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Meeting the WORD in the World

Affirmations of the natural world in one man’s heartfelt Christian beliefs.

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A series of reflections on Christianity and nature from debut author Warner.

Invoking natural wonders ranging from Zion National Park to the sublime simplicity of dairy cows, this collection of Christian musings takes readers on a leisurely walk through life and its challenges. In short chapters that tend to begin with the natural world and end with a biblical verse or teachings about Jesus Christ—e.g., “Christ did not come to make life easy, but to make people great”—the collection summons a fondness for figures such as Albert Schweitzer and John Muir along with an irritation for many of the worries of the modern world. Ranging from a chapter about the dangers of consumerism to a chapter detailing a lengthy conversation with an agnostic physician, the stories and musings include moments from the mundane and the divine. A chapter called “Hawk” begins: “The lake is a good schoolroom with many lessons for us, and for the creatures that live around it.” What starts as an observation of a hawk becomes words of advice for those struggling with faith. “God always has a better plan for us and we can find his way,” Warner writes, “even, or maybe especially when, we are discouraged and fighting an uphill battle.” Readers will easily imagine walking along the shore of Lake Erie with the no-nonsense yet genial author and his collie, Skye, as a developing weather pattern or piece of sea glass conjures a brief biblical parable, old hymn or simple statement of wonder. Though perhaps slow for readers seeking more fire and brimstone in their Christian texts, the book is instead geared more toward readers looking for meditative, folksy qualities in the writings of a fellow believer. Allusions to skipping stones and dairy farm chores may not illicit great moments of excitement, but they’re not necessarily meant to. Instead, the country contemplations will be calmly inspiring.

Affirmations of the natural world in one man’s heartfelt Christian beliefs.

Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-3200-4

Page Count: 400

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Review Posted Online: March 18, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014

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THE 48 LAWS OF POWER

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

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

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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