An appealing and inventive educational resource for young Christians.
A reconsideration of the heroism of Jesus’ life and the ways his story has shaped other accounts of heroism both ancient and modern.
According to Eichinger, Jesus is the ultimate protagonist; against formidable odds, he is called to save the entire world from destruction. His enemies are great—he’s not only opposed by the “triple threat of the scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees,” but also by Satan’s trials of temptation. And his superpower is unbeatable because he “possesses the exclusive ability to conquer death eternally.” And like many other superheroes, Jesus, who is both human and divine, boasts something of an alter ego, or “altar ego,” a corny joke charmingly delivered by Eichinger, who is primarily targeting a young audience bored by church and religion generally. The author thoroughly recasts Jesus as “the most courageous protagonist the world ever knew” and furnishes a vivid retelling of the biblical story of Jesus’ dramatic ministry, comparing it to stories of heroic triumph in ancient literature like Homer’s Iliad and contemporary tales in popular culture that feature Spiderman, Batman, and Luke Skywalker. “The seeds of Christ’s true narrative are evident in so much of our celebrated heroic literature, from ages past to modern triumphs. The underlying difference is that the story of Jesus actually happened.” The author is a Christian pastor and writes with the focused zeal of one. The result is a powerful representation of the story of Jesus’ life, though one that has the didactic tenor of a sermon. Also, in Eichinger’s enthusiasm, he sometimes makes a case that reaches beyond the evidence he adduces. It’s hardly obvious, and certainly not on the basis of the argument he furnishes, that the tale of Jesus is completely independent of the Greco-Roman mythology that precedes his life. However, this is still a buoyantly cheerful argument that Jesus is the original superhero.
An appealing and inventive educational resource for young Christians.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-7586-6990-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Concordia Publishing House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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
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