JFK, RFK, MLK, Lincoln, John Lennon, and a host of others speak from beyond death in this engaging series of purported...
A meditation on the afterlife constructed as a series of conversations with an array of dead people, from the very famous to the entirely ordinary.
Through their working collaboration—Michael taking messages from the beyond and Talbot writing them up and appending open-ended questions to facilitate discussion—the authors offer an account of a busy, hopeful afterlife populated by spirits who would universally prefer to be there rather than back in their earthly lives. “Not all will believe these spirit messages, but we ask you to suspend judgment until you have read the book,” Talbot writes. The conversations, presented as a series of encounters, are with a range of people, from famous dead U.S. presidents and celebrities to everyday people, all grouped into three categories: those who died unexpectedly and suddenly, those who had a bit of forewarning, and those who grappled with terminal illnesses that allowed months and sometimes years in which to prepare for death. Nine-year-old Lily, who died suddenly of a “brain seizure,” assures Michael that “living in spirit is not that much different from being alive as a human.” The spirit of President John F. Kennedy is asked what really happened in Dallas that day: “the shot that killed me came from an angry man in front of me—back and to the left.” Sometimes, touchingly, these spirits seem a bit lonely for their old lives: young Lily says, “I can easily share more,” and an old friend of the writer says, “Talk to me; tell me something funny!” But the general message is clearly one of hope in a warm, embracing Christian afterlife, a place of great comfort and peace from which the dead watch over the living. Fans of John Edward and other such afterlife mediums will enjoy it quite readily.
JFK, RFK, MLK, Lincoln, John Lennon, and a host of others speak from beyond death in this engaging series of purported afterlife conversations.Pub Date: June 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5122-8271-9
Page Count: 168
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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