With sincere enthusiasm and a playful tone, Wilson highlights the vitality of spirituality in our lives.
The actor and producer explores the importance of spirituality.
A decade after the season finale, Wilson is still most recognized for his role as Dwight Schrute on the U.S. version of The Office. However, the founder of the inspirational media company SoulPancake and producer and star of the new travel docuseries The Geography of Bliss has since applied himself to making the world a better place, and he has a great deal to say about the role of spirituality in that endeavor. In answer to those wondering how a comic actor ends up writing a book about spirituality, Wilson lightly traverses territory covered in more depth in his 2015 memoir, The Bassoon King. He recalls a bohemian childhood during which the Baha'i faith of his parents became important to him, and he writes about later mental health and addiction struggles that returned him to his faith and launched a spiritual journey during which he voraciously consumed the teachings of the world's religions. This book would seem to be the literary culmination of this journey, "a book on big spiritual ideas," in which Wilson considers our most difficult challenges and outlines nothing short of a spiritual revolution as a path to healing them. In a chapter titled “Hey, Kids, Let’s Build the Perfect Religion!” the author extracts religion's most essential aspects and leads readers on a participatory journey to do just that. Along the way, Wilson covers numerous heady concepts, including the purpose of life (soul growth), life after death, and God. Outrageous as this becomes, the book remains true to the author's thesis—that the world needs spiritual solutions to many of its ailments—and Wilson walks a razor-sharp line in addressing the most sacred of topics with the airy irreverence one might expect from the former sitcom star.
With sincere enthusiasm and a playful tone, Wilson highlights the vitality of spirituality in our lives.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780306828270
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Hachette Go
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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