A good, undemanding collection for those seeking to understand and commune with God.
Case provides a slim but thoughtful volume of prayers, based upon Christian Scripture but far from orthodox or didactic in character.
In each instance, Case provides a passage from the King James Version of the Bible— drawing from both the Old Testament and the New Testament—and then crafts a brief prayer in response. Her prayers are gathered under subject headings such as “Nearness,” “Assurance,” and “Healing.” The succinct nature of her prayers is somewhat surprising. None are more than a few lines in length. and some are quite brief, such as, “Thank you, Almighty Love, for holding all the power there is in Your hands. May I really trust this today.” Despite her use of the classic King James Bible, Case is certainly not bound by traditionalist approaches toward God. For instance, on various occasions she refers to God using feminine pronouns: “God, who is Love, is holding me in Her arms….She is holding me close.” In another instance, she imagines God as a spouse: “God, Love, you are my (husband)(wife).” Many of the prayers include questions to God within the text (“What is it You have to teach me today?”) This is a reminder that in many cases, prayer is about questioning and asking. Case has created a collection meant to be useful and accessible to any individual, even those whose faith in God is strained or intangible. Though she uses the Scriptures of her own faith tradition as a starting point, her prayers lack theological depth and rely instead upon universal needs and feelings for their substance. The experienced or dogmatic believer will find Case’s prayers lightweight or even uncomfortable. However, those who are seeking a faith tradition or who feel ostracized or alienated from a faith tradition may find these prayers to be simple affirmations of the idea of a loving God.
A good, undemanding collection for those seeking to understand and commune with God.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-0991483310
Page Count: 130
Publisher: He-leadeth-me Press
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2015
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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