A writer offers a celebration of the life and teachings of Jesus set against a contemporary backdrop.
Bohlen opens his well-designed nonfiction debut with an acknowledgement of an increasingly studied new reality. The heavy use of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter almost invariably leads to a lessening of personal happiness. People, particularly the young, who view these apps excessively end up wasting time, feeling jealousy, and becoming impatient with media and books that demand longer concentration. Bohlen asserts that this “murky collection” of platforms makes people worse: “We become prideful, self-centered, and think we know better than God.” But, as the author lays out in his eloquent and inviting prose, the solution to this problem has been readily handy for 2,000 years: Christianity. “Once envisioned—no, experienced—the story of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ cannot be erased,” he writes. “Why? Because Jesus Christ adds the dimension of eternal light. In a tender, deeply satisfying way, it blows any IMAX movie experience out of the water.” In a narrative move that’s possibly quite wise considering the unprecedented rates at which young people of the “Twitter generation” are abandoning traditional religions, Bohlen largely sidelines the opening antagonist of social media and instead concentrates on celebrating the Jesus story, bringing to it a sense of passionate immediacy that makes all the elements of that narrative feel fresh. Focusing on the Nativity, he relates: “The Christ, born tonight? Generations have waited for this moment, and here it is, tonight?” In the book—which features beautiful, uncredited photographs—the author intersperses his recapitulations of New Testament stories with pedagogical insets (“Doctrinal Points to Ponder”) and explicitly instructional ones (“How It Applies to Me”). Bohlen takes readers through the famous moments of the New Testament because, as he puts it, “Jesus is the gold standard by which we can know what is good, what is wise, and what is truly important.” His Christian readers should love how he treats that gold standard.
A bracingly enthusiastic example of modern-day Christology.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-949572-00-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Carpenter's Son Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION
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BOOK REVIEW
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 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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BOOK TO SCREEN
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Categories: BODY, MIND & SPIRIT | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION
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