A guide that treads familiar ground, but it may be helpful to readers seeking alternatives to restrictive religious...
De la Torre offers a map for living spiritually in his debut self-help book.
The author writes that his crisis of faith regarding Catholicism led him to a period of soul-searching. But finally, by using a logical way of thinking, honed by his math studies at Arizona State University, he says that he figured out how to live in a spiritual way. In the process, he writes, he had to unlearn Catholic dogma, and he devotes several pages to addressing what he terms “myths,” such as “You must be aloof or mystical” and “You can’t be spiritual and sexual.” Next, de la Torre describes the answer he found: one must live “in awareness of the Divine spark within us,” which will lead to being “aware of the Divine spark in all others.” With this foundation laid, he offers a road map, for which he uses the acronym “MAP IT FIRST, DUDE” (“M” for “Mindfulness,” “A” for “Awareness,” and so on). The explanation of this map forms the bulk of the book and offers a multipronged approach to addressing one’s mental, emotional, energetic, and physical states. Finally, de la Torre offers suggestions for taking one’s inner peace out into the world. The different sections of this book follow the stages of a hero’s quest: the crisis or call, the soul-searching, the discovery of answers, and the return and offering of his wisdom, which, in de la Torre’s case, is woven through with on-trend quantum physics principles. This is ground that has been well-covered by other writers, particularly by physicist and consciousness expert Thomas W. Campbell. Although de la Torre’s stated target audience is “busy people,” the pages that he devotes to free oneself from dogmatic religious precepts suggest a narrower audience that struggles against these same ideas. Such readers may find de la Torres’ myth-busting illuminating. Most others, though, will likely find some of the book’s notions quaint—such as that sex is a natural part of being human.
A guide that treads familiar ground, but it may be helpful to readers seeking alternatives to restrictive religious principles.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 137
Publisher: Peace Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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