by Jeff Kurtzer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 30, 2015
An honest, if sometimes-fantastical, account of a strange life journey.
A debut memoir of drug abuse, mental illness, and eventual Christian redemption.
Beginning with his teenage years on Long Island in Smithtown, New York, Kurtzer details growing up with a difficult father and periods of reckless drug abuse: “I started out smoking marijuana and popping pills (uppers and downers); then I went on to do acid and LSD-25.” At the age of 19, he writes, “my life fell apart”; he received a diagnosis of schizophrenia, which would eventually be changed to one of manic depression. The author’s struggles with mental illness would continue for many years, and would include numerous brushes with the law, time in prison and mental health facilities, and a maniac episode that culminated in an attempt to drive his car up the steps of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. Despite years of taking medication, the author asserts that he only received lasting relief from his condition after surrendering himself to Christ; doctors, he says, “are only men practicing medicine, but Jesus Christ is the Great Physician who can heal any sickness or disease if you believe in Him and trust Him to heal you.” After using his faith in Christ as a means to recovery, the author continued his rigorous study of the Bible and ministered in the Philippines. This is a meandering tale by its very nature, but it takes readers to a number of novel places. The early pages devoted to drug use prove somewhat dull, though some sections, such as when Kurtzer was questioned by members of the U.S. Secret Service, help illuminate the reality of dealing with a debilitating condition. Skeptical readers will likely find the episodes of faith healing here difficult to swallow, such as an account of the instant cure of a deaf girl (“The minister then commanded the deaf spirit to come out in Jesus’ name, and the child instantly turned her head”). However, the tone throughout the work is effectively earnest.
An honest, if sometimes-fantastical, account of a strange life journey.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5049-6002-1
Page Count: 152
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
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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by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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