A must-read for anyone seeking to understand how cults operate and view themselves in relation to the world.
Page-turning account of growing up at the heart of a fringe religion.
The Church Universal and Triumphant, which Prophet estimates to have had 40,000 followers worldwide at its peak, was an offshoot of earlier New Age movements combining Christian teachings, Eastern religious concepts and the channeling of messages from “ascended masters.” Starting in the early 1970s, the author’s mother, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, was at the center of the church and wielded autocratic power over her followers. Best known for ordering hundreds of adherents into underground Montana shelters in preparation for a prophesied nuclear war, the church and the Prophet family were often in the news during the early ’90s. Viewed as a spiritual heir-apparent, the author was encouraged to take up her mother’s mantel as a seer and visionary; she took on an increasingly active role in the church’s decisions, though often behind the scenes. Elizabeth Prophet’s control over her daughter’s life was complete, even down to how often she spent the night with her husband. Over time, a series of insights into her mother’s imperfections, from moral peccadilloes to frail and failing health, opened Prophet’s eyes to the inconsistencies in her teachings, leading in the end to the author’s independence. Looking back, Prophet dispassionately explores not only the cult but also her role in its day-to-day activities. Her memoir is lucidly written and entirely approachable, providing all the necessary background for understanding the story without belaboring New Age history. The author puts to good use her training as a sociologist in a text that demonstrates close reflection without wandering into self-pity or false excuses.
A must-read for anyone seeking to understand how cults operate and view themselves in relation to the world.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59921-425-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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