by Michael A. Bell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 17, 2014
A jokey pamphlet on love, faith, and marriage that lacks depth.
A debut booklet offers basic advice for a Christian marriage.
In his work, Bell, a graduate of the Memphis School of Preaching, semiseriously answers the famous Tina Turner lyric. Starting from a fundamental belief that God is love, he elaborates on how love is essential to a Christian marriage. Chapter 2 explains various types of love: agape (God’s unconditional love), phileo (brotherly love), and eros—differentiated from simple lust. Your spouse should be your best friend, the author argues—the most important, loyal, and committed relationship in your life. He then goes on to suggest one cannot have close friends of the opposite sex, characterizing these sexually threatening figures as “Mr. Cute Casanova” and “Ms. Fine Flirt.” Chapter 4, “Women—Don’t be Silly,” insists there can be no more girls’ nights out once a woman weds (“You could be setting your marriage up for failure. You must stop trying to prove to your friends that you can still ‘hang out’ and do whatever you please”). A short section giving the three components of a successful marriage (compatibility, commitment, and communication) could be expanded. Chapter 6 reveals simple ways of showing love, including a dinner date and compliments. A later chapter stresses the importance of training children in abstinence. The overall problem with this 16-page work is that it breaks no new ground. The text sometimes repeats Scripture almost verbatim without referencing it, as in these lines on Page 9: “The wife’s body does not belong to her alone, but also to her husband. Likewise, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone, but also to his wife.” A few other popular songs are alluded to, but one is given an incorrect title (“My Way” is called “I Did It My Way”). The frequent “(smile)” asides seem like a sign that the author hasn’t mastered the art of injecting sarcasm naturally. Words in boldface and all capitals are similarly unsubtle ways of showing emphasis. Presumably this pithy booklet is intended to be handed out to youth groups or in premarital counseling sessions; while it might be a useful jumping-off point in those contexts, its superficiality will likely frustrate keen readers.
A jokey pamphlet on love, faith, and marriage that lacks depth.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 15
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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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
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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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
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