A thorough, scripturally literate Christian reading of the Old Testament.
A writer offers the first installment of a two-volume series on Christian exegesis.
In her comprehensive, soup-to-nuts nonfiction debut, Fugate takes readers on a carefully guided tour of the Old Testament from Genesis to the Psalms, tracing a thread of Christian sentiment through the various books of the Hebrew Bible. Each chapter concludes with a catechism of “Deeper Insights” designed to facilitate study and discussion through a series of in-depth questions, ideal for Bible study groups (specific verse references are always provided). Each chapter centers on a different major book or famous event from Scripture, from Adam and Eve to the Great Flood to Sodom and Gomorrah to King David. In each case, the author relates the well-known stories in clear, accessible prose and shores up her readings with copious quotes, both biblical and scholarly. The extent of Fugate’s knowledge and research is evident on every page without being obtrusive, showing a vast amount of preparation without ever feeling intimidating. But the volume has a fairly rocky beginning, with the author making some extremely dubious or downright odd assertions right out of the starting gate, as when she notes that “people flock to the theaters to see science fiction movies about aliens, monsters, witchcraft, and super-heroes” because “we want to believe there is something more than what we can now see.” (Obviously, most people don’t “believe” those films. Or when she asserts: “We are wonderfully made and have been well provided for” (Over 1,500 people die of cancer every day in the U.S. alone). Or, most controversial of all, when she asks her readers: “Why don’t we give the Bible’s theory” of cosmology “a try. What have we got to lose?” (Many believe that life on Earth was not created by magic). But once Fugate is on slightly less dogmatic ground, her confidence as a teacher comes to the fore, and the vast majority of her work should prove invaluable for Christians and students seeking a lucid tour through the Old Testament.
A thorough, scripturally literate Christian reading of the Old Testament.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-4908-5126-6
Page Count: 339
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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