and comfort, though falls short of sharing three-dimensional stories.
An oncologist and his cancer-surviving co-author present the stories of 12 cancer patients and analyze each person’s spiritual growth following the diagnosis.
The idea of cancer as the best gift a person could receive is an obviously controversial suggestion. For the most part, the authors do a fine job of clarifying this inflammatory statement by examining how the personal and spiritual growth of the cancer patents profiled here led to enriched relationships, stronger faith and other positive impacts. However, by presenting each patient’s story as a first-person narrative, the authors are hampered by each person’s individual limits as a storyteller. Few of the patients use rich, descriptive language or set a vivid scene, relying instead on clichéd language or pat testimonies regarding their belief in God. A notable exception is a moving account that describes how a man’s relationship with a close friend’s daughter helped him fight cancer and, later, helped the girl’s mother cope with the sudden death of her daughter. A well-researched narrative and perhaps accompanying photographs would help the case studies resonate more deeply. Additionally, the majority of the stories involve those who survived cancer, further implying a positive attitude and strong, Christian faith result in recovery. The analysis following each anecdote takes an increasingly strong, evangelical tone that may alienate those who do not share such beliefs. Such proselytizing distracts from otherwise generally thoughtful discussions and guidance regarding strategies for living in the moment, reducing worry and addressing negative feelings in order to focus on positive ones. Analytical sections also are careful to explain such coping strategies may not cure cancer but may provide comfort and improve quality of life. Footnotes throughout the text often follow vague references to other literature, material generally unnecessary and distracting.
This Christian-themed handbook offers insight and comfort, though falls short of sharing three-dimensional stories.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2010
ISBN: 978-1440187698
Page Count: 167
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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