A forceful, if flawed and divisive, case for the purification of the church.
A Christian pastor’s call for the church to refocus its attention back toward Christ.
As the lead pastor of the Overcomers in Christ Group of Churches, with branches in Brooklyn, Newark, and Philadelphia, Guobadia has a particular passion for developing Christian apostles. In this, his seventh book, written after “the wind of God visited” him, he turns his focus to the church, writ large, which has “been soiled by strife, division, greed, self-interest, and a reluctance to declare the truth.” As someone who believes that the church is “the bride of Christ,” Guobadia is not shy in highlighting areas where it has gone astray, such as its complicity in slavery, apartheid, and the Holocaust. While highlighting the role of Black churches in serving as a historic voice of conscience within the church, the author laments that since the Protestant Reformation, it has been divided by a “proliferation of denominations,” which has diminished Christians’ “power to speak with one voice.” The book’s pleas for a “revival” take on an urgency exacerbated by the author’s belief that end times are near. Harsh reproaches, however, are met with pragmatic solutions, including promoting and training clergy who reflect leadership qualities delineated in Scripture, increasing church involvement in anti-poverty work, “capturing the youth” through campaigns targeting millennials, and, most importantly, “returning to the Cross of Christ” by following his example of prayer and sacrifice. Despite the book’s emphasis on unity and focus on church history, it does not shy away from criticizing those in the present who the author believes has led the church astray. While most would echo the book’s condemnation of racism or sexually abusive clergy, many will recoil at its critique of the Anglican Church’s endorsement of same-sex marriage and ordination of gay clergy as part of a “satanic agenda” from which “the USA in particular, needs deliverance.” In light of its homophobia, the book’s calls to “come together” ring hollow.
A forceful, if flawed and divisive, case for the purification of the church.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-66420-060-9
Page Count: 172
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A top-flight nonfiction debut from a unique artist.
The acclaimed director displays his talents as a film critic.
Tarantino’s collection of essays about the important movies of his formative years is packed with everything needed for a powerful review: facts about the work, context about the creative decisions, and whether or not it was successful. The Oscar-winning director of classic films like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs offers plenty of attitude with his thoughts on movies ranging from Animal House to Bullitt to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to The Big Chill. Whether you agree with his assessments or not, he provides the original reporting and insights only a veteran director would notice, and his engaging style makes it impossible to leave an essay without learning something. The concepts he smashes together in two sentences about Taxi Driver would take a semester of film theory class to unpack. Taxi Driver isn’t a “paraphrased remake” of The Searchers like Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? is a paraphrased remake of Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby or De Palma’s Dressed To Kill is a paraphrased remake of Hitchcock’s Psycho. But it’s about as close as you can get to a paraphrased remake without actually being one. Robert De Niro’s taxi driving protagonist Travis Bickle is John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards. Like any good critic, Tarantino reveals bits of himself as he discusses the films that are important to him, recalling where he was when he first saw them and what the crowd was like. Perhaps not surprisingly, the author was raised by movie-loving parents who took him along to watch whatever they were watching, even if it included violent or sexual imagery. At the age of 8, he had seen the very adult MASH three times. Suddenly the dark humor of Kill Bill makes much more sense. With this collection, Tarantino offers well-researched love letters to his favorite movies of one of Hollywood’s most ambitious eras.
A top-flight nonfiction debut from a unique artist.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-311258-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
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