Despite the title, this is not about faith healers or miracle cures, but instead compiles scientific studies of the impact of religious life on physical and emotional health, interweaving these with a multitude of personal stories in support of research findings. Koenig is director of Duke University’s Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health, which has conducted more than 50 studies of the relationship between health and traditional religious faith and practice. Among the center’s findings are that people who practice a religious faith tend to have a sturdier sense of well-being than do nonbelievers, possibly due to their more stable marriages and stronger families. They also have healthier habits, are better able to cope with stress, are less likely to suffer depression, have lower diastolic blood pressure and stronger immune systems, are hospitalized much less often, and live longer, healthier lives. But simply having faith that the universe is ruled by a benevolent God who hears prayers and performs miracles is not the whole story. According to research cited by Koenig, health benefits are derived directly from frequent attendance at religious services and active involvement with a supportive congregation. In story after story, he illustrates the role played by faith and religious practice in the lives of individuals beset by onerous physical and emotional problems. Both for those who are already religious and for others who are not, he concludes with practical recommendations on how to achieve the health benefits of faith and commitment for oneself or for an ailing loved one. The wealth of illustrative stories collected by Koenig makes this a highly readable summary of current research on the place of religion in health.
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-85296-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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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