A fine addition to any library of biblical analysis.
In this brief debut reference book, Baptist pastor East examines the nature of the Christian God through direct quotations from the Bible.
Starting with Exodus 34, the author investigates what he believes is the one point in the Bible in which God truly reveals himself. East hopes that by examining the true nature of the deity, readers will better be able to know and emulate him. He links the aforementioned chapter in Exodus, which deals chiefly with God’s interactions with Moses, with similar passages in the New Testament regarding the behavior and nature of Jesus Christ. He even breaks down the various terms that God uses to refer to himself, including various forms of the name “YHVH,” or “Yehovah.” It’s no surprise that East is a pastor, as the entire book takes the tone of a sermon—kind, informative, patient, and directly referring to both the speaker and the listener. It reads like a conversation between the author and his reader, even as it outlines another conversation between God and Moses. Christian readers will likely get the most out of this book, as it relies on assumed knowledge of various verses, but the text is clear and easy to parse, overall. It’s evident that East has done a great deal of research into not only the biblical passages he references, but also the history of various Hebrew words and customs. Overall, this book would be a useful companion for anyone seeking to further their personal, Christian faith, as it raises many intriguing points for consideration.
A fine addition to any library of biblical analysis.Pub Date: June 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-973630-66-1
Page Count: 60
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2018
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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