A brief yet heartfelt and uplifting religious guide.
A debut book presents a scripturally based approach to the promises of God in an uncertain world.
Coleman encourages readers by describing “this place with God,” a phrase she uses often to denote a believer’s personal relationship with God as a safe and comforting space in the midst of an often cold and cruel human reality. This “place” is characterized by four main qualities: acceptance, forgiveness, victory, and purpose. The author is careful to explain throughout her work that even though these qualities are often lacking in the world, the believer can be confident of possessing them within “this place,” this relationship with God. For instance, other people may or may not accept others for who they are, and any approval may come and go. Nevertheless, God loves and accepts individuals no matter what—his love is unconditional. Likewise, “outside of this place with God, forgiveness is never guaranteed nor is at all possible, depending on what has occurred.” In relationship to God, however, “Jesus was crucified on the cross so that you could experience the benefits of true forgiveness.” In an imperfect world, Coleman explains, believers can find a place of perfect peace with God. Throughout the book, the author deftly utilizes specific Scriptures and biblical stories to stress her point. For instance, Coleman underlines the tale of Joseph’s relationship with his brothers in the chapter on forgiveness; she highlights the story of David and Goliath in the chapter on victory. The author’s writing is lucid and approachable, and her tone and subject matter should bring encouragement to those battling with everything from troublesome family members to difficult job situations. The book’s greatest fault is simply its brevity. Coleman has only piqued readers’ interest by the time her work is complete. There are so many more aspects of life for believers left untouched. Peace, hope, love, endurance, and numerous other topics could also be explored as “places with God.”
A brief yet heartfelt and uplifting religious guide.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5127-5694-4
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2018
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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