A digestible interpretation of many scriptural tales and Christian beliefs.
Debut author Rutland offers a book of summations and commentary on various portions of the Bible.
Beginning with grand concepts, such as the omnipresence and everlasting nature of God (usually referred to in the text as “Awesome Sovereign”), this book goes on to explore more tangible stories of the Bible. It covers a lot of ground, from the story of Cain and Abel to the life of Jesus, with varying degrees of specificity. For instance, it recounts the story of Noah in detail, down to the individual animals that he put onboard his famous ark. Rutland writes in a contemporary style, including unadorned dialogue, as when God instructs Moses quite plainly to “return to Egypt to rescue my people, the Israelites, from slavery.” This easy-to-understand language helps to make otherwise dense biblical passages relatively breezy and comprehensible. Although readers will likely be familiar with many of the events described, such as the issuance of the Ten Commandments, the author also extends his explanations to more obtuse portions of Christian texts. For instance, the book clearly provides the reasoning behind why Jesus Christ decided to make a fig tree wither; it also says that the reason that Joseph isn’t mentioned in ancient Egyptian texts is simply because “Egyptian scribes rewrote history and changed Joseph’s name to the Egyptian name, Imhotep, to ensure the Egyptian people no longer remembered Joseph.” Some of the arguments here may not convince more skeptical readers, but they do provide an easily navigable text for those who share the author’s beliefs or are simply seeking to understand those who do. Although some simplifications may not satisfy those looking for more in-depth analyses, they still provide insight into core ideas of many modern Christians.
A digestible interpretation of many scriptural tales and Christian beliefs.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5049-7204-8
Page Count: 412
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: April 18, 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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