An innovative Christian moral handbook for attorneys.
A daily devotional work seeks to encourage lawyers with biblical wisdom.
Debut author Mounts isn’t an attorney, but in 30 years of ministry he’s met his fair share of them and found them both inspired and challenged. Ideally, the law is an exemplary Christian instrument insofar as it promotes justice and freedom, zealously pursues the truth, and is microcosmic of the judgment that the Lord will one day visit upon humanity. In fact, the author describes Jesus as a kind of spiritual attorney who represents readers before God. That said, lawyers are not always the shining examples of devotion that they could be: “While today’s American attorney bears no resemblance to the first-century religious lawyer in Israel, they do illustrate a group generally found inattentive to Jesus Christ and his way to life.” Instead of writing a hectoring screed, Mounts composed this devotional book, meant to provide a combination of motivation and counsel to attorneys. There are 91 chapters, and each begins with a pertinent biblical quotation (or several) followed by commentary on the way in which this passage furnishes guidance for lawyers. Each concludes with an “action plan,” a short paragraph that issues more specific suggestions about how to put that instruction into practice. The advice is wide-ranging—Mounts discusses the pitfalls of workaholics as mentioned in the Psalms, how to manage the anxiety of law school (Paul’s Letter to the Philippians), and the issues of guilt and judgment in terms of the infamous O.J. Simpson trial. There are more general disquisitions, too—the author offers some thoughts on race and diversity, which mine not only Pauline letters, but also LULAC v. Perry. Mounts’ use of the Bible is impressively clever, and he consistently finds creative ways to relate scriptural wisdom to lawyerly life. This is also a refreshingly cheerful book that genuinely attempts to rehabilitate the reputation of attorneys—something the author explicitly treats in a chapter titled “Lovable Lawyers”—by bringing them to Jesus. This work should appeal to lawyers looking to renew their Christian faith.
An innovative Christian moral handbook for attorneys.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5127-6778-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
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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